I had this voice when I was in high school, except nobody thought much of it then. I developed it by imitating singers I admired - Alison Moyet, Boy George, later on Nina Simone.
My favourite moment from the Oscars was when Brando didn't attend and sent a Native American woman to talk about Wounded Knee. She delivered a very unpopular and lengthy monologue about the injustice for indigenous people in North America. It was one of the greatest moments in American television.
America, a country that is no longer contained by physical borders, aspires only for more power and control. I want to maximize my usefulness and advocate for the preservation of biodiversity and the pursuit of human decency within my sphere of influence.
We're not just polluting a river and killing a couple of top predator animals; we're eradicating the krill, the necessary algae. We're dismantling the insect and amphibian worlds. We're going for the building blocks.
I would never undermine a person's interpretation of a creative work.
For me, a theatre is a dark place. It should be mysterious; it's where we go to get away from all the utilitarian things we do in the daylight.
Look at the American history of slavery. Can you say that hundreds of years later that has been eased? That pain has not yet been eased.
I spent ten years being told there was no way I was going to have a career because I was so effeminate.
You see artists hailed as a new generation of independents, only to be enlisted to leverage product.
It's a feminine universe, and every person who has ever tried to convince you otherwise is doing little more than pounding on his mother's breast, enraged by the predicament he faces as a leaf, dangling from the tree of life.
For millennia, men have enslaved women and attempted to appropriate female creative power, re-casting themselves as gods and creators. This assault continues today in the forms of ruthless wealth and mineral extraction, genetic engineering, mass surveillance, and war mongering.
My idea with '4 Degrees' was to articulate, for a minute, not my ideal vision of how I wanted to perceive my relationship to nature but the reality. If I could give a voice to my behavior, what would that voice be? Taking planes, enjoying first-world fossil fuel, an addict of first-world comfort.
As a transgendered artist, I have always occupied a place outside of the mainstream. I have gladly paid a price for speaking my truth in the face of loathing and idiocy.
Rage is a really fun place to dance from - expressions of anger sublimated into something beautiful are invigorating, especially if you feel like you're telling the truth.
This illusion that a lower class has less intelligence than a higher class is a complete fake-out.
If Hillary's the first woman president, well, in England we already know what a Margaret Thatcher is. It's not an end unto itself to be the first woman president.
The top end are still making bucket loads while maintaining the illusion of the American dream: that if you work hard enough, you can make a fortune. Meanwhile, the working and middle classes have been hollowed out of the system.
We've been playing in the sandbox of creation for millions of years. We ruin one environment, we move on to the next - manifest destiny. Now it's hitting us collectively: Our mother's life is in our hands.
The man-made apocalypse we are facing was not written in the stars; it is a notion that grew like mould from the texts of a few frustrated, feather-wielding monks.
Artists have different responsibilities in different eras. But at this point, I really feel like it's all hands on deck. An artist that's fiddle-faddling in opaque, gossamer gestures - I mean it's fine to do that, totally fine, but there's no time left. We don't have the luxury of time anymore.
