Rotterdam writer Jon Brittain on his hit transgender comedy
Jon Brittain has just won his first Olivier Award for the play Rotterdam. It’s a play “some people won’t think you should have written”, a friend warned him on first read. Why? Brittain is a straight, married, cisgender man who wrote a play about the emotional fallout from one person’s decision to transition from Fiona to Adrian. And he did it it with such acute insight and to such acclaim that it swiftly transferred from Battersea’s Theatre 503 to the West End. Rotterdam’s path to the Arts Theatre – it’s biggest venue to date – started five years ago, in 2012. That was still some time before Orange Is The New Black, Transparent and Boy Meets Girl (for starters) had brought transgender stories to mass public consciousness through their behemoth streaming platforms. Back then, there were woefully few trans stories in mainstream popular culture. “A couple of my friends came out as trans,” Brittain tells me as we chat over the phone. “I’d never seen a story about characters who were dealing with that. Or whose loved ones were negotiating their ideas and preconceptions. In the couple of years after I wrote the play, an explosion of awareness happened. What really broke into the popular consciousness was Caitlyn Jenner.” Rotterdam begins with a psychological minefield of a predicament. Alice is about to press send on an email in which she comes out to her parents (or, as the script reads, “Dear Mum and Dad… I’m a Lebanon”). But then her girlfriend pips her to the post with news that she wants to become a man. Does that now make Alice straight? In its review of Rotterdam’s 2015 London debut, Time Out lauded the show for giving transgender issues not only more exposure but also greater respect. This is all thanks to the world Brittain has carefully crafted. His characters are beautiful, flawed, hilarious and neurotic. In short, they’re totally relatable, whatever your experience, preconceptions or vested interest. They also have good comebacks. They navigate awkwardness around sometimes confusing terminology and gender politics along with the audience. They have seduced theatregoers from Battersea to New York – the show just played Brits Off Broadway – with their humanity, warmth and wit. And all this in a play Brittain thought he would “keep on kind of tinkering with and then put back in the drawer”. “I like laughing, basically,” Brittain explains. “When people laugh they relax a little bit and become open to other emotions. There’s something about jokes that disarms you, so when more emotionally challenging stuff comes about, you’re more engaged.” He wrote Rotterdam through a combination of immersive research, “supportive but not uncritical” conversations with trans friends and a vital collaboration with Gendered Intelligence, a not-for-profit company that does incredible work using mentoring, educational outreach and the arts to support the transgender community. (Look them up, but not until you’ve finished this, please.) So when Brittain and the Rotterdam company found themselves in the front row at the Olivier Awards earlier this year – “Donnacadh [O’Briain, director] and I thought, ‘Is this a sign?’” – as Rotterdam was crowned the winner of the Outstanding Achievement In An Affiliate Theatre award, they took the chance to dedicate the gong not only to friends, family and teachers past but also to Gendered Intelligence. Standing up in the Royal Albert Hall and accepting an Olivier Award – which Brittain informs me (please, God, only hypothetically) is “heavy enough to kill a man” – was an unmissable opportunity to “reach people in the room and raise awareness”. It should, of course, go without saying that aside from any social or political purpose, Rotterdam is first and foremost an award-winning piece of entertainment. Its primary aim is to tell a great story, not educate. But it still strikes me that this run at the Arts Theatre is its best chance yet to reach the biggest number of people. If you’re looking for a great night at the theatre, you should be one of them. Rotterdam may tell just one transgender story among a “massive plurality of experiences”, but let’s hope it paves the way for more of those stories to storm the stage.