Utilizing examples from staged works by Aszodi, Liza Lim and Jennifer Walshe, this performative lecture will discuss some ways in which identity and gender affect decision-making in music performance, linking theories of musical identity and identification to practice-based research. The presentation will especially emphasize how those decisions interact with representations of violence, objectification and female bodies, speaking from the vantage-point of a performer trained in the Western-operatic tradition within the relatively recent phenomenon of professional environments where significant proportion of empowered creative protagonists are female.