LOS ANGELES — Marval Rex, a transmasculine Jewish man, grew up as a Catholic girl in Salt Lake City, Utah. Though the artist and performer has exposed his body to audiences in boundary-pushing performances and gotten up close and personal in independent films, he has refrained from delving too deeply into his own life experiences — until now.
In a new one-man show debuting this week at the Elysian theater, Rexodus: Out of the Closet, Into the Tribe, Rex traces his journey of self-discovery through a mix of “performance art, stand-up comedy, and theater.”
“It’s sort of a TED talk, but not a boring one,” he told Hyperallergic.
Rex received his MFA from the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design in 2020, making a name for himself with transgressive, body-based performances that recalled the radical early work of fellow Angeleno artists Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley.
“I relate to McCarthy deeply,” Rex said, noting they’re both from Salt Lake City. “I understand where he was raised.”
Much of Rex’s early performances involved “shocking the world into seeing a transmasc body,” he explained, noting that societal acceptance of trans individuals has grown significantly since he transitioned 11 years ago. “Trans people age in dog years,” he joked. By contrast, his journey to Judaism has taken place rapidly over the past few years, but draws on centuries of hidden family history.
In 2019, at the suggestion of his frequent collaborator Oscar David Alvarez, Rex began listening to Weekly Energy Boost, a podcast about Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. He was hooked, burning through hundreds of episodes. Feeling spiritually connected to what he was learning, he began working with a kabbalistic mentor over Zoom during the pandemic; the mentor, Rex said, mentioned that the region of Spain where his mother’s family hails from is a historic center of Jewish mysticism. The artist recalled that when he was about 15, his father told the family that based on his mother’s Catalan heritage, there was a good chance they were descended from conversos, Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition to avoid persecution and death. The pieces were starting to fall into place.
Rex converted to Judaism in 2020 and had a b’nai mitzvah in 2020, sharing the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony with television writer and director Joey Soloway. Fittingly, Rex’s Torah portion, the section of the Hebrew Bible read during the ceremony, involved Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, central principles to Jewish life. “That’s a core part of Jewish mysticism, synchronicity and magic,” Rex said.
Around the same time, Rex’s mother began doing her own genealogical research at the Genealogical Society of Utah, eventually finding the family name, Prades, in records from the Inquisition. The name did not have a flame symbol next to it, meaning they were not burned at the stake, choosing conversion instead. “My mom spent 35 years living 12 blocks away from a building that held her family last name in Spanish Inquisition records,” Rex explained. “She didn’t want to know. I’m the catalyst for her wanting to find out more.”
In 2023, Rex received funding from Reboot Studios, the creative arm of the Jewish arts and culture nonprofit Reboot, to create a documentary film based on his family’s hidden Jewish past and his own religious conversion, which now includes plans to become a rabbi. The film’s title, The 700 Year Gap, refers to the span of time between 1291, the year when the name Prades was first listed in a record of Jewish families, and the present.
The idea for his new performance, Rexodus, emerged from the events and discoveries in the film. The result is a theatrical narrative interweaving his own identity and trials as a trans man, his journey with his mother to Salt Lake City and Spain to uncover their own painful family history, and his recent transformation as a Jewish man.
“Rexodus builds on every performance I’ve ever done. I spent a lot of time getting naked and doing shocking things, but I wasn’t fully embodying my truth, even though I was bearing myself to the audience. I felt like I was hiding in plain sight,” he said. “With Rexodus, here’s my actual nakedness, my actual story.”
A second performance at the Elysian theater is scheduled for October 25. The show will head to the East Coast in 2025, but details have yet to be released.
