It's the end of the world as we know it

In 1989 I travelled to the richest part of the world (Los Angeles) and a couple of months later to the poorest part of the world (Dhaka, in Bangladesh).

I experienced in my own body the fact that we all live in the one world, and that we are all connected together.

I also went to Egypt, turned on the TV in my hotel, and saw the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

This was trumpeted as marking the collapse of communism and the triumph of capitalism.

But I knew in my bones somehow that the Wall was holding up capitalism too and that its collapse was also imminent.

That our belief systems and our political structures were no longer adequate to the demands of reality and that we urgently needed to develop new ones.

I wanted to create a post-capitalist theatre that would empower audiences to imagine a new and better way of being in the world.

So it frightens me but does not surprise me to see the current disintegration of the US;

And there’s a certain horrible poetic justice in the fact that oligarchs are tearing the fabric of the US state apart like vultures.

And using it to enrich themselves in obscene ways.

Just as oligarchs did to the USSR.

With both developments causing immense atrocious suffering.

What I did not anticipate, somehow, was the President of the United States would join with the Russian president to be our enemy…

Nor did I anticipate back then that I would ever be able to come out and live as a woman and that as a result both governments would actively try to deny my right to exist.

Or that right wing politicians call me a “threat to western civilisation”.

Or that some feminists would agree with them…

All I can do, all anyone can do, is resist with whatever gifts and abilities we possess.

I’m proud to have been working with Bayley Turner to create “36”…as well as to have been performing Queen Jesus in churches…

And very proud of my “Eve”, too. Huge thanks to Lavender Menace for giving me the chance to rediscover and share her.

The act of telling my story is such a powerful way to contradict the fear and shame that when I was younger overwhelmed me…

And so, hopefully, helps contradict the fear and shame suffered by other trans or non-binary people in the audience.

More than that, I hope.

Because everyone, whether brought up to be male or female in Western culture, is gripped by shame and fear of their ‘other half’: the man inside every woman and the woman inside every man.

It is this shame and fear that possesses the Trumps and JK Rowlings of this world and drives them to commit, through their actions or their words, endless acts of cruelty.

Cruelty towards others, but also ultimately cruelty towards themselves.

And it’s true, I think, that cruelty is at the heart of our shared Western culture, and us queer people of every identity are doing what we can to bring it to an end.

In that way, all those anti-woke culture warriors are right. All those so desperately and violently trying to preserve our so deeply malfunctioning political and social world.

Maybe we are a menace to “Western civilisation”.

But only because we are working to give birth to something better….