The blurby bit I’m not quite sure who this show was actually aimed at. Presumably most people who booked were, like me, hugely impressed by
Review of film: Emilia Pérez
On the one hand, there is your typical AGP bingo, our man Manitas always knew he was trans, he’d been suicidal about having to live a lie, etc and so on. I’d expected that. And like a lot of gangster movies, there is more sympathy for the violent quasi-psychopathic character than is really reasonable. I might have expected that too. Ultimately Manitas (even as Emilia) can’t bear that his wife goes off and creates her own life with a new man, taking the children with her. Again, no surprises there. And of course, Manitas as Emilia is at the centre of all the women’s lives, particularly Rita whose existence is very much as a simp – she exists just for him, her love unrequited.
Transgender awareness training with The Police Foundation
He joined the police in 2000. He knew he was trans at five years old. More AGP bingo: Aged 15 he was an army cadet/lance corporal, ergo not only does he have the T but also the B, since he once found a fellow male cadet slightly attractive. He also ticks the G too, as he had a very short period where he was exclusively same sex attracted and didn’t date girls.
The inspiring story of Pop’N’Olly, the LGBT+ ‘edutainment’ company
The evening was also Olly Pike’s new book launch with the exciting opportunity to get a copy of Have You Ever Seen a Normal? This is self-described as ‘a delightful rhyming story designed to spark conversations about diversity and acceptance’. Some of the prose made up the beginning of Pike’s speech. It contains about a hundred uses of the word ‘normal’. Did you know there’s no such thing as normal? For example, there is no such thing as normal food, normal houses, normal families, normal kids, being a normal height, normal love or normal heat. Et cetera. Normal isn’t real. The implication being, of course, is that there is no such thing as abnormal [behaviour] and that everything is relative.
Review of play: Spit It Out
‘Call me Emily, just one of you, please …’
… said ‘Emily’, with an imploring look to his audience. I don’t think we learnt what his ‘deadname’ was, so the plea didn’t really make sense, as we were already calling him ‘Emily’ in our heads (though it was ‘useless tosser’ in mine).
Review: Participatory performance with Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley
Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (hereafter DBS) first came to my attention because Travis Alabanza (where art thou, my love?) has spoken approvingly many times, then the opportunity to attend this ‘participatory performance’ came up. Like Travis, DBS is a well spoken, middle class, black- & trans-identified male, who makes art focussed on ‘archiving the black trans experience’ (groan) and hailed as a genius by some (okay, possibly just Travis). On the artist’s website there’s a chance to play the computer games that have bought the gaming nerd so much kudos. I have to say, they’re rather intriguing, often terminating abruptly in the way trains of thought do but perhaps also thought-terminating? Anyway, very dream-like and other worldly. They definitely require patience as they are slow paced. However, such praise does come with a qualification: it’s pure propaganda.
The Lies They Tell 
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