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The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays
The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage is the first play anthology to offer eight new plays by trans playwrights featuring trans characters.
This edited collection establishes a canon of contemporary American trans theatre which represents a variety of performance modes and genres. From groundbreaking new work from across America's stages to unpublished work by new voices, these plays address themes such as gender identity and expression to racial and religious attitudes toward love and sex.
Edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Angela Farr Schiller and Leanna Keyes, the plays selected explicitly call for trans characters as central protagonists in order to promote opportunities for trans performers, making this an original and necessary publication for both practical use and academic study.
Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman
Archer's not out to his family but when his father falls ill he has to move back to his childhood home in central Oregon. At night under the oldest Ponderosa Pine, he meets a stranger who knows the history of the forests and the sadness of losing endangered things. As Archer accepts big changes in his family, he discovers the power of names and the histories they make and mask. Sagittarius Ponderosa is a play about changing names, love potions, and tilling up the soil to make room for new growth.
The Betterment Society by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
Three women on a godforsaken mountain wrestle with the elements, with each other, and with a world that does not value their way of life. As their resources dwindle, Gertie, Lynette, and Doreen try to redefine what it means to be civilized-a mission that forces them to confront what they value and what they're willing to sacrifice.
how to clean your room by j. chavez
Spencer begins to clean their room and reflect on their relationships with the people around them. Who can and can't we control in our lives, does caring mean anything beyond words, and does infatuation go both ways? A play in two cycles with anxiety, depression, and puppets.
She He Me by Raphaël Amahl Khouri
She He Me follows the lives of three Arab characters who challenge gender. Randa is an Algerian male-to-female who is expelled under the threat of death from her homeland because of her LGBT activism there. Omar is a Jordanian gay man who rather than body dysphoria, suffers social dysphoria when it comes to the strict codes of masculinity imposed and expected of him by both the heterosexual and gay people around him. Rok is Lebanese and female-to-male. Through humor and horror, the three characters come up against the state, society, the family, but also themselves.
The Devils Between Us by Sharifa Yasmin
In a small town in the boonies of South Carolina, a closeted young man named George is trying to figure out how to keep his late father's business running, only to be faced with a ghost from his youth. A young Muslim, whom he knew as his boyhood lover Latif, has returned as Latifa to take care of her estranged father's funeral. Forced to confront devils both have been avoiding, they find that their only way out of the past is through each other.
Doctor Voynich and Her Children by Leanna Keyes
This “prediction” is set in America years after reproductive healthcare has been made illegal. Doctor Voynich and her apprentice Fade travel the countryside in a converted ambulance dispensing harmless herbs by day and providing family planning services by night. Fade tries to help local youth Hannah complete her abortion, using forbidden knowledge from an ancient manuscript, before her mother and the sheriff can nail them for the “attempted murder of an unborn person.” This play about mothers and daughters is poetic, sexy, vulgar, queer, and a little too real.
Firebird Tattoo by Ty Defoe
Sky Red Rope goes on a quest to find her father, ultimately finding out she is queer by getting a tattoo. This play features themes of queer two-spirit identity on the Indigneous reservation in Anishinaabe territory.
Crooked Parts by Azure Osborne-Lee
Crooked Parts is a family dramedy set in yesterday and today. Freddy, a Black queer trans man, returns to his family home in the South after his fiancé breaks up with him. Once there, Freddy must navigate the tension created by his transition and his brother's serial incarceration. Meanwhile, in his past, 13-year-old Winifred struggles to balance her relationship with her mother with her desire to better fit in with her peers. Crooked Parts is poignant, queer, funny, and definitely, definitely Black.
This edited collection establishes a canon of contemporary American trans theatre which represents a variety of performance modes and genres. From groundbreaking new work from across America's stages to unpublished work by new voices, these plays address themes such as gender identity and expression to racial and religious attitudes toward love and sex.
Edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Angela Farr Schiller and Leanna Keyes, the plays selected explicitly call for trans characters as central protagonists in order to promote opportunities for trans performers, making this an original and necessary publication for both practical use and academic study.
Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman
Archer's not out to his family but when his father falls ill he has to move back to his childhood home in central Oregon. At night under the oldest Ponderosa Pine, he meets a stranger who knows the history of the forests and the sadness of losing endangered things. As Archer accepts big changes in his family, he discovers the power of names and the histories they make and mask. Sagittarius Ponderosa is a play about changing names, love potions, and tilling up the soil to make room for new growth.
The Betterment Society by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
Three women on a godforsaken mountain wrestle with the elements, with each other, and with a world that does not value their way of life. As their resources dwindle, Gertie, Lynette, and Doreen try to redefine what it means to be civilized-a mission that forces them to confront what they value and what they're willing to sacrifice.
how to clean your room by j. chavez
Spencer begins to clean their room and reflect on their relationships with the people around them. Who can and can't we control in our lives, does caring mean anything beyond words, and does infatuation go both ways? A play in two cycles with anxiety, depression, and puppets.
She He Me by Raphaël Amahl Khouri
She He Me follows the lives of three Arab characters who challenge gender. Randa is an Algerian male-to-female who is expelled under the threat of death from her homeland because of her LGBT activism there. Omar is a Jordanian gay man who rather than body dysphoria, suffers social dysphoria when it comes to the strict codes of masculinity imposed and expected of him by both the heterosexual and gay people around him. Rok is Lebanese and female-to-male. Through humor and horror, the three characters come up against the state, society, the family, but also themselves.
The Devils Between Us by Sharifa Yasmin
In a small town in the boonies of South Carolina, a closeted young man named George is trying to figure out how to keep his late father's business running, only to be faced with a ghost from his youth. A young Muslim, whom he knew as his boyhood lover Latif, has returned as Latifa to take care of her estranged father's funeral. Forced to confront devils both have been avoiding, they find that their only way out of the past is through each other.
Doctor Voynich and Her Children by Leanna Keyes
This “prediction” is set in America years after reproductive healthcare has been made illegal. Doctor Voynich and her apprentice Fade travel the countryside in a converted ambulance dispensing harmless herbs by day and providing family planning services by night. Fade tries to help local youth Hannah complete her abortion, using forbidden knowledge from an ancient manuscript, before her mother and the sheriff can nail them for the “attempted murder of an unborn person.” This play about mothers and daughters is poetic, sexy, vulgar, queer, and a little too real.
Firebird Tattoo by Ty Defoe
Sky Red Rope goes on a quest to find her father, ultimately finding out she is queer by getting a tattoo. This play features themes of queer two-spirit identity on the Indigneous reservation in Anishinaabe territory.
Crooked Parts by Azure Osborne-Lee
Crooked Parts is a family dramedy set in yesterday and today. Freddy, a Black queer trans man, returns to his family home in the South after his fiancé breaks up with him. Once there, Freddy must navigate the tension created by his transition and his brother's serial incarceration. Meanwhile, in his past, 13-year-old Winifred struggles to balance her relationship with her mother with her desire to better fit in with her peers. Crooked Parts is poignant, queer, funny, and definitely, definitely Black.
458 pages, Hardcover
Published June 3, 2021
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144 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 15, 2023
Sagittarius Ponderosa, by MJ Kaufman: This is a really touching play about the difficulties of connecting with others and being open. Archer is the protagonist. He's just come back home from somewhere because his dad is sick. But Archer isn't out to his family, who still think of him as Angela--though it seems that both Mom and Pops know, or at least suspect, that Archer is trans. But Grandma doesn't know, and she continually talks about the hope that Angela will get married. This is an uncomfortable insistence, but from the audience's perspective it actually changes really dramatically when Grandma is talking to her friend Peterson (who seem to have crushes on one another), and she reflects sadly that her family just keeps getting smaller. This is especially touching because it happens shortly after the death of Pops, her son. As this storyline is going on, Archer develops a relationship with Owen. They bond in the woods, in front of a giant Ponderosa tree, which has a complex symbolism in the play as it's both remarkably old (Owen estimates 400 years), but it has also been made vulnerable by the ecological irresponsibility of settler colonialism and capitalism, which has abandoned traditional Indigenous controlled burning practices that helped minimize the damage of wildfires.
https://youtu.be/cHVWrfkmQpQ
The Betterment Society, by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen: Set on a mountain in some kind of dystopian situation, the three women in this play live a harsh life, made harsher by their frequent harshness to one another. Gertie is the oldest of the three, and the most vicious. Lynette is slightly younger, and she tries to improve things, but her spirit is killed when Gertie sells her baby. Doreen is the youngest and the most open to hope, though she struggles to really know what hope is. The women's lives on the mountain are a strange blend of mutual hatred and mutual support--they depend upon one another to survive, but Gertie and Lynette especially often detest one another for not viewing the world the same way each of them would. Around this trio swirls the somewhat ethereal Lil'ope, played by three or more dancers, but also represented by Doreen's doll. Lil'ope represents some kind of possibility for a better life, some kind of possibility for change beyond just the difficult realities of the world they inhabit.
https://youtu.be/Q1l6N4BnqSk
how to clean your room, by j. chavez: I'm always wary of memory/dream plays because I often don't enjoy the fragmented structure, but this one I did like. The protagonist is Spencer, a nonbinary person of color who has a lot of difficulties with mental health and interpersonal relationships. And while some of the scenes are more directly focused on those challenges--especially the scenes with the therapists or doctors--many of the scenes deal with these problems more peripherally, which makes the play feel more rounded and complex. And because of the mental health focus, the memory structure makes a lot of sense because we get fragments of memories that kind of coalesce into a picture of how Spencer remembers their life and relationships.
https://youtu.be/bGSOhg2uXmY
She He Me, by Raphael Amahl Khouri: This is a very difficult play, because it really focuses extensively on the sufferings and oppression of trans people, particularly in Middle Eastern/North African countries. The play involves the interwoven stories of three speakers: Randa, an Algerian trans woman; Omar, a gay Jordanian man; and Rok, a Lebanese trans man. Each of their stories has harrowing portions and triumphant portions, typically dealing with issues like systemic and individual violence, family rejection, state persecution, humiliation by government officials, difficulty explaining the speaker's gender identity/sexual orientation, etc. There's some gruesome discussions of violence, including sexual violence, committed against trans people, and some heartbreaking scenes where the speakers' family members become their most virulent persecutors. And yet, the ending of the play is ultimately optimistic. The characters find ways to survive and even thrive, despite continued hostility and oppression even for those who have escaped to Sweden or the US.
https://youtu.be/1hBtJksz0Rc
The Devils Between Us, by Sharifa Yasmin: I just read this, so this may not be the most objective/considered assessment, but this may be one of the most beautiful and affecting plays I've ever read. Yes, it's another painful play about the very real violence of transphobia/homophobia, child abuse, internalized homophobia, etc. But it's also a story with amazingly complex characters going through difficult challenges and figuring out how to be themselves in a world that makes being themselves dangerous. It's a story about heart-breaking betrayal, but also a story about finding ways to come to terms with one's pain, one's trauma, and to escape the burden of violence without necessarily forgiving or forgetting. This is not a fairy tale ending in which everything is alright and the characters magically heal. But it's a story in which the characters learn that they need their pain, but they do not need to (and should not) be defined by it.
My review has not done this play justice, and I'm painfully aware of that.
https://youtu.be/_SG5DMa8jnc
Doctor Voynich and Her Children, by Leanna Keyes: This play is set in a dystopian near-future in which the US has split between the coasts and Heartland. The latter is the kind of world that the US right currently wants to build. Abortion is criminalized. Drugs are criminalized. Being LGBT is criminalized. The problem is that criminalization hasn't stopped any of these things, just made them punishable under an increasingly authoritarian surveillance culture. Traveling through this world is Rue (a.k.a. Doctor Voynich) and her apprentice Fade. They are traveling herbalists, selling traditional medicine to people who can't afford the expensive and exclusive services of the Med Techs (which is most people). When a young girl named Hannah comes asking for an abortion, Fade eventually performs the illegal operation, and then is set up for a sting by the sheriff. The only reason Fade is released is because the sheriff and Rue have had a lesbian relationship and if she arrests Fade and Rue then her own "crime" will come out. Fade persuades the sheriff to agree to this deal by burning their copy of the Voynich Manuscript, which Keyes presents as an herbalist's guide (though in truth no one is quite sure what it is, or even if it's authentic). However, even with the knowledge of centuries in ashes, Rue, Fade, and Hannah's desire to help people is not squashed--they decide to begin rebuilding their knowledge.
https://youtu.be/asj6zsovco4
Firebird Tattoo, by Ty Defoe: This is a play about finding oneself, particularly in the contexts of being Indigenous and two-spirit/queer. The play follows Sky, a young 2s Ojibwe woman who seeks answers about her father Eagle (a.k.a. Landa Lakes), himself a 2s man. Sky struggles against the traditions so important to her mother, and is either unable or unwilling to fully abandon her Ojibwe heritage. She also struggles with coming to terms with her sexuality/gender identity and that of her father, who guides her from the spirit world.
https://youtu.be/hWz9tM6J8G8
Crooked Parts, by Azure D. Osborne-Lee: This play deals with the Black trans experience, and capitalizes on the visibility of marginalized bodies to link the two issues. The protagonist is Winnie/Freddy, a young Black girl trying to fit in at school in the 1995 scenes, and a young trans man trying to find a place and reconcile with his estranged mother, Angela, in the 2013 scenes. Much of the conflict in the 1995 scenes revolves around Winnie's hair, and how she comes to dislike the way her mother styles it because the other kids make fun of her, but then when she asks for a different style Angela takes this almost as a personal rejection. A rift forms between them as Winnie (and later Freddy) move away from what Angela envisions her child should be. It's fitting that hair is the symbol of Winnie's/Freddy's childhood uncertainty about identity because Black hair styles are often regarded by "mainstream" (i.e., white) American culture as exotic, foreign, or strange. In many African American texts, hair symbolizes the heightened visibility of Black bodies, which are subject to additional social policing (in addition to direct policing, as is the case with Winnie/Freddy's brother Stephen, who is in and out of prison). In this sense, the Black experience aligns with the trans experience, as trans bodies (or queer bodies in general) are more subject to scrutiny that cis-gendered bodies. Freddy experiences this as well, a clear discomfort in his own body at times. One overt example comes early in the play when he's changing and Stephen arrives to eat a plate of nachos together and Freddy hides his chest. A second example comes late in the play when the adult Freddy meets up with the child Winnie in some kind of dream/vision, and Winnie asks if that's the best mustache he can grow, prompting a brief moment of self-consciousness from Freddy.
https://youtu.be/rasKMYVC1Eg
https://youtu.be/cHVWrfkmQpQ
The Betterment Society, by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen: Set on a mountain in some kind of dystopian situation, the three women in this play live a harsh life, made harsher by their frequent harshness to one another. Gertie is the oldest of the three, and the most vicious. Lynette is slightly younger, and she tries to improve things, but her spirit is killed when Gertie sells her baby. Doreen is the youngest and the most open to hope, though she struggles to really know what hope is. The women's lives on the mountain are a strange blend of mutual hatred and mutual support--they depend upon one another to survive, but Gertie and Lynette especially often detest one another for not viewing the world the same way each of them would. Around this trio swirls the somewhat ethereal Lil'ope, played by three or more dancers, but also represented by Doreen's doll. Lil'ope represents some kind of possibility for a better life, some kind of possibility for change beyond just the difficult realities of the world they inhabit.
https://youtu.be/Q1l6N4BnqSk
how to clean your room, by j. chavez: I'm always wary of memory/dream plays because I often don't enjoy the fragmented structure, but this one I did like. The protagonist is Spencer, a nonbinary person of color who has a lot of difficulties with mental health and interpersonal relationships. And while some of the scenes are more directly focused on those challenges--especially the scenes with the therapists or doctors--many of the scenes deal with these problems more peripherally, which makes the play feel more rounded and complex. And because of the mental health focus, the memory structure makes a lot of sense because we get fragments of memories that kind of coalesce into a picture of how Spencer remembers their life and relationships.
https://youtu.be/bGSOhg2uXmY
She He Me, by Raphael Amahl Khouri: This is a very difficult play, because it really focuses extensively on the sufferings and oppression of trans people, particularly in Middle Eastern/North African countries. The play involves the interwoven stories of three speakers: Randa, an Algerian trans woman; Omar, a gay Jordanian man; and Rok, a Lebanese trans man. Each of their stories has harrowing portions and triumphant portions, typically dealing with issues like systemic and individual violence, family rejection, state persecution, humiliation by government officials, difficulty explaining the speaker's gender identity/sexual orientation, etc. There's some gruesome discussions of violence, including sexual violence, committed against trans people, and some heartbreaking scenes where the speakers' family members become their most virulent persecutors. And yet, the ending of the play is ultimately optimistic. The characters find ways to survive and even thrive, despite continued hostility and oppression even for those who have escaped to Sweden or the US.
https://youtu.be/1hBtJksz0Rc
The Devils Between Us, by Sharifa Yasmin: I just read this, so this may not be the most objective/considered assessment, but this may be one of the most beautiful and affecting plays I've ever read. Yes, it's another painful play about the very real violence of transphobia/homophobia, child abuse, internalized homophobia, etc. But it's also a story with amazingly complex characters going through difficult challenges and figuring out how to be themselves in a world that makes being themselves dangerous. It's a story about heart-breaking betrayal, but also a story about finding ways to come to terms with one's pain, one's trauma, and to escape the burden of violence without necessarily forgiving or forgetting. This is not a fairy tale ending in which everything is alright and the characters magically heal. But it's a story in which the characters learn that they need their pain, but they do not need to (and should not) be defined by it.
My review has not done this play justice, and I'm painfully aware of that.
https://youtu.be/_SG5DMa8jnc
Doctor Voynich and Her Children, by Leanna Keyes: This play is set in a dystopian near-future in which the US has split between the coasts and Heartland. The latter is the kind of world that the US right currently wants to build. Abortion is criminalized. Drugs are criminalized. Being LGBT is criminalized. The problem is that criminalization hasn't stopped any of these things, just made them punishable under an increasingly authoritarian surveillance culture. Traveling through this world is Rue (a.k.a. Doctor Voynich) and her apprentice Fade. They are traveling herbalists, selling traditional medicine to people who can't afford the expensive and exclusive services of the Med Techs (which is most people). When a young girl named Hannah comes asking for an abortion, Fade eventually performs the illegal operation, and then is set up for a sting by the sheriff. The only reason Fade is released is because the sheriff and Rue have had a lesbian relationship and if she arrests Fade and Rue then her own "crime" will come out. Fade persuades the sheriff to agree to this deal by burning their copy of the Voynich Manuscript, which Keyes presents as an herbalist's guide (though in truth no one is quite sure what it is, or even if it's authentic). However, even with the knowledge of centuries in ashes, Rue, Fade, and Hannah's desire to help people is not squashed--they decide to begin rebuilding their knowledge.
https://youtu.be/asj6zsovco4
Firebird Tattoo, by Ty Defoe: This is a play about finding oneself, particularly in the contexts of being Indigenous and two-spirit/queer. The play follows Sky, a young 2s Ojibwe woman who seeks answers about her father Eagle (a.k.a. Landa Lakes), himself a 2s man. Sky struggles against the traditions so important to her mother, and is either unable or unwilling to fully abandon her Ojibwe heritage. She also struggles with coming to terms with her sexuality/gender identity and that of her father, who guides her from the spirit world.
https://youtu.be/hWz9tM6J8G8
Crooked Parts, by Azure D. Osborne-Lee: This play deals with the Black trans experience, and capitalizes on the visibility of marginalized bodies to link the two issues. The protagonist is Winnie/Freddy, a young Black girl trying to fit in at school in the 1995 scenes, and a young trans man trying to find a place and reconcile with his estranged mother, Angela, in the 2013 scenes. Much of the conflict in the 1995 scenes revolves around Winnie's hair, and how she comes to dislike the way her mother styles it because the other kids make fun of her, but then when she asks for a different style Angela takes this almost as a personal rejection. A rift forms between them as Winnie (and later Freddy) move away from what Angela envisions her child should be. It's fitting that hair is the symbol of Winnie's/Freddy's childhood uncertainty about identity because Black hair styles are often regarded by "mainstream" (i.e., white) American culture as exotic, foreign, or strange. In many African American texts, hair symbolizes the heightened visibility of Black bodies, which are subject to additional social policing (in addition to direct policing, as is the case with Winnie/Freddy's brother Stephen, who is in and out of prison). In this sense, the Black experience aligns with the trans experience, as trans bodies (or queer bodies in general) are more subject to scrutiny that cis-gendered bodies. Freddy experiences this as well, a clear discomfort in his own body at times. One overt example comes early in the play when he's changing and Stephen arrives to eat a plate of nachos together and Freddy hides his chest. A second example comes late in the play when the adult Freddy meets up with the child Winnie in some kind of dream/vision, and Winnie asks if that's the best mustache he can grow, prompting a brief moment of self-consciousness from Freddy.
https://youtu.be/rasKMYVC1Eg
August 5, 2024
Just one really great gut punch after another. No notes. The related essays are also phenomenal
November 28, 2023
Las obras reunidas en “The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays” me resultaron desiguales, tal como suele suceder en cualquier antología. Mientras que algunas como “Saggitarius Ponderosa”, “The Betterment Society” o “The Devils Between Us” me parecieron maravillosas, otras como “how to clean your room” o “Doctor Voynich and Her Children” me resultaron distantes y eso dificultó que pudiera comprometerme con ellas. Eso sí, todos los textos son únicos en los temas que tratan y, más allá del resultado final, abren muchas puertas para el debate. Sin embargo, lo que más valoro de esta publicación es que las obras que reúne se caracterizan por alejarse del conflicto del descubrimiento de la identidad sexual al que suelen quedar reducidos los personajes trans para centrar su foco en otros tipos de experiencias. En las diferentes obras nos encontramos con personajes que deben lidiar con autoridades casi dictatoriales, con padres ausentes, con recuerdos del pasado y hasta con temas religiosos. Nada de eso cuestiona su identidad sexual, ese no es más el conflicto. Sí, son personajes trans, lo saben ellxs y lo sabemos nosotrxs, pero lxs autorxs se preocupan por mostrarnos que sus vidas no se reducen únicamente a su identidad sexual. Eso me pareció realmente maravilloso.
June 30, 2023
I feel a little bad giving this three stars, but it's an overall grade for the book as a whole, which is made up of eight plays. Several of them left me either indifferent or nonplussed, but the real VIPs of the collection were Crooked Parts by Azure D Osborne-Lee and the brilliant Doctor Voynich And Her Children by Leanna Keyes. It's worth reading for Voynich alone, and Crooked Parts is a strong finisher to the book.
Your mileage, of course, may vary. I'm not super well-versed in reading plays, so it's possible my indifference to the earlier plays in the book is more down to not having exercised that mental muscle in a while. Anyway: more stories by trans people about trans people. Representation is always a good thing.
Your mileage, of course, may vary. I'm not super well-versed in reading plays, so it's possible my indifference to the earlier plays in the book is more down to not having exercised that mental muscle in a while. Anyway: more stories by trans people about trans people. Representation is always a good thing.
November 25, 2023
Pretty good, pretty amazing.
Read
February 18, 2024only read doctor voynich (for a festival.) and needed to like review it so that i got idk…. anything out of it. idk i was not a fan at all.
Read
October 14, 2024Read Doctor Voynich and her Children by Leanna Keyes
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews