Are you the Ugly Duckling?

(or: do we really know this story.....?)

Photo by Kerin Gedge on Unsplash

There was once a boy whose mother was a washerwoman and whose father was a drunk and who grew up in great poverty in 19th century Denmark.

He had a passion for stories, and a real talent for singing and for dancing, in a way that seemed miraculous in the difficulty of his circumstances.

As a boy, his singing voice was so good he was accepted into the Royal Danish Theatre when he was 14 years old.

But his voice soon broke and he grew out of his clothes and couldn’t afford to buy new ones.

He was tall and lanky and had a big nose and big feet and everyone laughed at him because he was so ugly.

But there was something special about him; rich patrons helped him and eventually after many setbacks and sufferings he grew up to be a successful writer called Hans Christian Andersen.

He wrote a story about his adolescent sufferings called “The Ugly Duckling” which he was later to say was the story of his life.

I completely overlooked this story until about ten years ago when I attended a European trans activists conference in Malmo.

One of the speakers was Vladimir Luxuria, a pioneering Italian trans activist and politician, who had been the first trans member of any European parliament.

She reminded us that we have always existed in the world, and exist under many different names.

As Queen Jesus reminds us, “we are the hijra of India, the kathoey of Thailand, the waria of Indonesia, the bissu of the Archipelago. The fa’fa’fine of Samoa, muxe of Mexico, travesti of Brazil. Two spirit people of North America, shamen of Siberia, yan daudu of West Africa, and many more besides….”

Our problem is that especially in European cultures, we have suffered and continue to suffer the intensest hatred over the centuries that has made it difficult for us to express ourselves openly.

But if we keep our eyes open, we can find traces of our dear and wonderful selves in every time and every place.

And then she talked about Hans Christian Andersen. There are letters he wrote to men he was in love with in which he described himself as feeling so feminine in their presence; and that this freed up something so precious in her/himself that usually had to be hidden away.

And this made Luxuria wonder whether in fact Andersen was trans, or at least as trans as the age would allow them to be. This sense of ‘trans-ness’ obviously could not be explored openly, but was something Andersen expressed indirectly in stories like “The Little Mermaid” and “The Ugly Duckling”.

And I tell this story now because it seems important when all the Tory candidates for leadership are vying with each other to express hostility towards us and their intention to diminish our human rights…

It’s important to assert that we are here, and we have always been here., and we have every right to be here.

And we will not be going away.

As Queen Jesus puts it, “Every place and every time has known of us, and celebrated us mostly. Except for this one, and it is in the minority…”

I also tell this story now because Luxuria’s words struck a deep chord in me. And now, years later, I’ve been able to bring the story to the stage in collaboration with Maria MacDonell, my wonderful co-writer and performer.

And she, incidentally, understands the story very differently…

But that doesn’t matter, because the story is as beautiful and generous and wild as the world…

And on our first day of rehearsal yesterday we found all kinds of things in it we never knew were there.

We open in August in the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

I hope we can meet each other there..

“The Not So Ugly Duckling - A Play For Grown-ups”.

Part of the ‘Made In Scotland’ Showcase on the Edinburgh Fringe.

Performances on August 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27 at 1645.

Tickets from https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:4336/

See also: http://www.notsouglyduckling.com;

https://www.queenjesusproductions.com