An absurdist collection of poems and monologues that is timely as ever
Petch’s absurdist collection of poems and monologues, Infinite Audition, invites us to step into the multitude of roles — some chosen, some forced upon him — he has inhabited as a transmasculine artist, poet, musician, dramaturg and lighting designer.
The first and perhaps most challenging role Petch had to perform growing up was gender itself.
“coming out trans
// is a slow avalanche //
as I try to celebrate //
like I saved my life //
like I stopped my infinite //
audition to be a woman”
-Excerpt from Good News
Petch, who hails from Toronto, spares his audience no harrowing details throughout Infinite Audition. In Photophobia, we hear of the harassment they endured from their first day on set as a femme-presenting lighting tech to their last day “working with men who grabbed my breasts before asking my name.”
Later, we read of the time, in 1992, Petch got beaten up at a party.
‘but I didn’t want sympathy or an ice pack for my eye I just wanted someone to recognize I existed when I wasn’t giving a handjob or dancing in a cage but how do you stand out when we were just all becoming ghosts and statistics”
Petch approaches even these tough-to-read moments with a humour and charm that makes Infinite Audition feel like a well-deserved curtain call. There’s a celebratory quality to much of this slim collection, as if, after a life spent auditioning for societal roles that never quite fit, Petch has finally made his star turn as the one character only he can play: himself.
In the book’s closing poem, Daughter of Gepetto: Part IV, Pinocchio pens an ode to his father, Gepetto, after learning of his death. Its closing lines could very well double as Petch’s own cri de coeur.
“I wonder who will you become // with all that love // and freedom”
Divided into three “acts”: poems for solo performance, poems to be performed with music or puppetry, and poetic monologues, Infinite Audition welcomes us into the funhouse mirror of Petch’s brain, perspectives constantly shifting, morphing before our eyes. While many of the poems are delivered from Petch’s purview, others take on or are addressed to inanimate objects, fictional characters, and celebrities. There’s a poem delivered from the perspective of Petch’s closet (“I don’t care that I’m no longer the only one who knows your true form”). Another eavesdrops on a boozy conversation at a medical waste facility between Petch’s removed breasts and uterus as they gossip about their former owner (“they never even tried uteral orgasms!”).
One of the collection’s funniest pieces, Hey You Lucy Liu, imagines the author and titular Hollywood starlet running into each other in the kind of gender-neutral bathroom Petch didn’t know existed until they saw Liu in one during a 1998 episode of Ally McBeal.
“CHARLIE & LUCY exit stalls, snap briefcases on the sink, share Blistex and take makeup off in a way that only increases their power
CHARLIE (to LUCY) You’d look so good as a man
LUCY (raises eyebrow) Never as good as you babe
CHARLIE (winks, straightens his tie, purr-growls into the mirror)”
For all its kaleidoscopic qualities, Infinite Audition is a highly personal book, filled with intimate details and childhood memories that only Petch could have penned. And yet, by structuring the collection as a series of pieces to be performed by others — the over-the-top performance instructions are often hilarious on their own: “To be performed in a public washroom alongside Lucy Liu, if she’s available, and a full camera crew.” — Petch ensures the reader will not only learn about their lived experience but also have the opportunity to inhabit it.
As the trans community continues to be dehumanized by a U.S. president intent on stripping away its hard-won legal and medical rights, Infinite Audition feels as timely as ever. It is at once a charming compendium of surrealist poems and songs as well as lighting a path towards genuine empathy and understanding, something we could all use a bit more of these days.
Petch appears at Finding Our Way: Salish Stroll Forest Walk on Nov. 2. This event is sold out.
Review is by Brandon Barrett. Barrett is a national award-winning journalist, playwright, comedian and performer who doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to be regularly rejected at auditions.