As Is and Co-creating Theatre From Research to Stage: The Play’s The Thing

Abstract

We offer a film of an ethnodrama/play: As Is; originally performed in Glasgow in 2022. Our accompanying article describes the who, how, what and why of bringing this ethnodrama to life on stage. The original research project interviewed 36 trans, intersex and LGBTI activists. The lines of the ethnodrama are drawn verbatim from these participant interviews, with the exception of The Narrator: a fictitious inclusion for the audience’s benefit. The play offers an imagined space to allow these characters to speak to each other, and highlights the ways some felt unable to have their voices heard. The play takes the context of proposed law reform as a format for discussion of social change, imagined alternatives and these complex activist relationships. The fictionalised ‘ASIS Bill’ is drawn from real laws that passed, and bills that did not, discussed by the research participants. The article discusses sociological thinking on authenticity drawing in contemporary trans and intersex studies contributions to this work. The article highlights these sociological concepts within the context of the As Is play and the ways in which these issues sit within contemporary discussion on language and legal recognition in the context of trans and intersex lives. We (researcher, cast, director) all have a connection to the LGBTI community with most of us defining as queer and trans. The majority of the cast defined the same way as their characters. We/They brought so much of ourselves/themselves to these characters to bring them to the stage. We discuss this important work of authenticity and representation often missed with cishet actors playing queer roles. We use notebook images of ‘Production Notes’ to consider our personal experiences bringing this work to the stage. We reflect on this work of representation and authenticity including how this work mattered to us.