A Generous Lover/Boy in a Dress

Two Plays

Lauren John Joseph, La JohnJoseph, Lauren J Joseph, Lauren J. Joseph

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786829894
• eBook ISBN: 9781786829887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Social Sciences

Two solo plays by celebrated performance artist Lauren John Joseph, author of the Polari and LAMBDA-nominated novel Everything Must Go (ITNA Press).

A Generous Lover is the true and very queer tale of one soul's journey through the wasteland of mental illness to deliver their lost love. Brimming with psychedelic proletarian prose and trenchant wit, it recounts the pandemonium of navigating mental health services on behalf of a loved one, whilst being transfeminine, and occasionally mistaken for a patient. Drawing on epic poetry, classical mythology, and queer modernist literature, A Generous Lover fuses psychology, euphonic prose and song, to create an intimate and beguiling world.

Boy in a Dress follows the life story thus far of a fallen Catholic, transgender ex-fashion model from the wrong side of the tracks. In this autobiographical, raucously political, and accidentally profound piece, Lauren John Joseph brings together an outrageous but heartfelt slew of true-life tales of Catholicism and drag, public sexuality and body dysmorphia.

Boy in a Dress was first performed at Ovalhouse (London) and was supported by Arts Council England and crowdfunding donations. The original production was directed by Sarah Chew, with musical direction from Jordan Hunt. The part of The Anima was originated by Anna Lewnhaupt, and subsequently played by Erin Hutching, in the Edinburgh production and on tour. The text of Boy in a Dress comprises material from three earlier works, which we drew together in rehearsal, to make one “retrospectacle”. These works were Notorious Beauty (directed by Tucker Culbertson and first presented at Dixon Place, New York), I Happen To Like New York (first presented at Bistrotheque, London) and Underclass Hero (directed by Jeffrey Gordon Baker and first presented at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London). The cover image was shot in Berlin by Anna Mimouni, with the permission of whom we use it here.

Playlist

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Written for three performers, with a good degree of fluidity between them as to who plays which role when. These voices are;

JOHNJOSEPH:

The central character from whom the other two personae emerge. They are a world wandering storyteller and this is their autobiography.

THE ANIMA:

The female alter-ego, the physical realisation of the narrative, she conducts her explorations through frantic personae switches.

THE PIANIST:

The male alter-ego, the musical expression of the narrative, an accompanist and a confidant.

All three characters wear red knee high socks and gold glitter platform shoes as their base, on top of which they continually build new looks and identities from the costume draped about the stage. The stage is never empty, the play is a continual cat and mouse game, between the three characters.

We are in a space that is transient; boxes, storage, interesting bits of rubbish, waste paper, a broken mirror and a disco ball. At the centre of the stage, amidst the detritus, stands a large, battered wardrobe. A soundscape plays, it is made up of the sounds of the sea, FM radio, church bells, and the noise of the fairgrounds, Coney Island and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. THE PIANIST is visible, sitting on a box, half dressed.

As the house lights go down, THE PIANIST starts to explore the space, with a flashlight. He puts on his gold shoes, and a tailcoat, busies himself moving boxes. When he reaches the piano, he plays a few chords as if testing it out. Amongst plastic sheeting on top of the wardrobe, JOHNJOSEPH is revealed, in an orange cocktail dress. They begin to talk, apparently continuing an ongoing conversation.

JOHNJOSEPH: And did I tell you? Entirely of my own free will, I attended a lecture on Foucault recently. The boy sitting next to me raised his hand to quiz the professor on his apparent intimacy with the great thinker. He said: “Excuse me, Professor, but did you ever even meet Foucault?’

The professor replied: “Meet him? My dear, he shat in my mouth.”

Foucault says that we know what we are because we know what we are not, the Other is our necessary twin. If you have spent your entire life imagining the world to be fabricated from building blocks with repellant charges, that hold the universe upright through the strength of their opposition, if you know yourself to be a man because you are the inverse of a woman; if you have built your entire lifestyle, eating habits, choice of soda, DVD collection and selection of white button down shirts on this sacred principle, equivocation may feel like global collapse on a hamburger bun to you.

JOHNJOSEPH climbs down from the wardrobe on a ladder.

I was helpless, homeless, and hopeless. I had a university degree worth less than the paper it was printed on, which had bagged me a job selling perfume at Penhaligons, to the decrepit and despotic of the financial district. I constantly prayed that bejewelled finger of fortune would single me out for a life less ordinary, but Fortune seemed to be busy elsewhere, and so I returned each evening, Cinderella style, to sleep on the sofas of begrudging pals, and back each morning to the oppressive tedium of the fragrance counter.

My one sustaining grace in life was that in my boredom I had figured out how to access Myspace via the till point. So it was without the slightest consideration, forethought, deliberation or planning, I accepted as soon as it arrived in my inbox, a most unusual offer. Inexplicably a dear friend of mine, Gina, had found herself managing a hotel in New York. Her offer was as straightforward as it was random; that we marry, run the hotel together, and that I relocate permanently to the big apple.

Upon receiving this invitation I turned to my co-worker, lovely girl, mouth like a sailor, and I said “Darlinda look, I have to split. Quite simply, I have realised, that this is not my place of magic. To be frank with you, gift wrapping bottles of toilet water is just not my bag!”

I continued, “Do I or do I not have a first class degree in philosophy from Oxford?”

“No,” she replied, “You have a 2.1 from King’s in American studies.”

I said, “Darlinda, you are right, you are absolutely right! I am out of here – and by here I mean this country. I have been here more than twenty years and it is quite clear I have outstayed my welcome!”

And with barely more than a suitcase full of old dresses and a family photo album, I was off. (JOHNJOSEPH shines the torch into the theatre aisle.) Diving head first into the golden sunshine of the American dream. I woke up in Brooklyn, in two foot of snow. You see, there was just one thing I had overlooked, just one factor, I had not taken fully into consideration – reality.

JOHNJOSEPH slowly turns and, as they do so, the mirrorball is activated and THE PIANIST plays ‘The Apple Stretching’, JOHNJOSEPH sings.

As the song ends, THE PIANIST continues to vamp the music. JOHNJOSEPH disappears behind the wardrobe, then reappears, drops a pair of schoolboy shorts, and exits the stage again. THE ANIMA enters from wardrobe, dressed identically to JOHNJOSEPH, picks up the schoolboy shorts herself and exits again through the wardrobe. JOHNJOSEPH re-enters immediately, having changed from the cocktail dress into a schoolboy’s uniform.

JOHNJOSEPH: In May 1982 Pope John-Paul II made a visit to England. He was the first ever Pope to do so, and called for peace in Northern Ireland and an end to the Falkland’s war.

The crowds that met him in the London were relatively modest; 3,000 at Westminster Cathedral, 4,000 at Southwark, but as His Holiness traveled further north they swelled. 350,000 in Coventry, 200,000 in Manchester, and when he arrived in Liverpool, a crowd of one million people came out to greet him, a great ocean of devotion swelling up from that deeply devout, desperate city, filling the streets and the services he presided over. As the sunset that revelatory day in Liverpool, a day in which all conversation centred on this visit from the Holy Father, my nineteen-year-old Mother went into labor. I was born in the last few hours of the papal visit, and so my deeply superstitious and personably spiritual Mother named me JohnJoseph, in honour of the pontiff and my grandfather.

Clocks and watches, cats and dogs, knives and forks and spoons, when I was a child everything was gendered to me.

“A cat is a girl and a dog is a boy, and they get married.”

THE ANIMA appears from the wardrobe also dressed as a schoolboy.

THE ANIMA: No it’s not. (She throws one of her gold shoes onstage.) A cat is a cat, it’s a different species. Different specieses don’t even get married. (She throws a book downstage.)

JOHNJOSEPH: “The fork is the lady and the knife is the man.”

THE ANIMA: But what about the spoon? (She throws a set of spoons.)

JOHNJOSEPH: (Picks up a spoon.) He’s in the middle.

THE ANIMA sits on wardrobe steps, watching JOHNJOSEPH somewhat mockingly.

JOHNJOSEPH: Of course, now I wear it as a badge of honour that no one ever knows if I am a boy or a girl. It takes the pressure off me from having to decide decisively for myself. But it was very different when I was twelve.

When I was twelve, I was trying to return a pair of shorts at Woolworths, they were too big for me. Being raised a boy, being raised the eldest son, being raised to believe that men are the smarter, stronger, superior sex when I was first referred to as ‘she’ it was mortifying. I was mortally wounded, I was slashed open right there in that branch of Woolworths, the same branch of Woolworths I had stolen a crème egg from when I was seven. My Mother ordered her seco...

Table of contents

• A Generous Lover
• Boy in a Dress