2011

The Gay Stage - (Online)

LGBT Theatre: Margins or Mainstream?

In my last article I talked about how, in writing and staging a play about someone I met who inspired me, I unexpectedly ended up producing what is being considered by most to be an ‘LGBT play’.

I wonder if it shows me up as ridiculously naive that I found this instant labelling quite surprising. Frankly, for reasons other than the desire to ‘get my name out there’, I really wanted to produce the play in a mainstream arena. I wanted it to be produced alongside all kinds of other work rather than solely in theatres and festivals expressly designed for Gay Theatre.
This doesn’t mean I’m not thrilled that we’re performing at the Brighton Pink Fringe or the Dublin Gay Festival. I think it’s important that LGBT Arts exist and that there is a place to discuss the issues that are pertinent to this particular community. But for any tight-knit community, whether that be centered around sexual orientation, religious beliefs or anything else, I strongly believe that it is essential to communicate with mainstream society.

This, for me, is the only way to take that next step. To go from discussing and sharing important ideas and truths amongst ourselves and then expressing them articulately to others. There is no point in the LGBT theatre talking about homophobic bullying in schools if the people responsible for this behaviour are not exposed to the play in question.
Likewise, when I was first dallying with the idea of writing the play and I read out my first interview with its subject to my University classmates, I can’t say that it evoked any more interest from the LGBT members of the group than it did from the others. In fact it’s the latter to whom it was a whole new world, and thus something they might only experience and find out about through a play.

They say you learn something new on every piece you work on. I think perhaps I learnt a little about what it feels like to be pushed onto the margins while working on this play. I’m used to working on Shakespeare, on British and American famous plays, on contemporary political theatre, stand-up comedy. When I tell friends what I’m up to they go, ‘Oh yeah, we might come and see that, sounds interesting’. When I say, ‘I’m working on a play about a pre-op transgender’ there’s a much bigger percentage that go ‘Sounds...interesting. Good luck with that.’ I’ve had kind, gentle, normally easy-going friends who’ve assured me they’d love to come and support what I’m doing but really, frankly, they just wouldn’t feel comfortable. But the ones who’ve come? They’ve said, ‘We didn’t know what to expect but we loved it. Really, it’s opened our eyes’. And that’s great but, like they said, they didn’t know what to expect. They were the ones who risked it anyway and it paid off. What might the others have learnt? How are they going to behave if and/or when they meet a transgender person? Would seeing this play have helped them behave or feel differently? If the Daily Mail didn’t print things like Kelly Osbourne’s outburst ‘“Ex fiance cheating with a transsexual was my most humiliating moment ever...I’d always thought that the worst way to get cheated on would be with an ugly girl...but when someone is a chick with a d**k?”’ and instead printed advertisements for the Drill Hall’s next season, perhaps the general British public wouldn’t be so certain that they weren’t interested in what these people had to say.
To produce a play you need money, and to get this money I decided to go down the sponsorship route. Whilst I had plenty of funding from friends and people who heard about the play, I couldn’t get a single company to touch me with a foot long pole. After pitching the show to various companies I decided to ask friends if their work places might be interested in funding the show. I got fervent yeses until it was time to explain the subject of the show, at which point every single person said, ‘My company would probably not be interested in linking their name publicly with a transgender show’.

I’m not saying that LGBT isn’t represented in the mainstream media. Of course it is. But I’ve definitely noticed much more resistance and much more need to persuade people than I ever have before. It’s a Catch 22. No mainstream company wants to be the first to put themselves out there and say ‘I support this’ but, until they do so, neither will the vast majority of the mainstream population. So, yes, I’m thrilled and excited to be performing my LGBT play at the LGBT festivals, but I really wish someone else would invite us to perform on the basis that we’re talking about a human being from the real world. And that’s the world we’re all in.

Originally published on thegaystage.com (site no longer active)