Dear subscribers on November 16th 2022

Dear subscribers

Thank you for being here, and thank you for joining.

It is a pleasure to be writing to you, though I have a confession to make.

I woke up this morning to remember I had completely forgotten about you.

Usually I post on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and I enjoy the sensation of having a post take shape in my head for a couple of days before I write it.

And then I love the process of crafting that idea into something I can share with you.

Last week I posted on Wednesday and Friday about the Covid Requiem, which I performed on Thursday and Friday, and that’s thrown me out somehow.

And then there were lovely visitors on Saturday and Sunday, and an insanely complicated application form on Sunday and Monday, which I will tell you about soon, and then yesterday evening a really beautiful “Conversation in the Cathedral” with ten members of its congregation online and its lovely vice-provost, Marion Chatterley, in person.

It was about death and how we prepare for it, and I read two bits from my new (and so far unseen) script SISTER DEATH. The conversation was very profound, and I was very moved by it and very grateful for it.

And very soon I shall be off to Edinburgh University Chaplaincy to finalise arrangements for an event this Saturday there that I am calling “An Hour With Queen Jesus”.

It’s based on the play, but not the same as the play. It’s not so much a performance, I guess, but more of an invitation to meditate and to reflect together.

And it’s happening in an intimate setting, which is where the picture comes from.

This was me performing extracts from the script in a hotel room in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool in 2011.

It was the grandest room in what was once a very grand hotel and I think a queen once stayed there. Or maybe a Princess. Or maybe Judy Garland. Or Bob Dylan.

Anyway Queen Jesus stayed there and I had maybe 4 or five half hour slots to perform in as part of an event called “Tranny Hotel” that I was happy to take part in.

Most of the trans community in Manchester and Liverpool felt differently about it, however, and they boycotted the event.

I think it was because they objected to the use of the word “tranny”; and it wasn’t helped much by the publicity pictures of the event’s organiser walking the hotel corridors in a very skimpy and very short mini dress that made her look like a prostitute.

Looking back, I can see where the protests were coming from; though I’m sure the intention was to reclaim a word that is used to insult us.

It’s still an experience I’m grateful for. It so helped me heal from the trauma of the play’s opening.

And I’m remembering it now, because this will be another intimate and simple performance without lights or costume. It will be, as the play says,

“a group of us, meeting as friends, because we want to change the world”.

There’s so much more to tell you, my dears, but I must catch my bus.

Just to add that I enjoy the informality of these semi private posts that go out just to you, as subscribers, and that I don’t attempt to publicise.

I will do more of this, I think.

I hope you have lovely weeks.

See you again soon,

love

Jo xxx