Diary

2009-06-08T19:27:00.002Z

One of the things we seem to be discovering through LEAVE TO REMAIN is that we have discovered a form that can be used to look at, and maybe heal, a whole variety of different forms of suffering.
We're thinking of bullying. Which is universal in our society. Everyone has suffered: whether as a victim, a perpetrator, or a complicit spectator.
I've been watching the news of a so-called "make or break' confrontation between Gordon Brown and his backbench MPs.
It's clear that the leadership used a combination of rule-bending and bullying to ensure that nothing important was said at the meeting; that the majority of participants were cowed into silence.
I remember so many meetings like this at my university. And the feeling of frightened helplessness that goes with them.
The way in which everyone loses: those at the top of the heap, and those below them.
Managements everywhere employ these techniques - perhaps they always have - and they are leading us to ruin.
The labour party is now in such a state that its leadership is totally ineffective: and so are those seeking to change it.
It's like a nightmare everyone is caught up in: of chaos, of malfunction, of fear.
That no-one seems able to change.
It was exactly the same in the Drama School at Queen Margaret: and in fact the only way i could begin to reflect upon it was to leave.Which was partly because I had begun to value myself enough to understand I deserved better.

2009-05-23T22:45:00.002Z

Tonight the Church of Scotland has voted to accept gay ministers in the church.
I feel a certain thankfulness that for once a church body has made the correct decision.
I could have gone to a "pray-in" outside the Assembly Hall, but went to see friends instead.
Two extraordinary brave and loving-hearted women.
I don't know what happened, but I have come back home again with a deep sense of compassion for everyone.
A profound awareness that everyone has their story.
That generally this is a story of deep suffering.
And that everyone, however misguided or irritating or evil they might appear is doing what they can to get through that suffering.
And that none of us has the right to judge our fellow human beings.
All stumbling through this life. On the way to death.
Perhaps it's been my work on LEAVE TO REMAIN that has left me with this feeling.
We performed it on Thursday at the Byre in St Andrews: after such a happy day preparing the theatre, and rehearsing, and then performing.
A tiring day, though: by Friday I was utterly exhausted.
I was sitting in my chair, looking at the clouds passing: and quite painfully aware of the rapid beating of my heart.
On the radio they were playing Sibelius' arrangement of "Come away death" for baritone and orchestra, a beautiful work he wrote just before his death.
And I couldn't help reflecting on the coincidence that made me turn on the radio precisely as this piece was being played...
And I thought: what if it happened now?
And that awareness of life's fragility seems to make it all the sweeter...

2009-05-10T21:11:00.002Z

LEAVE TO REMAIN ended last night.
Each of the nights was so different.
I feel i should describe them, record them somehow, but it feels impossible to do them justice.
The first night was full of fear; the second worked beautifully, with an astonishing discussion to follow.
the third i was a little too relaxed about, perhaps, and then panicked about 20 minutes in, thinking we were losing it..
It's made me aware of how utterly variable each experience is.. and how that perception i used to have that the main mountain to climb was getting the show on, and then somehow things would look after themselves.. how naive and misguided I was.
We have just climbed one mountain: and another huge one stretches ahead.
And me so horribly tired...

2009-05-06T19:41:00.002Z

A rather wonderful day...
Dear Tom McGrath died this week. He helped me so much in my difficult days. A wonderful and inspiring man. I wanted to write to his partner, Ella Wildridge.
Then I went to the co-op to shop for Susie's mum. Just before I left my mobile phone rang. I picked it up.
Voice: "Is Sue there?"
Me (scarcely breathing): "What?"
Voice: "Is Sue there?"
Me: "Who is this?"
Voice: "Jill from mobile services".
Me: "Sue died in 2005."
Voice (without a hint of regret): "I must have got the wrong number then"
Me: (hangs up).
How strange, on the day I do a dress for a show inspired by her death...
I take the shopping to Jean's house. She is 84, as far as I can tell in pretty constant pain. Always interested in the world: ij the doings of the birds on her lawn, the pancakes she's going to make for the activity class, the salmon she had for lunch yesterday...
I so hope I retain her positive spirit and her courage.
Left, refreshed from the encounter.
Quickly changed, put on my make-up, did my hair, caught the bus to the Lyceum Press Conference.
To announce the 2010 season. Every One will open in March. Pleasant talks with Matthew Lenton (of Vanishing Point), the Lyceum staff, whom I'm so fond of, a very twinkly John Byrne on leaving.
And then to the dress.
Even though I'm wearing my own clothes, I made a little ritual of changing into them.. how strange the space felt. Ambushed, again, by grief.
What a pleasure to have such a grounded, such a creative day..,

2009-05-05T19:16:00.002Z

5th May

There's a line in our show where I say: "We chose to keep our scripts"

and Suzanne says: "In case we get ambushed by grief".

Which is exactly true because it is such a risk in this script which touches so closely our grief. And most days in rehearsals it happens at least once that one of us is overtook by weeping.

This morning it happened to me. I wasn't in rehearsal, as it happened. I was alone at home. I can't remember what i was doing, or where it came from. In that sense it was a classic ambush: and suddenly i was helpless with weeping.

The memory was not of Susie, or of my mum. But strangely enough of myself.

I was at school and playing Lizzie in "Next Time I'll Sing To You" by James Saunders, which was the house play. I loved being Lizzie. And I loved her costume, which was a trouser suit in a bright colour. Maybe purplish... and I remember after a dress rehearsal somehow being free to wear it for a little while afterwards and feeling relaxed and happy and confident and at ease with myself.

It can't have lasted more than half an hour: and I was weeping at the briefness of it, of the loss of that confident person, that happy actor who loved what she was doing and felt so at home doing it...

She was destroyed by the bullying at that terrible place, and the profound fear it instilled in me.

And then I remembered a boy called Bull who was the constant butt of the most vicious bullying all the time he was at school. And I never really helped him or befriended him because I was so afraid.

I felt such acute sorrow for him, and such remorse because I did not help.

There was nothing much else I could do this morning, really, but weep, and I struggled reluctantly out to the lunchtime meditation group.

I'm so glad I did, because when it came to the walking meditation Jon told us something that happened to him at Plum Village. How a particularly lovely monk suggested to them that they take someone with them in their imagination as they walked.

So i took Bull, not even knowing his christian name, gently round the church twice.

Dear man. I hope his life was not altogether ruined and he has found some happiness.

2009-05-04T20:18:00.002Z

4th May
Spent the afternoon in the technical rehearsal for "Leave to Remain", which opens in Thursday.

As a writer, I always find the tech a bit dull. Obviously, because there's no role for the writer at all. And I always feel so deeply illiterate visually. So I tend to avoid them.

But as a performer, it's such a different thing. You can relax, in a strange kind of way, while others look after things. And there's a kind of pleasure in that.

And try to get back at home in the script that suddenly feels so unfamiliar all over again in these new surroundings.

We are blessed to have Charlie Nowolskielski, of Theatre Alba, designing the lights. There is something very comforting about his passionate presence, his fierce desire to have the stage looking its best.

And the stage does, in fact, look gorgeous.

All we paid for were the tea lights... someone was interviewing me over the phone this morning to compile a profile of me for Creative Scotland. These are the people organising the business course me and Suzanne are attending, that have us thiunking about cash flows and profit margins.

I thought this morning we were clearly a model company in terms of cutting costs: spending nothing on a director, nothing on design, nothing on costume, nothing on the set.. and performing, book in hand to cut down on rehearsal time.

But we'd still have to fill the theatre at £20 a ticket for at least a fortnight to have any hope of recouping the costs of our labour.

The interview went well; the journalist seemed a lovely person, really well informed, up on this blog and the website, full of admiration for what I have achieved.

And then a little later this morning along came someone else, again really positive about what i am doing, willing to help set up more writing groups.

And on saturday a really lovely young woman appeared to give me a makeover, of all things, for a lovely photographer coming to do head shots of me for an interview carried out last week by two, and I need a synonym for lovely at this moment, young women wishing to interview me. Because they, too, are really impressed by all I am and what i have achieved.

This is all wonderful and gratifying, of course, but a bit of me, fortified by old habits of (what? modesty? self-depreciation?) makes me quite surprised and even suspicious of it all.

It's as if many years of guarding myself against disappointment has left me unable to appreciate success...

And I found myself wondering, as I walked up the High St. to the theatre for rehearsal, why it is people seem to be noticing me all of a sudden.

In a bad way, as well as a good: yesterday on the way back from church another someone in a group outside a pub said "Excuse me" very loudly to me as I passed.

And suddenly I couldn't bear to have it pointed out to me yet again that I'm a "bloke" and so walked on.

This kind of thing hasn't happened to me for years, and I don't understand why it's starting again. Do I look different? Is there something in the air?

And I felt cross this morning, walking up to rehearsal, to find myself feeling wary and guarded as groups of people approached me. Reflecting, a little ruefully, on all the years when I was younger and so desperately longed to be invisible.

I've obviously made a very bad job of that...

2009-04-27T21:17:00.003Z

27th April

Watching a documentary on the tv tonight about the collapse of the banking system.

There were the ad breaks, as usual, and in the adbreaks the usual commercials for cars. As if nothing had happened.

As if the financial crisis hadn't happened, and it still made perfect sense to for people to buy new cars.

As if the ecological crisis wasn't happening, and it still made perfect sense to drive them.

It's a time where all the delusions that govern this world seem more apparent than ever: and the lies that sustain them even more paper thin.

And all the time the bodies are piling up in Mexico city, and that huge city of 20 million souls is in a state of uncanny stillness.

And I too, I continue to act as if nothing had happened. Business as usual. I carry on. I prepare for rehearsals of LEAVE TO REMAIN, I send out the emails to give the show publicity, because I really don't know what else it's appropriate to do.

I pray. Aware that perhaps a show that deals with bereavement may become all too apposite.

2009-04-26T21:09:00.003Z

26th April
I went out to the bank machine early yesterday evening.
I was rehearsing a speech in my head: ne I had to give later that evening.
I heard a voice say "Excuse me" very urgently, almost aggressively, and when I looked up I met the eyes of a guy standing with his mates outside the pub door for a smoke.
Having that discontented look such men have.
And he said:
"You're a bloke".
Much less aggressively after my eyes met his. Almost reproachfully.
Well the truth is I'm not, and I was trying to think of a way of saying so in a way he would understand.
Then suddenly I couldn't be bothered.
I shrugged my shoulders instead. Still looking him in the eyes, and with a coolness that amazed me, I said:
"Who cares?"
And slowly walked away.
And it's true what i said, which is maybe I guess why he couldn't think of a reply.
Because it won't matter soon. Not even tom people like him.
It won't be an issue to him, just as it is not an issue now to the huge majority of people I deal with.

Unless, of course, things go most terribly wrong...

2009-04-24T19:44:00.002Z

24th
Like so many other people, i seem to be watching "The Wire" quite obsessively.

I'm on Episode 9 of the third series. It's actually hard to stop.

These box sets seem to take the place of those massive nineteenth century novels: created as a serial, and with the highest ambitions.

To create a portrait not simply of an individual, or even a group of individuals, but of a whole city.

And a whole city that in its turn exemplifies on what's going on in a whole society.

And to do so with a high moral purpose, at least so it seems.

To use all the resources of its medium to do so.

One difference is that while "War and Peace" or "Great Expectations" were created by one individual, in this case the series is created, at least originated by one or maybe two.. but using a massive team of incredibly gifted artists to realise their vision.

Maybe that's important, too: because it's vision is so huge, so about much more than individuals. That it reflects the collective.

Which is what art needs to do now.

Now the age of the individual is over.

2009-04-23T21:29:00.002Z

23rd April

A dear friend read from his new collection of poetry tonight.

I know him as Christopher Whyte; but his name on the title page is Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin. The title of the collection is "Dealbh Athar". The poems are written in Scots Gaelic, and translated into Irish Gaelic, in a parallel text, by Gréagóir Ó Dúill.

The title of the collection means, I believe, "Portrait of a Father", and I hope I don't betray a confidence if I say his father called Christopher much suffering.

An incredibly important part of the process of writing this collection was to write the poems in Gaelic. In fact, if I understand right, they could not even have been conceived in English. The strictness of the verse forms enable him to shape his feelings; and the fact that no-one else in the family would be able to read them gave him a certain freedom.

Which had led me to believe that they would be filled with bitterness. Yet the ones Christopher chose to read were filled with a beautiful and profoundly moving spirit of gratitude and reconciliation.

That feeling expressed totally in the melody of the Gaelic as he read.

There was a different spirit in the Irish. Someone in the audience put it beautifully when they said that the Scots sounded like singing; and the irish like a conversation.

The translator explained that the Irish has been codified much earlier than the Scots; and used as a language of administration and government.

And it is that, centuries and centuries of it, that has hardened English and flattened its expressiveness. (It was still comparatively absent in the time of Shakespeare: which is partly, I think, what accounts for its beauty and expressiveness. Why we still thirst for it, without fully understanding it).

And that is why, in his poetry, Christopher will not use it.

And there is a total integrity in that: a faith and a respect for the power of poetry which I totally admire.

2009-04-12T21:23:00.002Z

12th April

AN APPLE A DAY opened at Oran Mor, in Glasgow, a week ago.
I was so frightened that day.
I guess part of this was fear for the actors: the script asks a huge amiount of them. They have to travel a huge distance in 55 minutes. They have to give the comedy the space it deserves; and the religious stuff; and the pathos; and the sex.
Among other things.
They had only two weeks rehearsal: mostly in Traverse 2, sometimes elsewhere, and they didn't get in to the space at Oran Mor until 9 am monday.
And the show opened at 1.00.
I was aware, not just of how difficult it was; also how much it exposed them; how they utterly depend upon each other.
This is usual for my work: it takes actors and audiences into places they've never been before.
I can say this without boasting.

But there was something else behind my fear.
Of course both characters are portraits of myself. Not in literal way, equally of course, but poetically yes. Most definitely.
A friend dreamt once, just before one of my openings, that there i was naked on the Traverse stage.
A crucial part of a playwright's skill, I think, is to be able to put yourself out there and yet defend yourse. At the same time.
To be open and closed simultaneously.

I think it had something to do with writing a part for a transsexual, feeling a bit uneasy she was a prostitute (this is a bit of a cliche) and being aware of the far more than personal dimensions of this case.
All the work I've been doing with the trans writers group has made me so aware of its public dimensions.

So i was scared of exposing myself and of misrepresenting us all.

Whether I did or not, I guess in some way it's not for me to say.

I was very struck though, as I went home on the train after a succesful opening, that watching an amazingly skilled actor portraying a transsexual woman had had a profound effect on me.
In the play, SHE is an amazing person who hates herself and does not value herself as she should.

Of course, this seemed very familiar.
As I wen home I found that having to look at her had interrupted that pattern in me. Really for the first time I stopped finding reasons for mistrusting or denigrating my work: and I felt, unequivocally, proud.

I think for the very first time.

2009-04-01T21:14:00.002Z

April 1st

AN APPLE A DAY opens on Monday.
Last Monday we got through the to the end of the play and I knew the whole script worked.
The relief was amazing... and thinking about it today I realise that I been through the whole usual gamut... from extreme anxiety to relief, to amazed and prideful excitement, and absurd and unrealistic expectations and then back down today to anxiety again...
Yesterday they were in Glasgow, and rehearsing in some new tiny useless space in the morning, apparently, and then in Oran Mor for the first time in the afternoon.. and in that moment of disorientation, from what i can gather, and with a few strangers around to watch, what had seemed funny before now did not make any kind of contact at all.
So there was a fear about them I probably picked up on... and the 'SHE' character I did not recognise any more... and I just got cold chills seeing the whole play run right through for the first time and seeing, it's my life, it's my life that's being played out there... not literally, it never is, but in every other way.. and the thought of the exposure I subject myself too, over and over again, gave me the shivers again.
As it does every time.
Which must be one reason why I'm keeping up my private diary but not this public one at all.
Because I'm putting myself on such intimate display and so I need my private space.

(But again, in another space, the cold eyed professional one, I can see how good the work they are doing is and then I stop being professional and cold and get all excited and the whole cycle begins all over again...)

Because in the end, in so many ways, this is what I live for...

2009-03-18T06:23:00.002Z

18th March.

I woke up about 5.20 this morning. I'd dropped off to sleep about 11.00.
I worked that out in a sleepy kind of way in the luxurious moments after waking.... it doesn't sound like much, but it triggered memories of the time I was ill and waking, at least being aware of waking, every 45 minutes or so sometimes.
This was because my heart wasn't working properly, and I was suffocating.
I remember those days feeling as if even a few hours uninterrupted sleep would be like the most amazing gift... as if some glimpse of a paradise beyond my reach.
And what I didn't know was that I was also waking up beneath awareness every minute or so. Because I was stopping breathing.
And I thought of all that, and the amazing gift of sleep.

Yesterday I went to see KYOTO, David Greig's new short play. Which opened last week at Oran Mor in Glasgow, and transferred to the Traverse. It's the first time they've taken part in the 'Play, a Pie, and a Pint' season, and it was lovely to see the place full at lunchtime.
Also, of course, there was the huge pleasure of seeing my name among the list of plays going on later in the season.
And my play, AN APPLE A DAY, in which I feel such pride.
But that's not why I'm mentioning this. I'm mentioning this because I went with a transsexual woman friend who is in the process of coming out at work, and living her life now to the full.
For the very first time.
And she came to my house before hand so I could authenticate her new passport photograph and also her new driving licence... and I so want to admire and celebrate her courage.
Mine too.
Another gift: the thought that maybe I helped her in this process.
And afterwards I went round to see dear Marni the beauty therapist, who is patiently removing the last of my facial hair.
A process which feels like she is giving me my own face.
And after that I called in at a charity shop to browse through their clothes.
And thought of how for years and years I didn't dare go into shops and browse through the clothes I wanted to wear and that would express my real self.
But it's so simple now.
And then I went to the Caledonian hotel, a posh place in the West End, and there in their grand lounge was a dear friend waiting for me beside an elegant afternoon tea.
And the dear camp waiter flirted with me. He called me 'young lady' and said I was looking very nice that afternoon.

And this morning, as I woke rested, I was thinking of all these things.
In a kind of deep happiness I wanted to share.
So I came up the stairs to this high beautiful room where dawn was breaking in the most lovely clear sky.
The birds are singing: and over the rooftop I can see the half moon.
Fading in the light of the morning sky.

2009-03-16T22:25:00.003Z

16th March
I know things aren't right when it's hard to get out the front door.
It becomes difficult to collect the stuff I need - the letters I was going to post, my purse, my keys... to remember to bring down the rubbish bags I was going to take to the bin...
I kept having to go up and down the stairs, and I was getting short of breath...
As I walked up the hill, a bit painfully because my back was sore and aching, I was trying to figure out why this was happening.
I spent the morning assembling receipts and stuff for a couple of travel claims - a journey to Hull to see YERMA, a journey to Leeds to give a talk at a seminar on translating for the theatre - and there was a bill to pay. I needed to find my cheque book. And the YERMA proofs to post back to the publisher, and a thank you card to a dear friend.
And then there was the mailing for "Leave to Remain", and the contacting of the press, and setting up a meeting of the "Queen Jesus" artistic team, and it's hard all this stuff, self promotion - and a nagging anxiety at the back of my mind about a couple of interviews I've been asked to do about "An Apple a Day".
And then a possibly hugely positive and significant upheaval late this year that I can't even talk about...
All this, I think, has to do with self esteem, with trying to learn to value myself, and it's all tangled up with my feelings about my birthday, which is coming up on Sunday, and the immense difficulty I have even imagining what a truly happy birthday might be like.
I just have this nagging feeling of being such a disappointment. At my birth, which was so hard and so painful and so dangerous for my mum, and she so badly wanting a girl. And though she was such a marvellous loving person, I still have this nagging sense of a real pang of disappointment in her first contact with me.
And is that at the heart of this lack of ability I somehow have to see my birthday as a cause for celebration?
How deep do these memories go?
How profound this kind of imprinting?
This we can never know.
All that I can do is walk slowly up the steep hill, and go to the post office, post the letters, go to my meeting, see if I can think up a good idea for a short opera or two - because that was what the meeting was about... stay alive to the beauty of the late afternoon.
Cook a good meal, try to enjoy my own company.
Do what must be done: and then sleep. As happy as I can.
And be thankful.

2009-03-08T10:22:00.002Z

March 8th 2009
Yesterday I was at another funeral.
I met Marcella Althaus-Reid when she and I and a muslim were taking part in a discussion about transsexuality and theology, I think, at St John's Church for the Peace and Justice festival.
I was very ill at the time, on the waiting list for valve repair surgery.
Heart problems, I think, profoundly affect your courage (which comes from the latin word for heart). It was one of the first times I had spoken in public as an out transsexual woman. I was very frightened.
She was lovely. So supportive, so strong.
I sent her GOD'S NEW FROCK, and she wanted to publish it.
She came along to LEAVE TO REMAIN and wrote and spoke about it in an utterly lovely way.
She was someone I so wanted to know better.
But in the turmoil of the last few years I neglected to. And though she seemed to have withdrawn from public view I thought nothing of it until I discovered she was dead.
And I hadn't even known she was ill.
That made me so sad.
I went along to the service, feeling a bit isolated, as usual. It was very moving to see members of my church there; and Maxwell reading out some of the tributes, and Andy leading one of our hymns.
I felt how much our church mattered.
I felt it mattered hugely that I was there: to bear witness.
The woman who spoke about her life spoke of how in her last weeks she felt she was about to pass through a 'curtain'.
Just as Susie spoke of going through a 'door'.
It was a big church. It was full.
I felt how much her voice mattered, and continues to matter.
She was apparently the first woman professor in New College, of Edinburgh University (and I saw the Edinburgh University flag flying at half mast in her honour).
I thought of me, the first tranny professor of QMU.
It made me feel proud, and wistful too about the ultimate failure of my academic career.
But strengthened me too: to keep writing.
To keep bearing witness.

2009-02-24T21:53:00.003Z

24th February 2009

I'm just home from dancing.

It was such a joyful affair, because I had my hair done today, cut in a new way, and then straightened.. and one of the many joys of my new life just now is to be able to experiment with how I look!

And everyone said such lovely things about how I look and I just loved it!

The usual dance teacher was away: and for the very first time there were two new teachers to replace her.
There was something so moving and wonderful about this. Our usual teacher, and all of us, really, have had such a struggle to get Biodanza established here in Edinburgh. We've been through some hard times together: and the presence of these two new fabulous women teachers was such a testimony, such amazing incontrovertible evidence, that all that hard work is bearing fruit.

They taught so beautifully, too: I went through the teacher training course with them and I could see how good they've become. How beautifully they demonstrated, how elegantly and profoundly they explained.
But above all else, perhaps, how delightfully they were themselves.
There was nothing forced or artificial about what they were doing: they were communicating a wisdom very deep in themselves.

I felt so good in my new haircut; and I couldn't help but remember how scared I was when I first came, still living as man, still trying to recover from the terror of my breakdown.

How different I feel now; how much more confident; how much I have become my own dear self.

I was aware of not such good things, too: how my knees have got sore, how my heart, so wounded by its illness and surgery, does not allow me to be so vigourous and lively as I would wish.

At one point I definitely did too much: and I felt a sharp pain in my chest.

These reminders of mortality do not scare me as much as they used to - and really it would not be so terrible to die dancing!

There was a kind of appropriateness to them, too: today is the anniversary of dear Susie's dying.

I thought of her then, as I think of her always, with such deep gratitude it is almost painful.

We're accustomed to say, when we think of the dead, "May they rest in peace".

But I would not wish that for Susie. She spent her life working & struggling & studying & striving to understand. Laughing & taking pleasure & loving.

And I so hope that is what she is doing now.

2009-02-22T22:20:00.001Z

Sunday, 22 February 2009
Last night I saw “The Mystery of Irma Vep” at a theatre I love, perfrormed by actors and a direcfor I totally respect.
Yet i found myself hating every minute of it.
It was a show I found didn’t possess a single redeeming feature.
Charles Ludlam is a writer whose work I’ve wanted to see for so long; to see this disaster was such a huge disappointment. Yet apparently in 1991 this play was the most performed work in the whole of the United States.
I thought one of the problems with the production - for all the skill of the performers - was that they were all straight. At least as far as I know. And they played it as if it was panto: as if it was a ridiculous story, just a bit of fluff, just something silly, without meaning or significance to it at all.
As if there is something straightforwardly funny about seeing a man in a dress.
Which was one reason why i found myself so totally affronted by it.
I suppose one of my deepest fears is precisely that: of being ridiculous. Being a grotesque. Being fit for nothing but ridicule.
And the performance of those two men in their frocks, squarely in the ‘dame’ tradition, totally reinforced these awful fears.
And in trashing drag, they also trashed so much else besides: bereavement, mourning, poetry, the possibility of love. And the act of creating theatre and the possibilities of imagination and make believe.
So it trashed everything I hold most dear: and in a cheap, lowest common denominator, unthinking kind of way that seemed to hold the script itself in deep contempt.
I couldn’t help thinking afterwards that it would have been far better if they’d taken the opposite line and treated it all very very seriously.
Supposing the rather silly storyline of the play on the surface was a kind of metaphor for a really deep, and perhaps even tragic, love affair between the two performers...?
And so all the dangers they went through, all the rapid changes of character and costume were actually images of the way the protagonists in a deep love affair do actually change in a really bewilderingly rapid kind of way. And so the werewolves and the mummies and the undead vampires would work on that level too - because the person we love does actually suddenly change into a scarey monster sometimes...
And perhaps if it had been played perfectly straight then it would also have ended up being much funnier...
So it was very reassuring, somehow, to discover that Ludlam called his theatre “ridiculous” in order to confront the prejudice under which he suffered and that he did, in fact, play his plays straight: "Our slant was actually to take things very seriously, especially focusing on those things held in low esteem by society and revaluing them, giving them new meaning, new worth, by changing their context".
Not only that, but in the original production he played Lady Enid; and the other part was played by Everett Quinton, his lover.
I wish the production I had seen had taken all that on board. Maybe then it would have been a show worth seeing.

2009-02-13T22:45:00.002Z

13th feb 2009

I remember how I used to make all these resolutions to keep a diary during the rehearsal process.
Resolutions I never kept, because the whole experience was so crowded and intense, and me so exhausted at the end of the day, that I simply could not even begin to keep track of it all.
My whole life is rather like that now...
Perhaps I should just think about one thing at a time.
Wednesday I was talking at a conference organised by Stonewall Scotland on transgender rights in the workplace.
I was supposed to be there at 9.15, so I laid out the clothes I was going to wear, and changed my mind three times, and dressed and undressed as many times, and swore at the whole process, and decided this M to F malarkey was just too complicated, and yes, i was speaking in a business environment, but no, I would not wear a business uniform.. and ended up in black trousers, black jacket, red top and boots.. rushed through my hair, rushed through my make-up... all the classic 'I haven't got a thing to wear' kind of stuff.. and maybe I needed to go through all that to get my nervousness out of the way.
Because when the time came, I felt very calm.
There were, I guess a hundred people there, couldn't tell for sure, in the usual corporate meeting place.. chairs in rows, a desk at the front behind which the speakers were supposed to sit, and to the side, in a terrible position, a lectern kind of thing with a stand for your computer.
And a huge gap between you, the speaker, and your audience.
As one of the speakers admitted, this was not about being in the best place to cmmunicate. This was about being able to hide behind something, and hold onto something, to shield you from fear.
I wasn't having any of it.
When my name was announced, I got up very slowly and walked to the table. I poured myself some water, turned to face them, and rank the water in silence as I looked them up and down.
I was trying to judge the acoustic and the sightlines; judged my voice would carry; and began to speak.
My voice, like my presence, seems to have strengthened.
I felt powerful, I felt at home, I took great pleasure in speaking to them.
This strength sems to have come from transition.
The other wek I was in Glasgow, in a crowded bar, trying to get a drink. There was only one bar person on duty, totally overwhelmed by the demand.
I so remember when being a man how this kind of situation would always intimidate me and fill me with the greatest anxiety.
And at that time, the idea of standing at the bar of a Glasgow pub, dressed as a woman, waiting to be served, would have just seemed unbearably frightening.
And yet there I was, feeling very calm; and radiating something that enabled a lovely woman standing next to me to engage me in pleasurable conversation.
And get served.
And suddenly as I think about my life now, which I was so frightened would be closing down, is actually opening up in the strangest ways....

2009-02-08T10:53:00.003Z

8th February 2009

Last night me and my daughters went out together.
These reunions are rare these days, and I treasure them.
We had a meal at a Chinese restaurant near Haymarket which we all love; and then went to the theatre.

Katie and Bex both love Arthur Miller plays; they were performing his The Man Who Had All the Luck at the Lyceum.

I'd bought our seats in a grand circle box.
Watching a play in a box is one of those treats we'd always meant to give ourselves , but never had.
I hadn't told them about it in advance; it was a surprise; we all got giggly and excited.
The box worked its magic; even though the sightlines were terrible, it still felt amazing special.

We had such a happy night; afterwards I bumped into a lovely person who worked with me on Faust as a stage manager. She has since become a gardener, and I had a sudden impulse to ask her to give her number so I could ask her to sort out the wee garden area at the back of the house.

It's behind me, here, as I right this: the space Susie turned so proudly into a rockery in the months before she fell ill.
I realised yesterday that while I have transformed the rest of the house, it's as if all the grief has got concentrated into this area just out the back of it.

And I still can't bear to go there. I avoid taking clothes up to the washing line, even on the best drying days, because it hurts to walk through this sad, neglected, grief-filled space.

And so there is this week's washing, right to the left of me at this desk. Drying a bit squalidly on a plastic drying rack.

It would be good to sort out that garden space, so I can enjoy it.
I was thinking all this as I walked home. That walk still reminds me of the dreadful lonely walk home after the first night of Anna Karenina just after Susie had died.

And then tonight I had one of those dreams in which Susie's dying and death has all just been a gigantic painful mistake, and we can be together again, and we run to meet each other... I've had such dreams quite often, but never, I think, with quite such incredible vividness and intensity: running to embrace each other in such incredible excitement and joy.

Waking up after this always feels like such cruelty.
I couldn't wake: I felt heavy and tired.
I just wanted to go back to the land of sleep: where I had been so happy.

2009-01-20T22:37:00.002Z

20th January 2009

I bought a new computer, and turned it on for the first time today.

It's always a little strange, leaving the familiar and cranky world of the old computer and entering the gleaming new one.

This one is so incredibly elegant I have had to re-position my desk and tidy it.

And soon after it turned on, it suddenly decided it needed my photo so I could lay claim to it. I hadn't quite taken on board the fact that it has a camera attached to the front of it, which it must do because all of a sudden this image of a tired and touself and so untidy a person appeared most alarmingly on my screen.

I felt very unworthy, and went downstairs to brush my teeth and and my hair and put on my make-up in order to be worthy of making my mark on this machine.

Mr. Jobs has begun to change my life already.

What next, I wonder...

2009-01-10T20:58:00.003Z

10th Jan 2009

I had a work meeting with a young woman the other day.

She looked pale and tired. After a while, she looked around nervously and said "It's public now, I can say it", as if she was about to make a confession of something a bit shameful and sordid, "I'm pregnant".

And then she said when she was going on maternity leave. Which would cut across a possible project we were discussing.

I asked her how she'd been feeling, and she said "Better. Better than i was at least".

And she must have been very ill, to judge from how ill she was looking. All kinds of things in our earlier conversation fell into place - a tiredness, a certain vagueness, a certain diffidence.

It seemed clear that she was at odds with herself, somehow. that the professional administrator was being pulled in quite a different direction by the demands of the new life within her.

That the demands of womanhood were at war with the demands of her job, and she couldn't reconcile the two worlds at all.

i remember some of the conversations I had had when women came up to me after I'd been speaking in public. one in particular who said she had until recently been working in a highly responsible job and it was only now, now she had retired, that she felt able to "become a woman again".

It's very clear that the dilemma I have been struggling with - of feeling I had to conceal, downgrade, suppress the demands of a female identity - are absolutely not, as I always supposed, confined to the condition of being trans and certainly not, as I had also always supposed, confined to me alone.

There is a much wider condition of suppression going on.

It's all been highlighted very fiercely and strongly and distressingly by the case of a minister of the French government who has felt obliged to go back to work 5 days after giving birth by caesarian section.

Five days.

And to go back, what is more, looking supremely elegant and well groomed.

As if nothing had happened.

2009-01-06T17:21:00.003Z

6th January 2009

Another funeral today. In the same place: which today didn't affect me in the slightest. I felt braced by thie discovery.

A completely different funeral, too. So much cying yesterday: a sense that Stanley Eveling was not ready to go, and nor were his family ready to let him.

Today's death, Bernard Crick, was someone I knew better, and really liked. A brilliant writer, a generous man, and a really alive man, even if often an impossibly difficult one.

Last time I saw him he did look tired. He'd had prostate cancer most of the fifteen or so years I've known him. I should call him 'Sir Bernard', though I think I preferred him as Bernard. Honours don't do people much good.

I saw David Blunkett wipe away a tear or two, and my companions eyes filled as we sang "Freedom come all ye...". But this was a much mellower affair, somehow. Beautiful music, distinguished company... it went on for almost two hours. The dramatist in me kept screaming: "Cut.. Cut.. Cut.." and I found myself planning my own funeral. Far fewer words. More silence. An open coffin, and I think I'll write the script.

When should I begin?

2009-01-05T21:58:00.002Z

5th January 2009

I went to a funeral today.

In the same chapel in the same crematorium where we had Susie's funeral.
As I left the house I was so reluctant to leave it felt as though my knees were locking to stop me moving one foot in front of the other.

It was for Stanley Eveling, a playwright of the generation before me whose work at the Traverse was a huge inspiration.
I met him once; although I knew his work, I hardly knew him at all.
I'd wanted to go because I had a hunch very few theatre people would be there, and I felt it important to honour his memory.

His family obviously loved him dearly. They had organised a beautiful funeral, which they conducted with great courage, crying a lot on the way.
Their tears started mine, but I controlled them, because I felt a bit wrong somehow, weeping tears at the funeral of this obviously lovely man I hardly knew. Tears that were really not for him at all.

And when I got home I felt so exhausted and stressed and depressed and full of tears and the most desperate pain of missing Susie all over again.

It felt impossible even to begin on the massive mound of work that awaited me.
But I began anyway.
And by evening I had finished the introduction to Yerma.

I went off to have supper with my daughter Katie feeling immensely proud of myself. As if I had slain a dragon or two.
Looked deep grief straight in the eye and emerged unscathed.
More than that: emerged somehow victorious.

And paid tribute to a gifted writer and lovely man.

2008-12-26T10:45:00.002Z

26th December 2008

The news got out yesterday that Harold Pinter has died. The poor suffering soul.

Dismayed at the level of animosity I feel towards him.

And the irritation at the thought that, given in this mad world dying tends to be a good career move, he will continue to communicate his unhappiness to us from far beyond the grave.

Mostly, I expect it's a question of vanity: because his dismal style of writing is valued, and mine on the whole is not.

Maybe there's something more: maybe his work angers me so much because it's done so much to popularise the notion that an evening in the theatre is going to be, on the whole, a pretty dismal affair. Watching a display of unhappiness and cruelty that's not very easy to understand and that, as a consequence, makes you feel ever so slightly stupid for not fully appreciating it.

Which means his work has done so much damage to theatre. So much harm to the art form I so passionately love.

As for him, poor soul, I hope he finds a measure of peace.

2008-12-23T12:14:00.003Z

23rd December 2008
The day before yesterday, I lost my pen.
I thought it fell under the bed. In the side against the wall.
I pulled the bed out, with some difficulty, because it's a bit jammed in, and couldn't see the pen at all in the heap of dust covered junk that I found there.
I was sorry to lose the pen. So yesterday, I pulled the bed further out and brought down a rubbish bag and started to clear away the rubbish.
Among all the junk were several pairs of my late partner's shoes.

And that is why that space had been untouched so long.

I so loved Susie's feet: they were small and graceful and intensely beautiful.

Of all the horrible things in the long painful process of her dying was what i could feel in the last days, when she was unconscious, and the breath was rattling in her throat; the slow loss of warmth and life in her feet.

And that was why I could not bear to throw out her shoes after she had gone.

And I could not bear to look under the bed, for all the grief and sadness stored there.

And now the place is cleared and clean, i feel better somehow.

I think I slept more peacefully last night.

And I found the pen. I had carefully wrapped in the cover round my tarot cards.