This is what performance is for....

It’s very odd to be thinking about performing in an evening of comedy right now when it seems to me there’s absolutely nothing in the world to laugh about.

It’s been almost unbearable to watch an old man clearly in quite an advanced state of dementia humiliating himself and his country in front of the United Nations this week.

Worse still because that man happens to be the President of the United States, is possessed with grievance and rage, and hell bent on causing immense suffering.

To watch him surrounded by a crowd of sycophants who know perfectly well that he’s a humiliation and an embarrassment but keep flattering him because his being President enables them to enrich themselves and indulge in their cruel fantasies of power.

There’s nothing funny about that.

And there’s nothing funny about watching a whole population of people being tormented in Gaza by the Israeli army.

I don’t watch TV news anymore but I can’t escape the photographs.

I can’t escape this spectacle of atrocious suffering that the world is watching and doing nothing about.

And I don’t want to stand on a stage and make people laugh.

I want to make people scream.

Scream with rage.

Vomit with disgust.

I can’t help thinking that would be the honest thing to do.

But would that accomplish anything?

Would it empower the audience to go out and change the world?

I don’t think it would, somehow.

So what can I do?

I was thinking about all this in the middle of a sleepless night and I think I must have drifted off somehow…

… because I suddenly found myself reliving a memory.

A memory of something that must have happened a long time ago when my partner Susie was still alive and when our daughters were still young enough for us all to go on trips together.

And I can’t remember exactly why we went to North Berwick except that it was at a time when the town’s public toilets were quite famous and had won an award.

And we all needed to pee anyway so off we went.

And Susie and the girls went to the ladies and I went to the gents and right enough they were lovely.

They had nice pictures on the walls and there were flowers and the whole place smelt nice.

And I really enjoyed my pee there.

And then I came out and sat on a bench and waited for the others to come.

I was probably preoccupied writing a play in my head but because I was only vaguely aware of quite a lot of noise happening all around me.

And then a schoolgirl came and sat next to me, and said,

“Excuse me but do you know they’re all laughing at you?

They’re laughing at you because you’re a man but you look like a woman”.

And I looked up and saw that, right enough, all the noise was coming from a group of school students who were looking at me and giggling.

And I said,

I thought it was important to express my feminine side, and it was something that men needed to do,

Although it obviously wasn’t very nice to have people laughing at me, it was better to be laughed at than to be unhappy because you’re hiding your true self.

That it’s always better to be true to who you are.

And she said, you’re right.

And she got up and went to speak to the crowd of fellow students and they all dispersed.

Just in time for Susie and the girls to come out of the ladies.

Which was a good thing because I wouldn’t have wanted them to come out and see a whole group of school students laughing at me.

And I guess one reason that memory cropped up is because my set is all about being true to yourself if you’re trans, and being true to yourself if you’re bi…

And that’s why good performance matters.

Why it doesn’t matter if it makes you laugh or if it makes you cry.

The main thing is that it allows all of us to share the experience of being human.

Of being ourselves in a cruel and inhuman society.

And even in a tiny way that will empower us to step out and make it better.