Five great plays…for exploring trans issues
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Each issue of D&T, we bring you five suggested plays for studying or mounting with your students. This issue we look at five great plays for exploring trans issues. All are included in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays.
She He Me by Raphaël Amahl Khouri
Cast: 1 trans woman, 1 trans man, 1 man
Synopsis: She He Me follows the lives of three Arab characters who challenge gender. Randa is an Algerian trans woman who is expelled under the threat of death from her homeland because of her LGBT activism there. Omar is a Jordanian gay man who, rather than body dysphoria, suffers social dysphoria when it comes to the strict codes of masculinity. Rok is Lebanese and a trans man. Through humour and horror, the three characters come up against the state, society, family, but also themselves.
Why it's a great play for exploring trans issues: This play traces some of the legal and cultural landscapes that trans people must navigate, particularly in the Middle East. The piece brings together three characters who've immigrated to other countries because of trans bigotry, often finding themselves in situations where they continue to face the same challenges. Nevertheless, the piece is uplifting and often funny.
Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman
Cast: 2f, 3m, one of which is transmasculine
Synopsis: Archer's not out to his family, but when his father falls ill, he has to move back to his childhood home in central Oregon. At night under the oldest Ponderosa pine, he meets a stranger who knows the history of the forests and the sadness of losing endangered things. As Archer accepts big changes in his family; he discovers the power of names and the histories they make and mask.
Why it's a great play for exploring trans issues: This play explores the significance of names and what it means to change them. Significantly, the trans character isn't the only character to change names – a savvy move that demonstrates solidarity between cis and trans family members.
Doctor Voynich and her Children by Leanna Keyes
Cast: 5 women, at least 1 of whom is trans
Synopsis: This ‘prediction’ is set in America years after reproductive health care has been made illegal. Doctor Voynich and her apprentice travel the countryside dispensing harmless herbs by day and providing family planning services by night. This play about mothers and daughters is poetic, sexy, vulgar, queer and a little too real.
Why it's a great play for exploring trans issues: Combining theatrical history and a prediction for the US, Doctor Voynich and Her Children draws from Bertolt Brecht's foundational play Mother Courage and Her Children and asks what women's rights will look like in ‘the near future, God help us.’ As Dr Voynich travels a post-apocalyptic US countryside, audiences will consider what anti-science policies could do to health care and reproductive rights.
Crooked Parts by Azure Osborne-Lee
Cast: 3 men, 1 of whom is trans, 1 woman, and 1 young girl
Synopsis: Crooked Parts is a family dramedy set in yesterday and today. When Freddy, a black queer trans man, returns to his family home in the South, he must navigate the tension created by his transition and his brother's serial incarceration. In his past, thirteen-year-old Winifred struggles to balance her relationship with her mother with her desire to fit in with her peers. Crooked Parts is poignant, queer, funny, and definitely black.
Why it's a great play for exploring trans issues: With great care, this play examines parent-child relationships and how our past selves never really leave us. Revealing the ways Black Americans have to navigate social and legal structures, the play also examines the way childhood dreams affect the adult choices we made.
how to clean your room (and remember all your trauma) by J. Chavez
Cast: flexible, at least 1 nonbinary actor
Synopsis: Spencer begins to clean their room and reflect on their relationships with the people around them. Who can and can't we control in our lives, does caring mean anything beyond words, and does infatuation go both ways? A play in two cycles with anxiety, depression, and puppets.
Why it's a great play for exploring trans issues: A puppet play, how to clean your room moves in and out of time and features a young adult reflecting on the choices they've made and coming to terms with themselves and their relationships.
The book contains these five plays, plus three more.
