Queer Contact 2016

Gender isn’t a exactly new frontier for queer people, it’s always been a frontier. The law that got to be too damn much at Stonewall – as we should know by now but as Laverne reminds us – was that all patrons must wear three items of clothing ‘appropriate to their gender’ otherwise the police would crack skulls.

Gender and its multiple expressions are deep in the heart of queer history and art. It wasn’t long ago that homosexuality / drag / transgenderism were talked about as a continuum of expression. You encounter it in contemporary accounts of the Stonewall era, right up to Paris is Burning. The scare queens, butches and femme queens of yesteryear might not necessarily connote cis or trans precisely the way we think of those terms today. Our connections to one another as queer people of all genders are deep and abiding and vital.

Timely as ever, this year’s Queer Contact Festival puts together a broad and exciting programme where gender is frequently at the artistic frontier. Transparent has been one of the most radically queer mainstream shows ever created, winning dozens of awards as it interrogates ideas about sexuality, history and identity. It’s something of a coup that one of the writers and series advisors, Our Lady J, is appearing at Queer Contact 2016. Her original musical show ‘For the Love of Gospel’ will help demonstrate why she has worked with everyone from Sia to Debbie Harry, via Antony Hegarty, Lady Gaga, Cyndi Lauper and Scissor Sisters.

Next, from high-femme to bold and butch, Eilidh Macaskill’s ‘STUD’ puts a queer woman’s perspective on the traditional gender binary as she performs a series of hyper-masculine tropes, exercising her ‘penis envy’ with full comedy intact.

For a more local perspective on the performance of gender, Jez Dolan and Chris Hoyle’s ‘Life’s A Drag’ is the beginning of a year-long project that celebrates Manchester’s drag culture and its deep roots with performance, oral history and maybe even some participation, so get your foundation right.

If the Pet Shop Boys are ‘The Smiths you can dance to’, Erasure are the Pet Shop Boys you can really camp it up to. Singer Andy Bell’s Contact show will take him on a somewhat different route as he explores the vexed polysexual character of ‘Saint Torsten’ through a song-cycle written especially for him and lately performed at Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a chance to see and hear a legendary gay pop voice as never before.

Another Queer Contact highlight is the return of Debs Gatenby, star of the much-loved Hi, Anxiety, whose new solo show looks at those journeys, inside and out, in search of ‘A Place Called Happiness’.

A dose of raw comedy can be had in the Comedy Playground where seven stand-ups battle it out for your love and lolz, including Bethany Black of Cucumber/Banana fame, Suzi Ruffell from telly and a familiar flamboyant host...

As for me, I’ll be throwing a Queer Contact launch party in the shape of A Queer Revue! at Band on the Wall, featuring international and local trans, gay, lesbian and queer talent, including contemporary dance, singing drag queens, Kate Bush and Bowie tributes, poetry, pop videos, comedy and a big old party afterwards.

As for the rest of the programme, you can tuck into the full listings here, or use my handy taster guide below…!

For the vivid voices of Black sex workers…

For the ultimate queen of heaven…

For getting read to filth and back…

For the godparent of gender outlaws…

For getting your voice heard…

For a frank voice on Black LGBT lives…

For an uplifting night of LGBT spoken word and writing…

For the highs and lows of internet cruising…

For religion and sexuality explored…

For the undisputed Mother of queer cabaret…

For our young voices…

'Every day in every way I'm getting better and better …' Adventures Part 2

An actual summer's day. Ma gets the train over from Blackpool and we sit on Canal Street drinking cider with ice and having a proper chinwag and a laugh. It’s the loveliest thing we’ve done together for ages, my Mum is amazing. Around 8 pm I pour her back on the train and she gives me a wad of sweaty fun money to spend, as if I’m a teenager, bless her. I head down to Club Brenda at the Deaf Institute to liaise with my lovelies and to watch the wonderful David Hoyle introduce a lady who pulls a handkerchief out of her ladyparts. Normal Saturday night, in other words. Late, wreckless, brilliant.

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

A gruelling but productive week at work. (I do have a job too, who do you think pays for all this? Apart from Ma, obviously.) A few days of work tedium is rewarded by dinner at Strada with Dee, Matthew, Marie and Jonathan, followed by a spectacular Mahler’s Ninth at the Bridgewater Hall which pulls me right out of myself but also makes me feel inexplicably lonesome. Well, not completely inexplicable I guess. Next night is a hit and miss Bourgeois & Maurice for Queer Up North at the gorgeous Spiegeltent. When they are good they are very very good and when they are bad they are torrid. Fun night though.

Frank Spencer

Saturday it’s up early and dry-mouthed for a trip to London with Shauny. Ohmygodfuntimes. The weekend is a heady mix of Camden falafels, the theme tune to Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, lager and vodka tonics, an interminable walk up Kingsland Road for drinkies with Malc and Craig at Dalston Superstore, and a trek to the Eagle in Vauxhall for Carpet Burn. On the tube platform I bump into my friend Jonathan, make a new friend called Harry, also on his way to Vauxhall, meet another new friend, lovely Martyn, in the Eagle, then at the bar there bump into Phil of Worrapolava fame, my longstanding-but-never-met-in-real-life internet buddy of mine, right there in the impeccable flesh. London is officially tiny and crammed full of friends.

Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea

Sunday is another hot day. I tube it to Victoria and walk the full length of the King’s Road, Chelsea, watching all the money laze about. Quick stop at the new Saatchi gallery where I admire some large crazy graffiti-collage-cartoon canvases which are kind of hypnotic and very POP. The artist turns out to be sixteen which means he is precisely half as old and twice as cool as yours truly. Fail.

Not a sniff of the King’s Road of the swinging sixties left, or of Viv and Malc’s punks. I find out after that I’ve been spitting distance from the house where Judy Garland died. In the window of one fancy Chelsea boutique is a mirror. A handsome young homeless guy with his arm in a sling is standing in front of it looking at himself. I walk close enough to hear him saying, ‘I’m very clean for a homeless person.’ It puts such a terrible lump in my throat.

The Black Cap, Camden

I keep walking down to the river, cross Battersea Bridge, walk through the beautiful park along the river, past the power station, mostly under wraps, past the dog’s home where they all yap like mad things, then tube back to Soho for lunch and coffee and people watching. I buy Mrs Dalloway and read it in the last of the sunshine in Soho Square. Shauny meets me and we have a drink before retiring back to Chalk Farm. We attempt to stay in but of course we’re unable to. Instead we’re lucky enough to catch the semi-final of Britain’s Got Drag Talent, or Drag Idol, or maybe it was Drag Factor? Whatever, it takes place at the rough and rowdy Black Cap in Camden and it’s shamazing. Okay it’s naff, but we stay ages and drink our hangovers away and are completely superior and un-ironic and gauche. Lots of smashed glasses and scraps and rough trade. Not us, of course. Shaun and I are from seaside towns though, so it’s like home for us. Shaun falls up the stairs at one point, which is just my favourite comedy move of all time.

Back to Manchester, yuck, short week at work, yay, then back to London again quick-sharp to see the Pixies play the Troxy out on the wilds of Commercial Road with Matthew and the Geordie. It’s a complete wet dream set list, take a look. I couldn’t have asked for better, honest to God. ‘River Euphrates’, ‘Sad Punk‘, ‘Gigantic’, ‘Broken Face‘, ‘Bone Machine’, ‘Caribou’, ‘Dig For Fire‘, ‘Alec Eiffel’ for Christ’s sake! Fuck it, they’re the greatest band of all time. I want a Pixies tattoo.

The Troxy

Next day it’s a complete scorcher. We pick our lovely Helen up at Kings Cross and travel out to spend the day at Kew Gardens which costs a fortune to get into it but really is worth it. Picnic by the lake, breathless Victorian greenhouses, gorgeous birds, cool grass. The highlight is the tree-top walkways, not just for the gorgeous views but for the pleasure of watching Matthew white-knuckle his way around the entire thing while it rocks back and forward ominously.

After Kew it’s back to the city for Pimms and Lemonade by the river outside the Royal Festival Hall until the sun goes down. Bliss was it that night to be alive, but to be young(ish) was very heaven. Helen gets her train home and we head on to The Enterprise pub at Chalk Farm which is rammed and sweaty and brilliant. Britpop and Madness and utterly sozzled punters cooling off in the rain and our last night there and oh I love you London.




Soundtrack: Shipbuilding, Dirty Old Town, If She Knew What She Wants, When Your Life Was Low, Sleeping Satellite, Schoolin', The Best Of The Proclaimers, loads of Joni Mitchell, Edith Piaf, Pixies, Mahler and Schubert

We love you Sandra Bernhard, go home!

She is tall, lean, tanned, with a deliciously drawling hick accent, dressed head to, er, hips in spangled shimmering silver with batwing tassels. No, it’s not Sandra Bernhard, it’s Tina C, glamorous redneck Country and Western heartbreaker. ‘Please forgive me’, she announces, glinting under the spotlight like so much bacofoil, ‘I didn’t bring any stage clothes with me. I’m here tonight as an ordinary person … and as a Presidential Candidate for the United States of America!’ (‘White Trash in the White House!’) Drag is so not over, it’s just doing political satire instead of cock jokes and Bassey covers. Tina C (real name Chris Green) is a class act all round, she sings, she politicises, she makes jokes about Primark (‘I held up a dishcloth that was apparently a piece of clothing and I said ‘Yes! I am gonna wear this for the people of Manchester!’) She does the finest cover of ‘Purple Rain’ ever and if you don’t think No Dick's As Hard As My Life is the funniest album title you’ve ever heard, you are dead inside.

The audience, despite dozens of empty seats, was hyped and ready for Sandra Bernhard’s much-vaunted return and to be fair it took a while for her to kill our enthusiasm, but kill it she eventually did. The act was pretty much split between gorgeous musical pieces and hilarious scripted fantasy scenarios (becoming Stevie Nicks’ best friend, the WASP childhood she never had) and meandering, whining, ad-libbed, uncomfortable, monotonous crowd-baiting. Miss Bernhard doesn’t like the time slot, Miss Bernhard doesn’t like the flight she was on, Miss Bernhard doesn’t like Queer Up North (‘Get over it!’), Miss Bernhard might not actually like England, Manchester, us, me! Miss Bernard certainly doesn’t like coming on after Miss Tina C. ‘Maybe if I put on a little dress and ooh! Is that what you want? I’m working my ass off up here. This is REAL!’ Ouch.

At one point she pulled out a faintly embarrassing gay disco anthem style tune from the archives. I have a feeling this was meant to save the show. When that failed to get us on our feet things got nasty and not a little desperate. When she began an unprompted tirade against the white middle-class heterosexual patriarchal powers that be (so seventies) and their damn institution of marriage and us poor homos it would just have taken too long for anyone to heckle ‘In actual fact we have a system of Civil Partnership which, though not a full social equivalent to marriage per se, nevertheless provides fundamentally equal status in most significant areas of social partnership.’ Who could be bothered?

When we realised the people going to the loo in droves weren’t coming back, we too called it a night (at that point she was walking around the stalls beating a druum and shrieking ‘Jesus walks!’). We met some friends and fellow escapees outside the theatre, headed to the Village to recoup and spent the rest of the blissfully warm night drinking cold lagers on the boat at Eden (from actual glasses, amen!) and laughing our asses off.

Sorry Miss Bernhard, you might think drag is dated but I aint gonna roll over and shit Mars Bars every time someone says ‘Disco!’ either. Maybe they did that twenty years ago, thankfully those days are over.

We love you Sandra, go home.