Interview: Wet Mess

“I think about the stage as a place where we can dream, and dreaming as a process of becoming,” says Wet Mess sharing from London, while adding the final touches to their Fringe show. “I think a lot of trans / queer people can relate to the feeling of needing to dream as means of escaping, reimagining, and desiring.” 

This August, Mess will be dreaming onstage each night as they present TESTO, a one-person show that melds their experience as a cabaret artist, drag performer, dancer and music video choreographer to explore testosterone, non-binary transition and the edges of drag. The show combines theirs and others’ personal histories of these topics; “I interviewed lots of people who have experience taking testosterone, their voices are warped and distorted and feature in the show which I lip sync to,” Mess tells me.

Mess, an alum of Edinburgh College of Art, first performed at the Fringe in 2018 as part of ThisEgg, in the acclaimed dressed.. TESTO marks their first solo show here, which they have been devising, performing, and recalibrating over a period of several months. “I think when it’s your first full length solo show you learn about how you want to work and how you develop a work,” says Mess on the process of creating the show. “What I want the audience to leave with is the thing I've tested and questioned the most.”

TESTO’s latest iteration has been supported by Here & Now, a showcase at this year’s Fringe of live performance artists from across England, including works spanning experimental theatre, installation and dance. “It was curated via a nomination and selection process that is now a programme of exciting, intriguing and thought-provoking work created in England,” Mess explains. 

One of the reasons that TESTO has morphed over time is because of how many of the topics it covers are actively weaponised. Earlier this year the Cass Review sought to further police queer and trans youth by, amongst other things, recommending that gender-affirming hormones are not prescribed to under-18s. This policy has been implemented by NHS Scotland to the outcry of many. 

Wet Mess | Photo by Manuel Vason

“It’s quite wild to be making a show about something that feels so hotly debated. Like to be non-binary and considering hormones in this specific year is quite intense when it's been so weaponised by the government,” says Mess. “It feels good to create a space where these conversations are opened up and made human again.” 

The art of drag has also come under scrutiny in recents years, with some people thinking it has become less policitised in recents years with shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing drag to the mainstream. “On the one hand it's amazing to have this art and queerness celebrated and seen on a big scale, and we are starting to see conversations around non-binary identities, and trans celebrities being birthed through it,” says Mess. “At the same time, it commercialises, depoliticises this inherently punk art form as well as excluding cis women, ALL drag kings, and basically anyone that is out of the box of man dressing as a woman. It’s complex but I think both these things can exist at the same time.”

For Mess, being a drag artist has been a powerful outlet for them to express and explore their ideas of the world, especially the messy and in-between: “I think it is often looked down on as hammy or cheesy. Drag manages to comment on the huge structure and religion we live by – gender – and simultaneously make fun of itself.” In fact over time Mess has adopted their stage and drag name as their offstage name. “I think it’s quite a beautiful and complicated cycle of finding and redefining yourself, using the freeing space on stage to discover oneself,” they tell me. 

Aside from their nightly performance, Mess is keen to see a lot of queer shows (they recommend Temi Wilkey, Katie Greenall, Bi-curious George and Kathrine Payne’s shows) and hang out with friends. “But also take it slow and look after myself because the Fringe can really really eat you up.”