Trans Identity and Neurodiversity in Dramatic Literature: Diego Casado Rubio’s millones de segundos
摘要
From the modest beginnings of a YouTube viewing to a critically acclaimed theatrical run in Buenos Aires, Diego Casado Rubio’s millones de segundos takes a vital step forward in our growing efforts at inclusivity and representation. Casado Rubio tells the story of a transgender teenager who is not allowed to have the transition surgery he wants because his doctors and mother believe his Asperger syndrome prevents him from truly understanding what that would mean. The absurd, eclectic, and minimalistic form and presentation chosen to tell this story forces the viewer to flex their muscles of understanding to encompass other ways of thinking, challenging its audiences to experience the world differently. Millones de segundos particularly focuses on marginalization within marginalization. The current, Western, individualist lens which tends to precede the stories we tell would have us believe that marginalized individuals have but one, main part of their identity that is the underlying cause of their ostracism. Apart from perhaps The Miracle Worker, plays about people with more than one disability or marginalized trait are rare. The implicit assumption is that audiences only need (or perhaps, can only handle) one element of empathy-solicitation per story. I argue that milliones de segundos serves as a performative, intersectional lens for how to view and understand all subjectivities because it pushes the audience out of the comfort of voyeur-hood and into a proximal empathy with the main character, Alan, making spectators challenge their own assumptions.