the usefulness of enemies....

Thirteen years ago I was sitting frightened in my dressing room in the Tron Theatre while hundreds of protestors vented their hatred of me on the street.

Not to mention the hundreds and thousands of people all over the world that wrote horrible things about me on the internet.

And the tabloid press who all joined together to insult and mock me.

And then there was the archbishop who denounced me, and all the people who wrote to tell me I was a coward because I wasn’t saying the same thing about the prophet Muhammad….

And that’s something all the Queen Jesuses tend to get told at some time or another and for a long time it completely bewildered me.

I mean why would I want to say Muhammad was trans, blessings and peace be upon him, when he obviously wasn’t  and when in fact I wasn’t saying that  Jesus was trans either?

Eventually I understood that these good Christian people (and they did all seem to be Christian) envied the ability of Ayatollah Khomeini to pronounce a death sentence on Salman Rushdie and would really love to be able to do the same to me.

Instead they had to content themselves in a grumpy kind of way with the thought that I would most certainly go to hell and suffer eternal torment.

And that was something they would dearly like to see, apparently, the poor loves, all lost in their own version of hell already…

The dear man in the Gospels told us to love our enemies, which I never put into the script because it never made sense to me at all.

But thinking about it all afterwards I began to understand that it was because of all the people that took such pleasure in hating me and what I’d done that I began to see that what I’d done might be important and might matter.

And being trans, and being so very prone to thinking whatever I do is shit, I’d never have managed to do that myself.

I needed those who hated me to help me.

That didn’t stop me at the time having the very strong feeling that I’d done the stupidest and most disgusting thing imaginable and wanting to disappear off the face of the earth…

…but I’m glad I didn’t.

Because if I had Iwouldn’t be sitting here with the uneasy feeling that I really should be packing because I’m off to Norway again tomorrow…

Off to see the Norwegian Queen Jesus, the amazing Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad, and hear Ingrid Frivold’s beautiful music, in a theatre rather than a ruined cathedral.

Where, as you can see, it was so stunningly beautiful. And where I sitting next to a very lovely bishop, instead of being denounced by one.

And the bit of me that isn’t wondering where I put my warm socks (because I’ll surely need them in Norway) is amazed at everything that’s happened since that terrifying evening in the Tron Theatre all those years ago.

Amazed I should be considering going to Australia in January for the revival of the award winning Australian production the year before.

That the Brazilian production toured every city of that enormous country, was a hit at every theatre festival there, sold out everywhere, made a major star out of its actress, changed the status of trans people in Brazil and changed the face of Brazilian theatre for ever.

And that next year the German translation will tour Germany, the Icelandic translation will open in Reykjavik, and with a bit of luck there’ll be a Danish production in Copenhagen as well.

And that even just this week there’s been interest from Latvia and from Japan…

I don’t understand how all that’s happened, to be honest, but it makes me proud and happy to be part of it.

And now I must really find those socks…