TRANSCRIPT: Lauryn Redding - Series 4 Episode 2
- James Lovelock
- Oct 4
- 29 min read
Updated: Oct 7
VO: You’re listening to Represent, the queer musical theatre podcast. My name is Dr James Lovelock, and I’m an academic and a huge musical theatre fan exploring the representation of all things queer in the musical theatre industry.
My guest today is the extraordinary actor and writer Lauryn Redding. Lauryn appeared as Nikki in the gorgeous West End musical Standing at The Sky’s Edge and was the first writer and performer to open a show at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester after the pandemic with the wonderfully titled Bloody Elle. We discuss Lauryn’s current project Jack, based on the diaries of Anne Lister, and recent television role as Mel in Smoggie Queens, as well as exploring our hopes for female queer representation in musical theatre in the future.
As always, you can follow us on your favourite podcast platform, and don’t forget to share this episode on social media! Let’s get started.
Lauryn: Hello. My name is Lauryn Redding. I'm an actor/writer/composer musician. My pronouns are she/they and I'm very happy to be here.
James: And I'm very happy you're here too, how exciting! So we've been talking over this series about queer musical theatre, or musical theatre with queer characters, and thinking about how we can promote the musicals that already exist and thinking about some of the new stuff that's being written, and also thinking about what difference it makes when we're allowed to tell our own stories. And so there's lots of things there that we can work with there.
Let's start with Standing At The Sky's Edge because that's something that we've been talking about during this series already, and that's the first thing I saw you in as well. So can you tell us a bit about how you got involved in that and the character that you played?
Lauryn: So I saw Sky’s Edge at the National Theatre, I know Chris (the writer) really well, and I knew a few people in it. There was so much noise about it when it was at the National, and I was like, I need to see it. And it's about Sheffield and it's about a block of social housing, and it's a musical- this is right on my street. So I went to see it, and I think it's the first time I've ever seen something not knowing that I would ever be in it. So I saw it completely just because I wanted to see it and I loved it, thought it was great, was really happy that there was a lesbian storyline in there. And then when the audition came through, I was very excited. It's very rarely that I go to see a musical and feel really connected to a storyline. I mean I feel connected to a lot of things that I see, but it was such a visceral connection, that storyline and - not that I've ever turned up at someone's door and just like…
James: …started singing.
Lauryn: ‘Hiya! It’s only me!’ But to be part of a musical based in the north of England, a lesbian storyline where it's not even mentioned. It's just, are they together or not? Should they, shouldn't they? Answer on the back of a postcard.
James: Yeah, that’s a very difficult question.
Lauryn: I get told a lot by different people how they feel about it! But I just remember thinking ‘God, I'd love to get my hands on that’, because lesbian relationships can be so nuanced and having lived as a lesbian my whole adult life and experienced a lot of things, I was like ‘God, I'd really love to get this’ when I got the audition. And then I got it, I was in Tesco's buying a butternut squash and I got a call from my agent and I cried in the Tesco in Soho. So every time I pass it. I'm like, oh, the butternut squash!
And so the journey began, and I was really fortunate to work with Laura Pitt-Pulford who was playing Poppy. We were both new to this cast for the West End and we both felt a real affinity to the individual characters, but also we spoke quite openly and I spoke quite openly to Laura about how I felt about the lack of female queer representation on stage, and almost like I had a bit of a responsibility to that part and to that storyline sitting in the seat I was in, because there's so few seats. So We had a very short amount of time, I think we had three and a half weeks to get the show back on its feet, which is short and there was a lot of us that were new but we did it.
James: And it's a much bigger venue.
Lauryn: And it’s a much bigger space. But it was amazing, you know, Rob Hastie can steer a ship like no other and Chris's book is… and the music, you know, everything about it, the stars align sometimes with projects and that show’s definitely one.
Playing Nikki was great. She's a complex person and that's what I love about my job. Anything kind of grey makes me interested in the sense that I don't think the world is black and white, I don't think things are one thing or another. They're in this middle kind of melee, and Nikki and Poppy’s relationship is very that. And it was a joy to perform that show every night, to be on stage in a lesbian relationship and, as I said before, it's never mentioned, it's just there together as the other couples are throughout the time zones. But also, we end and we have a big snog and pretty much every night we got a round of applause, and I think to have that and to be part of that and that celebration of female queer love is an honour of my career really.
James: It was a beautiful show and that was the thing that really drew me to it, that relationship right at the centre of it and the character of Nikki and the impact you have, the energy that you bring when you come on for the first time with the song ‘Open Up Your Door’.
Lauryn: I was like a greyhound in the blocks waiting, because Nikki doesn't come on for a while. I think I had about 35 minutes before [I came on]. I did some backing vocals at the beginning and then I went back to my dressing room for a bit and I was just waiting. I mean, she does get, in my opinion, one of the best entrances in musical theatre. Everyone walks across the stage and then spotlight, microphone, let's go, banging song. It's a gift as an actor to be given that, but also there’s people like Nikki in the world. Poppy wants to get away, but there's something about Nikki that keeps her there and I think Nikki had to be so charismatic and a bit of a clown and a lovable rogue, so finding that was really fun and getting to work with Laura, whose Poppy was just gorgeous - it was joyful.
James: And it's lovely to have those relationships where you can put so much nuance in because the part has been written so well and in such depth, and I find it amazing with Standing at the Sky's Edge that that's not the only story. You've got three separate strands going on all at the same time, all beautifully written, all got so much depth, and those songs as well, just amazing music.
Lauryn: Yeah I just miss it.
James: Yeah, I do too.
Lauryn: I mean, I wish I could watch it again. I just think musicals are so precious when they work and Standing at the Sky's Edge really works and I hope it has another life.
James: Me too. One of the things that worries me slightly is that there's been a bit of a trend recently that musicals that go to the West End that have a queer protagonist only last for quite a short run. To me, it's a real shame that Standing at the Sky's Edge is not still at that theatre. In the same way recently, we've had it with Why Am I So Single? Everybody's Talking About Jamie did okay, but that's a very specific type of queer character that I think society is very comfortable with. And the lovely thing about Standing At The Sky's Edge is that there's all sorts of queer characters in the background as well.
Lauryn: It's so such a shame about Why Am I So Single? With Sky's Edge, I think because, like I say, it's never really mentioned, it's just they are in a relationship. You've got the best friend Marcus, he's also gay. There’s smatterings throughout the show but doesn't feel like a queer show. It's just life and that's what the fabric of life is - we're all in there somewhere.
James: I was going to move on to some of your other work and particularly the musical that you were working on, well, you're still working on but have been working on the last few years, which is Bloody Elle, and I wanted to talk to you more about that as a different example of a queer character or lesbian character being right at the forefront of a story. So tell us a bit about that.
Lauryn: Well, I mean I wrote Bloody Elle in lockdown. I'd always wanted to write something that came from my experience of coming out in the working-class North, and I started as a singer-songwriter, so I used to gig a lot and play guitar and sing. I always wanted to make a piece of theatre that felt like a gig, that starts with a song and then the chat between songs that artists do, and then, all of a sudden, it becomes another beast entirely and we're in the theatre.
I wrote it because I had never seen it and I feel, still progressively actually, frustrated by the lack of female-identifying queer narratives on stage, especially in leading roles, not just thrown in or fetishized or a phase or spicing up a storyline, like we actually exist and we deserve to have our stories told. And I think with Bloody Elle, I never expected it to do what it did, but it came from quite a cathartic place for me to write this story. It's based on my experiences of coming out and it's using a lot of songs - there's 14 songs in it. Some of them I wrote when I was like 17, which was nuts! As I was writing it, I was like, oh I've written this song, ten years ago.
But it started on Zoom, as many things did in lockdown, pitching it out there and seeing if anybody was bothered. And it turns out they were, so we reopened the Royal Exchange after Covid, which still to this day I can't believe I can say that. I'd never even managed to get an audition at the Royal Exchange and then after Covid, I was reopening it with my one-person show. It's not that similar to Sky's Edge, but I guess it is, in the sense that there's no rainbows on the poster, it's not plastered that it's this lesbian musical. It’s a love story set to gig music and theatre, and it just happens to be about two female-identifying people. I think one of the things I'm most proud of is that as I wrote it thinking all this would be great for the little queerbies out there who want to see themselves represented, which is what I would have wanted to see at that age, but also a lot of parents thanked me saying, I understand my child a bit better now. Some people that are predominantly living in heteronormative relationships were like, God, I've never thought of it like that
We took it to the Fringe and it was an amazing experience. I think the Edinburgh Fringe can be a difficult place and I was lucky enough to have a really fantastic experience up there and the show did really well. We were at the Traverse and they supported the show so much and from there, we took it into Soho with the Trav, we sold out, we won awards, we were adding shows. A lot of the audience that come to the Traverse at the Fringe, they come to see everything at the Traverse. So there was people that would probably wouldn't… I don't want to brushstroke anyone, but they were seeing something that maybe they wouldn't have seen, and were like, oh god, I've never thought of it like that, or were really moved by it. And that's the thing I'm most proud of is that it's for everyone, as is Sky's Edge, the applause at the end of the snog, everyone has a version of that in their head, whether it's that relationship or whatever. But I am doing my best, and it looks like Bloody Elle might be happening again next year.
VO: If you're interested in LGBTQ+ representation in musical theatre, check out our website www.queermusicals.com for lots more information about musicals with LGBTQ+ characters.
James: I love what you were saying there about trying to get things that anyone can relate to, but at the same time also people noticing what's different or what can be different from the experience of as a queer person.
Lauryn: Absolutely, yeah.
James: I've been thinking a lot about non-binary thinking recently. It's only been recently that I've thought that that might be where I fit, but I love the idea particularly that it's not just that it's either this or it's that, a piece of art can do two quite opposite things at the same time. So it's great to have work like Standing At The Sky's Edge and Bloody Elle, and there are other musicals out there that have lesbian protagonists there. There's not many of them, but I was thinking about Bad Girls, which was quite some time ago. It always has struck me as being very strange that the female queer experience is so little represented when it's such an amazing… I mean obviously I'm not talking from lived experience, but there's such amazing differences and things that people gain from the different way that people have to navigate the world.
Lauryn: Yeah, absolutely, when I think about when I was younger and I was kind of realizing that potentially… I'd never met a lesbian, I didn't know what one was but I knew something was a bit awry, and I remember watching Queer As Folk on volume 2…
James: Oh gosh, we’ve all done that!
Lauryn: And I was like God, I really relate to this and I can't really work out why, even though it was the male experience predominantly and there was still something that I was piecing together. I still feel there's such a lack of female queer representation. It’s frustrating. It's funny, isn't it, because I think in a marginalized group of the queer community, gay relationships and lesbian relationships are so opposite in many ways and I love supporting queer work, but so much of it is through the male gaze. And I think there's so much more room for lesbian narratives, for non-binary narratives, for trans narratives. And I saw Otherland at the Almeida, and to be able to sit in a space and witness and watch amazing work about something that is so specific, but so relatable. I felt richer as a human for seeing that show, and I feel like the world needs that empathy and that's what theatre has the magic wand of doing. I don't just want to see lesbian shows either but I want to see a mixed tapestry and there is obviously space for everything, but I wish there was a bit more room for the female and non-binary storylines.
James: Yeah, I agree. I think there's so many stories that are untold in musical theatre at the moment and it does feel like we get stuck with the same story just repackaged over and over.
Lauryn: Yeah, and I wonder if that's something to do with Everybody's Talking About Jamie. I mean, what an amazing musical firstly and based on a documentary that was about, you know, a young… I think I think they were from the Northeast somewhere?
James: Durham.
Lauryn: But I remember watching that at the time and it was a… Whereas now it feels like the world has moved on and people are a bit more understanding, and those shows feel like oh, there's a young person in drag, a drag queen, and because of RuPaul and all these things, it's quite palatable for people to watch that. Whereas I think that some people, when they imagine a lesbian, still imagine something very archaic. I still have to work out what is me and what is what I had to adopt twenty years ago to exist in a community where, because I had long hair, people wouldn't believe I was gay. Whereas now, my partner is extremely femme and we've been in bars together and people have gone, ‘are you gay?’ to her, and she's like, ‘yeah, I am, that's my partner’, but it’s funny how if it's not understood by the binary then it can be alienating and actually, in my opinion, it's the opposite. I think we need to understand the nuance of the queer experience, not just the obvious.
James: And that comes through telling different stories with different characters. I’m thinking about Smoggie Queens, which is something that I've watched recently and love your character in.
Lauryn: Thank you.
James: And even seeing that those characters in the love triangle in the very first series, there's something really lovely and slightly unexpected from the sorts of stereotypes that we see of queer women.
Lauryn: Smoggie is so joyful. If you haven't seen it, listeners, please do. BBC Three, Phil Dunning has just written - it's hilarious and it's camp, it's silly. It's about a load of drag queens and a queer chosen family in the Northeast. It’s so funny, I've spent my whole life playing straight and then the last three years I'm like, right, lesbian part, let's go. Which I'm here for by the way, and it's a beautiful thing to be on a set and there's a real mix of humans on that job. Phil is a gay Northeast lad and has written this chosen family, the nuance of the baby gay and then the mum drag queen, but for the storyline of my part (Mel), there's Sal who is with a girl who's horrible played by the amazing Charlotte Riley. I mean, the first time I met Charlotte, she had a massive penis drawn on her face. If you've seen it, you'll know why. I was like, all right, mate. That's how we first met!
But it's great to see lesbian storylines on TV, on the BBC, that are real, that feel relatable - as relatable as Smoggie Queens can be! I think it really is, though, I think it's got the magic touch
James: And again, it's one of those themes which I think that's different about the queer experience. I know there are straight people who have chosen families as well, but I feel like for most of us that are queer, that's something that we end up trying to find, and to have that sort of story… There's not loads of stuff in musical theatre. I guess Rent, to some extent, is a chosen family story, but quite dated in the way that it represents the lesbian and bisexual female characters in that. But it makes me think there are so many more stories that could be written and could be on the stage, so I'm excited to see what other things come out as well.
VO: If you want to follow us on social media, you can use queer.musicals on Instagram or Facebook, or you can follow me @drjameslovelock on Instagram.
James: Are you working on anything at the moment that you might be able to talk about?
Lauryn: Yes, I am. It's been something that I've wanted to do for a while but it's just been time. Writing is amazing, and Bloody Elle came during lockdown when nothing else was happening, and I just had the time to write it. Trying to find that time in normal life is really hard! But I am back on it and I'm writing a musical called Jack, which is based on the life of Anne Lister, Gentlemen Jack, who is the original Yorkshire lesbian Lothario and if you don't know who she is, she lived in Shibden Hall in Halifax, and there was no one else like her of the time. She owned property which women just didn't do. She had a business and also she was a lesbian. She was sleeping with a lot of women in Halifax, in Yorkshire, and probably across the world, but she wrote a diary and she wrote it all in code, a mixture of Greek and Zodiac signs, and she hid it in her walls. And then when she died fifty years later, her diaries were found and the code was cracked, and it turned out that there was a lot going on!
So like we were saying, there's not a huge amount of female queer relationships portrayed in musical theatre. You may be lucky to get mainstream lead role a decade, but I'm writing five lesbian relationships in my new musical, and all those five women and non-binary people are very different.
It's my passion project at the moment to tell the story of Anne Lister through the five pivotal women of her past and how different their experience was with Anne, but how different they are as humans.
James: That must be really interesting going from the diaries, which are Anne’s perspective, and then trying to work backwards from the characters to work out how their perspectives might be different?
Lauryn: Yeah, I mean my brain is on fire but it's really fun. I'm a member of MMD, Mercury Musical Developments, and I did a writer's week last week with them. I wanted to set aside that week to really get my head back in it because I find it’s either I am so in it that I dream about it… and I have to be there where I feel passionately about it. So I hope will lead to a really exciting show. I'm writing the music at the moment and getting into the head of five different women and their relationship with one person is a really fascinating thing.
Personally, I certainly draw on my experiences. I came out when I was like 15/16 and I'm now mm-hmm… So it's been a while and my experiences over those years have changed a lot. Back then there was a lot of shame, there was a lot of hiding, there were a lot of secrets. I was with people that weren't happy with their sexuality and felt they couldn't live their truth and that's a really sad rubbish thing that still happens today, and again, I think that leads back to there being a lack of representation. I feel if there's more and there's a more wider tapestry of it, that gives people an outlet to understand what's going on.
James: I totally agree. I saw this wonderful musical yesterday called The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs, which is currently on at the Kiln Theatre and was at the Soho Theatre a couple of years ago. And I learned so much from sitting in that space with a whole load of different characters, all of whom were lesbian or bisexual or trans women, and I learned so many things that I wouldn't have known because I've never been in that situation. It was such a lovely story as well, you know, set in a choir and so much fun.
Lauryn: Perfect, I need to go. It’s on my list, I can’t wait to see it. And I'm excited to see how and what and who those women are. But it's about that, isn't it? It's about being able to experience the differences, it's not the obvious and it's like we were saying about the grey, in the middle ground. I'm here for that.
I find it really fascinating that I've got some amazing male gay friends that have no idea. When I Kissed A Girl came out last year, this golden retriever and black cat conversation was like, ‘Oh my God’, and I was like, ‘Yeah, where have you been?’ I think we all know what a twink and a bear and an otter is because it's more out there. Lesbians aren't a secret code – well, Anne Lister is – but you know, we exist and I really wish that people would open doors and allow that space and that platform for those stories because they are as important as all the others.
James: [It’s important that] the musical that you're working on at the moment has six female characters including Anne Lister, with each of them having different background. It's the same as going back about 10 or 20 years when we're talking about gay characters in musical theatre and the only one was the one that would dance on, do a camp number, then dance off again. Sometimes we're like that, but not all gay men are the same. And I feel like there's been a lot more nuance around that more recently in terms of looking across intersections with race or with social class, and now it's time for that to happen for queer women as well and non-binary people, so I'm very excited to see how you find those five different characters. It's been a while since I've written anything but you know that that moment where you work out what musical language does this character have? What music does this person listen to? And of course, that's being difficult in the 1700s. They didn't have Walkman's. Walkman’s, what am I in, the 1980s?
Lauryn: Walkman’s! Mini disc players!
James: They didn't have record players in those days.
Lauryn: I mean, for the play, I'm bringing a lot of it to now, and instead of it going forward in time, we're going back in time. One of the things I was really fascinated about when I started working on it, and it's something that I felt throughout my experiences while writing and being part of queer work on a bigger platform, is the experiences of me as a 30-something year old and the experiences of somebody in their 50s/60s who's come to see the show.
A lot of people have said to me, ‘God, I thought it would have been better by this time’. After Bloody Elle, I had a big group of women from Hebden Bridge come and see the show and they were great. They were raucous as anything. Afterwards I was chatting to them a bit and they told me when they were younger, there was a one lesbian place in Leeds and it was at the top floor of a building and they had to run upstairs because people would shout at them. And they were telling me this, and having seen the show, if anyone has seen the show or maybe you'll see it next year, and they were like, ‘God, I can't believe it, your experiences were…’ And I didn't have to run upstairs in Leeds, but there were similarities. And even when I'm reading about the 1800s, and Anne Lister and their affairs, there's a secrecy, there's a shame, there's a nuance and I feel excited that I can crack that open a bit and we can have the conversation about why there is a thread of similarity from 1840 to 2025 and how do we grow from that? How do we build? How do we smash that?
James: I think there's a big thing to do with location there as well. It's funny you mentioned Hebden Bridge - I have a PhD student at the moment who is writing a musical with non-binary characters in that's set in Hebden Bridge. They come from Middlesbrough, and it's really interesting and there’s the same thing when I'm looking at their work and thinking, oh my goodness, how is this still a thing for young people? Is it still as difficult as it was even though you've got all of these apps, which we didn't have in my day, we just about had a telephone, just landline.
Lauryn: Morse code
James: In the olden days, but I think there's something about when I'm working with students where I sometimes assume that more progress has been made than it has. And things have changed a bit, but also there’s a lot of things that are still the same.
Lauryn: There's a lot that's changed but I always think we're standing on the shoulders of giants. I've always lived an openly queer life, and it wasn't always easy but that was the thing that I needed to do because I didn't know any other way of doing it. For a lot of people, it's not that easy and it makes me sad that those situations still exist.
I think they will always exist but what we can do to make it easier, or at least have an outlet, is provide our space for people to be their authentic selves and see their authentic selves. Hebden Bridge is one of my favourite places, I love it and that's so cliche but I do. I love it so much and I've got a few friends there and it's the lesbian capital of Europe apparently. I don't know about that, I mean, it probably is? But I find it as a place, it's a beautiful Yorkshire village, the energy is very free and anything goes and I just wish the world was a bit more Hebden Bridge.
VO: This series of Represent has been recorded at the Content is Queen studio in Somerset House. Content is Queen a podcast agency and community, made up of women, people of colour and LGBTQIA+ people who wish to connect, create and collaborate using audio and podcasting. For more information, go to contentisqueen.org.
James: I can remember even back in the 1980s and the 1990s when I was growing up, there are places that you go to, you don't know what they are, but there's something about them that calls you. The theatre was always a little bit like that for me, but they're specific locations and places where it seems a little bit easier to be yourself.
Lauryn: I guess what these queer shows give people is that space. Gay and queer spaces give you that space where you go in and you can breathe out a bit. And that's what Sky’s Edge did for a lot of people on that storyline and especially being such a mainstream, commercial musical and that's the difference for me. With Bloody Elle, I've had to fight quite hard to make that happen, and I've had amazing supporters and angels on the way who without them, it wouldn't be anywhere and I'm forever grateful for that. There's a real team of us - I've written it and it's a one-person show, but there's a real village that has been built to make that show happen, but it's still been difficult. I’ve felt like I've had to bang on doors with a really great show that matters that has really helped people. And when I did it at the Exchange and it was still socially distanced, remember those days? It was still masks. It's quite direct address, the show, and I was looking in people's eyes and they had masks. It was strange… but it was amazing. I got a lot of letters, I got a lot of tweets, and I got a lot of messages on social media from people, like parents, young people. I got a letter from a man in his 80s who said that the show had been the rainbow that he needed and my god, I always said if I could help one person with that show then my job is done, and I know that it's helped more than it's helped me. Every time I do it, I'm in a different place in my life as well and certain bits resonate in a different way. That's the beauty of what we do and why we tell stories.
James: Absolutely, and also there's a thing I think with queer work when you're taking it to theatres and producers where they’re like ‘I don't think there's enough lesbians in this area’. Well, (a) yes there is, and (b) it's not just for people who are lesbians, and there seems to be this thing very specifically with queer musicals, I think it's specifically now more to do with the LBTQ part of the LGBTQ community, and it's so unfair. I was just talking on another podcast episode about the representation of disability as well, and how it’s about making work so that we can see ourselves, but it's also so that others can see us as well. And that's the thing that I'm interested in now, trying to find ways to find these musicals that are in development.
I've been encouraging a lot of the actors who've been on these podcasts to talk about things they've been workshopping, because we're quite often quite secretive about things. Oh, it's not ready yet, shh, don't talk about it. But it's really important that we can get the word out of it so people know what to follow, and then how do we take it forward? It might be at the moment that it's a load of songs and a bit of script and how does it get from there, what stages does it need to go through to make it something that people can experience in its… I say final, it never is, is it? But in a version and what can we do, what can other queer people do, what can the community do to support that work that we want to see? How can we help to get it from where it starts to where it ends?
Lauryn: Yeah, and it does take a village. It really does. I mean, it's hard, isn't it? You want things to be perfect, not perfect, but you want things to be ready, but I think it's really important to let people know that these things are coming. It’s also to give myself a deadline that I've got to write. It's such a long journey, especially writing musicals, there's some mad statistic that it's at least six or seven years and I completely believe that. With Bloody Elle, it shot out, and I still don't really know how I did it, but with this new show that I'm writing it's, because it's based on Anne Lister and the women that she wrote about, and it's gonna be hopefully not too long. I've got really great people already working on it, that are really excited and are equally as ambitious and fuelled by wanting to get the female queer experience out more. So I feel like once it's ready and or whatever ready means, I just want to get a load of humans in a room and see if it's any good and sing it through and talk it through and have some other people's brains.
James: And that's the joy of the workshopping process. At the moment I'm thinking about what are the most helpful things that you can give people who are writing musicals. Is it most helpful to put on a concert where little bits and pieces come from different musicals so that is showcasing songs, or is that not the most helpful way to build up a following for a show, are there other options? Are there other things you can do? Do we want to be seeing little bits of shows together?
It’s an interesting one from a producing point of view and from a point of view of somebody that teaches students that are always looking for new work to develop, thinking about what ways we can support the new work that's going on that's not going to be destructive?
Lauryn: Yeah, that people are willing to get up and do. Adam Lenson and Signal - there hasn't been one for a while but they are great nights because you don't have to have the play, you can do a song. And I did it with a song from Jack, the last one that Adam did and it was really great because I did BEAM the other week and I was singing for one of the shows and a few people came up to me and were like, ‘what's going on with Jack?’ People listen and people care and so that was a nice thing to have because you're like, ‘okay, no, it hasn't just disappeared, it's still there’ and I think with writing, because I'm an actor and I'm a writer, so I spend a lot of my life either writing words or speaking other people's, or sometimes writing and speaking my own, but writing is a lot. It's amazing. I love it. It's like being given wings, you can do anything, but there's a cost, and I think when I'm writing about something, Bloody Elle for example, it's so close to me, it’s so close to my experience. There's people in that play that in my head are somebody, and I'm having to dig deep and it's a lot. So writing with integrity and writing with passion can sometimes take it out of you and that's why it takes time.
But also, there's deadlines, and there's bursaries if you're lucky enough to get them, there's people tapping their watch. So it's getting the balance between writing the thing you want to write and not being too precious and getting something out there, trying it out… and I love being an actor in workshops. And I've written another play - I got the Peggy Ramsey Channel 4 bursary through the Royal Exchange, and it's based on a lecture. It's about three sisters in the caravan in Yorkshire and in that there's a queer relationship. It’s not what the play’s about, there just happens to be two women. But we had a workshop at the Royal Exchange and my director Bryony Shanahan, who's an amazing director and she was like, ‘do you want to read it?’ Because I've written one of the parts for me, and I was like, ‘no, I just want to be in this week, in this room as a writer and just hear it’. And that was amazing because then what I had was six or seven women and non-binary people's brains on this script that had been in my head for a year and a half and they had thoughts about the characters because they're only living that character, whereas I'm living seven people.
So it's such a joy to get other people's brains and other people's experiences and other people's thoughts on the work that we create, but essentially you have to make the thing you want to make and I always write what it is I'm trying to do and put it above my laptop so that I remember why I'm writing it and what I want the audience to feel when they leave, because that's the thing, isn't it? If you don't do that, then what you write… sometimes grey is good and sometimes grey isn't good.
The one thing that I will say is that I graduated in 2009 and I've worked on lots of amazing shows. Musicals, plays, telly. I was lucky enough to play Emily in The Hired Man, which was such a gorgeous show.
James: I love that show! I played Jackson in an amateur production. It was a very gay Jackson.
Lauryn: Jackson can be a bit gay, I like that! But I played Rita in Educating Rita. I've had some gorgeous, amazing experiences in my career, and I do joke, but it is in the last kind of three or four years that, all of a sudden there's the lesbian role in Sky's Edge, there's a lesbian role in Smoggie Queens. I had to write it to make it, because, and I think it's a great step forward. But also, people often ask me this question and I think it's a really hard question to answer, but do you think gay characters should only be played by gay people?
And I don't think you have to have experienced the things that characters experience, I don't think you have to be a heroin addict to play a heroin addict, I'm not saying that, but I certainly think for queer roles especially female non-binary roles, there's not a lot of seats at the table and I think when there's a lot more seats at the table, knock yourself out. Do you know I mean? But I believe that when there's so few that we should be given the opportunity at least to take up that space because you can't buy lived experience, you can't emulate. And like I say, I was playing straight for a lot of years, and I'm an actor, and that's what I can do because that's what I've been trained to do. I mean, I’ve snogged a lot of boys on stage, not in real life! But I do think that's something that while there's so few seats at the table, I feel strongly that we should be sitting in them.
James: I've started asking that question in a slightly different way now - what do we gain when queer people play these roles? I was lucky enough to talk to Lisa Kron for a book that I'm working on that I've been working on for the last eight years, but eventually I'll finish writing! But Lisa Kron was saying that there is a shorthand between people who are queer, and with something like Beth Malone working on Fun Home - I spoke to both of them and they both talked about the idea of a lesbian shorthand. There's a certain way that you don't even have to talk about it, and there's various things on different podcasts about this, but the idea that if you don't have to go through all of this research about what does it mean to be gay? What does it mean to be lesbian? Then you can just go straight for the really interesting stuff about the character.
Lauryn: On Bloody Elle, my director is lesbian. My sound designer is lesbian. My designer is lesbian. My dramaturg, lesbian. If I've missed anyone out, sorry, but like there was a commonality of experience, there was a shorthand where you didn't have to explain why when they first had sex was it like so good? Cos you know, well I've kind of got one! And there were things like that, you're right. It's really important to me. To go back to Bloody Elle as well, we are talking about queer work, so why not? But it was really important to me that the creative team were either queer, female or non-binary, or working-class. Three out of three would be great. But when you're dealing with quite specific subject matter, you want to be able to get on with the work. I'm here for having conversations and an echo chamber isn't the place we should be living. We should be having conversations and pushing people's brains and thoughts, but when it comes to making work, we've got four weeks to put this on. I can't be teaching you about Golden Retrievers and black cats, do you know what I mean? Watch I Kissed a Girl and then we'll have a chat! But I Kissed a Girl was great, and there's this renaissance of Chapelle Roan and I Kissed a Girl, a lesbian won big brother, and it feels like okay, everyone's getting on board now.
But we've existed since Sappho back in the day, so it's about time. And as an industry and especially in musical theatre, what Standing at The Sky's Edge did and the way that me and Laura got hounded at stage door in a lovely beautiful way, people were so grateful to see that storyline, so grateful to sit there and experience that for however long it was, and that's down to Chris's amazing writing, but it's proof to me that there's an audience out there. And it might not be as obvious as sticking the obvious LGBTQ+ big rainbow flag, you know, let's go. It might not be that obvious, and there's space for that work, but give us some time, give us a platform because we deserve it. There's audiences for it and it will do nothing but good for all of us.
James: Absolutely. That's a great place to finish. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, and thank you very much for listening at home and we'll see you soon. Thank you. Bye.
VO: In next week’s episode, we talk to River Medway, star of RuPaul’s Drag Race Series, Unfortunate – the untold story of Ursula the Sea Witch, a musical parody and Here And Now, about their career in drag and musical theatre. See you then!
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