Post show selfie

This is us feeling proud and happy after the first performance of Ringing Out The Changes in St. Mary's Cathedral yesterday. There's me, who did the words, and there's Susanna and Eli and Geoffrey, who did the bells.

None of us had ever performed that way before. The bell ringers had never rung their bells in public, where everyone could see them.

I'd never performed anything sitting in a chair, reading from the script.

And none of us—nobody had seen a show like this before …

As far as I can tell, it's the first time there's been a show written in collaboration with bell ringers in a sacred space.

So we didn't know if it would work or not, but what we had discovered at the moment we took this photo is that we'd created something very new and very special, something that moved the audience and gave them immense pleasure.

Someone wrote that they were feeling "All tuned in and blissed out after an amazing performance."

Someone else wrote, "It was so beautiful."

Someone else said, "It was so moving, and so touching, and I learnt so much."

What's for sure is that it's unlike anything else that's happening in the fringe just now.

It's quiet. It's meditative.

And among other things, it uses my very visible identity as a trans person as a metaphor for the profound changes that we are all living through today.

So it's a very necessary antidote to all the transphobia and all the reactionary thoughts and actions that are trying to turn the clock back.

This performance with these bells and this building move us forward to celebrate the world that is coming…