“About trans women, by trans women, with trans women”: The Careful Catharsis of 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals

Sam Allen interviews Laurie Ward about her and Charli Cowgill’s critically-acclaimed show 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals.

Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill in 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals, photo by Arabella Kennedy-Compston 

Something magical happened in a packed theatre in Islington this November. Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill’s 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals took the audience by the hand and led us through a journey of pleasure, pain, and communal healing. The end result was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I laughed out loud, but I cried quietly, and I was surrounded by dozens of people doing exactly the same. I immediately wanted to pick the brains of one of the geniuses behind this two woman show, and fortunately I had the opportunity to do just that. 

“Me and Charli are party girls, but we’re also critical theory girls,” Laurie tells me with a grin as we sit chatting over coffee. “That’s going in,” I joked, “That’s perfect.” And I wasn’t lying; that really is a perfect summation of exactly what makes 52 Monologues so exhilarating. It’s fun, it’s playful, it’s outrageous, but it’s also cerebral – to use Laurie’s own word – and it makes you think just as much as it makes you feel. 

It’s almost impossible to summarise the show without losing a sense of its complexity and all its interlocking components. There are monologues, dance numbers, lip syncs, stand-up routines, and a constant running thread of verbatim dialogue from trans women that Laurie and Charli interviewed. Varied and exciting though they are, these elements never feel disconnected or without purpose, and every one is impactful and relevant, sharing a hot pink colour palette and a beautifully camp soundtrack. 

“We had a Google Doc called ‘untitled two woman show’, and we just wrote down all the things we wanted to be in it,” Laurie told me when I asked what the process was for creating this amalgam of forms. “That included a strobe light techno birthing scene, the song No More Tears by Barbara Streisand, whipped cream, baby oil, and talcum powder… you know, all the key things.” It’s as rich in content as it is genre, and perhaps the most impressive thing about the show is the way it handles such vastly different topics with care, and allows every one of them the necessary room to breathe. Some moments are hilarious, including jokes about philosopher-YouTuber Contrapoints and some ingenious audience interaction, but some are deeply moving and genuinely difficult to watch. Charli’s monologue about voice training is especially hard-hitting; she discusses being told to “smile more, intonate, and be quieter”, before having a cup of spit produced by the audience pre-show thrown at her face by Laurie. Silence fell in the auditorium as our spit dripped from her face onto the stage floor. “I’m working on spitting back what I’ve always been told to swallow,” she says through gritted teeth.

Perhaps a perfect example of the intersection between comedy and tragedy is the parody of a stand-up routine that Laurie performs, beginning every line with, “Fucking a trans woman is like…” The punchlines start off fairly tame, and gradually progress into vile transphobia. After each of them, a laugh track is played, along with unsettling, distorted music throughout. The audience is lured into this segment with its initial humour, and eventually left in stunned silence, while Laurie grins, and the laugh track erupts. 

“In the beginning of the show we’re befriending the audience,” Laurie explained, “And then we start to get a little bit rough with you guys and plunge you into all these different worlds. When you’re living out these difficult, violent experiences, you’re forced into a position of submission and vulnerability. When I’m performing, and I’m the one putting the audience through something, sometimes that shift in power can be very empowering. We’re not girlbossing or reclaiming our trauma,” she joked, “but it is earnest, it’s about making peace and grieving.”

Indeed, if 52 Monologues has one defining feature, it is its earnestness. The complex reality of the experiences we get insight into – those of Charli, of Laurie, and of the other trans women they interviewed – is driven home at every opportunity. They touch on transphobia (in society at large and within intimate relationships), sexual assault, kink and casual sex, motherhood, grief, and friendship. There is seemingly no stone left unturned, no nuance left uncommunicated. There is an awareness, constantly, that what is being expressed through performance is real, shared, and deeply felt. 52 Monologues reminded me precisely why I love theatre, how important it is to hear stories from the mouths of those who live them, and how beautiful it is to cry with strangers.

Laurie beamed when I mentioned that feeling of catharsis and the group expulsion of emotion, because their aim is to create “a feeling of going through something together with the audience.” “That’s why it’s so incredible when there are lots of queer people, especially trans women, in the audience,” she added. “There’s a real sense of connection; we’re getting emotional at the same time that a trans girl in the audience is getting emotional. It becomes a temporary space to exercise grief through this spectacular, joyful, bubble-gum pink landscape.”

I wanted to know what her and Charli’s favourite reaction to the show was, and she told the story of a trans woman telling her she’d been at the train station after the show and saw another trans girl she recognised from the audience. “They didn't know each other but they went up to each other without speaking and held each other's hands in the train station,” she said with a lump in her throat, “I don't even know how to begin to comprehend that something me and Charli have created could do that. It was a complete dream for us as theatre makers.”

They’re more than theatre makers though; Ward and Cowgill’s creative partnership extends off the stage and into the clubs of Cambridge, where they aim to create “spaces that cross nightlife with theatre.” This is a kind of space Laurie says she would’ve wanted when she was a student here, and one that “exists in London in a way that doesn’t really exist in Cambridge…yet.” The events are all put on by their theatre company, recently renamed ‘piss / CARNATION’, inspired by perhaps my favourite moment in 52 Monologues. One of the interviewees, Petra, explains what the German word ‘Pissnelke’ means to her: “the beautiful and otherworldly flowers which bloom from human pee on the sides of motorways and petrol stations.” At its core, it’s the idea that beauty, be it natural or theatrical, can come from “dirt and abjection”, and that is the essence of Laurie and Charli’s work.

These projects don’t just have Charli and Laurie in common, they’re also connected by the fact that they all include, in Laurie’s words, “two trans women on stage voicing their own experiences unapologetically and on their own terms.” When I asked why this felt so important to reiterate, Laurie said, “It feels like there isn’t that much work being made right now about trans women, by trans women, with trans women. We create space for the messiness and the joy and the pain of life as young trans women and young queer people. It isn't some kind of distilled headline saying: this is what it is to be a trans woman!”

After she’d revealed the company name change, I asked Laurie if there was anything else she could tease. She told me that her and Charli have just been given an exciting commission to create a new show, which they plan to call UGLY SISTERS: (adult human females) / a tale of two sissies [working title], premiering in March. They also plan to return to Fringe in 2024, and to keep performing 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals. If I’m lucky, I’ll get the chance to be in that audience again.