Synopses & Reviews
When Terry Galloway was born on Halloween, no one knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system. After her family moved from Berlin, Germany, to Austin, Texas, hers became a deafening, hallucinatory childhood where everything, including her own body, changed for the worse. But those unwelcome changes awoke in this particular child a dark, defiant humor that fueled her lifelong obsessions with language, duplicity, and performance.
As a ten-year-old self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury at her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater and performanceonstage and offto defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, Terry writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and her life in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.
Synopsis
In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, she writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
Terry Galloway is the founder of the Actual Lives writing and performance programs; a founding member of Esthers Follies, Texass legendary cabaret; and the cofounder of the Mickee Faust Academy for the REALLY Dramatic Arts. Her solo theater piece
Out All Night and Lost My Shoes is considered one of the foundational texts in the history of disability performance. She lives with her partner in life and art, Donna Marie Nudd, and splits her time between Austin and Tallahassee, Florida.