The Silicone Diaries
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
Nina Arsenault is a women made of plastic.
Born a man, Arsenault underwent 60 medical surgeries to transform herself into a silicone bombshell.
Arsenault performed a one-woman play she created chronicling her journey from man to woman in The Silicone Diaries.
It was one of six plays performed during the ninth annual Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa, Canada’s national festival of contemporary theatre.
Arsenault managed to single-handedly hold the attention of an entire audience for nearly two hours when her play debuted June 8th at the University of Ottawa Academic Hall.
Part of this can be attributed to her physical body. Too perfect to be real, it in itself is the performance. So delicate and graceful, she looks and moves more like any “real” woman. She’s spent her whole life perfecting the intricacies of a female.
The rawness and perfection of the set, lighting, and Arsenault’s body itself is well balanced by her comfort and ease with the audience. Getting over the shock of her appearance is surprisingly easy once she begins talking. She’s warm, casual, and humorous.
Arsenault gives the audience little time to judge her. Her openness allows for an honest discussion about pornography, transsexuality, and plastic surgery.
“I’m a chick with a dick that masturbates,” Arsenault said bluntly, describing her work in the she-male porn industry.
And for all the silicone in this show, the performance is anything but fake. What makes Arsenault’s play so compelling is that the stories are her own and the characters real people.
There are several shocking moments in the performance, including video footage of Arsenault’s surgeries. In many ways, this video adds nothing but shock-value, and instead takes away from Arsenault’s story.
The Silicone Diaries in no way endorses or condemns plastic surgery. Instead, Arsenault said it allowed her to become the woman she always was inside, but at an extreme mental and physical cost.
“I put it all on the line for what I had to be . . . I think my body thought I was getting in car accidents over and over again,” she said.More than a discussion of plastic surgery or sexuality, Arsenault asked to examine how society views beauty. She explored both our obsession with and yet rejection of beauty, in both its natural and plastic forms.
“Some girls just want to be comfy with themselves . . . and some want to be as beautiful as can be,” she said in one scene. “I will not be ashamed to say that I have silicone in my body.”
