July 22, 2025 • 55 mins
Welcome to Represent, the queer musical theatre podcast. My name is Dr James Lovelock, and I’m an academic and a huge musical theatre fan exploring the representation of all things queer in the musical theatre industry.
My guests today are the extraordinary writer Chris Bush and the fabulous actor and workshop queen Beth Hinton-Lever. Beth recently appeared in Chris’ play Otherland at the Almeida Theatre, which follows the post break-up relationship between Harry, who has recently come out as a trans woman, and Jo, who is preparing to be a mother. We talk about trans, queer and disability representation as well as exploring Chris’ beautiful musical Standing At The Sky’s Edge, Beth’s West End debut in Hadestown and an epic community musical called The Doncastrian Chalk Circle.
Links
Chris Bush's instagram
Beth Hinton-Lever's instagram
James Lovelock's instagram
Standing at the Sky's Edge website
Buy the Standing at the Sky's Edge script from Nick Hern Books
'As the Dawn Breaks' and 'Tonight the Streets Are Ours' from Standing At The Sky's Edge (press preview)
Listen to the Standing at the Sky's Edge soundtrack on Spotify or Apple Music
Otherland website
Buy the Otherland script from Nick Hern Books
The Doncastrian Chalk Circle website
Other new LGBTQ+ theatre / musical theatre discussed in this episode
After the Act website
Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2018 production of Oklahoma! - website
One of Them Ones website
One of Them Ones script
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You're listening to Represent, the queer musical theatre podcast. My name is Dr.
(00:05):
James Lovelock and I'm an academic and a huge musical theatre fan, exploring the
representation of all things queer in the musical theatre industry.
My guests today are the extraordinary writer Chris Bush and the fabulous
actor and workshop queen Beth Hinton-Leaver. Beth recently appeared in
Chris's play Otherland at the Almeida Theatre, which follows the post-breakup
(00:27):
relationship between Harry, who has recently come out as a trans woman, and
Jo, who is preparing to be a mother. We talk about trans, queer and disability
representation, as well as exploring Chris's beautiful musical Standing at
the Sky's Edge, Beth's West End debut in Hadestown, and an epic community musical
called the Doncastrian Chalk Circle. As always, you can follow us on your
(00:48):
favourite podcast platform, and don't forget to share this episode on social
media. Let's get started. Hello, my name is Beth Hinton-Leaver, my
pronouns are she/her and I am an actor, and I think I'm here because I'm also
queer and I have a lot of opinions. Hooray! That's what we need on a podcast. Lovely. And Chris? Hi, yes, I'm Chris Bush, she,/her. I am a playwright, lyricist, theatre
(01:17):
maker, sometime screenwriter a little bit, occasionally promoter of queerness
across all art forms. Excellent, excellent stuff. So what we're trying to do on this
series of the podcast is we're looking a little bit at what it means, what the
term queer gain means. So what do we gain from queer people being involved in art
(01:38):
and particularly a musical theatre? So I was going to start off today thinking a
little bit about maybe some of the projects that you've done, maybe a
favourite project that you've done that you feel is something that you've
really connected to as an actor or as a writer. I mean, I feel like the last
project that we have both done, working together, Otherland at the Almeida, was a
(01:59):
really special one for me and came at the end of around seven or eight years of
trying to get that show on, which was the third theatre that had been in
development. We're very, very thankful to the Almeida for taking a chance on it
really and just saying yes and actually getting it programmed. That's for a very
(02:19):
kind of long slog to get that far. Which I think was, yeah, I mean very, very
special, quite kind of close to my heart and quite a personal story in lots of
ways. But also, I think one of the reasons why it took seven or eight years to get on
was I was striving for a version of queer authenticity, I suppose, that some
(02:40):
other theatres maybe weren't as interested in and liked on paper but
then had their own idea of what that story should be and what kind of
familiar, slightly trope-y beats that would have to hit along the way in order
to sort of be understandable to an audience. And actually, you know, sticking
to my guns and finding the right partner in the Almeida, we were
(03:03):
able to sort of come to the end of a very long road. Unfortunately, we did then
put Beth in it. I feel like most of our friendship is us just being mean to each other. And I feel like it would be really inauthentic to come in here and pretend that's not what we did.
(03:23):
Chris also used me for, I think, every single workshop, I should say. We do love each
other. I agree, I think Otherland was an incredibly special piece. To also watch
(03:43):
for so many years, kind of, change and like, as Chris said, she always stuck to
her guns with the way in which the, I guess, queerness is represented. And yeah,
I was incredibly proud to be on that stage with those incredible women and
all the women and the people that also helped us make it. And it felt like the
(04:05):
Almeida, as well, made it an incredibly, kind of, safe space. And I mean that not in the
sense of, kind of, stifling any, like, articulation that might be there. As in, it
just felt we could all try and be ourselves and fail and come back from it
(04:26):
in a place where it was just held. And I think that was really important. And to
be in that room was really special. It's been really difficult, hasn't it? Because
that phrase, safe space, is so important for us as queer people. But it's, kind of,
got a bit of a, it's taken, it's been, kind of, taken away from us and given
this really, sort of, like, mollycodling feel about it. And that's not what we mean at
(04:49):
all when we're talking about safe space. No, it wasn't just, you know, a poster on a wall. It was an
actual feeling of safety in that room. And that enables people to do their best
work, right? You know, knowing that there's an implicit sense of, like, trust
and people, you know, have everyone's back and therefore, you know, you get an
openness, you get a playfulness, maybe, and an experimentation in the room that,
(05:11):
yeah, if you're having to second-guess yourself in any, sort of, as a
performer or a writer or as anything, then you're never gonna be making your
best work. And I think, also, shout out to Ann Yee, our incredible director in that.
And, because you don't want to get too, sort of, tokenistic about, sort
(05:31):
of, who are the right people for the team. And fundamentally, Ann is just the best
theatre director out there. And she's extraordinary. But also, to have a queer
woman helming that team does feel like, again, lots of things are implicitly held
you are actually starting that journey from a relatively high level of
(05:52):
understanding. Interesting, actually, when we were in the room and we were
talking about, particularly, you know, queerness in general, but more
specifically in terms of trans identities, and, sort of, going, actually, we need to
remember that within this group of people, you know, eight actors and, you know, how
many creatives or whatever, we're, sort of, starting 12 steps ahead of the general
(06:14):
discourse on, like, gender identity, for instance. So, actually, going, like, we need to
remember that our audience might always be with where we are, and how are we
going to, like, enable making work that's going to, like, carry people, carry an
audience with us in a way that feels not, again, like, not mollycoddling, not, sort
of, but enables people to end up in a place of greater understanding, which I
(06:36):
think is the, you know, the goal of that piece, certainly. Yeah, and I think, I mean,
I'm sure we all got amazed, like, the reaction was incredible to Otherland, and
it's an incredibly important play, and it's a beautiful play, and I think some
of my favourite interactions were the audience who came up to us and, kind of,
(06:56):
said, thank you, because I now understand my grandson, and it's, oh, so, it's, we knew
what it meant to us as, kind of, queer people in the team doing the show, and,
you know, but what was amazing was to know that that understanding and that
love and care was extended into an audience that, I think it's fair to say,
(07:19):
at the Almeida, you're looking at a certain demographic, and, yeah, it was so
special, so special. I absolutely loved it, it's one of my favourite things that I've
seen for a very long time, and, I guess, as somebody in the queer community, but
not necessarily somebody that has a detailed knowledge or lived experience
of female queer relationships or trans relationships, I just thought it was such
(07:40):
a, such a wonderful piece just to be thrust into the middle of this piece, you
know, and I feel like that's the sort of work I'm looking for, and that's the sort
of work I want to champion, and, and I hope that we have more of, that becomes
more accessible to people. I think one of the questions that I'm, kind of, struggling
with at the moment is, so, Otherland was great, and it was fantastic, and it was at,
(08:03):
you know, at the Almeida Theatre, and lots of people went to see it, but how do we
get that play now to other people who might need to see it? What happens next?
And I think that's the question I have with a lot of the work, that a lot of the
queer work that we see at the moment, because it tends to be on quite limited
runs, and so I don't know whether there's any answers to that question or not, or
any, you have any thoughts about how we, kind of, share, I mean, particularly, Chris,
(08:25):
you know, how we share your work, you know, without infringing copyright, but...
Yeah, I think it's, it's really hard, and, you know, I was so delighted with that
production, genuinely, couldn't have asked for a better team of people other than
Beth. Genuinely, like, so, so proud of it, and, you know, this piece broadly was
(08:50):
really, sort of, critically well-received, played to, you know, more or less full
house this entire run, but then, yeah, you know, you run for five weeks, and it's
quite a big cast for new writing, you know, we had a cast of eight and a band
of three, and, yeah, you know, I don't think it is going to have an immediate
(09:11):
future life in the UK. At least, I'm still, like, banging on a lot of doors in New
York, and I feel like it would, could play there, and I've not given up on that yet,
but it's, you know, it's true across the industry that, yeah, if you've got a new
piece that doesn't have, you know, real household names, leading TV series in it,
it's very hard to get that future commercial life for it, and if you then
(09:35):
add on top of that an element of, you know, whether it's queerness, whether it's
whatever sort of protected identity or angle that might make it seem less
mainstream, and I suppose particularly with something like Otherland, it takes some sort
of big theatrical swings as well, you know, it doesn't contain itself within
naturalism, it doesn't, sort of, I think it is accessible and it's an
(09:58):
entertaining night out, it's not, you know, it's not hard work, but actually on
paper it can maybe seem like a bit of a tough sell, and so it's interesting, I
suppose, to look at those examples of queerness, and if you say this, and it
might sound like it's pejorative, and it really, I don't mean it to be, you take a
show like Everybody's Talking About Jamie, for instance, which came out of
(10:22):
Crucible, where Sky's Edge did as well, and, you know, has produced so many
incredible shows, and, yeah, really great track record for new musical theatre, and the,
one of the interesting things about Jamie, which again is such a fun night
out, is that actually it's, I think, incredibly mainstream and accessible in
(10:44):
its representations of queerness, which enables it to go to the West End, to, you
know, tour both nationally and internationally, to, sort of, reach that
audience, because it has a kind of, if you like, non-threatening gloss to it, and I
think you will see in all forms, particularly in queer art, the slightly
(11:05):
more out there, on the fringes stuff, the stuff that is able to speak more to a
mainstream, neither one is more important than the other, actually, they're both
really necessary, I think, in terms of a broader ecology of queer identities, queer
storylines, and then, I suppose, to go on to something like Sky's Edge, for
instance, which, again, you know, when I first came on board to that project, I
(11:27):
wasn't necessarily expecting it to be a show that was going to, you know,
transverse the National, transverse the West End, do the sort of journey that it
did, but, again, it feels like the hook of that was, here is a slice of social
history, here is the story of post-war Britain within this broadly working-class
community in Sheffield, and that was the, certainly, the sell of it in Sheffield, at
(11:49):
least, anyway, and then it sort of became something a bit more expansive as it
grew. I think there's a danger when you're talking about, sort of, Northern
storylines and working-class storylines, firstly, the danger that those two things
mean the same thing, which clearly they don't, but also that those
representations become, sort of, monolithically straight and white,
(12:09):
essentially, and I always knew that wasn't going to be the story that I was
going to tell, and it was sort of the primary reason my initiative going, I
want these three storylines and follow these three different families, was to
get a sort of breadth of storytelling possibility, so you're not just following,
you know, if we were just stuck with Harry and Rose in 1960 and a direct line of
(12:33):
their descendants of, again, white working-class Sheffielders, nothing wrong
with that story, fascinating, but that doesn't speak to the truth of the city, and
actually going, you know, there needs to be racial diversity within that company, I
knew that I wanted a queer relationship at the heart of that story, and it feels
a little bit queerness by stealth, in a way, you're not selling that story, I
(12:53):
think, as a queer musical, but it is, and it's not just through Poppy and
Nikki, who are that central queer couple, but there's lots of, sort of, queerness
threaded through in other spaces, as well, and in other ways, but also they are
just, quote-unquote, normal people, who have their sort of
dilemmas, isn't being driven by a sense of, you know, of queer identity, that's not
(13:17):
what's throwing them into crisis, or that's not what's propelling them forward,
that just happens to be who they are, which I get it, because also a really
important part of queer storytelling, as well as those stories, which is about
no, you actually need to understand what it means to be othered in this way, what
it means to be a queer person, a trans person, you know, whatever that might be,
(13:40):
but yes, I think there's space for all of it, basically, but it's
interesting to see which stories can have that commercial life, and which
stories is a much harder sell.
If you're interested in LGBTQ+ representation in musical theatre, check
out our website, www.queermusicals.com, for lots more information about musicals
(14:04):
with LGBTQ+ characters.
One of the things I love about you, Beth, is that every time I see something about
you on social media, you're workshopping something, and I feel like you are the
workshop queen, and I also love that the stuff that you workshop very
often has, certainly themes of otherness, but often has themes of queerness as
(14:29):
well, and I think one of the things, kind of on the same theme, but one of the
things I'm thinking about is, how do we take some of these shows that are in
workshop stages, how do we get them to the next stage, and I guess maybe a
better question is, are there shows that you've workshopped that you love, that
you're kind of waiting to see what happens to next?
Ooh, yeah, definitely. I mean, as you say, I love a workshop. I think it's an
(14:53):
incredibly exciting period of time for any production, and to get to go in as an
actor and have a hand in kind of, I guess like the narrative and the voice of that
character, and like the way that they fit into the world, and I mean, I've said
this before, but every role I ever play, in my opinion, is queer and disabled,
(15:16):
because I can't splice those two things away from me. That's so intrinsically in
the essence of who I am, that I carry that into these roles. So I think when I
am workshopping, without meaning to, even if it's not explicitly a pansexual
character, they all end up being that way. So I think one of my favourite
(15:38):
shows I've ever workshopped was actually the show that Chris and I met on, which
was a retelling of the Caucasian Chalk Circle, which became the Doncastrian
Chalk Circle. It was part of the public acts program at the National Theatre,
which is an incredible program, and I love it dearly and have worked with them
before, so I got asked to come in and do this workshop, and I was playing Saffiya
(16:01):
Shashava, so the kind of queering of Simon, and I read the Caucasian Chalk
Circle. I did, I think it must have been at GCSE level, and I remember not really
caring about this masculine soldier that seemingly leaves his girlfriend, and
wasn't really interested, or was more interested in this goose, is what I
(16:23):
remember from Simon. And then to kind of read this incredible version of it, which
was also a musical, and just from the virtue that Saffiya was then in a queer
relationship with Grusha, and the fact that there was a child there, and Saffiya
loves that child as if it was her own, and I think there was something so
(16:45):
beautiful about this epic love story that spanned decades and years, and they
waited for each other, and they yearned for each other, and you know, she
protected Grusha, and she thought of her, and yeah, I think there was something so
special about the epicness of it, that I think, especially in like old stories, we
(17:06):
don't really find for queer characters. And yeah, I thought that was amazing, to
the point where we finished that workshop, and I think we did a sharing,
and I went up to Chris and James Blakey, the director, and just went, you're not
auditioning anyone else for this role, I'm playing it. And somehow that worked,
(17:26):
and it was amazing, and I think one of my favorite things about Public Acts as a
program as well, is there are five professional actors, and then, oh I'm
gonna say, over a hundred community members that all come and fill out this
beautiful company, and this cast, and from all ages, I think from the youngest is
usually about four, which is amazing, and then up to, you know, a hundred, however
(17:49):
old, and to get to portray a gay relationship, where we had, you know, no
one questioned, why are they gay, why is she a woman, they just went, yeah, but
that's who they are, and they loved them, and they really adored them, and I
think me and my Grusha, Daisy, we kissed, and we were a bit like, the first time we
(18:11):
did it, we were like, okay, what are this community gonna think, are we gonna get
some awkward questions, we got a massive round of applause and a cheer, like, I
just think there's something so special about taking some of these stories that
we think we know, and changing them to become this kind of queer relationship,
(18:32):
and what that can do, and what that can mean, and what it can show that community,
and yeah, it was amazing, it was, it was absolutely incredible to do that, and
that's probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite shows I've ever done. I
also started my career in Doncaster, so it felt like a really nice homecoming, to
go back there, and the last show I did there, before Doncastrian Chalk Circle,
(18:54):
was a pantomime, where again, it was a queer relationship, so it just felt very,
yeah, incredible, and then when we had community members coming up to me, and
saying, you know, I think I might be queer, and as a queer actor, I got to then, kind
of, actually have, like, something to hold the hand, and say, oh okay, well I remember
(19:15):
when I came out, or this is what I told my mum, and that was incredible, from
virtue of, kind of, casting a queer person in a queer role, so, it was just such a
special thing, and obviously I met Chris, which is up and down, but what can we do?
Yeah, because again, I think there's such a presumption that, like, queerness only
exists, or at least can only be, like, celebrated and over in, you know, London,
(19:38):
maybe Brighton, maybe Manchester, at a push, and oh, somewhere like Doncaster, can you
really have a queer relationship? Like, yeah, of course you fucking can, like, why
would this be, you know, but actually, that kind of visible representation on stage,
that feels like it is a significant thing, and again, I sort of, in terms of
(19:58):
how you get those queer narratives into a mainstream, as well, as I feel like the
phrase in my head is queerness by stealth, which feels, like, deeply
problematic. But I also want it tattooed on my body. But ease of, you know, taking a
classic story and finding that as your, sort of, angle into it, you know, and the,
(20:19):
you know, the Caucasian Chalk Circle is 10 seconds summary, poor woman working in
the kitchens finds this child that's been abandoned by rich family who are
fleeing in midst of revolution, raises it as her own, and then the birth mother
comes back and there's a big trial, like, who gets to raise this child? Who will
(20:41):
provide the best home for it? Is it the person who's been raising this child or
the person who's biologically connected to it? Which feels like such a, sort of,
open goal to tell a story about chosen family, about queer family, and actually
by making that central relationship, by going, like, you know, you are not my blood,
(21:02):
but you are still mine, and to, sort of, find those, sort of, you know, transgressive
conversations, yeah, about belonging, about your tribe, about who are the people who
have your back, and, sort of, which feels like it was so in the spirit of
absolutely everything that I believe Brexit's standing for, in terms of the
(21:25):
centre of the community, in terms of, you know, the garden belongs to the ones who
will tend it, this idea of, you know, what it means when a community, sort of, comes
together. Even though we were taking some, sort of, quite wild swings, I suppose, in
terms of changing plot points, and actually the Brecht estate were really
great. I thought they were gonna be a lot more, sort of, difficult to navigate, you
(21:49):
know, but actually they were they were really up for this story, even though we
were changing quite a lot of plot, because I think absolutely it was in the
spirit of it. We were not fundamentally trying to make that show anything that
it isn't at its heart. I think that's one of the things that people come back to
quite a lot with musical theatre, is they say that because it's an adaptive
(22:11):
medium, that's the reason, or that's the excuse for stories being maybe 30 or 40
years behind us, and particularly for queerness, obviously that's a really big
deal. And so I'm thinking at the moment in the West End, I'm not sure that we
have any musicals that have a queer protagonist at the moment. I think Why
Am I So Single was probably the last show that was true of. And so it's great
(22:35):
to hear about how you can reinvent stories, and particularly classic stories
as well. And, you know, we talked about the Brecht estate there, and one of the
things I was really interested to find was that there was a gender-swapped
queer version of Oklahoma that the Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation
allowed to happen at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival about five or six
years ago. And I love that, I mean, it must have taken years to get the
(22:58):
Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation to that stage. But I think there's
something to be said about how you go about, you know, taking older stories and
kind of adding, sprinkling queerness among them, I don't know.
Yeah. I mean, I will shout out the fact that there is a show called After the Act
currently at the Royal Court, which is brilliant. It's a new musical about
(23:21):
Section 28. But again, that was made elsewhere and then has gone into the
Royal Court. So I think it would be amazing if some of these big
theatres and companies were, you know, creating them and putting them onto
those stages. But it's a brilliant musical and that is currently on. But
again, for a really, really limited run. Yes. Yeah, sorry. Well, no, I was going to
(23:43):
say two things. One is that I don't know if that is the production, but I think
the Oregon Oklahoma might have been worked on by Ann Yee, actually, because I
know that she did do a very queer Oklahoma somewhere in America. I'm
wondering how many of them that there would have been anyway, because I know
that it wasn't the Daniel Fish one that, of course, came over here and did very
(24:05):
well. Really interesting and sort of heartbreaking, if that's, you know, if
that is the case, that there isn't a musical currently in the West End with
a queer protagonist. Because we do think of musical theatre in general,
but queer musical theatre in particular, as being such an innately queer medium.
(24:26):
But actually you sort of look at the, I suppose, the codification of queerness in
a way, and how like, oh, everyone knows that this character has an essence of,
you know, straight outside of musicals. But, you know, if there's a really, really
beautiful section in After the Act, actually, when a character describes
(24:50):
their sort of queer awakening, if you like, coming from a teacher breaking
down the queerness that exists within Streetcar Named Desire and other
Tennessee Williams works, and is sort of going like, yes, this is, you know, this
presented as cis straight woman is so coded as a queer man in this sort of way.
(25:15):
And that's, you know, and hopefully we're coming out of a point of the necessity
for a codification or a disguising of queer narrative to make it more
palatable, and queerness evolves. I think it's also a really interesting question
about who queerness on stage is for, and whether you are seeking to make work
(25:40):
that speaks broadly to your community, and it's about going like, this is one
for us, this is going, I see you, and you are a valid human, you can go and like
watch a reflection of yourself on stage and feel something really powerful, versus
something that is primarily for an audience who is not that. And again, this
(26:02):
applies, again, all sorts of, yeah, again, whatever protected minority that might be,
you know, whether that's to do with queerness, whether that's to do with race, whether that's to do with class, of
going like, is this one for us, or is it one for them so we are better understood?
And of course, you know, the great, the best work will do both of those things,
and I hope that a show like Otherland is able to do sort of both of those
things in terms of show, sort of authentic representation that somebody
(26:26):
can see and go, yeah, that's me, but also someone, again, that can bring their mum
to, can bring their gran to, and go, this is me, can you watch this, please?
If you want to follow us on social media, you can use queer.musicals on
Instagram or Facebook, or you can follow me at Dr. James Lovelock on Instagram.
(26:51):
Interestingly, those, I suppose, totems of queerness, as well, in queer musical
theatre, quite recently, so the wonderful Jackie Clune, who was also in
Otherland, is currently, or has maybe just finished, a stint as the narrator in the
Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a bunch of us from the Otherland
(27:13):
company all went out to watch this on tour, and I was struck by how this
show that is such a queer icon, and rightly so, in all sorts of ways, but
feels like it is now playing to such a straight audience in a way that I felt
(27:34):
kind of almost uncomfortable being there, because it feels like it's going for
that, like, hen party-esque crowd where, yeah, it's the equivalent, and this is
again maybe unfair to hen parties, of course, I'm making broad generalisations,
but, like, the hen party who go to the gay bar, and it's all a bit like going to
(27:56):
watch the monkeys at the zoo, and it's, you know, and it's going, oh, this is a
performance of queerness for, not to bring a kind of a better case of
understanding of that, but as a form of, I suppose, titillation, and I'm not sure,
like, how comfortable I feel about that, but then also it's, you know, whatever
lens to you as an individual bring to anything that you're experiencing, and
(28:18):
you can't always ask a production to cater to your thing, because also, I was
watching that show, going, it is not the fault of Richard O'Brien or anyone
responsible for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, that Frank N Furter, this
incredible creature, this queer alien transvestite from transsexual
(28:41):
Transylvania, is now full of sort of tropes and signifiers that terrible
prejudiced people apply to trans women, in terms of, you know, this sort of figure
who towers a foot above anybody else on stage, and is sort of broad-shouldered,
(29:03):
and has five o'clock shadow, but is wearing this sort of high femme get-up
and heels, and is over-sexualized, and is aggressively sexual, and is deviant, and
is blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, the Rocky Horror Show makes no claim, never has done, never
will be, that this is a representation of trans women. Absolutely not. And yet, is
(29:24):
there a degree of, like, uncomfortableness of going and, like, experience that? Maybe
there is for some people, but that's not the fault of the show. That's, I guess,
that's just art, baby. That's what we're all wrestling with. But, I think the
sort of, again, and you can't pick your audience, and whoever buys a ticket is
very welcome to come through the door and watch a show, you know, but it's
(29:46):
interesting how you interpret those sort of things, because, again, at the moment,
to me, anyway, Rocky Horror, on stage, no longer feels like this subversive queer
underground thing. It feels, yeah, it feels like, yeah, this, you know, a
performance of something that doesn't feel like it's, you know, authentic, or
(30:11):
healing, or helping, in a way. I mean, which, again, like, I've got no objection
to queer theatre being like, a fun night out, not everything needs to be, you know, a tutorial, that's not what I'm saying, but you know.
I think you're right there, and I think with the Rocky Horror Show as well, because it's, I
think it was 1973 it first came out, or somewhere around that time, so it's 50
(30:32):
years old now, and it's not, I think there is a case sometimes for looking at work
that's still going around. I mean, Rocky Horror Show is one example, there's so
many examples of musicals that still go around on tour, and you think, I'm not
sure how helpful it is, this musical, you know, I'm thinking things like The King and I,
which seems to still go round and round, despite the obvious problematic tropes
(30:54):
that are in that as well. It also kind of leads me to this other thing I've been
thinking about, which is, which goes back to the thing you're saying about, who are
we making this, these musicals for, this art for, and thinking about, well, maybe
the West End, or Broadway, or whatever it is, is not where our musicals, or these
musicals necessarily need to be, but then the question becomes, how do we get the
(31:17):
people who need to see these shows to be able to know where they are, and find
them? Yeah, I remember we had a conversation about that with Otherland,
because we were saying it felt like we were in some ways preaching to the choir,
talking to our friends, which was incredible, and those shows do, they
should be able to hold the community and invite them in, but it was one of those,
(31:40):
okay, but the people that maybe would learn the most from it, how do you
encourage them to buy a ticket? And then if, and then there was also this, it's
very unfortunate we had to have the conversation, but I think it's important
that we did, because it's about safety, about if there were protesters who came
(32:02):
to come see the show, how would we deal with that? How would we keep members of
our company and our team safe? Or, you know, how can we look after each other
in that way? And I think that's also, I guess, I mean, I'm not a producer, and my
goodness, I never should be, but if, you know, you were going to do big gay play
and put it on, like, Broadway or the West End, whether that's even something that
(32:26):
would cross those producers' minds of the safety of the company, which I think, mmm,
this is going to be, this is a very off-tandem thought I've had, but I was
trying to think of the last time, you know, as a big West End company, we had to
have a safety talk, and it was about the Just Stop Oil protesters, and about, you
know, if they stage, what's it called, stage invade, this is what you do, and
(32:49):
then I was going, but we haven't had this safety conversation with any other, you
know, thing, and I think, I don't know if that even would be a concern, but I don't
know, I thought it was, um, it was just an odd thing that, in Otherland, we were all
so aware of it, and so wanting to be able to look after each other, that we had to
(33:10):
have that conversation. I think, also, it's, we shouldn't be seeing the West End,
that's the be-all and end-all, and not every show needs to end up there, and, you
know, people also need queer but they can afford to see, and they need it where
they are. I mean, one of the best examples I've seen of my partner, who's a writer
and also a stage manager, worked on a Pentabus production of a Charlie
(33:31):
Josephine show called One of Them Ones, really brilliant play, about two brothers,
one cis, one trans, sort of trying to find a better understanding between the
two of them in, like, broad strokes, while doing this, like, classically masculine
thing of, like, one of them's a painter and decorator, and they're sort of, they
(33:52):
redec, they paint this room over the course of the show by, it's this sort of
brilliant conceit of, like, I'm talking to you about something difficult, so I can't
make eye contact with you, so I'm gonna go and paint this wall. Anyway, great show,
and Charlie Josephine's brilliant. And it's Pentabus, so it did come in for a run
at Brixton House, so it had a little London stint, but they are a rural touring
(34:15):
company, and were, you know, playing small sort of art centres, village halls, you
know, very, very small places, which, in the sort of rural communities that don't
have a Arts Council, you know, theatre within, whatever, and so the stuff that
(34:36):
goes on in the village hall, in the pop-up venue, in whatever it is, is broadly seen
by everyone who has a vague interest in the arts, regardless of what it is. So
whether you're seeing a new queer Charlie Josephine play, whether you're
seeing Alan Ayckbourn, whether you're seeing, you know, Shakespeare on bikes,
whatever it might be. And actually, one of the great things about London is, in a
(35:00):
way, is this ability to find your tribe. When you go, on any given night, I can go,
if I'm in the mood for a Royal Court kind of show, I can go to the Court, if I'm in
the mood for a Bush show, I can go to the Bush show, any one of these sort of things,
you will be catered for, presuming you can afford to buy a ticket. But actually, I
suppose, in terms of, like, fostering connection between a community, of going
(35:20):
like, no, we all come, and it's like that magic thing that a theatre can
sometimes do, when it feels like going to church, going to temple, when you're sort
of going, yeah, we all come, and we see this thing. And this week, we're seeing
two brothers come to an understanding about who they are, and their relationship
with each other, and their gender. And next week, we're going to come for a murder
mystery, and next week, we're going to come for basket weaving, and we're going to,
(35:42):
like, and that feels like that should be the goal, and then, you know, queerness
becomes as normalised as anything else within this sort of thing, rather than
going, oh, I should go and see the queer show in town. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's very fair, actually. And I think, also, that's
something that's really strong about some of our regional theatres, as
(36:05):
well. I mean, we mentioned the Sheffield Crucible, the Sheffield
theatres earlier on, and the fact that they've managed to, you know, they've had
Everybody's Talking About Jamie, they've had Standing at the Sky's Edge, but
they've also had, recently, they had a production of Streetcar Named Desire, but
all of those things, like you say, people have got memberships to, you know,
(36:26):
to go and see everything at the theatre. I remember, some time ago, interviewing
somebody at the Theatre Calgary in Canada, who said exactly the same thing,
that he tries to programme as many different shows as he can, because he
knows that the audience will always be there for it. And that's really
interesting, and perhaps something we don't think about, I mean, as academics, we
maybe don't think about enough. I've recently been teaching in Sheffield,
(36:50):
which has been great, and so Standing at the Sky's Edge has been fantastic,
because I look out of the window of the University, and I see where the
musical is set, and I think there's something about things which are so
clearly set in a place, that really help to link it to the community. I was going
to ask you a little bit about some of the other characters in Standing at the
(37:13):
Sky's Edge as well, because one of the things I loved about it, I loved that
Poppy and Nicky, you know, were so central in that, but I also loved the fact there
was Marcus, and Marcus's partner, and then there was also, I think it was quite
heavily implied, that George as well. And to have all of those queer
characters in this story, this story that covered, you know, so many decades, was
(37:34):
just something so wonderful, and I wondered how you kind of, was that a
conscious decision, or did they just kind of appear as you were writing them?
Yeah, I think, I always knew that, you know, if you like, one of those three core
relationships was always, of the three timelines, was always going to be a
queer one, and that felt important. And then, I think things kind of organically
(37:57):
evolved from that point, from going, oh actually, like, it is quite, like, it's
quite nice to have this friendship between Poppy and Marcus, and be able to
like, essentially land the gag of, oh, each of them thinking that the other one
might think it's the date, and how will they let the other one down, because they're
both raging homosexuals. I loved that. And then, yeah, and then you're branching out to
(38:20):
then that sort of New Year's scene, where there are lots of, you know, other queer
couples as well, because like, yeah, we hang out together, who's gonna be at
your, you know, it's not gonna necessarily be an exclusively queer gathering, but
you're gonna find, again, finding your tribe, you're going to find this
community, and it also felt significant, I suppose, to go, it's not just the outsider,
(38:42):
it's not Poppy from the metropolis of London, bringing queerness up north, of
going like, no, it exists here as well. And then, again, and that it doesn't only
exist in the sort of present-day strand, which I think is why it feels important
to sort of, yet again, it's very light touch, but to kind of drip that in with
George as well, who, yeah, talks about his, we don't see his partner, but sort of
(39:06):
refers to a partner at the end. And actually, we're, I mean, who knows whether
it'll ever happen, because such is the whims of TV production, but in theory,
we're making, you know, there might be a TV show. It's so far from being
greenlit, so I'm not, you know, I think I'm allowed to say this, because it's been,
like, people know that we're developing it, but like, yeah, we'll see. But if
(39:29):
that does happen, then actually, it gives us the scope to dive into so many more
of those characters' backstories, and actually, George's sort of sexual
awakening, I suppose, or not awakening, but sort of being able to live more as
himself, as he gets more settled in the area, is going to be something we're
gonna be able to explore far more in a series if we ever get to make it, which
feels like an exciting thing as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the song
(39:53):
The Streets Are Ours, which is just, Tonight The Streets Are Ours, which is
just a beautiful song anyway, and when you hear George sing it, and, you know, in
a very strong, is it Liberian accent? Yes, yeah. And then that means one thing, but
then to go back when you realise that George is also queer, and to have that
song as well, and for the song to mean something completely different, and to
(40:14):
mean something entirely different to what it meant originally when Richard
Hawley wrote it as well, I think that's one of the things I love most about
Standing At The Sky's Edge, is how you use the songs that, you know, were
completely different from the very beginning. I didn't even realise it was a
jukebox musical until afterwards, which is, I think, is, you know, for all the
(40:34):
people sometimes have problems with there being so many jukebox musicals,
actually, if you, where you can write a really clever jukebox musical, then it
gives you, it gives you this room to make your own story around it, and that allows
you then to get free from, you know, maybe the movie, or the whatever it is
that you're writing the story from.
This series of Represent has been recorded at the Content Is Queen studio
(40:58):
in Somerset House. Content Is Queen is a podcast agency and community made up of
women, people of colour, and LGBTQIA+ people who wish to connect, create, and
collaborate using audio and podcasting. For more information, go to contentisqueen.org.
So, thinking about musical theatre in the future, and where we are in terms of
(41:20):
musical theatre at the moment, what sort of shows, or what sort of characters, or
stories, would you like to see more of in musical theatre? I'm going to ask you, Beth.
Okay, I mean, I would, as we've kind of said the whole way through, I wish
that there was more of a opportunity for those shows that are being developed at
(41:41):
places like the Edinburgh Fringe, you know, on university campuses, to, you know, if
you look at Operation Mincemeat, like, one of the biggest commercial successes I
think this country's come up with for a very, very long time. Those shows that
have those queer characters, and that queer love and relationships, and just
the actual, like, reality of being alive and a human being in this world, is that
(42:03):
there are queers everywhere, and we're wonderful. Having more of, like, those
stories to a point where, as you said, it's not, oh, the gay show's here, or
there's a queer show in town. It's just, I'd want to see a kind of fabric of,
across the country, up and down, of just those relationships being there. Because
(42:25):
I think you can't, having that relationship in a theatre, and, you know,
it not always being about coming out, and about, you know, the
hardships, and the othering, and, you know, feeling insecure in that. But if we had
that real joy, and, you know, happy relationships, and, you know, relationships
(42:48):
with older people, because it seems that there's a real focus on young coming out
stories, not just settled down, living with my partner in the Lake District
stories, you know. I'd love to see that coming through. Would be incredible, and,
you know, I think moving away from, well, this is a male character, or a female
(43:10):
character, and moving into, let's see who comes in. And then let's be, like,
I think that's to do with estates as well, just kind of being more open to, well,
actually, you know, why couldn't Orpheus be a woman? And why couldn't Eurydice be a
woman? Why couldn't that story be told this way, if we just change a couple of
keys? Yes. I love Hadestown. I'm using Hadestown as an example, because I was in it.
(43:33):
And also Hadestown has done, you know, particularly with the role of Hermes, that has been
changed virtually every time it's been done. And I'd love to see that kind of across the
board, with, well, anyone who comes in can play anyone, and I think that would be
exciting. And, you know, there's a bit at the beginning of Act Two, where Hermes and
(43:53):
Persephone share a bit of a flitation, a bit of a kiss. And that's always just a little
bit of a sprinkle of, ooh, maybe they're gay. And I'm like, well, why can't we just say
it? Why does it have to be a little, like, hint and a tantalising, oh, this might be
just, you know, be proud and loud and say it. And I mean, with Mean Girls, there are
queer characters in that. But again, I'd love to have seen them end happy. And I know
(44:15):
it's a musical. I know we all want to get 220 and out. But, you know, it would be amazing
if we just cut one minute from somewhere else and give them a love story. I don't know.
I just think I'd like to see just more of a active thought of the portrayal of queerness
in musical theatre and not kind of it being there as a foil to the lead straight couple.
(44:37):
I think would be nice.
Yeah, that sounds great. Chris, do you have any thoughts?
So many thoughts. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it would be nice to get to a point where you
can have queer-led musicals that aren't driven by, you know, a crisis over their queerness
(44:59):
or their gender identity, or it's about the struggles and the pressure. I mean, you know,
it's drama, so it's all about conflict, right? So you need some struggles, but do they need
to be defined by sexuality? I think if you broadly, to make some great sweeping statements
about the sort of history of queer theatre, of which I am not a scholar, but, you know,
(45:21):
I've seen enough of it, it sort of feels like you have this progression where firstly, like
everything needs to be codified. You can't have any queer characters at all. You can
only have characters that can be sort of read with a queer lens if you know what you're
looking for. Then, if you have queerness, the story has to be about struggle. Maybe
(45:44):
it's about the AIDS crisis, maybe it's about horrific, you know, homophobic tags, whatever
it may or may not be. Then, sort of, people cheer up a little bit, and all these things
continue as well, but then you start to introduce, like, your queer comedies, and then it's like
going, okay, it's, you know, this is still a story that's absolutely driven by sexuality
(46:04):
because it's about the dating life of gay men, but again, it's about the queerness is
the sort of the USP of that production. And then you get to a point where, yes, as a supporting
role, you can have a character who just happens to be queer and it's not necessarily at the
heart of their thing, but maybe they are the sassy sidekick. And also, in all of those
(46:26):
things that I've just laid out as well, 90% of those stories are cis white gay male stories
of queerness. So, again, it's one part of a lens. And so, sort of, again, that story,
we would sort of joke about it in the Otherland rehearsal rooms of going like, we're not doing
(46:47):
the sad man puts on lipstick version of trans representation, which is like the only fucking
story that you ever get. People really need to stop doing it because it's so exhausting.
And just generally bad. And anyone who does it should be ashamed. But how much of trauma
(47:08):
dumping do we need to get through? And then we'll have the trans rom-com and then we'll
just have the like, this character can be trans and maybe that's fine. And then maybe
they can leave the show. I'd like to get to that point where... Because it's a facet of
a, and it does have an impact on your life, you know, in a way that any, again, any aspect
(47:29):
of your identity does. I have like certain issues with like, well, I think we sometimes
refer to as like colorblind casting in terms of race or this sort of idea that actually
you could gender flip a character from a canonical text from a Shakespeare from a music or whatever
it be, but not have to change a word because actually, you know, these, or yeah, race swap
(47:53):
a character or whatever it might be. Because sort of, I think sometimes, normally actually
if they're not protagonists, if they're sort of small enough supporting roles, sometimes
that doesn't make any difference. Sometimes there's enough there that you go, Oh, this
is an interesting thing. I think actually generally like with Chalk Circle, you have
to wade in and fuck around with the text in order to like make that work. Because otherwise
(48:14):
actually you are saying, you are still like pushing other and sort of minority identities
into this Cishet framework and going like, it's all the same. If you don't look too hard.
I had, I think like a little bit of an issue maybe with, um, Constellations, the Nick
(48:38):
Payne play in the West End revival a few years ago, which is a brilliant play by a great
writer and a really classy production. But of these sort of like multiple couples of
going like, here's your, if you like quote unquote, here's the normal one, here's the
white Cishet couple. And then we've got the black couple and then we've got the older
couple and then we've got the queer couple. And of going, but you know, if you see that
(49:01):
original production, which again was incredible, at the Royal court with Rafe Spall and
Sally Hawkins going, those characters are written as a very, very specific type of,
I think like 30 something Cishet metropolitan middle-class couple and how they behave is
codified in such a manner. And then to sort of squish another identity into that, I feel
(49:26):
like actually for me, isn't doing justice to that identity because queerness does make
a difference to the way in which you exist in the world in the same way that race does
or that disability does or that anything else sort of might. So actually I am all for smart
queering of existing texts, particularly existing stories where you can, where you can riff
(49:49):
on a frame where you can go, I'm going to rewrite this myth, this iconic thing, this
sort of existing tale in a way. But I think when you're sort of going, I can just take
this boilerplate script off the shelf, recast it. Sometimes you run into difficulties.
So alongside that sort of reclaiming of stories, I would like to get to a point where
we can just have mainstream queer storylines where that's a facet of life. And it is something
(50:16):
that has an impact in the way in which this character moves through the world, but it
isn't the one thing that defines them. I feel like that should sort of be the end goal of
representation for me. Yeah. I mean, I like the, as you said, like if you're queering
a character but not kind of taking care with it, being in this industry and being a creative
(50:36):
and being an actor and being part of this kind of community, one of the beautiful things
about this world is how, I hate this word, but diverse and eclectic and all these different
personalities and lived experiences and people it attracts. And by just not giving them the
chance and not giving the writer the chance or the director the chance to really put themselves
(50:59):
into it, which I think is, I mean, it's the point of me as an actor is to try and tell
the truth. So if I'm not allowed to use my real, my whole truth, there is always going
to be something that's not quite, I mean, it's not fully taking shape in a way that
I think it can. It's amazing. Like, there's a really, I don't know if it was Chalk Circle.
(51:21):
It might've been, there was just a line in it because, who knows if I'm like,
if I'm going to be in it and it said hands and I had to say like, take my hands and it
took me ages to build up the confidence to go, hi, Chris Bush. Could we possibly, could
I say hand? Cause I have one and I just think it takes me out of the character because it,
you were like, yeah, of course. And I think if there were more people just with that in
(51:44):
mind and going, Oh, does that not sit well in your, like in your brain, in your mouth?
Like it doesn't really sound like something you might say. So let's just change it a little
bit. And the more that we can do that and it's like, it links to being queer as well.
The more that you can go, actually, this is the way that I would say this, or it just
makes it feel kind of more authentic. And I think as, as people in the creative industry,
(52:05):
we can see it. But for an audience who, you know, it might be their first time ever seeing
a play you, I think you can feel when something is real and something feels right for that
person. And yeah, I think that would be an amazing place to get to with
the kind of, with these stories and with these characters and these people, if we could kind
of give it more to the real person in that community. And yeah, I think that will be
(52:29):
an exciting kind of flip.
I think that is so exciting. And actually, when I'm talking to people on these episodes,
that's the thing that makes me most excited when people say, actually, as an actor, I
was involved in developing this and, you know, or as a director, I, you know, I was able
to do this. And that idea of, you know, multiple people being able to, to be involved in creating
(52:51):
these characters. And, you know, and you're right, I think that is part of what makes
authentic representation. Thank you very much, Chris and Beth for joining us on the podcast
today. And thank you very much, everyone for listening at home, and we'll see you soon.
Thank you. Bye!
Thank you for listening to Represent, the Queer Musical Theatre podcast. The research
(53:17):
for this series is funded by the British Academy Early Career Researchers Network Seed Fund
and supported by Sheffield Hallam University. The episodes were recorded at the Content
is Queen podcast studios at the Makerversity at Somerset House. For more information, go
to contentisqueen.org.
(53:44):
In next week's episode, we continue exploring Standing at the Sky's Edge with actor and
writer Lauren Redding, who played Nikki in the original West End cast at the Gillian
Lynne Theatre. See you then!
You're listening to Represent, the queer musical theatre podcast. My name is Dr.
(00:05):
James Lovelock and I'm an academic and a huge musical theatre fan, exploring the
representation of all things queer in the musical theatre industry.
My guests today are the extraordinary writer Chris Bush and the fabulous
actor and workshop queen Beth Hinton-Leaver. Beth recently appeared in
Chris's play Otherland at the Almeida Theatre, which follows the post-breakup
(00:27):
relationship between Harry, who has recently come out as a trans woman, and
Jo, who is preparing to be a mother. We talk about trans, queer and disability
representation, as well as exploring Chris's beautiful musical Standing at
the Sky's Edge, Beth's West End debut in Hadestown, and an epic community musical
called the Doncastrian Chalk Circle. As always, you can follow us on your
(00:48):
favourite podcast platform, and don't forget to share this episode on social
media. Let's get started. Hello, my name is Beth Hinton-Leaver, my
pronouns are she/her and I am an actor, and I think I'm here because I'm also
queer and I have a lot of opinions. Hooray! That's what we need on a podcast. Lovely. And Chris? Hi, yes, I'm Chris Bush, she,/her. I am a playwright, lyricist, theatre
(01:17):
maker, sometime screenwriter a little bit, occasionally promoter of queerness
across all art forms. Excellent, excellent stuff. So what we're trying to do on this
series of the podcast is we're looking a little bit at what it means, what the
term queer gain means. So what do we gain from queer people being involved in art
(01:38):
and particularly a musical theatre? So I was going to start off today thinking a
little bit about maybe some of the projects that you've done, maybe a
favourite project that you've done that you feel is something that you've
really connected to as an actor or as a writer. I mean, I feel like the last
project that we have both done, working together, Otherland at the Almeida, was a
(01:59):
really special one for me and came at the end of around seven or eight years of
trying to get that show on, which was the third theatre that had been in
development. We're very, very thankful to the Almeida for taking a chance on it
really and just saying yes and actually getting it programmed. That's for a very
(02:19):
kind of long slog to get that far. Which I think was, yeah, I mean very, very
special, quite kind of close to my heart and quite a personal story in lots of
ways. But also, I think one of the reasons why it took seven or eight years to get on
was I was striving for a version of queer authenticity, I suppose, that some
(02:40):
other theatres maybe weren't as interested in and liked on paper but
then had their own idea of what that story should be and what kind of
familiar, slightly trope-y beats that would have to hit along the way in order
to sort of be understandable to an audience. And actually, you know, sticking
to my guns and finding the right partner in the Almeida, we were
(03:03):
able to sort of come to the end of a very long road. Unfortunately, we did then
put Beth in it. I feel like most of our friendship is us just being mean to each other. And I feel like it would be really inauthentic to come in here and pretend that's not what we did.
(03:23):
Chris also used me for, I think, every single workshop, I should say. We do love each
other. I agree, I think Otherland was an incredibly special piece. To also watch
(03:43):
for so many years, kind of, change and like, as Chris said, she always stuck to
her guns with the way in which the, I guess, queerness is represented. And yeah,
I was incredibly proud to be on that stage with those incredible women and
all the women and the people that also helped us make it. And it felt like the
(04:05):
Almeida, as well, made it an incredibly, kind of, safe space. And I mean that not in the
sense of, kind of, stifling any, like, articulation that might be there. As in, it
just felt we could all try and be ourselves and fail and come back from it
(04:26):
in a place where it was just held. And I think that was really important. And to
be in that room was really special. It's been really difficult, hasn't it? Because
that phrase, safe space, is so important for us as queer people. But it's, kind of,
got a bit of a, it's taken, it's been, kind of, taken away from us and given
this really, sort of, like, mollycodling feel about it. And that's not what we mean at
(04:49):
all when we're talking about safe space. No, it wasn't just, you know, a poster on a wall. It was an
actual feeling of safety in that room. And that enables people to do their best
work, right? You know, knowing that there's an implicit sense of, like, trust
and people, you know, have everyone's back and therefore, you know, you get an
openness, you get a playfulness, maybe, and an experimentation in the room that,
(05:11):
yeah, if you're having to second-guess yourself in any, sort of, as a
performer or a writer or as anything, then you're never gonna be making your
best work. And I think, also, shout out to Ann Yee, our incredible director in that.
And, because you don't want to get too, sort of, tokenistic about, sort
(05:31):
of, who are the right people for the team. And fundamentally, Ann is just the best
theatre director out there. And she's extraordinary. But also, to have a queer
woman helming that team does feel like, again, lots of things are implicitly held
you are actually starting that journey from a relatively high level of
(05:52):
understanding. Interesting, actually, when we were in the room and we were
talking about, particularly, you know, queerness in general, but more
specifically in terms of trans identities, and, sort of, going, actually, we need to
remember that within this group of people, you know, eight actors and, you know, how
many creatives or whatever, we're, sort of, starting 12 steps ahead of the general
(06:14):
discourse on, like, gender identity, for instance. So, actually, going, like, we need to
remember that our audience might always be with where we are, and how are we
going to, like, enable making work that's going to, like, carry people, carry an
audience with us in a way that feels not, again, like, not mollycoddling, not, sort
of, but enables people to end up in a place of greater understanding, which I
(06:36):
think is the, you know, the goal of that piece, certainly. Yeah, and I think, I mean,
I'm sure we all got amazed, like, the reaction was incredible to Otherland, and
it's an incredibly important play, and it's a beautiful play, and I think some
of my favourite interactions were the audience who came up to us and, kind of,
(06:56):
said, thank you, because I now understand my grandson, and it's, oh, so, it's, we knew
what it meant to us as, kind of, queer people in the team doing the show, and,
you know, but what was amazing was to know that that understanding and that
love and care was extended into an audience that, I think it's fair to say,
(07:19):
at the Almeida, you're looking at a certain demographic, and, yeah, it was so
special, so special. I absolutely loved it, it's one of my favourite things that I've
seen for a very long time, and, I guess, as somebody in the queer community, but
not necessarily somebody that has a detailed knowledge or lived experience
of female queer relationships or trans relationships, I just thought it was such
(07:40):
a, such a wonderful piece just to be thrust into the middle of this piece, you
know, and I feel like that's the sort of work I'm looking for, and that's the sort
of work I want to champion, and, and I hope that we have more of, that becomes
more accessible to people. I think one of the questions that I'm, kind of, struggling
with at the moment is, so, Otherland was great, and it was fantastic, and it was at,
(08:03):
you know, at the Almeida Theatre, and lots of people went to see it, but how do we
get that play now to other people who might need to see it? What happens next?
And I think that's the question I have with a lot of the work, that a lot of the
queer work that we see at the moment, because it tends to be on quite limited
runs, and so I don't know whether there's any answers to that question or not, or
any, you have any thoughts about how we, kind of, share, I mean, particularly, Chris,
(08:25):
you know, how we share your work, you know, without infringing copyright, but...
Yeah, I think it's, it's really hard, and, you know, I was so delighted with that
production, genuinely, couldn't have asked for a better team of people other than
Beth. Genuinely, like, so, so proud of it, and, you know, this piece broadly was
(08:50):
really, sort of, critically well-received, played to, you know, more or less full
house this entire run, but then, yeah, you know, you run for five weeks, and it's
quite a big cast for new writing, you know, we had a cast of eight and a band
of three, and, yeah, you know, I don't think it is going to have an immediate
(09:11):
future life in the UK. At least, I'm still, like, banging on a lot of doors in New
York, and I feel like it would, could play there, and I've not given up on that yet,
but it's, you know, it's true across the industry that, yeah, if you've got a new
piece that doesn't have, you know, real household names, leading TV series in it,
it's very hard to get that future commercial life for it, and if you then
(09:35):
add on top of that an element of, you know, whether it's queerness, whether it's
whatever sort of protected identity or angle that might make it seem less
mainstream, and I suppose particularly with something like Otherland, it takes some sort
of big theatrical swings as well, you know, it doesn't contain itself within
naturalism, it doesn't, sort of, I think it is accessible and it's an
(09:58):
entertaining night out, it's not, you know, it's not hard work, but actually on
paper it can maybe seem like a bit of a tough sell, and so it's interesting, I
suppose, to look at those examples of queerness, and if you say this, and it
might sound like it's pejorative, and it really, I don't mean it to be, you take a
show like Everybody's Talking About Jamie, for instance, which came out of
(10:22):
Crucible, where Sky's Edge did as well, and, you know, has produced so many
incredible shows, and, yeah, really great track record for new musical theatre, and the,
one of the interesting things about Jamie, which again is such a fun night
out, is that actually it's, I think, incredibly mainstream and accessible in
(10:44):
its representations of queerness, which enables it to go to the West End, to, you
know, tour both nationally and internationally, to, sort of, reach that
audience, because it has a kind of, if you like, non-threatening gloss to it, and I
think you will see in all forms, particularly in queer art, the slightly
(11:05):
more out there, on the fringes stuff, the stuff that is able to speak more to a
mainstream, neither one is more important than the other, actually, they're both
really necessary, I think, in terms of a broader ecology of queer identities, queer
storylines, and then, I suppose, to go on to something like Sky's Edge, for
instance, which, again, you know, when I first came on board to that project, I
(11:27):
wasn't necessarily expecting it to be a show that was going to, you know,
transverse the National, transverse the West End, do the sort of journey that it
did, but, again, it feels like the hook of that was, here is a slice of social
history, here is the story of post-war Britain within this broadly working-class
community in Sheffield, and that was the, certainly, the sell of it in Sheffield, at
(11:49):
least, anyway, and then it sort of became something a bit more expansive as it
grew. I think there's a danger when you're talking about, sort of, Northern
storylines and working-class storylines, firstly, the danger that those two things
mean the same thing, which clearly they don't, but also that those
representations become, sort of, monolithically straight and white,
(12:09):
essentially, and I always knew that wasn't going to be the story that I was
going to tell, and it was sort of the primary reason my initiative going, I
want these three storylines and follow these three different families, was to
get a sort of breadth of storytelling possibility, so you're not just following,
you know, if we were just stuck with Harry and Rose in 1960 and a direct line of
(12:33):
their descendants of, again, white working-class Sheffielders, nothing wrong
with that story, fascinating, but that doesn't speak to the truth of the city, and
actually going, you know, there needs to be racial diversity within that company, I
knew that I wanted a queer relationship at the heart of that story, and it feels
a little bit queerness by stealth, in a way, you're not selling that story, I
(12:53):
think, as a queer musical, but it is, and it's not just through Poppy and
Nikki, who are that central queer couple, but there's lots of, sort of, queerness
threaded through in other spaces, as well, and in other ways, but also they are
just, quote-unquote, normal people, who have their sort of
dilemmas, isn't being driven by a sense of, you know, of queer identity, that's not
(13:17):
what's throwing them into crisis, or that's not what's propelling them forward,
that just happens to be who they are, which I get it, because also a really
important part of queer storytelling, as well as those stories, which is about
no, you actually need to understand what it means to be othered in this way, what
it means to be a queer person, a trans person, you know, whatever that might be,
(13:40):
but yes, I think there's space for all of it, basically, but it's
interesting to see which stories can have that commercial life, and which
stories is a much harder sell.
If you're interested in LGBTQ+ representation in musical theatre, check
out our website, www.queermusicals.com, for lots more information about musicals
(14:04):
with LGBTQ+ characters.
One of the things I love about you, Beth, is that every time I see something about
you on social media, you're workshopping something, and I feel like you are the
workshop queen, and I also love that the stuff that you workshop very
often has, certainly themes of otherness, but often has themes of queerness as
(14:29):
well, and I think one of the things, kind of on the same theme, but one of the
things I'm thinking about is, how do we take some of these shows that are in
workshop stages, how do we get them to the next stage, and I guess maybe a
better question is, are there shows that you've workshopped that you love, that
you're kind of waiting to see what happens to next?
Ooh, yeah, definitely. I mean, as you say, I love a workshop. I think it's an
(14:53):
incredibly exciting period of time for any production, and to get to go in as an
actor and have a hand in kind of, I guess like the narrative and the voice of that
character, and like the way that they fit into the world, and I mean, I've said
this before, but every role I ever play, in my opinion, is queer and disabled,
(15:16):
because I can't splice those two things away from me. That's so intrinsically in
the essence of who I am, that I carry that into these roles. So I think when I
am workshopping, without meaning to, even if it's not explicitly a pansexual
character, they all end up being that way. So I think one of my favourite
(15:38):
shows I've ever workshopped was actually the show that Chris and I met on, which
was a retelling of the Caucasian Chalk Circle, which became the Doncastrian
Chalk Circle. It was part of the public acts program at the National Theatre,
which is an incredible program, and I love it dearly and have worked with them
before, so I got asked to come in and do this workshop, and I was playing Saffiya
(16:01):
Shashava, so the kind of queering of Simon, and I read the Caucasian Chalk
Circle. I did, I think it must have been at GCSE level, and I remember not really
caring about this masculine soldier that seemingly leaves his girlfriend, and
wasn't really interested, or was more interested in this goose, is what I
(16:23):
remember from Simon. And then to kind of read this incredible version of it, which
was also a musical, and just from the virtue that Saffiya was then in a queer
relationship with Grusha, and the fact that there was a child there, and Saffiya
loves that child as if it was her own, and I think there was something so
(16:45):
beautiful about this epic love story that spanned decades and years, and they
waited for each other, and they yearned for each other, and you know, she
protected Grusha, and she thought of her, and yeah, I think there was something so
special about the epicness of it, that I think, especially in like old stories, we
(17:06):
don't really find for queer characters. And yeah, I thought that was amazing, to
the point where we finished that workshop, and I think we did a sharing,
and I went up to Chris and James Blakey, the director, and just went, you're not
auditioning anyone else for this role, I'm playing it. And somehow that worked,
(17:26):
and it was amazing, and I think one of my favorite things about Public Acts as a
program as well, is there are five professional actors, and then, oh I'm
gonna say, over a hundred community members that all come and fill out this
beautiful company, and this cast, and from all ages, I think from the youngest is
usually about four, which is amazing, and then up to, you know, a hundred, however
(17:49):
old, and to get to portray a gay relationship, where we had, you know, no
one questioned, why are they gay, why is she a woman, they just went, yeah, but
that's who they are, and they loved them, and they really adored them, and I
think me and my Grusha, Daisy, we kissed, and we were a bit like, the first time we
(18:11):
did it, we were like, okay, what are this community gonna think, are we gonna get
some awkward questions, we got a massive round of applause and a cheer, like, I
just think there's something so special about taking some of these stories that
we think we know, and changing them to become this kind of queer relationship,
(18:32):
and what that can do, and what that can mean, and what it can show that community,
and yeah, it was amazing, it was, it was absolutely incredible to do that, and
that's probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite shows I've ever done. I
also started my career in Doncaster, so it felt like a really nice homecoming, to
go back there, and the last show I did there, before Doncastrian Chalk Circle,
(18:54):
was a pantomime, where again, it was a queer relationship, so it just felt very,
yeah, incredible, and then when we had community members coming up to me, and
saying, you know, I think I might be queer, and as a queer actor, I got to then, kind
of, actually have, like, something to hold the hand, and say, oh okay, well I remember
(19:15):
when I came out, or this is what I told my mum, and that was incredible, from
virtue of, kind of, casting a queer person in a queer role, so, it was just such a
special thing, and obviously I met Chris, which is up and down, but what can we do?
Yeah, because again, I think there's such a presumption that, like, queerness only
exists, or at least can only be, like, celebrated and over in, you know, London,
(19:38):
maybe Brighton, maybe Manchester, at a push, and oh, somewhere like Doncaster, can you
really have a queer relationship? Like, yeah, of course you fucking can, like, why
would this be, you know, but actually, that kind of visible representation on stage,
that feels like it is a significant thing, and again, I sort of, in terms of
(19:58):
how you get those queer narratives into a mainstream, as well, as I feel like the
phrase in my head is queerness by stealth, which feels, like, deeply
problematic. But I also want it tattooed on my body. But ease of, you know, taking a
classic story and finding that as your, sort of, angle into it, you know, and the,
(20:19):
you know, the Caucasian Chalk Circle is 10 seconds summary, poor woman working in
the kitchens finds this child that's been abandoned by rich family who are
fleeing in midst of revolution, raises it as her own, and then the birth mother
comes back and there's a big trial, like, who gets to raise this child? Who will
(20:41):
provide the best home for it? Is it the person who's been raising this child or
the person who's biologically connected to it? Which feels like such a, sort of,
open goal to tell a story about chosen family, about queer family, and actually
by making that central relationship, by going, like, you know, you are not my blood,
(21:02):
but you are still mine, and to, sort of, find those, sort of, you know, transgressive
conversations, yeah, about belonging, about your tribe, about who are the people who
have your back, and, sort of, which feels like it was so in the spirit of
absolutely everything that I believe Brexit's standing for, in terms of the
(21:25):
centre of the community, in terms of, you know, the garden belongs to the ones who
will tend it, this idea of, you know, what it means when a community, sort of, comes
together. Even though we were taking some, sort of, quite wild swings, I suppose, in
terms of changing plot points, and actually the Brecht estate were really
great. I thought they were gonna be a lot more, sort of, difficult to navigate, you
(21:49):
know, but actually they were they were really up for this story, even though we
were changing quite a lot of plot, because I think absolutely it was in the
spirit of it. We were not fundamentally trying to make that show anything that
it isn't at its heart. I think that's one of the things that people come back to
quite a lot with musical theatre, is they say that because it's an adaptive
(22:11):
medium, that's the reason, or that's the excuse for stories being maybe 30 or 40
years behind us, and particularly for queerness, obviously that's a really big
deal. And so I'm thinking at the moment in the West End, I'm not sure that we
have any musicals that have a queer protagonist at the moment. I think Why
Am I So Single was probably the last show that was true of. And so it's great
(22:35):
to hear about how you can reinvent stories, and particularly classic stories
as well. And, you know, we talked about the Brecht estate there, and one of the
things I was really interested to find was that there was a gender-swapped
queer version of Oklahoma that the Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation
allowed to happen at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival about five or six
years ago. And I love that, I mean, it must have taken years to get the
(22:58):
Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation to that stage. But I think there's
something to be said about how you go about, you know, taking older stories and
kind of adding, sprinkling queerness among them, I don't know.
Yeah. I mean, I will shout out the fact that there is a show called After the Act
currently at the Royal Court, which is brilliant. It's a new musical about
(23:21):
Section 28. But again, that was made elsewhere and then has gone into the
Royal Court. So I think it would be amazing if some of these big
theatres and companies were, you know, creating them and putting them onto
those stages. But it's a brilliant musical and that is currently on. But
again, for a really, really limited run. Yes. Yeah, sorry. Well, no, I was going to
(23:43):
say two things. One is that I don't know if that is the production, but I think
the Oregon Oklahoma might have been worked on by Ann Yee, actually, because I
know that she did do a very queer Oklahoma somewhere in America. I'm
wondering how many of them that there would have been anyway, because I know
that it wasn't the Daniel Fish one that, of course, came over here and did very
(24:05):
well. Really interesting and sort of heartbreaking, if that's, you know, if
that is the case, that there isn't a musical currently in the West End with
a queer protagonist. Because we do think of musical theatre in general,
but queer musical theatre in particular, as being such an innately queer medium.
(24:26):
But actually you sort of look at the, I suppose, the codification of queerness in
a way, and how like, oh, everyone knows that this character has an essence of,
you know, straight outside of musicals. But, you know, if there's a really, really
beautiful section in After the Act, actually, when a character describes
(24:50):
their sort of queer awakening, if you like, coming from a teacher breaking
down the queerness that exists within Streetcar Named Desire and other
Tennessee Williams works, and is sort of going like, yes, this is, you know, this
presented as cis straight woman is so coded as a queer man in this sort of way.
(25:15):
And that's, you know, and hopefully we're coming out of a point of the necessity
for a codification or a disguising of queer narrative to make it more
palatable, and queerness evolves. I think it's also a really interesting question
about who queerness on stage is for, and whether you are seeking to make work
(25:40):
that speaks broadly to your community, and it's about going like, this is one
for us, this is going, I see you, and you are a valid human, you can go and like
watch a reflection of yourself on stage and feel something really powerful, versus
something that is primarily for an audience who is not that. And again, this
(26:02):
applies, again, all sorts of, yeah, again, whatever protected minority that might be,
you know, whether that's to do with queerness, whether that's to do with race, whether that's to do with class, of
going like, is this one for us, or is it one for them so we are better understood?
And of course, you know, the great, the best work will do both of those things,
and I hope that a show like Otherland is able to do sort of both of those
things in terms of show, sort of authentic representation that somebody
(26:26):
can see and go, yeah, that's me, but also someone, again, that can bring their mum
to, can bring their gran to, and go, this is me, can you watch this, please?
If you want to follow us on social media, you can use queer.musicals on
Instagram or Facebook, or you can follow me at Dr. James Lovelock on Instagram.
(26:51):
Interestingly, those, I suppose, totems of queerness, as well, in queer musical
theatre, quite recently, so the wonderful Jackie Clune, who was also in
Otherland, is currently, or has maybe just finished, a stint as the narrator in the
Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a bunch of us from the Otherland
(27:13):
company all went out to watch this on tour, and I was struck by how this
show that is such a queer icon, and rightly so, in all sorts of ways, but
feels like it is now playing to such a straight audience in a way that I felt
(27:34):
kind of almost uncomfortable being there, because it feels like it's going for
that, like, hen party-esque crowd where, yeah, it's the equivalent, and this is
again maybe unfair to hen parties, of course, I'm making broad generalisations,
but, like, the hen party who go to the gay bar, and it's all a bit like going to
(27:56):
watch the monkeys at the zoo, and it's, you know, and it's going, oh, this is a
performance of queerness for, not to bring a kind of a better case of
understanding of that, but as a form of, I suppose, titillation, and I'm not sure,
like, how comfortable I feel about that, but then also it's, you know, whatever
lens to you as an individual bring to anything that you're experiencing, and
(28:18):
you can't always ask a production to cater to your thing, because also, I was
watching that show, going, it is not the fault of Richard O'Brien or anyone
responsible for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, that Frank N Furter, this
incredible creature, this queer alien transvestite from transsexual
(28:41):
Transylvania, is now full of sort of tropes and signifiers that terrible
prejudiced people apply to trans women, in terms of, you know, this sort of figure
who towers a foot above anybody else on stage, and is sort of broad-shouldered,
(29:03):
and has five o'clock shadow, but is wearing this sort of high femme get-up
and heels, and is over-sexualized, and is aggressively sexual, and is deviant, and
is blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, the Rocky Horror Show makes no claim, never has done, never
will be, that this is a representation of trans women. Absolutely not. And yet, is
(29:24):
there a degree of, like, uncomfortableness of going and, like, experience that? Maybe
there is for some people, but that's not the fault of the show. That's, I guess,
that's just art, baby. That's what we're all wrestling with. But, I think the
sort of, again, and you can't pick your audience, and whoever buys a ticket is
very welcome to come through the door and watch a show, you know, but it's
(29:46):
interesting how you interpret those sort of things, because, again, at the moment,
to me, anyway, Rocky Horror, on stage, no longer feels like this subversive queer
underground thing. It feels, yeah, it feels like, yeah, this, you know, a
performance of something that doesn't feel like it's, you know, authentic, or
(30:11):
healing, or helping, in a way. I mean, which, again, like, I've got no objection
to queer theatre being like, a fun night out, not everything needs to be, you know, a tutorial, that's not what I'm saying, but you know.
I think you're right there, and I think with the Rocky Horror Show as well, because it's, I
think it was 1973 it first came out, or somewhere around that time, so it's 50
(30:32):
years old now, and it's not, I think there is a case sometimes for looking at work
that's still going around. I mean, Rocky Horror Show is one example, there's so
many examples of musicals that still go around on tour, and you think, I'm not
sure how helpful it is, this musical, you know, I'm thinking things like The King and I,
which seems to still go round and round, despite the obvious problematic tropes
(30:54):
that are in that as well. It also kind of leads me to this other thing I've been
thinking about, which is, which goes back to the thing you're saying about, who are
we making this, these musicals for, this art for, and thinking about, well, maybe
the West End, or Broadway, or whatever it is, is not where our musicals, or these
musicals necessarily need to be, but then the question becomes, how do we get the
(31:17):
people who need to see these shows to be able to know where they are, and find
them? Yeah, I remember we had a conversation about that with Otherland,
because we were saying it felt like we were in some ways preaching to the choir,
talking to our friends, which was incredible, and those shows do, they
should be able to hold the community and invite them in, but it was one of those,
(31:40):
okay, but the people that maybe would learn the most from it, how do you
encourage them to buy a ticket? And then if, and then there was also this, it's
very unfortunate we had to have the conversation, but I think it's important
that we did, because it's about safety, about if there were protesters who came
(32:02):
to come see the show, how would we deal with that? How would we keep members of
our company and our team safe? Or, you know, how can we look after each other
in that way? And I think that's also, I guess, I mean, I'm not a producer, and my
goodness, I never should be, but if, you know, you were going to do big gay play
and put it on, like, Broadway or the West End, whether that's even something that
(32:26):
would cross those producers' minds of the safety of the company, which I think, mmm,
this is going to be, this is a very off-tandem thought I've had, but I was
trying to think of the last time, you know, as a big West End company, we had to
have a safety talk, and it was about the Just Stop Oil protesters, and about, you
know, if they stage, what's it called, stage invade, this is what you do, and
(32:49):
then I was going, but we haven't had this safety conversation with any other, you
know, thing, and I think, I don't know if that even would be a concern, but I don't
know, I thought it was, um, it was just an odd thing that, in Otherland, we were all
so aware of it, and so wanting to be able to look after each other, that we had to
(33:10):
have that conversation. I think, also, it's, we shouldn't be seeing the West End,
that's the be-all and end-all, and not every show needs to end up there, and, you
know, people also need queer but they can afford to see, and they need it where
they are. I mean, one of the best examples I've seen of my partner, who's a writer
and also a stage manager, worked on a Pentabus production of a Charlie
(33:31):
Josephine show called One of Them Ones, really brilliant play, about two brothers,
one cis, one trans, sort of trying to find a better understanding between the
two of them in, like, broad strokes, while doing this, like, classically masculine
thing of, like, one of them's a painter and decorator, and they're sort of, they
(33:52):
redec, they paint this room over the course of the show by, it's this sort of
brilliant conceit of, like, I'm talking to you about something difficult, so I can't
make eye contact with you, so I'm gonna go and paint this wall. Anyway, great show,
and Charlie Josephine's brilliant. And it's Pentabus, so it did come in for a run
at Brixton House, so it had a little London stint, but they are a rural touring
(34:15):
company, and were, you know, playing small sort of art centres, village halls, you
know, very, very small places, which, in the sort of rural communities that don't
have a Arts Council, you know, theatre within, whatever, and so the stuff that
(34:36):
goes on in the village hall, in the pop-up venue, in whatever it is, is broadly seen
by everyone who has a vague interest in the arts, regardless of what it is. So
whether you're seeing a new queer Charlie Josephine play, whether you're
seeing Alan Ayckbourn, whether you're seeing, you know, Shakespeare on bikes,
whatever it might be. And actually, one of the great things about London is, in a
(35:00):
way, is this ability to find your tribe. When you go, on any given night, I can go,
if I'm in the mood for a Royal Court kind of show, I can go to the Court, if I'm in
the mood for a Bush show, I can go to the Bush show, any one of these sort of things,
you will be catered for, presuming you can afford to buy a ticket. But actually, I
suppose, in terms of, like, fostering connection between a community, of going
(35:20):
like, no, we all come, and it's like that magic thing that a theatre can
sometimes do, when it feels like going to church, going to temple, when you're sort
of going, yeah, we all come, and we see this thing. And this week, we're seeing
two brothers come to an understanding about who they are, and their relationship
with each other, and their gender. And next week, we're going to come for a murder
mystery, and next week, we're going to come for basket weaving, and we're going to,
(35:42):
like, and that feels like that should be the goal, and then, you know, queerness
becomes as normalised as anything else within this sort of thing, rather than
going, oh, I should go and see the queer show in town. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's very fair, actually. And I think, also, that's
something that's really strong about some of our regional theatres, as
(36:05):
well. I mean, we mentioned the Sheffield Crucible, the Sheffield
theatres earlier on, and the fact that they've managed to, you know, they've had
Everybody's Talking About Jamie, they've had Standing at the Sky's Edge, but
they've also had, recently, they had a production of Streetcar Named Desire, but
all of those things, like you say, people have got memberships to, you know,
(36:26):
to go and see everything at the theatre. I remember, some time ago, interviewing
somebody at the Theatre Calgary in Canada, who said exactly the same thing,
that he tries to programme as many different shows as he can, because he
knows that the audience will always be there for it. And that's really
interesting, and perhaps something we don't think about, I mean, as academics, we
maybe don't think about enough. I've recently been teaching in Sheffield,
(36:50):
which has been great, and so Standing at the Sky's Edge has been fantastic,
because I look out of the window of the University, and I see where the
musical is set, and I think there's something about things which are so
clearly set in a place, that really help to link it to the community. I was going
to ask you a little bit about some of the other characters in Standing at the
(37:13):
Sky's Edge as well, because one of the things I loved about it, I loved that
Poppy and Nicky, you know, were so central in that, but I also loved the fact there
was Marcus, and Marcus's partner, and then there was also, I think it was quite
heavily implied, that George as well. And to have all of those queer
characters in this story, this story that covered, you know, so many decades, was
(37:34):
just something so wonderful, and I wondered how you kind of, was that a
conscious decision, or did they just kind of appear as you were writing them?
Yeah, I think, I always knew that, you know, if you like, one of those three core
relationships was always, of the three timelines, was always going to be a
queer one, and that felt important. And then, I think things kind of organically
(37:57):
evolved from that point, from going, oh actually, like, it is quite, like, it's
quite nice to have this friendship between Poppy and Marcus, and be able to
like, essentially land the gag of, oh, each of them thinking that the other one
might think it's the date, and how will they let the other one down, because they're
both raging homosexuals. I loved that. And then, yeah, and then you're branching out to
(38:20):
then that sort of New Year's scene, where there are lots of, you know, other queer
couples as well, because like, yeah, we hang out together, who's gonna be at
your, you know, it's not gonna necessarily be an exclusively queer gathering, but
you're gonna find, again, finding your tribe, you're going to find this
community, and it also felt significant, I suppose, to go, it's not just the outsider,
(38:42):
it's not Poppy from the metropolis of London, bringing queerness up north, of
going like, no, it exists here as well. And then, again, and that it doesn't only
exist in the sort of present-day strand, which I think is why it feels important
to sort of, yet again, it's very light touch, but to kind of drip that in with
George as well, who, yeah, talks about his, we don't see his partner, but sort of
(39:06):
refers to a partner at the end. And actually, we're, I mean, who knows whether
it'll ever happen, because such is the whims of TV production, but in theory,
we're making, you know, there might be a TV show. It's so far from being
greenlit, so I'm not, you know, I think I'm allowed to say this, because it's been,
like, people know that we're developing it, but like, yeah, we'll see. But if
(39:29):
that does happen, then actually, it gives us the scope to dive into so many more
of those characters' backstories, and actually, George's sort of sexual
awakening, I suppose, or not awakening, but sort of being able to live more as
himself, as he gets more settled in the area, is going to be something we're
gonna be able to explore far more in a series if we ever get to make it, which
feels like an exciting thing as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the song
(39:53):
The Streets Are Ours, which is just, Tonight The Streets Are Ours, which is
just a beautiful song anyway, and when you hear George sing it, and, you know, in
a very strong, is it Liberian accent? Yes, yeah. And then that means one thing, but
then to go back when you realise that George is also queer, and to have that
song as well, and for the song to mean something completely different, and to
(40:14):
mean something entirely different to what it meant originally when Richard
Hawley wrote it as well, I think that's one of the things I love most about
Standing At The Sky's Edge, is how you use the songs that, you know, were
completely different from the very beginning. I didn't even realise it was a
jukebox musical until afterwards, which is, I think, is, you know, for all the
(40:34):
people sometimes have problems with there being so many jukebox musicals,
actually, if you, where you can write a really clever jukebox musical, then it
gives you, it gives you this room to make your own story around it, and that allows
you then to get free from, you know, maybe the movie, or the whatever it is
that you're writing the story from.
This series of Represent has been recorded at the Content Is Queen studio
(40:58):
in Somerset House. Content Is Queen is a podcast agency and community made up of
women, people of colour, and LGBTQIA+ people who wish to connect, create, and
collaborate using audio and podcasting. For more information, go to contentisqueen.org.
So, thinking about musical theatre in the future, and where we are in terms of
(41:20):
musical theatre at the moment, what sort of shows, or what sort of characters, or
stories, would you like to see more of in musical theatre? I'm going to ask you, Beth.
Okay, I mean, I would, as we've kind of said the whole way through, I wish
that there was more of a opportunity for those shows that are being developed at
(41:41):
places like the Edinburgh Fringe, you know, on university campuses, to, you know, if
you look at Operation Mincemeat, like, one of the biggest commercial successes I
think this country's come up with for a very, very long time. Those shows that
have those queer characters, and that queer love and relationships, and just
the actual, like, reality of being alive and a human being in this world, is that
(42:03):
there are queers everywhere, and we're wonderful. Having more of, like, those
stories to a point where, as you said, it's not, oh, the gay show's here, or
there's a queer show in town. It's just, I'd want to see a kind of fabric of,
across the country, up and down, of just those relationships being there. Because
(42:25):
I think you can't, having that relationship in a theatre, and, you know,
it not always being about coming out, and about, you know, the
hardships, and the othering, and, you know, feeling insecure in that. But if we had
that real joy, and, you know, happy relationships, and, you know, relationships
(42:48):
with older people, because it seems that there's a real focus on young coming out
stories, not just settled down, living with my partner in the Lake District
stories, you know. I'd love to see that coming through. Would be incredible, and,
you know, I think moving away from, well, this is a male character, or a female
(43:10):
character, and moving into, let's see who comes in. And then let's be, like,
I think that's to do with estates as well, just kind of being more open to, well,
actually, you know, why couldn't Orpheus be a woman? And why couldn't Eurydice be a
woman? Why couldn't that story be told this way, if we just change a couple of
keys? Yes. I love Hadestown. I'm using Hadestown as an example, because I was in it.
(43:33):
And also Hadestown has done, you know, particularly with the role of Hermes, that has been
changed virtually every time it's been done. And I'd love to see that kind of across the
board, with, well, anyone who comes in can play anyone, and I think that would be
exciting. And, you know, there's a bit at the beginning of Act Two, where Hermes and
(43:53):
Persephone share a bit of a flitation, a bit of a kiss. And that's always just a little
bit of a sprinkle of, ooh, maybe they're gay. And I'm like, well, why can't we just say
it? Why does it have to be a little, like, hint and a tantalising, oh, this might be
just, you know, be proud and loud and say it. And I mean, with Mean Girls, there are
queer characters in that. But again, I'd love to have seen them end happy. And I know
(44:15):
it's a musical. I know we all want to get 220 and out. But, you know, it would be amazing
if we just cut one minute from somewhere else and give them a love story. I don't know.
I just think I'd like to see just more of a active thought of the portrayal of queerness
in musical theatre and not kind of it being there as a foil to the lead straight couple.
(44:37):
I think would be nice.
Yeah, that sounds great. Chris, do you have any thoughts?
So many thoughts. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it would be nice to get to a point where you
can have queer-led musicals that aren't driven by, you know, a crisis over their queerness
(44:59):
or their gender identity, or it's about the struggles and the pressure. I mean, you know,
it's drama, so it's all about conflict, right? So you need some struggles, but do they need
to be defined by sexuality? I think if you broadly, to make some great sweeping statements
about the sort of history of queer theatre, of which I am not a scholar, but, you know,
(45:21):
I've seen enough of it, it sort of feels like you have this progression where firstly, like
everything needs to be codified. You can't have any queer characters at all. You can
only have characters that can be sort of read with a queer lens if you know what you're
looking for. Then, if you have queerness, the story has to be about struggle. Maybe
(45:44):
it's about the AIDS crisis, maybe it's about horrific, you know, homophobic tags, whatever
it may or may not be. Then, sort of, people cheer up a little bit, and all these things
continue as well, but then you start to introduce, like, your queer comedies, and then it's like
going, okay, it's, you know, this is still a story that's absolutely driven by sexuality
(46:04):
because it's about the dating life of gay men, but again, it's about the queerness is
the sort of the USP of that production. And then you get to a point where, yes, as a supporting
role, you can have a character who just happens to be queer and it's not necessarily at the
heart of their thing, but maybe they are the sassy sidekick. And also, in all of those
(46:26):
things that I've just laid out as well, 90% of those stories are cis white gay male stories
of queerness. So, again, it's one part of a lens. And so, sort of, again, that story,
we would sort of joke about it in the Otherland rehearsal rooms of going like, we're not doing
(46:47):
the sad man puts on lipstick version of trans representation, which is like the only fucking
story that you ever get. People really need to stop doing it because it's so exhausting.
And just generally bad. And anyone who does it should be ashamed. But how much of trauma
(47:08):
dumping do we need to get through? And then we'll have the trans rom-com and then we'll
just have the like, this character can be trans and maybe that's fine. And then maybe
they can leave the show. I'd like to get to that point where... Because it's a facet of
a, and it does have an impact on your life, you know, in a way that any, again, any aspect
(47:29):
of your identity does. I have like certain issues with like, well, I think we sometimes
refer to as like colorblind casting in terms of race or this sort of idea that actually
you could gender flip a character from a canonical text from a Shakespeare from a music or whatever
it be, but not have to change a word because actually, you know, these, or yeah, race swap
(47:53):
a character or whatever it might be. Because sort of, I think sometimes, normally actually
if they're not protagonists, if they're sort of small enough supporting roles, sometimes
that doesn't make any difference. Sometimes there's enough there that you go, Oh, this
is an interesting thing. I think actually generally like with Chalk Circle, you have
to wade in and fuck around with the text in order to like make that work. Because otherwise
(48:14):
actually you are saying, you are still like pushing other and sort of minority identities
into this Cishet framework and going like, it's all the same. If you don't look too hard.
I had, I think like a little bit of an issue maybe with, um, Constellations, the Nick
(48:38):
Payne play in the West End revival a few years ago, which is a brilliant play by a great
writer and a really classy production. But of these sort of like multiple couples of
going like, here's your, if you like quote unquote, here's the normal one, here's the
white Cishet couple. And then we've got the black couple and then we've got the older
couple and then we've got the queer couple. And of going, but you know, if you see that
(49:01):
original production, which again was incredible, at the Royal court with Rafe Spall and
Sally Hawkins going, those characters are written as a very, very specific type of,
I think like 30 something Cishet metropolitan middle-class couple and how they behave is
codified in such a manner. And then to sort of squish another identity into that, I feel
(49:26):
like actually for me, isn't doing justice to that identity because queerness does make
a difference to the way in which you exist in the world in the same way that race does
or that disability does or that anything else sort of might. So actually I am all for smart
queering of existing texts, particularly existing stories where you can, where you can riff
(49:49):
on a frame where you can go, I'm going to rewrite this myth, this iconic thing, this
sort of existing tale in a way. But I think when you're sort of going, I can just take
this boilerplate script off the shelf, recast it. Sometimes you run into difficulties.
So alongside that sort of reclaiming of stories, I would like to get to a point where
we can just have mainstream queer storylines where that's a facet of life. And it is something
(50:16):
that has an impact in the way in which this character moves through the world, but it
isn't the one thing that defines them. I feel like that should sort of be the end goal of
representation for me. Yeah. I mean, I like the, as you said, like if you're queering
a character but not kind of taking care with it, being in this industry and being a creative
(50:36):
and being an actor and being part of this kind of community, one of the beautiful things
about this world is how, I hate this word, but diverse and eclectic and all these different
personalities and lived experiences and people it attracts. And by just not giving them the
chance and not giving the writer the chance or the director the chance to really put themselves
(50:59):
into it, which I think is, I mean, it's the point of me as an actor is to try and tell
the truth. So if I'm not allowed to use my real, my whole truth, there is always going
to be something that's not quite, I mean, it's not fully taking shape in a way that
I think it can. It's amazing. Like, there's a really, I don't know if it was Chalk Circle.
(51:21):
It might've been, there was just a line in it because, who knows if I'm like,
if I'm going to be in it and it said hands and I had to say like, take my hands and it
took me ages to build up the confidence to go, hi, Chris Bush. Could we possibly, could
I say hand? Cause I have one and I just think it takes me out of the character because it,
you were like, yeah, of course. And I think if there were more people just with that in
(51:44):
mind and going, Oh, does that not sit well in your, like in your brain, in your mouth?
Like it doesn't really sound like something you might say. So let's just change it a little
bit. And the more that we can do that and it's like, it links to being queer as well.
The more that you can go, actually, this is the way that I would say this, or it just
makes it feel kind of more authentic. And I think as, as people in the creative industry,
(52:05):
we can see it. But for an audience who, you know, it might be their first time ever seeing
a play you, I think you can feel when something is real and something feels right for that
person. And yeah, I think that would be an amazing place to get to with
the kind of, with these stories and with these characters and these people, if we could kind
of give it more to the real person in that community. And yeah, I think that will be
(52:29):
an exciting kind of flip.
I think that is so exciting. And actually, when I'm talking to people on these episodes,
that's the thing that makes me most excited when people say, actually, as an actor, I
was involved in developing this and, you know, or as a director, I, you know, I was able
to do this. And that idea of, you know, multiple people being able to, to be involved in creating
(52:51):
these characters. And, you know, and you're right, I think that is part of what makes
authentic representation. Thank you very much, Chris and Beth for joining us on the podcast
today. And thank you very much, everyone for listening at home, and we'll see you soon.
Thank you. Bye!
Thank you for listening to Represent, the Queer Musical Theatre podcast. The research
(53:17):
for this series is funded by the British Academy Early Career Researchers Network Seed Fund
and supported by Sheffield Hallam University. The episodes were recorded at the Content
is Queen podcast studios at the Makerversity at Somerset House. For more information, go
to contentisqueen.org.
(53:44):
In next week's episode, we continue exploring Standing at the Sky's Edge with actor and
writer Lauren Redding, who played Nikki in the original West End cast at the Gillian
Lynne Theatre. See you then!
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.