Author and director NEIL BARTLETT on the extraordinary true story behind his new show for the Brighton Festival.
With America passing new laws to prevent gender-panic in cottages, and supermodel Andreja Pejic turning heads all over the global media – not to mention our very own and very marvellous Rebecca Root and Paris Lees – you could be forgiven for thinking that trans is the new queer. You might also think that gender-transformation in all its contested varieties is something that post-dates hormone treatments and surgery. Well, no.
A century and a half before the North Carolina legislature started to get all twitchy about who sees what in their restrooms – in April 1870, to be exact – a strikingly well-dressed young woman named Stella was catching the show at the Royal Strand Theatre, a Victorian variety-palace on the corner of the Aldwych. The rather daring silk gown she was wearing needed some attention, so she repaired to the ladies’ toilet to fix her drag. However, this was no lady; it was, in fact, the 22-year-old Ernest Boulton, for whom Stella was only one of many aliases, and when she left the theatre Stella was arrested and carted off to Bow Street in the company of her sister in crime, one Frederick Park, a.k.a Fanny. The high-profile Old Bailey trial that ensued was a battle over identity and labels; was Stella a sex-worker, a lady, a queen – or simply a misguided young man with an unfortunate drag habit ? Nowadays, of course, we’d want to know if she was “really” trans rather than drag – because we, in our way, are just as keen to categorise anyone who strays outside of their allotted gender role as the Victorians were. Stella’s mother told the gentlemen of the jury about how the school-age Ernest liked to dress up as the family chambermaid, and could even pass in front of her own grandmother – but they took that as evidence of high spirits, rather than of nascent gender dysphoria.
Unbelievably, Stella got off. Received wisdom dictates that after all that exposure she ought to have slunk away into obscurity, but not a bit of it; her transformations merely took a new turn. She changed her name, dyed her hair and took her act on the road, touring variety theatres for nearly three more decades as a drag queen, actress and comedian. In 1904, she assumed her final identity; a certain Mr Thomas E. Boulton is registered as having died that year in the National Hospital in London’s Queen Square – Stella again, taking her final bow as a man.
A year ago, my husband and I moved house, and a chance confusion in unpacking my boxes of papers meant that a long-forgotten photograph of my younger 1980’s self in drag came into collision with a photocopied newspaper illustration of Stella on the night of her arrest. That strange juxtaposition got me thinking, and eventually lead me to approach the Brighton Festival with an idea for a new theatre piece. The idea was simple; to bring Stella back to life for the night and just let her talk – to talk to our century, if you like, about the life-lessons she learnt in hers. The Festival said yes, and as well as going back to Stella’s letters and police records and play-scripts I then started on a six-month journey to meet and talk to people who live or work in a gender different to the one they were born into – hairdressers, journalists, pensioners, actors, nightclub hostesses and singers, from Dalston to Brighton to Tokyo. Meeting them and hearing their stories confirmed what I feel every time I recall what happened to Stella on that pavement outside the Royal Strand Theatre all those years ago. I think we need to put all our categorising and label-wars aside, and remember that the gift that all transformers and transitioners and dressers-up give us is an invaluable one . They tell us that our queer identities are never a destination, but always a journey. They remind us that in the end it doesn’t matter what category you fit, only how brave you are.
The world premiere of Neil Bartlett’s new theatre piece STELLA is at Brighton’s Theatre Royal as part of Brighton Festival (May 27-28, 8pm). The show then transfers to London (Hoxton Hall, June 1-18) and Amsterdam (Holland Festival, June 20-21).
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