On Friday 19 April 2024 I was invited to speak a little about the work I do and about making queer art (specifically theatre.)
Here is the writtern content of that short talk:
Here is the writtern content of that short talk:
Hello, my name’s Leon. Quite a few people in here already know who I am and what I do, but for anyone who doesn’t or who has heard my name before but has never seen me; this is who I am and what I look like.
Big thank you first to Richard and Vicky for inviting me to speak today, and big thanks to Kelly and Fozia for all their help.
I am going to be reading from my notes, so if I’m not looking at you it’s not because I’m ignoring you.
I’m going to be talking a little bit about my work, about making work specifically for queer audiences, and also a little bit about recognising hidden parts of the LGBTQ+ community and working authentically to help make sure we all have a voice.
I’m a gay, working class playwright and producer. As a queer person I am a basic cis white gay.
And I really am very basic.
Big thank you first to Richard and Vicky for inviting me to speak today, and big thanks to Kelly and Fozia for all their help.
I am going to be reading from my notes, so if I’m not looking at you it’s not because I’m ignoring you.
I’m going to be talking a little bit about my work, about making work specifically for queer audiences, and also a little bit about recognising hidden parts of the LGBTQ+ community and working authentically to help make sure we all have a voice.
I’m a gay, working class playwright and producer. As a queer person I am a basic cis white gay.
And I really am very basic.
As a playwright I work in a very traditional manner; in that sit at a computer and write scripts. I don’t generally make work through divising or other non-traditional methods of theatre making; although I do, do quite a lot of research including interviewing people as part of my writing process.
As a producer I produce theatre with my main collaborator Scott Le Crass under the banner of 5Pound5 Theatre. We’ve made tours, three week runs, and shows in the small-scale end of the West End. I don’t generally produce theatre for other people. Not that I wouldn’t; I just haven’t been asked to do that yet. But I have produced other kinds of events; I was the producer of the Jersey Jazz Festival for three years, I co-created and produced a platform for new writing at the Jersey Opera House called Plays Rough for several years, and here in Bradford I was the Chair of Bradford Pride for three years; and anyone who knows how Pride works in Bradford will know that the chair is really the lead organiser, so I absolutely class that as producing as well. Adjacent to the writing and producing, I also do and am available for; mentoring, dramaturgy, teaching; specifically on playwriting but also on self-producing. I also do some programming support, audience development work, and consultancy on things specific to my areas of knowledge.
As a producer I produce theatre with my main collaborator Scott Le Crass under the banner of 5Pound5 Theatre. We’ve made tours, three week runs, and shows in the small-scale end of the West End. I don’t generally produce theatre for other people. Not that I wouldn’t; I just haven’t been asked to do that yet. But I have produced other kinds of events; I was the producer of the Jersey Jazz Festival for three years, I co-created and produced a platform for new writing at the Jersey Opera House called Plays Rough for several years, and here in Bradford I was the Chair of Bradford Pride for three years; and anyone who knows how Pride works in Bradford will know that the chair is really the lead organiser, so I absolutely class that as producing as well. Adjacent to the writing and producing, I also do and am available for; mentoring, dramaturgy, teaching; specifically on playwriting but also on self-producing. I also do some programming support, audience development work, and consultancy on things specific to my areas of knowledge.
Although I’m a queer writer, a lot of my work hasn’t been specifically queer. And in fact even though my first produced play, Monkeys in Toy Town, back in 2006; was a play about a gay manor boss and his boys in amidst a turf war with another gang, that play wasn’t written specifically for a queer audience. It was a violent, sweary thriller about survival, that just happened to have a queer backbone holding it together.
Much of my specifically queer work has been in the form of short plays. I came to short plays already a little way into my career and found that I really enjoyed writing them because by concentrating everything into a snapshot of twenty or thirty minutes, or ten of fifteen even, you can really make an impact.
For me, it’s a bit like running into a house and shouting FIRE!
And then running out again, standing back, and watching the fall-out.
And when you’re making work that is political; whether that be with a big P or a little P – and queer art is always political, because just living as a queer person is political and an act of defiance – having your audience right there in the moment living the danger with the characters can be more effective than longer plays that have to cajole an audience into caring enough about the characters to then want to concentrate on a two hour debate on a specific area of contention. Believe me when I say that no audience member will thank you that.
So although not all my plays are queer, being queer myself means they all have an extra queer layer to them.
The show I’m most known for… I mean, I’m not known at all, but if I were to be known, then the play I’d be most known at this point in my career, would be a one-person play called Sid.
Much of my specifically queer work has been in the form of short plays. I came to short plays already a little way into my career and found that I really enjoyed writing them because by concentrating everything into a snapshot of twenty or thirty minutes, or ten of fifteen even, you can really make an impact.
For me, it’s a bit like running into a house and shouting FIRE!
And then running out again, standing back, and watching the fall-out.
And when you’re making work that is political; whether that be with a big P or a little P – and queer art is always political, because just living as a queer person is political and an act of defiance – having your audience right there in the moment living the danger with the characters can be more effective than longer plays that have to cajole an audience into caring enough about the characters to then want to concentrate on a two hour debate on a specific area of contention. Believe me when I say that no audience member will thank you that.
So although not all my plays are queer, being queer myself means they all have an extra queer layer to them.
The show I’m most known for… I mean, I’m not known at all, but if I were to be known, then the play I’d be most known at this point in my career, would be a one-person play called Sid.
Photo credit: Darren Elson
It’s not a queer play. Unless you’re watching it as a queer person.
One of the main things the play talks about as a kind always-there undercurrent, is hero worship. And that’s what makes the play queer.
Hero worship for me manifests in a similar way to the idea of the trinity in Christianity.
And in a 3D world that’s a conceptual nightmare, and can only truly exist as an abstract.
Hero worship is the same; to want to be alongside a person, while also being transformed into that person, while at the same time wanting to have that person inside of you. It’s a conundrum, and within the play the protagonist acknowledges the difficulties of it, and even angrily recognises for a moment the queerness of it. Because the majority of us have experienced the longings of hero worship, it means that for a moment in that play even the non-queer people in the audience get a glimpse just for a nano-second of that tiny bit of queerness hiding inside them.
One of the main things the play talks about as a kind always-there undercurrent, is hero worship. And that’s what makes the play queer.
Hero worship for me manifests in a similar way to the idea of the trinity in Christianity.
And in a 3D world that’s a conceptual nightmare, and can only truly exist as an abstract.
Hero worship is the same; to want to be alongside a person, while also being transformed into that person, while at the same time wanting to have that person inside of you. It’s a conundrum, and within the play the protagonist acknowledges the difficulties of it, and even angrily recognises for a moment the queerness of it. Because the majority of us have experienced the longings of hero worship, it means that for a moment in that play even the non-queer people in the audience get a glimpse just for a nano-second of that tiny bit of queerness hiding inside them.
But then there are the plays written specifically for a queer audience. That doesn’t mean non-queer people shouldn’t attend them, or that they won’t enjoy them, or even that they won’t learn something. And the more queer work non-queer people witness, the more likely they are to begin to understand the nuances of our community; it’s just that it’s not written with them in mind. And that can be the same with art made by and for any marginalised group. When I write a play with a queer audience in mind, I’m probably discussing issues which are specific to my community. I won’t be worrying about using language which a non-queer audience might not get, and I won’t be spending time in the play explaining concepts to a non-queer audience that a queer audience will already – often innately – understand.
It's like using a kind of short-hand that connects me directly to my target audience.
The hieroglyphics that only a queer audience will see the symbolism in.
I get that it’s hard for a non-queer audience. Not just because of the gaps in understanding, but because it’s not about you. And you’re not used to that.
You grow up in a world that’s yours. Everything you see, every societal rule, every representation is about you. I’m not saying it’s all good, just that it is always about you.
So you grow up believing that everything is about you. And that means that later on when you do stumble into something that isn’t about you; It feels like an affront. It feels like your entire identity is being erased just because someone that isn’t you and something you don’t and can’t ever understand is getting some representation. And that’s hard for you.
And I understand how hard that it is, because that moment of not feeling represented in absolutely every little thing, is our entire lives. From the moment we become aware that we’re something different, not knowing what that it is or what it will come to mean; but in that moment, often around six or seven years old – sometimes younger – we are suddenly alone, and living in a world not shaped for us.
And of course there are other people from other marginalised groups who may experience something similar. And all of this is intersectional anyway. And it is similar.
But it’s not the same.
And the difference is that when you grow up queer, you are absolutely alone both outside the home and within it, because those you live with don’t share your queerness; a queerness you don’t yet have the language or understanding to express, and which no one else in your home can see because it’s inside of you.
And that’s why it is so important that as queer people we make work specifically for queer audiences.
Because that is how we know ourselves.
For example, I spoke about this exact thing; the growing up in a world that doesn’t belong to us and isn’t made with us ever in mind, in a short play called Going Outside.
Going Outside has had two different productions; first in London at the beginning of 2020 just before the covid lock-down hit. And then again in Bradford in 2021 during lockdown.
It's like using a kind of short-hand that connects me directly to my target audience.
The hieroglyphics that only a queer audience will see the symbolism in.
I get that it’s hard for a non-queer audience. Not just because of the gaps in understanding, but because it’s not about you. And you’re not used to that.
You grow up in a world that’s yours. Everything you see, every societal rule, every representation is about you. I’m not saying it’s all good, just that it is always about you.
So you grow up believing that everything is about you. And that means that later on when you do stumble into something that isn’t about you; It feels like an affront. It feels like your entire identity is being erased just because someone that isn’t you and something you don’t and can’t ever understand is getting some representation. And that’s hard for you.
And I understand how hard that it is, because that moment of not feeling represented in absolutely every little thing, is our entire lives. From the moment we become aware that we’re something different, not knowing what that it is or what it will come to mean; but in that moment, often around six or seven years old – sometimes younger – we are suddenly alone, and living in a world not shaped for us.
And of course there are other people from other marginalised groups who may experience something similar. And all of this is intersectional anyway. And it is similar.
But it’s not the same.
And the difference is that when you grow up queer, you are absolutely alone both outside the home and within it, because those you live with don’t share your queerness; a queerness you don’t yet have the language or understanding to express, and which no one else in your home can see because it’s inside of you.
And that’s why it is so important that as queer people we make work specifically for queer audiences.
Because that is how we know ourselves.
For example, I spoke about this exact thing; the growing up in a world that doesn’t belong to us and isn’t made with us ever in mind, in a short play called Going Outside.
Going Outside has had two different productions; first in London at the beginning of 2020 just before the covid lock-down hit. And then again in Bradford in 2021 during lockdown.
Photo credit: Sam Drake
The Bradford version was a wonderful example of the way Bradford’s DIY arts and culture community comes together to make work. It was produced by Laura Brooks, in association with Bradford Fringe, MillTV, Equity Partnership and the Bradford University Film Production course. There may have been others, so if I’ve forgotten anyone, apologies for that. It was directed by Bradford director Katie Turner-Halliday, and was broadcast live across the internet from MillTV.
It’s only a 15minute two-hander, and it’s about two young gay men who have taken very different paths in regards to the way they’ve explored and come to terms with their shared sexuality.
That’s the poncy explanation anyway; essentially it’s about a grindr fuck meet where one of the participants is famous and in the closet.
Part of me feels like I should explain to any non-queer people here what grindr is, if they don’t already know; but I’m not going to. Because that’s kind of the point. We don’t choose to weaken our art by offering gifts to an audience it’s not created for. You take it as it is, and you don’t make it our responsibility to make it suitable for you just because you’re the dominant majority.
It’s only a 15minute two-hander, and it’s about two young gay men who have taken very different paths in regards to the way they’ve explored and come to terms with their shared sexuality.
That’s the poncy explanation anyway; essentially it’s about a grindr fuck meet where one of the participants is famous and in the closet.
Part of me feels like I should explain to any non-queer people here what grindr is, if they don’t already know; but I’m not going to. Because that’s kind of the point. We don’t choose to weaken our art by offering gifts to an audience it’s not created for. You take it as it is, and you don’t make it our responsibility to make it suitable for you just because you’re the dominant majority.
Photo credit: Bonnie Britain
I was originally going to talk a little bit about making the Chechnya Plays with Ian McKellen and using queer political work to raise awareness within a community about persecution of that community elsewhere in the world, and the impact political art can have. But I think I’ll go way over time if I do that so I decided to move past that and instead talk about making work with hidden parts of the LGBTQ+ community.
The term queer is used as an umbrella. And it’s a huge umbrella because there are so many different manifestations and expressions of our queerness in terms of sexuality, gender, and physicality. And of course not all areas of the community get the same prominence. It will be of no shock to anyone at all that cis white gay men just like me tend to be on the top of the leader board when it comes to acknowledgement and perceived acceptance within society.
And so within the minority of being queer, there are minorities within the minority. And it’s important within our community to work against that.
Currently I’m under commission to write a show for Leeds Playhouse that isn’t specifically for a queer audience – it is specifically for a working-class audience and it is aimed at a youth audience, but not specifically queer - and in that play none of the three characters have a gender assigned to them. They have non-gendered names and throughout the whole show they only refer to each other using non-gendered pronouns. Not only does that make it easer in terms casting, it means that while non-queer audiences won’t even notice; anyone in the audience who is non-binary will hopefully feel just for at least the time the show is on, that they are being seen. It’s a tiny thing that takes representation away from no-one but gives some representation to an area of the LGBTQ+ community who almost never get to see themselves on stage, in media or in art.
What I haven’t done is written a show about those characters being non-binary. I haven’t done that because it’s not my place to do that. I’m not non-binary, and being queer doesn’t give me license to start writing as parts of the community that I don’t identify as. There are non-binary writers out there and it’s for them to use their art to talk about what it is to be non-binary if they choose to.
And that level of authenticity is very important.
Yes, there are quite a lot of gay plays out there written by people who aren’t queer. And I know some of those writers, and they’re very nice people, but they have appropriated and exploited my identity and my lived experience for their own benefit. And although their plays maybe very good, they can never get to the heart of the emotional truth because those writers have no lived experience of what it is to be gay or queer. They have never lived in a world that wasn’t theirs.
Representation matters, but it is only works if it’s authentic.
At the moment I’m lucky enough to be working on two pieces of work with my 5Pound5 Theatre hat on, and unbelievably – because the majority of our work hasn’t been - both pieces of work are queer. And by queer I mean gay, because myself and Scott are both basic cis gay men.
Although Scott isn’t quite as basic as I am.
One of them is a Bradford Based project, our partners are Theatre in the Mill, Bradford Producing Hub, Equity Partnership and Yorkshire MESMAC, and we also have some funding from Bradford Council, as well as from Theatre in the Mill and BPH. It’s an R+D project which we’d love to get on with but we’re fifteen thousand pounds short and Bradford 2025 have just turned us down, so if anyone has a spare 15K that they’d like to pass our way, that would be amazing and would mean I don’t have to try and apply to the arts council yet again.
And it’s in this project where we seek to give representation to a hidden aspect of the LGBTQ+ community. And that’s queer sex workers.
Sex work has a massive impact in the non-queer world of course, but within the queer world it is an integral part of our community and always has been. And by sex worker I mean all along the vast spectrum of sex work; whether that be street prostitution, strippers, escorts, online content creators, big studio porn stars, sex club performers, or masseurs that give happy endings.
Everyone has witnessed some aspect of this work, and most people have interacted directly with it in some form or other. But in most cases when represented in art and media sex workers are usually spoken about from a position of ignorance rather than spoken to.
The aims of this R+D project will be to interview a number of male and non-binary, gay, bi, pan sex workers of all kinds from the Bradford district and around it; and then use their stories to create and workshop a piece of theatre. And then in a second project finish the play and fully produce it for touring.
It’s true that anybody could make this work if they chose to; anyone could work to give queer sex workers a voice. But could just anyone do that authentically? The answer is no.
Scott and I only make work together where we have some personal connection to it. It’s not enough to interview someone and tell their story. If you’re unable to share in their lived experience then you’re only ever going to be giving an audience an echo of the subject’s story; you’re never going to be able to open that story up for an audience and allow them to exist within it.
I seem to have always had friends who were sex workers; right from the twinky rent boys I was friends with years ago in Hull, to the very high profile big studio gay porn stars I’ve met in more recent years. But all that and the interviews and other research still don’t make up for lived experience.
But don’t worry; I’m not going to go into it, but we have the lived experience aspect covered as well.
But so often that’s not what I’m seeing.
And so I want to end with a bit of plea – and it’s not for money this time – I’d like to ask that if you’re not queer, you don’t make work that centres around queer people. No matter how pure and good and authentic your intentions; it’s only ever going to be a projection of your perception of queer life. And essentially, that’s harmful to our community.
And that if you are queer, that you ask yourself why this is your story to write; how does it connect to your area of our community, what is your lived experience of this world and these lives, how strong is your link into this story and these people?
Gone are the days when it’s acceptable for gentlemen playwrights to write whatever they want to write about by merely observing their subjects from a distance and making claims to the lives they live. If the story is not yours; step away and give space to someone who can tell that story authentically.
Because if the art we are making is not authentic, then what is the point of it?
If anyone has any questions, or wants to offer me work or money, feel free to grab me later.
Thank you.
And so within the minority of being queer, there are minorities within the minority. And it’s important within our community to work against that.
Currently I’m under commission to write a show for Leeds Playhouse that isn’t specifically for a queer audience – it is specifically for a working-class audience and it is aimed at a youth audience, but not specifically queer - and in that play none of the three characters have a gender assigned to them. They have non-gendered names and throughout the whole show they only refer to each other using non-gendered pronouns. Not only does that make it easer in terms casting, it means that while non-queer audiences won’t even notice; anyone in the audience who is non-binary will hopefully feel just for at least the time the show is on, that they are being seen. It’s a tiny thing that takes representation away from no-one but gives some representation to an area of the LGBTQ+ community who almost never get to see themselves on stage, in media or in art.
What I haven’t done is written a show about those characters being non-binary. I haven’t done that because it’s not my place to do that. I’m not non-binary, and being queer doesn’t give me license to start writing as parts of the community that I don’t identify as. There are non-binary writers out there and it’s for them to use their art to talk about what it is to be non-binary if they choose to.
And that level of authenticity is very important.
Yes, there are quite a lot of gay plays out there written by people who aren’t queer. And I know some of those writers, and they’re very nice people, but they have appropriated and exploited my identity and my lived experience for their own benefit. And although their plays maybe very good, they can never get to the heart of the emotional truth because those writers have no lived experience of what it is to be gay or queer. They have never lived in a world that wasn’t theirs.
Representation matters, but it is only works if it’s authentic.
At the moment I’m lucky enough to be working on two pieces of work with my 5Pound5 Theatre hat on, and unbelievably – because the majority of our work hasn’t been - both pieces of work are queer. And by queer I mean gay, because myself and Scott are both basic cis gay men.
Although Scott isn’t quite as basic as I am.
One of them is a Bradford Based project, our partners are Theatre in the Mill, Bradford Producing Hub, Equity Partnership and Yorkshire MESMAC, and we also have some funding from Bradford Council, as well as from Theatre in the Mill and BPH. It’s an R+D project which we’d love to get on with but we’re fifteen thousand pounds short and Bradford 2025 have just turned us down, so if anyone has a spare 15K that they’d like to pass our way, that would be amazing and would mean I don’t have to try and apply to the arts council yet again.
And it’s in this project where we seek to give representation to a hidden aspect of the LGBTQ+ community. And that’s queer sex workers.
Sex work has a massive impact in the non-queer world of course, but within the queer world it is an integral part of our community and always has been. And by sex worker I mean all along the vast spectrum of sex work; whether that be street prostitution, strippers, escorts, online content creators, big studio porn stars, sex club performers, or masseurs that give happy endings.
Everyone has witnessed some aspect of this work, and most people have interacted directly with it in some form or other. But in most cases when represented in art and media sex workers are usually spoken about from a position of ignorance rather than spoken to.
The aims of this R+D project will be to interview a number of male and non-binary, gay, bi, pan sex workers of all kinds from the Bradford district and around it; and then use their stories to create and workshop a piece of theatre. And then in a second project finish the play and fully produce it for touring.
It’s true that anybody could make this work if they chose to; anyone could work to give queer sex workers a voice. But could just anyone do that authentically? The answer is no.
Scott and I only make work together where we have some personal connection to it. It’s not enough to interview someone and tell their story. If you’re unable to share in their lived experience then you’re only ever going to be giving an audience an echo of the subject’s story; you’re never going to be able to open that story up for an audience and allow them to exist within it.
I seem to have always had friends who were sex workers; right from the twinky rent boys I was friends with years ago in Hull, to the very high profile big studio gay porn stars I’ve met in more recent years. But all that and the interviews and other research still don’t make up for lived experience.
But don’t worry; I’m not going to go into it, but we have the lived experience aspect covered as well.
But so often that’s not what I’m seeing.
And so I want to end with a bit of plea – and it’s not for money this time – I’d like to ask that if you’re not queer, you don’t make work that centres around queer people. No matter how pure and good and authentic your intentions; it’s only ever going to be a projection of your perception of queer life. And essentially, that’s harmful to our community.
And that if you are queer, that you ask yourself why this is your story to write; how does it connect to your area of our community, what is your lived experience of this world and these lives, how strong is your link into this story and these people?
Gone are the days when it’s acceptable for gentlemen playwrights to write whatever they want to write about by merely observing their subjects from a distance and making claims to the lives they live. If the story is not yours; step away and give space to someone who can tell that story authentically.
Because if the art we are making is not authentic, then what is the point of it?
If anyone has any questions, or wants to offer me work or money, feel free to grab me later.
Thank you.
