Swansong: Nathan Evans on Queering the Care Home for Kings Head Theatre
Nathan Evans is a writer, director, performer and producer whose work in film, cabaret and theatre has been funded by the Arts Council, toured by the British Council, broadcast by Channel 4, archived by the BFI, awarded some statuettes and described as 'pure genius' by Time Out. Nathan recently appeared in the BBC's All Together Now: The Great Orchestra Challenge and directed Flights of Fancy at Soho Theatre; his first poetry collection Threads is out now in paperback and ebook. His new play Swansong will be at the King's Head in August and here he writes for us about the play's conception.
I’ve recently been enjoying, as I procrastinate over the dishes each morning, the queering of Radio 4’s programming as part of the BBC’s Gay Britannia season to mark fifty years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. It was on this station that, a few years back, I chanced upon a documentary about our older LGBT brethren who find themselves needing a care home: estranged in the fifties from families who would not accept them, in the eighties divested of friends by a ‘big disease with a little name’, they can be, in their seventies, at risk of isolation. And become dependent on the care system.
Society has advanced admirably since the 1967 act, but that doesn’t mean the attitudes of all retirement home residents have kept pace with it. On entering such a home, an elderly lesbian or gay man might find themselves confronted with the sort of person they’d spent fifty years avoiding, and with the choice to return to the closet or come out all over again.
The subject, it struck me, merited more attention: the mature homosexual has often been side-lined by a homo-media fixated keenly on youth’s beauty; it's easy for younger generations to be complacent about current acceptance, forgetting they wouldn’t have it without those pioneers who began the fight for equal rights five decades back.
It also struck me as replete with drama and comedy. And on a writing retreat to Timberlina’s country semi-detached, two protagonists emerged from the Sussex mist – one who had let his assumed heterosexuality go unchallenged, the other for whom assimilation was not an option. What might happen if they were placed in the same home? What might happen if – in spite of their oppositions – there emerged an attraction?
This was a story that hadn’t been told: we’ve seen stories aplenty of young gay love and some stories, recently, about straight senior love, but queer love in the care home…? It’s about bloody time.
I did some research – visiting LGBT elders of my acquaintance, community groups such as Opening Doors London, and a number of nursing homes – then, basing some of the supporting cast on those I’d encountered, sketched a first draft.
A gentleman called Joan would land in a subdued, suburban care home like a colourful, combustible cocktail. A veteran of Gay Lib and no stranger to conflict, Joan would don battle dress with relish, seeking an ally in the young, gay but disappointingly conventional care assistant Craig for his attempt to overturn the heteronormativity of the care system. Then – in this most unlikely of settings, at this most unlikely time of life – Joan would be smitten by a gentleman called Jim…
First conceived as a feature film – The Grey Liberation Front – things got off to a flying start with a reading for an invited audience at Soho Theatre featuring Richard Wilson, Bette Bourne, Chris New and Nina Wadia. I couldn’t have asked for more: there was laughter, there were tears, then the project was kicked into the long grass for years.
Development hell – the stories are all true. Hardly an ingénue having made scores of short films, it is nevertheless next to impossible to raise funding for a first feature unless you are landed aristocracy, progeny of the glitterati, or lucky. Those who have made it through hard work (or enormous personal debt) hats off. I all but had a nervous breakdown in the process.
But still I felt the story should be told, so I rewrote it as a play – SwanSong – which is now receiving its first public outing in a staged reading as part of the Queer Festival at the King’s Head Theatre. Joan will be played by Lavinia Co-op of the legendary Bloolips, who I’ve not worked with since my Vauxhall Tavern cabaret days. Craig will be played by actor/writer Alexis Gregory, who I’ve directed more recently in the reading of another of my plays, and Jim by John Atterbury, who I’m looking forward to rehearsing with for the first time.
I’m determined the grass shall not be long: expect an all-singing all-dancing production in a theatre near you soon. But do, please, come this first incarnation and help get us airborne.
SwanSong is at the King’s Head Theatre, 115 Upper Street, London N1 1QN
20-21 August 7pm
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