We're still collecting donations
On the 28th March 2022 we'd raised £380 with 17 supporters in 21 days. But as every pound matters, we're continuing to collect donations from supporters.
Enable an all trans team to devise a theatre show on access to trans healthcare in the UK, based on interviews and lived experiences
by Burning Attic in London, Greater London, United Kingdom
On the 28th March 2022 we'd raised £380 with 17 supporters in 21 days. But as every pound matters, we're continuing to collect donations from supporters.
We are devising a theatre show based on interviews with trans people across the UK, investigating the realities of navigating access to life-saving healthcare particularly during the pandemic.
With the waiting list to Gender Identity Clinics now 5 years long, at which point does patience turn from virtue to verb? What does 5 years really mean to an individual’s life and how long does the march of societal progress really take? Through the lens of duration as a constantly renewed act of living, this show considers trans concepts of adulthood / puberty and searches for agency in waiting.
We plan to interview at least 20 trans people for research, drawing on their lived experiences as the basis of content and narratives, representing the stories behind statistics and media reports. We are also consulting research conducted by trans organisations and experts, such as Gendered Intelligence and Trans Actual UK.
This campaign funds the Research & Development phase of the show, where we bring the gathered stories and our ideas into physical space to devise the basic framework of the show, consolidating performance material for a showcase at the end of this period. The showcase will allow audience feedback and recorded footage to reach potential show venues, before the material is brought into further development and rehearsal for future production.
Physical showcases / shows will be taking place in London, but they will also be digitally streamed / released to be accessed from anywhere.
The core creative team behind this show is all trans, with 3 of them having previously worked on a similar interview-based approach in 2021, devising a multimedia show on trans students’ lockdown experience at Durham University. Access to trans healthcare was a crucial theme discovered from those interviews, which this project seeks to investigate in depth, this time with a broader demographic and professional partners. This will also allow us to continue developing our methodology of interview-based investigative theatre as a new collective.
Burning Attic is a new collective that devises investigative theatre created from engagement with the lived experiences of people under-represented in theatre, particularly drawing from interviews as research and source material. As a collective mainly comprised of queer, migrant, and Global Majority members, we see theatre and live performance as a means of intervening in reality, where artistic representation has the power to reshape understanding and reconfigure mainstream paradigms. We seek to respond to the spectacle of politics in our multimedia world through interdisciplinary creative processes, defying hierarchies between art and experience.
We will have gathered ample research and ideas before the R&D process, and need the resources to enable this earliest phase of show development to create and showcase material, which is necessary for reaching potential venue partners and obtaining further support, in order for the show to be developed for production.
We will be applying for grants from funding bodies to cover our costs for this R&D phase, but some match funding is a requirement for us to have a good chance at this. All of the preparation and organisation (including interviewing participants) before obtaining grants is voluntary, and some token fees to the creative team would help support the work completed in this period of time.
Our budget includes creatives’ fees, rehearsal / showcase space, and a token fee of £10 to compensate interview participants for their time. The amount we are crowdfunding represents the very minimum amount needed for us to go ahead with the R&D, with creatives taking a much lower fee.
The additional funding we get from grants will allow a proper budget for us to make the most of the show development phase, including paying our creatives the minimum ITC fee, a props and costumes budget, technical hires, professional showcase filming and photography, engaging experienced professionals for mentorship, the show’s graphic design and so on. More funding also facilitates more community engagement, allowing us to invest more time in involving and empowering interview participants (eg podcasts, further discussion groups, more open rehearsals etc).
If we are fortunate enough to have excess from this campaign, it will go straight into the next steps of developing this show, including rehearsals and putting up a production.
Starting out as young emerging artists and as a new collective is challenging, particularly in the current climate. We believe artists should be paid fairly, and we need your support for this under current systems and circumstances. Your help is imperative for us to find our footing as a new collective and set our ambitious creative visions in motion.
Diverse representation requires proportionate resources to be channeled into diverse sources of creation. Trans stories are not represented enough in media and the arts, particularly not in ways that are authentic to trans people’s experiences - both the struggles and the joy. Community is so crucial for marginalised people to be uplifted and for unheard voices to be platformed, and we turn to your support because it is collective will that can make our vision happen! Help us create a space in theatre where people can meaningfully engage with lived realities beyond the crude talking points of today’s headlines, for true empathy and change.
We may not be able to promise concrete products during this R&D phase, but are showing a token of our heartfelt gratitude through the rewards! The true and guaranteed reward would be knowing your support was critical to making this project a reality!
Donate us a drink, just £5 will go a long way! (You are of course welcome to donate us a meal out, a night out or more!)
We are currently in conversation with venue and community partners, and will begin conducting interviews in April. Help share our interview callouts on our socials as well! Follow Burning Attic (IG: @burning.attic, FB: @burningattic.tc, T: @burning_attic) to stay updated on the show’s development. We will be documenting and sharing our research process as we go along, and supporters of the campaign can look forward to exclusive behind-the-scenes content. Future showcases / shows will be streamed or released online for remote access.
This project offered rewards