I always start with music. I find it helps. On other projects it has ranged in style, genre, and mood. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, the soundtrack to Disney’s Inside Out, or Stefan Gregory’s sound design for an Australian production of The Glass Menagerie. Breeders was no different – it started with multiple repeats of Why by Bronski Beat.
Between the reliable beats of the Yamaha Synthesiser, Sommerville’s soaring falsetto, and its volatile pace and melody, it evoked such a strong sense of time/place/feeling. The dancefloors of the eighties, plugged directly into my ears. As I listened, and re-listened, to this song an opening image began to form. Verbatim dialogue, followed by a sudden blackout. In the darkness, the initial, piercing vocal rings out and then – lights up, we’re on a dancefloor in Birmingham. It’s both 1986 and 2023. And it’s the end of the world.
And that’s how the play starts. I stuck to my guns – let that one image define and guide what followed. And what has followed? A few things.
I should probably jump back a bit. I’ve not actually started at the beginning (can you tell I don’t do this often?). To start at the beginning would mean sharing with you why I started writing in the first place. And that actually grew out of a rejection from a hitherto unspecified regional theatre in the West Midlands – they were on the look out for a local story they could develop into an original commission. I’d just returned from university, where my final year had been pre-occupied with a lot of research around the AIDS crisis in performance, but through a particularly London-centric lens. I felt like I still had stories to tell around the AIDS crisis, but written into the commission was a necessity to focus on a local story. So, I set to work; I would become an excavator, an archivist, someone who would locate the AIDS crisis in a context much closer to home, here in Birmingham.
And that’s exactly what I did. I spent weeks in the Library of Birmingham, trawling through papers, articles, recordings, and images. I arranged meetings with people to discuss their lived experience. I rediscovered Birmingham. I realised I had walked past venues with significant, queer histories, that now lay desolate/neglected/abandoned. The most striking example was the nightclub ‘The Powerhouse’, just off of Hust Street and a stones throw from the Hippodrome, that is now boarded up, almost invisible to the daily commuter. I must have walked past it hundreds of times in my life and had no idea of its history – a choppy, complex history, but a somewhat queer history, nonetheless. My application to a hitherto unspecified regional theatre in the West Midlands began with this:
The 25th of August, 1988 – Birmingham. 5 minutes away from the insert hitherto unspecified regional theatre in the West Midlands here, in the venue formerly known as ‘The Powerhouse’, the Gay Men’s Health Group ready themselves for a busy afternoon. In a few hours’ time, just before the Birmingham Super Prix, they plan to use the venue as a forum to disseminate leaflets, condoms, lubricants, posters, magazines – even provide a free massage lesson – all in an attempt to combat rising cases of HIV and AIDS across the country. They will affectionately name this event the ‘Super Pricks ‘88’.
And then my application got rejected! The enviable joys of freelance theatre work (but we do it for the love, right?). Despite this, my interest was piqued. I continued my research, and one interview lead to another, and through an expansive network of generous LGBT people in the city, I discovered SHOUT. They saw the vision. They saw the history. They saw the potential. And they’ve been supporting my ever since. Through their mentoring, the scope and vision for the piece has grown. I’ve placed at the forefront of Breeders an appeal for intergenerational exchanges, to begin unpicking what queer Birmingham now might owe queer Birmingham back then – I mean, culturally, socially, sexually. Birmingham, to me, still feels like it hasn’t reconciled itself with the AIDS crisis; with most of its contemporary queer history. And perhaps it will take a while to figure out what that means or looks like, but as I move forward with Breeders, it’s a question at the very centre of my current practice.
Of course, within that intergenerational appeal, has been my own desire to connect with a queer lineage. And so, certain narrative points, beats, ideas, within Breeders have grown out of my own experience as a queer person in Birmingham now – my own thoughts around fertility, insecure futures and extinction. The process of inserting my own experience, but also distancing myself enough to feel comfortable, has been fascinating (and is ongoing). I continue to connect with queer brummies now, especially women, to ensure my story remains inclusive, authentic, and necessary.
And, on the topic of intergenerational appeal, I come to the first public sharing of Breeders in early December, last year at the Nightingale Club. It was such a special day. We brought a bunch of interesting people, to an interesting space, presented the work and SHOUT facilitated a discussion. It ranged from feedback on the script, to discussion of lived experiences, to the modern day advancement of HIV treatment and the ongoing impact of cultures of shame around the virus. I got feedback on characters, and structure, and narrative arcs – I identified where I need to inflate or expand certain ideas, insight into how people want the story to end, and fundamentally, the kind of stories a community of intergenerational, queer brummies want to see made available on local stages. Of course, within that, there were disagreements, resonances, overlaps, tensions, gaps, and dissonances – but then again, isn’t that very definition of queerness?
Looking ahead to the next few months, it’s a lot of food for thought, that at times, feels slightly overwhelming. But, I remain excited for the future of Breeders, and I’m sure, with the support of SHOUT and the queer community around Birmingham, I’ll develop a script that is both challenging, resonant, and engaging all at once. If not, at least I can say, I died trying!
Anyway – enough about me. I’m off to listen to Bronski Beat again in an attempt to force inspiration; I bought on vinyl after the sharing in December as a kind of reward.
