Mess Up The Mess Theatre Company & Youth Cymru presented
Humanequin
Written by Kelly Jones
20 – 24 November Weston Studio 2018, Wales Millennium Centre
Three transgender actors step out onto a stage. They want you to listen. To tell you how it is. How it is in 2018. When everyone else has an opinion. Hear their truth.
Humanequin – a play about gender, identity and finding your family in the unlikeliest of places. With director Jain Boon and writer Kelly Jones, the actors worked alongside members of TransForm Cymru and students from Radyr Comprehensive school to devise Humanequin. They shared their common and individual stories and experiences to create a performance which educates, challenges and provokes conversation about what it meant to be trans in 2018.
Humanequin began life as a Community Action Project we ran with Youth Cymru as part of our Big Lottery Funded Dream On programme. We worked with their TransForm group of trans young people to create a performance and film dispelling myths and misconceptions about gender variance and encouraging a conversation around gender identity. With funding from Arts Council Wales Creative Collaborations, ISD and Wales Millennium Centre we brought it to the Weston Studio for a week long run. Youth Cymru also delivered teacher training in Trans awareness alongside the production and we worked with schools and youth groups to create curtain raiser performances and exhibitions to involve even more young people in the process. Wales Millennium Centre also hosted some panels exploring the themes of the production.
‘Humanequin is performed in the Wales Millennium Centre’s Weston Studio, and the intimate theatre has unreserved seating. It’s a noteworthy point, for nearly half an hour before the play begins there are already hordes of people waiting outside. There are crowds of friends standing in circles, the air filled with the happy buzz of chatter. Not one soul in the theatre, and already one of the play’s most prevalent themes is alive all around – that is, the importance of community. You can feel the expectation, it’s almost nervous energy; this isn’t just any other play, it matters a great deal. What a relief then that it’s an undoubted success.’
Extract from Wales Art Review by Caragh Medlicott. Caragh goes on to write
‘Woodward, Bryant and Miller give the impassioned performances of actors with a thorough understanding of their script; each of them has the raw ability to deliver lines capable of sending shivers down spines. Though to be clear, Humanequin pushes far past the realm of a mere tear-jerker, it is heart-squeezing. There are damp eyes throughout, and not always from something as one-note as sadness – because Humanequin is more than just sad. It speaks to the joys of the fostered families found within the LGBTQ+ community, and – as with any family – the tensions and jealousies which can often come along with them.’
Rehearsal shot
