Travis Alabanza

Travis Alabanza
Alabanza in 2023
Born	(1995-11-15) 15 November 1995 (age 30) Bristol, England, United Kingdom
Awards	Jhalak Prize, 2023
Website	travisalabanza.co.uk

Travis Alabanza (born 15 November 1995) is an English performance artist, writer and dramatist.

Career

Alabanza started their career in London with spoken word performances; their poems were first published in 2015 in the Black and Gay in the UK Anthology and they were named a Barbican Young Poet. Later that year, Alabanza toured in Stories of a Queer Brown Muddy Kid, performing at clubs, bookstores, and performance venues.

They have lectured on race and sexual orientation at universities in the United Kingdom during LGBTQ and Black History month. In 2017/2018, they became the youngest person ever to be awarded a residency at The Tate.

In 2016, Alabanza appeared in a production of Putting Words in Your Mouth by Scottee.^{[citation needed]} In 2017, they worked on a solo exhibition, The Other'd Artist for Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. Alabanza released their first chapbook titled Before I Step Outside. (You Love Me); a compilation of visual art, poetry, diary entries, and essays. They also performed the leading role in the stage adaptation of Derek Jarman's punk film Jubilee.

In 2018, Alabanza created Burgerz. This solo audience participation show concerns an incident of harassment in 2016 in which a person threw a burger at Alabanza on a bridge in London. The show toured from October 19 to November 17, 2018. It was performed in Australia in 2023 with another performer.

In 2019, Alabanza and a friend collaborated on an immersive installation titled All the Ways We Could Grow for the Free Word Centre, London, which explores the question: "What's it like to be trans?". In 2020, during the first COVID-19 lockdown in England, Alabanza and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley gave a live-streamed performance for the Free Word Centre of If I Feel Lonely Maybe U Do 2?. Overflow, written by Alabanza, directed by Debbie Hannan, and starring Reece Lyons, was produced by the Bush Theatre in London in 2020 and 2021. It later had an Australian version starring Janet Anderson, at Darlinghurst Theatre. The play is about trans safety.

In 2022, Alabanza released a semi-autobiographical non-fiction book None of the Above: My Life Beyond the Binary. The book was listed as a Waterstones Best Book of 2022: Politics and won the 2023 Jhalak Prize. In 2023, Alabanza and Hannan co-created Sound of the Underground at the Royal Court Theatre. The play featured drag performers from London.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Alabanza was born in Bristol and grew up on a council estate. They started writing poetry at 16 years old. After having the burger thrown at them, they decided to make their works public.

Alabanza is Black, transfeminine, and gender non-conforming, and uses the pronouns they/them. Alabanza speaks out about trans rights and the importance of safe spaces and communities for gender non-conforming and transgender people. Shon Faye, in her 2021 book The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice, quotes Alabanza: "When I say trans, I also mean escape. I mean choice. I mean autonomy. I mean wanting something greater than what you told me. Wanting more possibilities than the one you forced on me."

In November 2017, Alabanza was denied access to a female dressing room while shopping at Topshop in Manchester, the fashion retailer owned at the time by Sir Philip Green's Arcadia Group. On social media, Alabanza accused Topshop of violating their own policy to allow trans individuals to use the dressing rooms associated with their preferred gender. The Times published an opinion piece by Janice Turner, implying that Topshop's policy was changed because of Alabanza's tweet and claiming the policy would lead to child abuse. Subsequently, Alabanza received online death threats over Topshop's policy.

Works

References