WHILE the ninth Queer Arts OutBurst Festival's message is about the positive experience of belonging to the LGBTQ community, it acknowledges some people's pain in finding their true identity – nowhere more so than in the premiere of Stacey Gregg's new play, Scorch.
The play, which will be performed in a circular space at The MAC in Belfast, gives an insider's view of Kessy, a teenager who feels she was born the wrong gender. The audience sees actor Amy McAllister in the one-woman show thinking aloud and weighing up her options.
It's a tough, emotionally challenging play, according to Conn McKermott, arts development manager with Prime Cut Productions.
"Kessy talks about her experiences and her first love, another young girl called Jules. She may or may not transition, that's left open, but she's also facing a tough situation with a charge of sexual assault against her girlfriend."
Belfast playwright Gregg, author of Perve (BBC radio drama award 2012) and Huzzies (Tinderbox), was inspired by a recent English case involving a teenage girl in the same predicament.
Scorch also promises to be funny. Humour emerges as Kessy looks online at boys and boys' fashion and talks about her ambitions. She gazes at images of Ryan Gosling. Her parents may assume she fancies him, but in reality, as she says: "I don't fancy Ryan Gosling, I want to be him."
Prime Cut have gone for innovative staging: there'll be descending light boxes, illustrating Kessy's online quest for her true self – the audience will see the sites she's looking at; male fashion images appear as Kessy searches for that perfect masculine look, running parallel to her quest for identity. And they'll hear her disembodied voice; as she says, she can only be honest online.
"Happiness, aching, consuming... (It's) more real than real life."
Director Emma Jordan says: "I'm hugely excited to be directing Scorch as Stacey Gregg is one of our most important playwrights. The play really illuminates the experience of a young person in flux, and audiences will experience something pretty special."
- Scorch runs from November 17-21 at The MAC (themaclive.com; 028 9023 5053). There will be after-show discussions on the play's themes.
