The politics of gender – and specifically transgender issues – are a hot potato right now. There’s a lot of media attention on high-profile transgender women – Caitlyn, Kellie – with endless interviews, articles, speculations and pronouncements from the women themselves and from their family, friends and enemies. Meanwhile, within the tight enclaves of radical feminism, there’s something of a raging battle between some so-called cis-women (women born as women who choose to identify as women) and some transgender women (not all of whom accept that label), about issues such as the terminology used to describe people, who is the most oppressed, and whose needs are greater. Too often the arguments are limiting, the assumptions made unhelpful… Some have wondered whether the feminist agenda is being hijacked by people who are coming from a position of male privilege and thus used to dominating the conversation and getting their own way. It is with some wariness that I – who define myself as a feminist and who as a child rejected my assigned female gender, becoming a ‘tomboy’ who was delighted when the local shopkeepers called her ‘sonny’ – enter the affray. So this is the baggage I’m carrying on this subject as I enter the theatre to see Trans Scripts – the first play(as playwright) by Paul Lucas, who comes to the job with a wealth of experience as a producer.
What Trans Scripts has to offer is many things. First of all, it’s a very good piece of verbatim theatre – a great hour of engaging and enchanting performance. Six transgender women’s stories are told by six performers. We do not know if any of the women are telling their own story, or if they are all acting. We do not know which of the actors are transgender and which, if any, were assigned the female gender at birth. This is theatre, and the point is the stories, which shine through with strength and pride. Trans Scripts does not present some sort of universal, composite picture of transgender issues. By focusing on six distinct personal stories, it shows that there are as many ways to be a transgender woman as there are transgender women.
So, meet the girls: Sandra, Luna, Tatiana, Zakia, Josephine, and Eden. They represent not the full spectrum – that would be impossible – but a spectrum of transgender women’s views.
Sandra, played by the legendary Capernia Addams, is the play’s mother figure; the glue that holds it all together. She’s from Staten Island, and her story starts in childhood with a desire to steal the damask cloth beneath the family parakeet’s cage to make herself a skirt. Her journey to become the strong and noble older woman she now is takes her far and wide, and yet always circles around Staten Island. It’s a massive challenge to see off the hurt of being ignored by people she’s known all her life who refuse to acknowledge her as a woman, but she sees it through. Once, she was sent to counselling. Now she is a counsellor. Throughout the piece, Sandra is often to be found with her hand on another woman’s shoulder, offering support as their story emerges.
Luna is a tall, skinny woman with afro hair, big eyes, and lips painted a chalky beige, in sharp contrast with her dark skin. She’s punky and streetwise, dressed in a teeny leather jacket, see-thru net T-shirt, and bright red micro mini skirt. She was raised by a grandmother, but also spent time in foster care, and is a veteran of the Manhattan gay and trans scene. A seminal moment in her life comes when she meets her blind elderly grandfather and has to ask him if he knows she is transgender. You’re my granddaughter and I’m proud of you, he says. They share an interest in radical politics, and she gives the show a strong sense of the history of the transgender struggle, from Stonewall to STAR and beyond. My punky, Gay Liberation Front supporting younger self is naturally drawn strongly to Luna’s stories and to Jay Knowles fabulous presence as she inhabits those stories.
For Tatiana, being a transgender woman is an identity she embraces – both the ‘woman’ and the ‘transgender’ parts of the equation. Her story brings us right into the experience of transitioning in the 1960s and 70s, taking friends’ birth control bills, finding doctors willing to prescribe hormones, developing breasts (which she’s so proud of she feels the need to invite a gentleman in the audience to affirm their beauty, cupping his hands around them), and confronting the question of gender-reassignment surgery. Bianca Leigh plays her with perfectly-pitched dignity and confidence.
The larger-than-life Zakia takes everything in her stride and has always believed in herself. She’s a sassy, sexy and self-assured former beauty pageant queen. There’s not an ounce of self-doubt about her, and she meets any opposition (from her mother, from the ladies at the local church) square on. Carolyn M Smith, playing Zakia, has the audience eating out of her hand as she sashays and sways around the space with a big grin on her face. ‘I can see you’re looking at me!’ she says playfully to a man in the front row.
Josephine is about as far away from Zakia as you can imagine. She is a plainly dressed middle-aged woman in slacks and a colourful jumper who is desperate to be a regular, ordinary woman – the girl next door, unassuming, unnoticed. She’s married to a woman who she loves dearly, and one of her biggest fears was how her wife would react to her coming out as transgender. Or discovering her true gender. The politics of language are difficult to work through. She’s played sympathetically and delicately by Australian actress Catherine Fitzgerald, and her story breaks my heart.
Eden, played by British actress Rebecca Root, brings a very different story to the table: one of being born inter-gender, with both male and female sexual characteristics. Her parents take the decision to assign her as male. She has surgery as a child. She grows up, has a girlfriend she loves – but has a growing sense of dissatisfaction, and eventually chooses to transition. Or to reinstate the gender she feels she should have been assigned at birth. In Eden’s case, the language is even more difficult to pick your way through. Her story of botched gender reassignment surgery, and the sorrow of always being somewhere in-between, is captured brilliantly by Root, who brings Eden’s intense anger and distress on to the stage with great skill.
These tales aren’t told as linear narratives, they weave around each other superbly – the writing and editing a model example of how to use verbatim text in a theatrically cohesive way. Taking a few stories and telling them properly is a good decision, combatting the kind of composite, superficial view that can often blight verbatim theatre.
The staging is simple but effective. Upstage is an extended folding screen, the kind you might find in a lady’s dressing room, collaged and stencilled with images from women’s magazines. This visual motif is carried through to other stage furniture, plinths and tables draped with chintz cloths. There is a well-directed, simple choreography of sitting, standing, moving to a new station within the set as the stories emerge.
Trans Scripts is of course primarily a vehicle for the voices of transgender women – but it also offers a more general reflection on what we mean by ‘gender’ and how we relate to our assigned or acquired gender. The debate will go on, and in new forms. Trans Scripts 2: The Men is already on the cards for 2016…
This is a good play, and it is also an important play. No matter what your designated biological sex, assigned or chosen gender, and sexual orientation might be, this is a show to see to make you think about who you are, why you are – and what you might want to be. Go get your magic!