Diary

There’s something very wonderful about this year coming towards its end as the play is performed that I wrote at its very beginning.

I feel incredibly proud of TREE OF KNOWLEDGE and its production: its cast and its creative team. It’s been a joy to work on these last weeks, and after so long an absence it makes me so happy to be back at the Traverse again.

And back with a play that provokes so much thought, and so much feeling, and so much pleasure. And that Nick Hern has so beautifully published.

Watching the last performance - a full house, like all the performances in the last week - the cast’s luminous, authoritative performances. Watching the audience leaning forward to watch them. It all makes me forget how miserable I was when I was writing it way back in January, how isolated I felt, how full of so much tension it made me ill.

How I decided I would try to stop struggling with these mammoth tasks alone, and perform more, and collaborate more.

Not a very sensible decision as I then had to plunge into turning GOD’S NEW FROCK into a kind of tranny old testament book of prophecy, and THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN into a book-like Gospel.
Which took me up to September.

The spirit of Adam Smith must have escaped from the play and into my real self, somehow, because when I wrote the report to Creative Scotland on how I had spent the £10,000 they had granted me, I calculated this worked out as a payment of £5.95 an hour.

Only just above the minimum wage: but that didn’t stop Hugh Henry MSP and the Scottish Sun denouncing it and me as a grotesque waste of tax-payers’ money.

It was a bit of a shock to find myself in the tabloids again; but I kept bumping into people who read the paper and seemed utterly unimpressed by what the paper was actually saying.

What impressed them was the fact I’d had two big photographs in and a whole page to myself.

So I stopped being dismayed, and got on with the writing. Which I finally finished after a wonderful stay at Retreats For You http://www.deborahdooleyjournalist.co.uk/retreat.html and came home with a thick bundle of typescript which I now, somehow, need to find time to rewrite and revise.

In the meantime I was performing: with Suzanne Dance and Harriet Davidson doing LEAVE TO REMAIN at the Bath Literary Festival and a fascinating international conference on theatrical activism.

Just on my own doing JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN in a Glasgow pub, a Liverpool hotel room, and the beautiful kitchen/performing space in The Bakehouse, Gatehouse of Fleet.

And then developing SEX, CHIPS AND THE HOLY GHOST with David Walshe and Susan Worsfold for Oran Mor next February.

And loving it. Rediscovering the joy of performing which got buried under the shame of discovering I really hated being a boy and wanted to be a girl. When I was sixteen: all those years ago.

None of which has also stopped me taking huge pleasure in the revivals of my ANNA KARENINA (Adam Smith College and most beautifully by Dundee Rep) and my INES DE CASTRO (in the States by Shakespeare Carolina, and in Uzice, Serbia, by the National Theatre of Serbia).

And in listening to my dear PRINCESSE DE CLEVES being repeated on Radio 3.

I adapted THE CHERRY ORCHARD for Theatre Alba to perform in Duddingston kirk garden during the Festival. The pleasure of adapting that beautiful play. That beautiful production. My unexpected love affair with the work of Anton Chekhov.

I rediscovered my translation of Lorca’s THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, which Nick Hern is publishing in the new year. She will form a nice trilogy witht he already published BLLOD WEDDING and YERMA.

And the book chapter I wrote about the protests around the opening of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN in 2009. Which will be coming out in:

Rivers, I., & Ward, R. (Eds.). Out of the ordinary: Representations of LGBT lives

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I recently discovered I may be on the cover. I keep trying to enjoy representations of my self. I celebrated the beautiful portrait Fiona Robertson painted of me.

I need to celebrate the beautiful photographic portrait Neil Montgomery created the year before but which I was a bit too dazed, somehow, to properly take in.

I am trying to enjoy the trailer that’s just been made of SEX CHIPS AND THE HOLY GHOST. http://www.sexchipsandtheholyghost.com

It’s a really lovely piece of work: will I get used, ever, to seeing myself on film?

I suspect i will have to. Huge changes on the way....

The last performance of THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE happened on Christmas Eve.

The end of the run of the play always brings a degree of sadness.

I become aware of all the incredible effort involved in bringing the play into being: the sweat and suffering that went into the writing of the script.

Into its rehearsals.

Into the design and construction of the set: and fitting it all together into performance.

And at the end of it all you wonder: is it worth it?

Now it’s all over, did it make any sense to work so hard?

Jo Tope, Neil McKinven, Gerry Mulgrew: the cast were amazing. “Magisterial”, I called them. And Jo “luminous” in her final speech.

The audience, crammed into the Traverse, leaning forward in their eagerness to hear.

The last week sold out. Every copy of the script sold.

So: yes. Yes it was worth it.

And today we started rehearsing SEX CHIPS AND THE HOLY GHOST.

But that’s another story...

A very lovely friend came to visit me today. Deirdre McCloskey is an extraordinary and inspiring transwoman, a free market economist whose views affected me profoundly in writing THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE and was able to come and see the show half way through a lecture tour of Europe.

The wonderful thing about having a houseguest is that it roused me from a state of sadness and depression. I had to get going, make her room nice, sort myself out...

And she is a wonderful houseguest. An extraordinary thing happened at lunchtime - that I'm not allowed to talk about - and we celebrated together.

And then saw Adam Smith's house. And Adam Smith's grave - Deirdre being a devotee.

And then went to the hospital. "This place is terrible" says Jean as I arrive. "They are so disorganised".

That is, in fact, the impression I get. It's not that they're bad people, as far as I can tell, but they don't seem to have adequate medical cover and the nursing staff do not seem to be organised in an effective way at all.

This afternoon, as last night, Jean's alarm went off because her drip had run out. She is suffering acute kidney failure. She needs fluids. She needs to drink loads, and she needs a drip.

Last night the same alarm went off. And nobody came. And while I managed to get someone to turn off the alarm last night, I had failed to get someone to change the drip.

Today i thought I would do better. The first three attempts failed. People would come, look a bit helplessly through her file, and say, "There's nothing written up" and then "I'll ask".

And then disappear.

I happened to see the doctor in the middle of this. The third visit, the third attempt.

She was perfectly pleasant and willing to help. But clearly pretty low down the hierarchy; generally working on a completely different ward; no knowledge of Jean; and no access to the treatment plan.

But she did her best. I did learn something from her. And as I left, i said "Please write up Jean's drip".

And so the fourth nurse came, with a full bag, and hooked it up to the machine.

I felt triumphant. But after ten minutes it became clear that while she had hooked it up to the machine, and the machine was functioning perfectly, she had neglected to hook it up to Jean.

So the drip was dripping onto the floor.

So off I went again. it's important to be pleasant on these occasions, there's no sense blaming individuals, but the first nurse said "I'm doing something else". as if my request was a bit outrageous. But she did get the other nurse back, who did hook the drip up to Jean. And then left without cleaning up all the liquid that had by now dripped onto the floor.

In the circumstances, Jean's spirits remain remarkably high. But I wonder how much longer she can possibly withstand so health destroying an environment.

And then off to the show. Another full house. This is unprecedented outside the Festival.

Lovely meeting with Orla O'Loughlin, the Traverse's new artistic director. She said the play has already far surpassed its target for ticket sales for the entire run.

And then I got home, and there was me on the trailer for SEX CHIPS AND THE HOLY GHOST. Which we filmed yesterday. Looking remarkably like a nun.

But that is another story.

Labels: medical ward, NHS, Tree of Knowldge