In this episode, I’m joined by the extraordinary Wet Mess, performer, shapeshifter and maker of work that exists right on the ecstatic fault line between desire, politics, embodiment, confusion and joy.
At the centre of our conversation is Testo, their solo show that has been touring over the past year. It is a work born from a deeply personal and live question: whether or not to take testosterone, and what that decision means physically, psychologically and socially.
What unfolds is a fascinating exploration of how performance can hold complexity, contradiction and transformation all at once.
We talk about how you can stretch a reveal across an hour, and how pacing and punctuation shape tension inside live work. Wet Mess reflects on repetition, and how the same action can carry entirely different meanings depending on the intention behind it and the cultural context in which it is received. We explore how trans experience is filtered differently across cities, audiences and performance spaces.
We also dig into training, both physical and psychological. How do you prepare a body to hold euphoria, absurdity and anger simultaneously? How do you sustain emotionally charged work over time without collapsing under its weight? Wet Mess shares how performance has taught them to choreograph points of view, build energy and carefully shape audience attention.
Alongside this, we talk about the relationship between cabaret and contemporary art, and how entertainment spaces offered freedoms that traditional white cube environments sometimes could not. It is a conversation that challenges the idea that spectacle and seriousness exist in opposition to one another.
And importantly, we also speak candidly about sustainability. About touring. About finances. About hiring a producer and building the support structures that allow embodied work to travel and continue without becoming an act of self-sacrifice.
At its heart, this episode is about commitment. Commitment to the body, to the question, to community and to building the conditions that allow difficult, joyful and transformative work to keep evolving.
What We Learned from Wet Mess
What stays with me after this conversation is the depth of attention running through Wet Mess’s work.
Testo is not simply a performance about transition or identity. It becomes a meditation on choice, time, authorship and the body itself. On what it means to take something into yourself, or decide not to. On how language, politics and other people’s voices can be absorbed, transformed and rearticulated through choreography and performance.
Wet Mess speaks beautifully about pacing. About stretching a reveal across an hour. About repetition as something alive rather than fixed. That level of rigour changes the way you watch. It asks you to pay attention not just to what is happening, but to how meaning is being shaped moment by moment.
There is also something incredibly powerful in their relationship to entertainment. The recognition that humour and spectacle are not distractions from seriousness, but ways of carrying difficult truths into the body of an audience. Ways of building connection, tension and release simultaneously.
And underneath all of this is the practical reality of sustaining embodied work. Touring, recovery, finances, collaboration and support. A reminder that performance is not simply an act of expression, but a practice that requires infrastructure, care and longevity.
Perhaps this episode ultimately asks what it means to stay committed to a question long enough for it to transform you. And how art can create space for complexity without rushing to resolve it.
