How Rotterdam has led the way for transgender stories on stage

Published in The Independent on June 20, 2017

It was 2008 when Jon Brittain first started working on his play Rotterdam, about a lesbian couple where one half transitions to being a man. He had several friends who were transitioning gender, and was suddenly struck by how few trans stories ever got told. Continue reading “How Rotterdam has led the way for transgender stories on stage”

The cross-dressing gents of Victorian England

Published in BBC Culture on June 8, 2016

Had you been sitting in the Royal Strand Theatre one evening in April 1870, you might have noticed a giddy young woman in a low-cut cerise silk dress, larking around in a box before repairing to the ladies’ lavatory. If you had looked a little closer, you would have realised this was no lady after all: rather, a 22-year-old man by the name of Ernest Boulton. Or, to give her the name she preferred, Stella. Continue reading “The cross-dressing gents of Victorian England”