Writers: Luis Amália and Adam Zmith
Still smarting from the time that Spain failed to win a women’s gymnastics medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Luis Amália presents a show about failure, a subject closes to queerness’s heart. Even after a spectacular routine on the floor, Esther Moya only managed fourth and she never made it to the medal podium. Stigma examines a life destined to be lived on the sidelines.
Amália’s fascination with Moya’s loss is akin to the outrage that Britons felt, when in the 1994 Winter Olympics, Torville and Dean were pushed down the medal table when the judges deemed one of their lifts illegal. But the British duo still had plenty of Olympic gold medals on their mantelpieces whereas Moya was never awarded an Olympic medal of any colour. Amália begins the show with a detailed description of Moya’s Olympic routine and women’s gymnastics in general. All the time Amália moves across the stage, pirouetting and preening like a gymnast. All what’s missing are the jumps and the summersaults.
At first it’s hard to gauge the tone of the 60-minute piece, but this makes it more intriguing. Should we be laughing at Moya’s defeat? Should we be finding Amália’s asides and raised eyebrows more funny than they are? A few people in the audience giggle occasionally, but that response doesn’t quite feel right either.
The tone is even harder to fathom once Amália begins to act out scenes from Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, another story about shattered ambitions. And just as we settle down in our seats thinking that Stigma will be comprised of famous examples of loss – surely the football on the table will be used to discuss a penalty shootout as tragic as England’s in the Euro 2020 Final? – Amália switches tack.
The play becomes autobiographical as they explain how they never fit in with the traditional version of a boy, and how in later life they are neither gay or queer or masculine enough to fit into any category currently available. People they have met concentrate on their sense of humour, which, in a way, de-sexes them completely. It’s an interesting take on identity and it never feels self-indulgent.
It’s a physical piece too, and Amália is never still and at one point they exercise to a metronome while talking to us about time they joined the football team, only to become its mascot, another sexless identity. Slowly, we are allowed to laugh, but the show never loses its sense of seriousness.
A few parts don’t work – like the voice-overs that come across as unnecessarily didactic – and the play is a little overlong, but it’s curious that they never embrace failure like some other queer legends – among them, Wilde, Crisp, Jack Halberstam. There’s a sense that Amália will forever be reimagining Moya’s floor routine, and that is somehow comforting.
Runs until 18 June 2022
