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| The Butch Monologues |
Representation matters.
In the discourse surrounding representation on stage and
screen, whether we are talking about gender, race or disability, the argument
always seems to be that the path to equality will be difficult or impossible.
That years of cis white male supremacy will be difficult to overcome. And that’s
probably true, but I look at something like The
Butch Monologues, as a kind of grass roots campaign for representation that
isn’t difficult or impossible. It exists and it is brilliant.
Playwright Laura Bridgeman has spent years talking with
butches, transmen and gender rebels across the UK, the United States and the Caribbean
– and now she has collected those stories into a series of monologues that
explore gender and sexuality for self-described “butches”.
The monologues are all brief, allowing for dozens of them to
paint a portrait of the butch experience across the world. Performed at Theatre
Works as part of Midsumma, five readers tackle the wry, amusing, shocking, and
sometimes very simple tales of people who society can be suspicious of because
they do not fit into an expected gender norm.
There are stories about being ashamed to wear the kind of
boots that might out someone as butch or queer, stories of sex and domination
and submission, stories of leaving small towns to find their place in the big
city – where they felt more comfortable, finding a community that would embrace
them. Many of the stories touch on a universal queer experience of feeling like
an outsider, but also bring along a more complicated kind of gender baggage
that cis femme queer women don’t experience. And that feels so radical.
The extraordinary kaleidoscope of experience on stage, presented
by readers who aren’t necessarily performers, made the whole show feel warm,
inviting and without artifice or pretence. These people weren’t telling their
own stories explicitly, but they were presenting their experience to the world
in bodies and gender types we are not used to seeing on stage.
Representation matters because people who do not have these
experiences should hear them, but it also matters for an audience who has never
seen themselves on stage. More than one of the monologues touched on an
obsession with musical theatre, which is so often the identifier of a femme gay
man. I know that musical fandom knows no boundaries, not really, but I also
know that particular genre almost never has a space on stage for butch women.
The Butch Monologues
was a place for butches and transmen and gender rebels to see themselves on
stage – and given the make-up of the audience at Theatre Works last night, this
particular audience turned out in droves. This is a very special show that has
traveled the world and I am so thrilled that Midsumma and Theatre Works helped
to bring it to Melbourne.
Making theatre is never easy. Making this show must have
been hard at times. The research is expansive, impressive. But it’s also five
people on stage, under a comforting light, telling small intimate stories.
Theatre does not need to be big and complicated to be important and to have
impact. More of these kinds of nights, please. Tell me stories of people I do
not know or have never heard from.
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