Transland

This year, as some of you will know, I wrote, directed and produced a play called Rachael's Cafe. It was, in short, a one hour one-man play created through interviews with its real life protagonist. This protagonist happened to be a pre-op transgender living on the Bible Belt in Indiana, USA where she runs an 'inclusive' cafe. I wanted to write a play, but I didn't set out to write a 'transgender' play.

Admittedly, though not involved in it myself, I have always been drawn to exploring, through theatre, the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) scene. My previous directorial role was for Torchsong Trilogy, and I'm an avid fan of other similarly focused productions, but this is entirely subconscious and I certainly wasn't looking to get further involved when I stumbled across the raw material for Rachael's Cafe.

Transgender is, anyway, quite a step away from the LGB bit of LGBT. While the first three deal with sexual orientation, the latter deals solely with gender rather than with any sort of sexual preference. For this reason it is a little uncomfortably lumped in with the rest causing great disparity in peoples' general understanding of what exactly it means to be transgender.

Having spent hours interviewing the real Rachael Jones, meeting and talking with a variety of transgender people around the UK, shopping for the necessary underwear and make-up, teaching a man to walk in shoes and dealing with a very straight actor's issues regarding getting to grips with his feminine side to such a degree, I have to admit the entire concept still perplexes me a great deal. I completely comprehend that this is not a choice for the individuals involved. Having witnessed the damage it can potentially wreak on an individual, a family, on a life, I know that wanting to change your gender is not a whim, a rebellion or a selfish act, it is for most an entirely necessary act and, for some, a matter of life and death.

I'd only met one transgender person before Rachael. I was 16 at the time and I remember that the main reason this person had been pointed out to me was because she was not passable, she was not the norm and I, in no way, truly got to know her as a human being. Looking back I now wonder how many people really did take the time to get to know her.

As I was working on the play two things struck me:

1. There are a lot of transgender people! Almost everyone I stopped to talk about the play with (whether in London whilst fundraising or in Edinburgh while flyering) knew a transgender person. Last week I took my car into the garage and my mechanic told me his best friend was transitioning, I went to my local pub in Canterbury and one of the regulars confided she used to be a man. Rachael was an anomaly, unique, to me but now I was learning that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the exact same scenario as her.

2. Transgender people were not enjoying the same amount of support or understanding as the Gay community. I think this partly comes back to the fact that transgender sits a little uncomfortably in the LGBT acronym, but it means that people truly do not understand it. From the LadyBoys of Bangkok to the fetishisation of the transitioning body, there is a very small box into which we try to squeeze the entire trans issue and it simply doesn't reflect the majority of these people who are trying to live as an average person whether that be male or female. I found that contacting gay magazines, communities and fundraising centres was easy to do and all above board. I found that there were a lot less of these outlets for the trans community and I found contacting dressing services for transgender people was incredibly difficult. Firstly there are not a huge amount of these services, secondly they seem to be scattered in basements and attics across London, thirdly they seem to open and close at the rate of knots and lastly there is a veil of privacy surrounding everything since so many trans people are 'in the closet'. We went to a wig company calling themselves the best in 'Gender Transformations' and yet the stylist spent the entire time commenting on the size of my actor's head, his large features and the fact he wasn't 'passable' as a woman. He was mortified, imagine if someone desperate to transition was in that chair? In the end, almost everything I managed to organise was done through word-of-mouth. I posted on forums, asked for introductions and people sent me their own clothes, wigs and shoes.

Once back from Edinburgh this year a television programme on Channel 4 suddenly appeared that seemed to change everything. My Transsexual Summer, featuring a host of pre-op, post-op and transitioning individuals, instantly brought transgenders to the fore. Issues such as visiting the local pub, looking passable and applying for jobs were tackled head on and the public started to be gently, and honestly, educated. This was followed up with the BBC's Coming Out Diaries and a flurry of articles in women's magazines as people suddenly rushed to tell their stories of transitioning and get it all out in the open.

I can only imagine the collective sigh of relief that transgender people all over the UK breathed as this series aired. And people being relieved, relaxed, feeling 'right' can only be a good thing.

Twitter: @rachaelscafe1
Facebook: rachaelscafetheplay
www.littleflytheatre.com