22.42°C II first saw Max Percy’s extraordinary piece at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023, and it’s good to see it has had further life beyond the Fringe. Bakla is a derogatory term in the Tagalog language from the Philippines, a name for a homosexual man. We in the West have many equivalent terms. What Max Percy does in his extraordinary work is show us the deep connections between three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule and the racist attitudes that persist to this day.
He uses his body to expose how sexuality is constructed and imposed on his body by colonialism and patriarchy. It works on many levels, and part of that racial imposition is the whitening of skin, demonstrated here by an advert for soap that will “whiten your skin in a week”, and Percy whitening his own skin, and using soap as part of it. It’s a fractured piece, with the narrative constantly being interrupted as we move between time zones and atmospheres.
Unfortunately, the show was very much interrupted in reality when the Mercury had to be evacuated halfway through the performance. All was OK, but it was a long stop, and Percy did an incredible job of pulling the strands together and taking the piece to its conclusion. There is no doubt, perhaps naturally, that the rhythm and the build-up of the piece were largely lost.
There was still much to admire, though. His physicality is astonishing, dancing, acrobatic work, and teasing. What is refreshing is that he knows his history and his context within the tropes imposed on him. He also combined this with the telling of the loss of his virginity and the screening of a homophobic encounter. We see how an image of the available young boy is literally imposed on him, together with an enforced femininity and Western ideals of beauty. It was also full of wry humour, inviting us to admire and gaze upon him, challenging our own preconceived ideas.
Although it was such a shame the show was stopped, it’s still a thought-provoking, intelligent and brave piece of theatre.
