Compiled from interviews with more than 70 transgender women in six countries, playwright Adam Lucas’s award-winning documentary theatre piece Trans Scripts, Part I: The Women receives its Canadian premiere later this month in Vancouver.
Presented by local queer theatre company The Frank Theatre and Vancouver’s indie Zee Zee Theatre, Trans Scripts centres on seven diverse stories with tales of early childhood insecurities to adulthood ruminations on sex, surgery, and suicide.
Co-directed by Zee Zee Theatre’s Cameron Mackenzie and The Frank Theatre artistic director Fay Nass, Tran Scripts explores the ongoing marginalization of transgender people. It is an issue Mackenzie says Canadians, and Vancouverites specifically, continue to grapple with.
“From exclusionary bathroom policies across the country to the Vancouver Rape Relief centre’s refusal to offer services to transgender women, it is clear that we need to be further exposed to the voices in this community,” says Mackenzie in a media release. “Trans people are 1.6 times more likely to experience physical violence against them; Trans Scripts is an opportunity to bear witness and be reminded that, no matter our differences, all humans deserve respect and dignity.”
Adding to its authenticity, the cast is comprised of seven local transgender women – Josie Boyce, Carolynn Dimmer, Amy Fox, Morgane Oger, Quanah Style, Sabrina Symington, and Julie Vu – who will share these real-life stories.
“We are all enriched by a diversity of cultures and narratives, and the more we allow ourselves to experience other perspectives through storytelling, especially the stories not often heard, the better we become as individuals and as a society,” says Nass in the release.
Trans Scripts, Part I: The Women plays the Firehall Arts Centre (280 East Cordova St, Vancouver) March 12–21. Visit firehallartscentre.ca for tickets and information.