Sunday, May 04, 2014
Overcoming emotional abuse
“Children should be seen and not heard”.
So often I heard this appalling nonsense as a child. And
“Want doesn’t get”.
The general belief seemed to be then, and sadly so often is now, that to listen to children and respect their wishes would somehow “spoil’ them.
I certainly wasn’t spoilt. I was damaged instead.
I’ve been reflecting on this a lot the past week as I’ve been working with Chris Goode
(http://chrisgoodeandcompany.co.uk/) on developing a new theatre piece on what it means to be trans*.
My experience as a child seems to be the best place to start; it’s certainly no use looking for any kind of tradition because there isn’t one.
One of the things the week has forcibly reminded me is that it wasn’t until i was in my forties (1992, to be precise) that “The Crying Game” was released that I saw a dramatic portrayal of a trans person as a sympathetic human being and not as a monster or a grotesque.
For the very first time...
It reminded me once again that up till middle age, quite apart from the universally hostile prejudice, I’d had to somehow form myself in the almost total absence of good and accurate information.
No wonder it was hard.
I got haunted last week by an old school photograph. Wiseman’s House, Clifton College, maybe 1966.
It was a vile institution in those days. Bullying was built into the brickwork. By then I knew I wanted to be a girl; knew, too, that if that was revealed my life would quickly be made unbearable.
My mother was dead. I was estranged from my father. My brothers were ten years older. There was no help available. No help of any kind. I felt completely alone.
In the past I’ve always focussed on the suffering in the picture. The emaciation (I would never eat); the bent shoulders; the air of unbearable tension and strain.
Chris helped me see this differently. “You’re the only one”, he said, “the only one who knows where they’re going and knows how to be in this world”.
And it’s true. “See how you’re looking at the camera”, he said. “Look at the incredible intensity of your gaze”.
And I did. And it’s as if I saw myself for the very first time.
And saw myself as more than a victim of extreme bullying and emotional abuse: but as a survivor.
And more than a survivor. As a young transwoman lacking even the words to describe herself (words like ‘transgender’ were not then in current use) who knew that in order to survive I had to go deep underground.
A brave young transwoman who couldn’t even conceive the freedoms she would come to enjoy but who could wish for one thing, with every fibre of her being: to become a writer.
I was afraid of telling anyone that wish. And at that time, my instincts and desire to be a performer had been silenced.
That’s why it took me twenty years to find my way back into the theatre and find my voice as a writer; and, to begin to find myself as a performer, another twenty years after that.
And here I am.
I couldn’t have wished for a better week. As anyone who’s seen his work will know, Chris Goode is one of the bravest and best theatre makers around. A totally wonderful collaborator. A real joy to work with.
And all this happening while back home in Edinburgh, my monologue was one of those being performed as part of the acclaimed NTS “Dear Scotland...” project in the National Portrait gallery. And while other performance slots were falling into place - at Rally & Broad (Counting House 23rd May), the Sunday Assembly (Summerhall 25th May) and Jo Caulfield’s Speakeasy (Scottish Storytelling Centre 10th June). And an amazing creative team is falling into place around me to revive “Jesus Queen Of Heaven” at ArtSpace@St. Marks during the Fringe.
So I look back at my young self in that dark suffering place and feel so very proud.
“You made it happen”, I tell her, “You made it happen with the intensity of your wish”.
To their credit, the National Theatre of Scotland funded our first week’s exploration.
Let’s hope we get the chance to continue.
As dear Jesus says: “Ask, and it shall be given you”.
And I’m certainly asking.
And I know that if it’s the right thing wanting often gets.
Labels: oppressive schooling, public schools, recovery, survivor, trans, writing as a tool for survival
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Feeling happy in The Albemarle Sketchbook
This is me onstage in the Courtyard Theatre of The West Yorkshire Playhouse last Sunday.
I’m with the rest of the cast of Chris Goode’s “The Albemarle Sketchbook” and we’ve just done our first run on stage. I’m feeling happy, I think we all are, because the run has gone well and we’re going to perform the show in a couple of hours and we know it’s going to be something special.
And it was.
I’m wearing a print frock of a kind I wouldn’t normally wear because I’m playing Chris’s mother. And it’s good we’re all feeling happy because this is a show about happiness. It’s inspired by a happy dream Chris once had and it’s a lovely, tender, thoughtful piece of work that in its own very special and quiet kind of way is profoundly revolutionary.
I feel especially happy because, without being rude to all the lovely studio theatres I’ve performed in, this is a real grown up theatre and this is the first time I’ve performed on a grown-up stage.
And that makes me happy because so many years ago I discovered theatre by acting in plays, and playing women’s parts, and I loved it. I felt I completely belonged and I didn’t feel shy and frightened any more.
And that was when I finally understood about all the feelings of strangeness and not belonging to my own body and wanting to play with girl’s toys and wanting to wear girl’s clothes and knew I wanted to be a girl.
And knew that was utterly impossible, because we’re talking fifty years ago and all I knew about men in women’s clothes were the dames in the pantomime, and how ridiculous they were, and the young man in “Psycho” and how sick and evil he was, and I felt I must be sick and evil and ridiculous all at once and knew I couldn’t tell anybody and the only thing I could do was try my very best to be normal.
And that didn’t work out very well, it never does, and I did want to keep on acting but when I went for boy’s parts I was stiff and shy and embarrassed and completely hopeless and that is why I have spent most of my adult life absolutely convinced that acting and performing were things I absolutely could not do and they were completely not for me.
But theatre obviously was. There was something absolutely compelling about it; because even though theatre had become a place of terror and shame I was totally drawn to it, in spite of myself, and it became the subject of my Phd and eventually, 15 years later, by a serious of outrageous accidents, writing for it became my profession.
And even though looking back on it it seems clear that becoming a playwright was probably not my true path, in a way, but a response to blockage, I am so proud I did it and so proud of what I achieved.
Working in theatre has been so important to my learning to accept and value myself as a transwoman and all along the way re-discovering myself as a performer has been incredibly important to my transition.
It’s no coincidence that the first show that really made me visible as a performer, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN was the first show that happened after my surgery.
And then the whole process went a stage further last October when Chris Goode asked me to take part in the development process for his “Albemarle” and I remember being quite nervous about it, because although I’ve taken part in quite a few development processes as a writer I’d never done so as a performer and had no idea, really, as to whether or not I could.
But I could, and ever since then seem to have been performing more and more. And it still amazes me, somehow, that I can do it.
A month ago I was playing the lead in a film, “High Heels Aren’t Compulsory”, by Lock Up Your Daughters productions, and I remember the last morning I had to walk down a corridor towards a door with my name on it, Caroline. I was playing a post transition transwoman academic turning up for work and this was me seeing my female name on my office door for the very first time.
I remember waiting for them to say “Action!” and not knowing quite what I would do, but knowing when the moment came I would find my spot and be absolutely in it and do it. Whatever it was.
And I did, and was amazed I could, and felt a bit of a fraud when the lovely director told me it was so good for them to be working with someone as experienced as me. Because really I’ve hardly any experience at all.
I feel a bit absurd saying it, but it’s as if finding my spot, finding the place I need to stand for the camera, is about finding my place in life also.
And I’m glad it’s happened so strongly in Chris Goode’s “Albemarle” because this is all about healing. Healing from a deep wound; and his beautiful work, among so many other things, is about healing also.
And there I am on stage and feeling completely at home there.
Because I am at home.
Labels: acting, Chris Goode, happiness, healing, recovery, revolutionary theatre
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