No more sad songs....
It’s always easier, I guess, to get angry at other people or institutions when things go wrong.
Easier than to take action oneself.
I know I have every reason to be angry at the failure of arts funding in this country of mine. A failure that has stunted my theatre career and now brought it to a halt.
My career, and the career of countless other artists in this country which, we were hoping, could and should be doing better.
But I can’t stay angry for ever.
And bashing my head against a brick wall doesn’t knock the wall down.
It just makes my skull bleed.
I have to take stock.
Consider not so much: What is to be done ?
So much as: What can I do?
What have I to give the world and how can I make the most of it?
“It seems to me”, a wise friend writes, “you are in that chaordic place between the old and the new.
A place where you to find both the right tension between chaos and order
And also the grace and patience to simply allow things to emerge…”
And maybe it’s not just me. Maybe we’re all in that place…
A couple of weeks ago when I was feeling discouraged I saw myself as a day labourer turning up for work in the market place.
Turning up with empty hands and no idea where I might be going.
But still, even not knowing, it was important to show up.
Now I’d say I feel a bit more positive about myself.
Still in the marketplace: but with a well appointed stall. With things to sell:
With much to offer to give hope and pleasure.
It’s strange that after all these years, and all that I’ve achieved, I still find it hard to take full ownership of and pride in what I’ve done and find ways to promote it.
For instance: it gives me such hope and meaning and pleasure to share things here…
But I totally shrink from the equally necessary job of finding ways to promote them.
I can’t help thinking it’s something to do with what happened to me as a child:
the experience of discovering that the boy who I saw in the mirror wasn’t really me.
And wasn’t really me in ways I couldn’t even begin to understand
But which I knew utterly frightened me.
And then, when I got a bit older and discovered it was connected with wanting to wear girls’ clothes and play with girls’ toys and then, later still, was connected with the utter joy I felt performing…
…the fear deepened and became totally bound up with self disgust and the deepest shame.
It was like missing a foundation stone, I think as I look back,
And somehow I still marvel, as I did this morning,
Sitting on my windowsill in the sunshine watching the world go by,
Watching men passing who knew they were men, and had no problem with that,
And women passing who knew they were women, and had no problem with that,
And wondering: what does that feel like?
Knowing, as I do, that I am still utterly engaged with what people call ‘transition’
And which is actually a process of self discovery that will never come to an end.
And that both a strength and a weakness.
“We all have a light inside us”, says Queen Jesus,
“And sometimes it’s the very thing we’ve been taught to be most ashamed of”.
And I was, for sure, most thoroughly ashamed of my Queen Jesus after that first hate besieged opening week in the Tron in Glasgow way back in 2009.
Especially because members of the fledgling trans community of the time sided with those who condemned me and said that my putting on a play that imagined Jesus coming back to earth as a trans woman had done nothing but deepen people’s hatred of us.
And again because not a single person in my theatrical community came out publicly in my defence
And I was tempted to write the piece off as yet another of my “difficult” plays I was in the habit of writing
That would play for a bit, and be successful, and then disappear.
And the people who did come and see Queen Jesus did truly love her, and I owe so much to their appreciation and support…
…although strangely enough it was all the people who hated her, hated her in Glasgow, and hated her all over the world, that made me think I really somehow was onto something and needed to do all I could to keep the show alive.
Though I didn’t know how.
We always get to meet the people we need to, I think, and it was meeting Susan Worsfold and Annabel Cooper that made it possible for us to present Queen Jesus in all kinds of unlikely places up and down the country, and then in Brazil, and then create beautiful theatre shows in the Traverse, and the Tron, and in Brussels, and then back to Brazil again…
And I miss the friendship and sweet companionship of these friends and theatre shows and hope we can get to work together again…
But in the meantime, as if to compensate, there’s the freedom of being able to travel alone and not depend on grants from organisations…
I look back on my travels through America in June, performing Queen Jesus in embattled and besieged affirmative churches, all in fear of what is to come in November
And how Queen Jesus brought them encouragement and comfort
And I can think of how she has touched and changed so many people’s lives in America, in Brazil, in Norway, in Germany and Australia and many many other places besides
And know that she can take pride of place on my market stall
Her and her dress and her prayer bell ready to travel anywhere in the world.
It gives me pleasure to know that when people ask me: is she coming to e=where I can see her?
I can say: she’d love to come. Just ask. It’s easy to arrange….
And it’s true. You can get in touch. there’s a clever button you can click on just here…