Monday, March 14, 2016
Every One and breaking long silence
There's been a fascinating dialogue going on in Chris Goode and Company's blog between Maddy Costa, the Company's Critical Writer, and Griffyn Gilligan, the Stage Manager for EVERY ONE.
You'll find it here
... and I'd recommend it.
I've posted on it this morning, and this is what I wrote:
I like to think of my plays as presents to the actors - they're a kind of offering to them to enable them to showcase their skills. And not just the actors, but the whole creative team.
And not just them, but the audience also. I hope what they see gives them pleasure, in the richest possible sense, and gives them space to think and feel more deeply that life normally allows.
I get lots back, of course, and I wouldn't claim this process is entirely altruistic.
There's witnessing the actors' incredible sensitivity, intelligence and skill. Enjoying every aspect of the production. Listening to the audience's tears and laughter and intent silences...
And then there's discussions like these, which help me think about my work, and theatre work in general, in an entirely new way.
And I love that. So thank you.
I wish I could be with you in person to talk these things over further,.
One thing that's intrigued me very deeply is the question of why Joe is a man.
I wanted to share some of my thoughts about that.
I understand now that I needed to create a certain distance from this character, who is going through suffering that I had so recently gone through myself. I needed to detach in order not to be overwhelmed by grief. Making him a bloke is a simple thing to do.
Also, of course, when I was in my relationship with Susie I actually was living as a bloke, and the suffering we both went through because that wasn't in the end who I was is incredibly important but somehow there is no space for it in the play.
It's as if there isn't the emotional room for it, somehow. And there is really quite enough emotion going on in the play already. There's no need for any more.
And then there's the question of censorship. I know this isn't supposed to exist in our theatre but I can assure you it does.
I began to write about trans issues in the early 1990's as a response to a commission from the Traverse to write a play about Lorca. The play was called "The Night Journey" and was rejected. And then I wrote another short play for them, again in response to a commission, about a young trans woman whose father was a Serb general.
It, too, was rejected. And both plays were lost. I don't think the fact they were about trans issues means their rejection was altogether coincidental.
In 1996 I was commissioned to write a play for the Royal Lyceum, "War In America". Which was also rejected. I was told it was too offensive.
Then there was a long, long period in which no theatre anywhere in the UK would commission original work from me.
The writing of "God's New Frock" (2002) and "The Gospel According To Jesus Queen Of Heaven" (2007-8) was entirely self funded.
"An Apple A Day" (2009) was a lunchtime play commissioned by Oran Mor and the Traverse; and "Every One" came the following year.
"Every One" matters so much because it was the first published play produced under my name "Jo" and because it broke a long period that began with "Light In The Village" (1991) and lasted for 19 years during which I was unable to write original full length work for the theatre.
I call that censorship.
And even then when I was discussing with the Lyceum's artistic director what the play might be about he said "Please don't write any of that transgender stuff".
And I don't want to attack him or condemn him for that.
One of the ways I survived Susie's fatal illness and death was that I wrote my "Faust Part One" and "Faust Part Two" through it all. Again for the Lyceum.
I put myself into those two plays as the Poet. Who in Part One is a man and in part two a woman.
So I was completely staging the process of my transition which was taking place at the time. I would have loved to play that role, but didn't dare ask.
For self censorship is also central to trans people's experience.
So it was (very beautifully) played by a cis man and a cis woman. But I hope one day it's staged as I intended.
Mark Thomson, the director, supported me very strongly through this. It's important to understand he was running a theatre that depended very brutally for its subsidy on meeting audience targets, and that the core of that audience were predominantly middle class subscribers whose taste in theatre was pretty conventional.
So it's important to understand that "Every One's" form - with its direct address so prominent - was an incredibly revolutionary kind of thing in this beautiful 19th century proscenium arch theatre. Spoken in that theatre and to that audience.
It took a lot of courage to stage that play, and I'll always be grateful to Mark for that.
When my mother died, I remember being put back into the boarding school the very same day I was told. And the message was: don't talk about your grief".
And then after Susie died, I remember people crossing over to the other side of the street to avoid talking to me.
Don't talk about grief.
This play breaks so many different kinds of silence.
Labels: censorship, every one, transgender
Monday, November 16, 2015
To all those who hate Queen Jesus
A LETTER TO THOSE WHO CAME TO PROTEST AGAINST “THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN” BEING SHOWN IN THE OUTBURST QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL, BELFAST, ON 15 NOVEMBER 2015.
AND A LETTER TO FUNDAMENTALISTS EVERYWHERE…
My dears
The first thing is to say thank you. Thank you for taking an interest in my play.
One of the major ways our society suppresses dissident artists is by ignoring us. By acting as if we didn’t exist.
I know from bitter experience how hurtful this is. So your action in coming together to register your disgust and try to drown out the sound of my words tells me that maybe I am succeeding in saying something worthwhile.
So thank you.
I know that when I heard there was a chance you were coming to the venue I felt deeply frightened and upset. Just as I’m aware, as I write these words to you now, of the fearful pounding of my heart.
This comes from way in the past when I was still forced to live as a boy.
It was through acting that I first became able to make sense of the deep feelings of alienation and strangeness that had always afflicted me; and understood, inescapably, that I was not a boy and would be so much happier if I could live as a girl.
I was so afraid of this, and so ashamed of it. I knew if I kept on playing girls’ parts everyone would come to know this, and hate me for it.
And then I could no longer act.
That part of my creativity was blocked for forty years.
It’s important you hear this.
Jesus foresaw that many people would come after him to speak in his name. He knew it would be confusing. He advised us to take note of the results of people’s preaching. He said “By their fruits shall you know them”.
The fruits of your preaching are a stunting of human growth and the deepest unhappiness.
Please think about this.
I know your intentions are of the best. You stand for things. It’s admirable. Your banners spoke of “TRADITION. FAMILY. PROPERTY”.
And: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. NO MORE BLASPHEMY”.
I wish I could have told you that I care about blasphemy too. It’s strange how much we have in common: we all go to church, we all try to live Christian lives. And we all care about Christianity.
I so want Christianity to stop being an instrument of repression and hatred; and become, instead, a source of love and human liberation.
Jesus tells us to love one another, and I found so much love in the venue. In the very beautiful generosity and warmth and understanding of the audience who came to see my work. In the amazing women from the Outburst Arts Festival who made it happen. In my beautiful colleagues and companions. In the people setting up the venue, and the front of house volunteers. In the courageous and gentle security guards who made me feel so safe.
Love is a difficult word. It stands for so many things. Part of it is people working with care and creativity and consideration. Just doing their jobs.
It made me so happy to be with them.
And you, poor loves, you all looked so miserable.
A transwoman in the audience told me how she’d been brought up Catholic, and it made her so unhappy; and how she then became an evangelical Christian to try to escape her unhappiness. And was standing outside Belfast City Hall demonstrating against LGBT rights when she caught the eye of a gay man demonstrating in favour of them.
That moment of simple human contact completely changed her life. She began the long journey towards self acceptance and love.
Hearing her beautiful voice made me so glad I’d stood on the street for a moment to look at you and try to catch your eyes.
Many of you recognised me and started to take my photograph. I hope now you’ve taken me home with you I am more than an object of hatred.
We tend to hate in others what we hate in ourselves. I think that’s why Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves.
And I’ve a funny feeling that the loudhailer and the bagpipes that you brought along to try to make it difficult for my words to be heard were also there to try to silence of the voice of your own hearts.
It makes me sad that you’re so full of self loathing and unhappiness.
Please believe me when I tell you that I wish you well.
JO CLIFFORD
Labels: fundamentalism, love, spirituality, transgender
Sunday, December 14, 2014
The Good Fairy And The Voice Of The Future
I have a facebook friend who has a part in a pantomime. He’s posted before and after pictures of himself: dressed in his street clothes, and in make-up and costume.
The make up makes him look both more than his usual self - brighter, handsomer, more engaging - and also, strangely more like his real self. More like the inner self he maybe feels himself to be, somewhere, as we all do, yet which in normal life he never quite manages to manifest.
Looking at him made me remember my first panto - Bristol Hippodrome 1962 - which was also my first experience of professional theatre.
And how that was what I most loved: the fact that the people on stage were recognisably people and yet also so much more. Funnier, more full of love and pathos, brighter. More vivid. Bigger. More alive.
And maybe that's how I still want my characters to be...
He’s playing Buttons from the look of him. Buttons who I used to love and feel so very sorry for. And -absurdly - I found myself feeling a pang of envy. Sadness, too: that I’ll never get to play Buttons. Not ever…
Another facebook friend, also in pant, is playing the Good Fairy. She shared a lovely story of how she was holding a little girl’s hand on stage just after the song sheet and the girl looked at her and asked:
“Are you real?”
And she thought about it a moment and then said
“Yes”.
And then felt guilty about it, but didn’t need to.
Because of course she was. Absolutely real.
And I realised I also wanted to play the Good Fairy…
I seem to have spent a lot of energy this past week reading pant reviews and struggling with the same regretful pang.
And the same anger, too:
That an incompetent and malicious music teacher made me ashamed of my singing voice; and that a viciously prejudiced culture made me ashamed of my whole self.
But I won’t feel sad.
I’m sitting down on the plane to study Nova’s amazing, beautiful and visionary speech from Peter Handke’s “The Long Way Round” which Chris Goode wants me to perform in a reading.
A reading that forms part of his project to form a permanent Company.
It’s not quite the Good Fairy: but it is the voice of New Age, and it really excites and inspires me.
Though I doubt Chris’ll give me a big frock….
Labels: Chris Goode, panto, transgender
Friday, October 11, 2013
Healing the division between body and mind
So here I am trying to do a Pilates exercise when all of a sudden I overwhelmingly want to burst into tears.
I don't know why.
In the loo afterwards, trying to recover myself, I find myself thinking " It's so dreadful the way Susie died".
(Susie being my late partner, the mother of our children, who died of a brain tumour in 2005. After 33 years together)
My dear teacher suggested I do the exercise at home. So there's me at the bus stop, pressing my bag between my knees, doing the exercise, tears running down my face.
And when I get home its the same.
That night I dream of a huge old fashioned reel to reel tape recorder, one that records feelings instead of sounds, and I know I've pushed the playback button and don’t know how to find the one marked STOP.
That’s the question, I think: how we stop ourselves endlessly reliving emotions of the past. And re-learn to live the feelings of the present.
But the problem seems to be there's a whole load of trauma stored up in my body somewhere, and I keep walking in such a way as not to to feel it.
And now my legs are twisted and arthritic...because the pain goes right back into the past, long before the death of Susie, maybe even before the death of my mother, and seems somehow connected with the terror and the shame of being forced to live as a boy when deep down I knew I wasn’t a boy at all.
To avoid the shame I forced myself to walk “like a man”: and so my body, like my identity, got twisted out of its proper shape.
It amazes me, when I think about, how we in the West could ever have fallen for the collective delusion that the mind, or the soul, is somehow different and separate from the body.
And yet in my deep fear and distress that is somehow how I had to live.
I used to love performing in plays; and the rehearsal room was one place where I felt accepted and at home. And wasn’t shy any more.
But that was where I also learnt I would be so much happier living as a girl; and the shame and the terror of that tainted the theatre and completely blocked my capacity to perform.
It all became like an underground stream, dark and hidden and incredibly powerful, that somehow, years later, carried me back to the theatre as a writer.
And so saved my life...
I had to learn to write fast in my early days as John Clifford the writer; and bit by bit I became aware that I was performing all my plays in my head. That as well as becoming the character, I was becoming the actor or actress playing them.
That my performer’s instinct was still at work, deep underground, and telling me what lines worked and what lines did not.
My creative work, the love of my partner, the love of my children: all these helped me recover from the trauma. And as I became slowly more and more able to reveal myself as transgendered, so, too, did this underground stream rise to the surface more and more.
And now.... For years I’ve had an agent as a writer (Lisa Foster at http://www.alanbrodie.com/) and now I have an agent as a performer (Triona Adams at http://www.cdm-ltd.com/) and an entry in SPOTLIGHT, even. As a transgender actress.
And I celebrate all this today because I am packing my bags to spend a fortnight in London to work at devising a new work with the extraordinary gifted and courageous Chris Goode (http://chrisgoodeandcompany.co.uk/).
To work on the creation of ALBEMARLE.... not as a writer, but as a company member: a performer and deviser.
So here’s me: with my bandy legs, my arthritic knees and my bus pass. About to start a new chapter. Stepping into the gorgeous unknown.
How wonderful...
Labels: Chris Goode, Descartes, Pilates, transgender
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