The power of theatre in troubled times

This is a story I very badly wanted to tell.

Yesterday I had the chance to tell it. And this is what I said:

SPEECH FOR MADE IN SCOTLAND LAUNCH ON MAY 31ST 2022

This story begins on the third of November 2009. it’s the opening night of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN in the Tron Theatre, Glasgow.

The street outside the theatre is packed with angry protesters. Some have brought a statue of the Virgin Mary. Others have brought stern placards, saying things like “God says: my son is not a pervert”.

The ones with the statue generally hate the ones with the placards, but tonight they are all united in their hatred of me.

And so are all the tabloids next morning. “Sex swap playwright” they call me, and “ex bus conductor” and they all deride and insult me.

The Archbishop of Glasgow hates me too. He says it’s hard to imagine a greater affront to the Christian faith than my play.

And so do the 350 thousand + bloggers all over the world. They’re very happy at the thought I will die a painful death and go to hell. They call me a coward for not saying the same thing about the prophet Muhammad. They call the play ridiculous and disgusting.

None of them have read the play, or seen the play, or know the very first thing about the play. Apparently, they don’t need to. As a street protester says: You don’t need to go near a sewer to know that it stinks.

All this for a play in a tiny theatre that over its five day run is seen by 150 people.

The people who see it seem to love it. And the fact that so many people hate it, I think, must mean it is saying something necessary and important.

I know if this is left to the tender mercies of the Scottish Theatre it will just disappear, like most of the 77 plays I’ve written before it.

If I want it to survive, I will have to produce it myself.

I don’t know how to do that. And I’m terrified and traumatised. And I paid for most of the production myself. I can’t afford to do that again.

So that’s where it could have ended.

But I meet the director Susan Worsfold, who I’ve worked with ever since, and with her encouragement I start to perform it. In my local church. In a hotel room in Liverpool. An old railway hotel in Brighton. In a Glasgow pub. Bits of it in a really dingy basement bar in Edinburgh.

We think we might do it in the Fringe. But producers don’t want us to know us and the only venue that seems remotely interested, St John’s church in the West End, keeps getting cold feet and cancelling at the last minute.

That happens in 2012, 2013, and 2014. And it could have ended there, but we meet Annabel Cooper who becomes our producer, and we have a company, and at the last minute we have a venue.

It’s a late night slot at St Mark’s church, Castle Terrace, and I’ve just sold my house, so that’s how we pay for it.

It’s not really a late night show, and audiences average 14 and a half people, and I lose all my money, and that’s where it could have ended.

But one person who sees it is Liliane Rebelo of the British Council in Brazil, and she brings along someone who comes on the very last night who hugs me, tears in her eyes, tells me the play has changed her life, and will I give her the script so she can translate it into Portuguese?

And of course I can, and her name is Natalia Mallo, and she does the first draft that same night, and this gives us the courage to apply for Made in Scotland, and we get it, and put the play on in Summerhall in 2015 and one of the people who see it is Diego Bagagal of the International Theatre Festival in Belo Horizonte, and he books it for the Festival in 2016.

Meanwhile Natalia has finished her translation, found an amazing trans actress called Renata Carvalho to play queen Jesus, and a wonderful production company… but nowhere to stage the play. Theatre managements are just too frightened.

And it could have ended there, but we open in Belo Horizonte in spring, exactly six years ago, and Brazil is notorious for being the country that kills most trans women in the world, and we arrive just at the time of the constitutional coup that brings the right wing to power, and I am terrified.

There is massive press coverage of the show, I have never given more inter views in my life, I feel like I’m on the front line of a massive culture war, and the strain is too much, and my heart gives way, and I collapse on stage on the very last performance of the run.

And it could have ended there…

But I recover, and the play is hugely successful, and that opens doors for the Brazilian production which opens in the Londrina theatre festival that September.

There’s a massive campaign of hatred on social media, mostly organised by the Christian churches. Legal attempts to prevent the performance. Death threats. At the last minute the company are forced to change the venue. They organise a candlelit procession from the old venue to the new one.

A group of pregnant women and women with small children turn up. The show is completely sold out, and they say they know they can’t get tickets: but they want to form a circle of protection around Renata.

And that’s the pattern for the next few years. Incredible hatred; massive love. Sold out shows and standing ovations. The play becomes a symbol of resistance against censorship and LGBT oppression.

“This play has completely changed my life”. I hear this over and over again on my visits to Brazil. “This play has made my life so much better”.

It transforms people’s understandings of trans representation; allows for the emergence of many other trans performers; and changes Brazilian theatre for ever.

And it does not end there. And won’t, ever.

That production has been seen in every Brazilian city. It’s also been to Glasgow for the play’s tenth anniversary celebrations, to Belfast and Berlin, and to Cape Verde in Africa.

The play has been translated into Spanish and performed in Argentina and Uruguay; and translated into German and performed online in the lockdown.

It’s had huge success in Australia; the Norwegian translation will open in September; and the Icelandic some time after that. And then the Italian…

As for me, I’ve performed it in churches and pubs and hotels and cafes and community centres, and even sometimes in theatres. It’s been the Christmas show in the Traverse, we’ve celebrated its anniversary in the Tron, I’ve performed in Brussels and in the City of God favela in Rio de Janeiro.

We used it to broadcast words of comfort in the first lockdown, broadcast it live from Augustine United Church, and made the show the basis of live online transmissions from St Mary’s cathedral in Edinburgh.

And what enabled all this global activity to happen was a grant from Made In Scotland.

It’s a huge honour and delight to be part of the scheme again with THE NOT SO UGLY DUCKLING - A PLAY FOR GROWN-UPS.

I don’t think there’ll be massive demonstrations of outraged Hans Christian Anderson devotees, or that there’ll be truckloads of armed police turning up to try to stop the performance… but in its own quiet way, it is a revolutionary play too.

The moral of all this is: never underestimate the power of a well directed grant.

And never underestimate the power of a play to change the world…

https://www.queenjesusproductions.com

https://www.madeinscotlandshowcase.com