What makes the man a man? This is a question that everyone of us faces. Diane Torr, performance artist and "Drag King Pioneer", developed tools to transform courageous women into the man of their choice. Maybe gender is just a mere set of gestures that men/women can acquire? The worldwide stage appearances and workshops of the gender activist and performance artist Diane Torr, are legendary. Her main investigation is in a theoretical, artistic and hands-on approach to experimentation with gender identity. Katarina Peters observed the development of a Berlin Workshop by Diane Torr, in which a group of open-minded women acquainted themselves with the secrets of manliness. What makes a man a man? What makes a woman a woman? Where and how is gender identity formatted? What is natural and what is learned or indoctrinated? Is gender simply a mere set of gestures that men/women can acquire? Every single one of Torr's workshops is a social laboratory experiment with an open ending for the participants. In Man for a Day, we meet women of various backgrounds: a 22 year old East German beauty queen; a political researcher from Munich; an Angolan single mother; and an Israeli lesbian married to a German woman living in Berlin, among others. We witness each of their transformations and follow them in their adventures into the man's world. Is it possible to discover whether through a self-conscious transformation from one gender to another one can create a sense of self-liberation and furthermore expand one's boundaries with regard to male/female behavior?
