Gloop on Glooptopia!

Marlborough Productions’ Executive Director David Sheppeard said: “A big motivation for New Queers on the Block was getting stories onto our stages that don’t usually get heard or seen, simply because representation matters! For the final tour we had the opportunity to commission an LGBTQ+ led work by an artist who also identifies as disabled with the trailblazing folks at Unlimited and support from ACCA and Esmee Faibairn Foundation. We wanted to give this artist the resources to make something bold and ambitious and that could be scaled up for space like ACCA. Gloop, the UK’s premiere green autistic drag queen took this commission by the horns and delivered a truly extraordinary experience in Glooptopia. We hope that you all get the chance to see this work when we can all be together, because even now, I can’t get it out of my head!”

It’s December 2018 and I’m sat at my computer waiting for a Skype call from Xavier De Sousa from the terribly prestigious Marlborough Pub and Theatre; who had honoured my first ever solo-show, The Gloopshow! as an award winning show by the powers bestowed upon them by the Brighton Fringe back in May? Which is precisely two years from when I am writing now on May 1st 2020 AKA MAYDAY and a time of international workers strikes and solidarity for a better world! Which is precisely what I end up talking with Xavier De Sousa about on that fateful phone call (that was actually a distinctively less stylish, but severely more functional Skype call) which is happening just after the rip-roaring finale of my first ever show (The Gloopshow, an award WINNING show don’t’cha know?) at the Bethnal Green Working Mens Club (Nov.31st) and I have like, no, fucking, clue, what I’m supposed to do with my life when X.D.S lays down that there’s a commission for me if I have the cahoonas to take it;

and I realise for the first time in my life someone is actually saying to me;

“What do you want to do?”

Not “What CAN you do?” Not “Heres two bits of string and some shit, good luck!” And I say;

“I wanna know Glooptopia; and to do it I simply must go to an abandoned island (Stroma) off the coast of the Scottish highlands (basically fucking nowhere) to go to a cave that is there (the arsehole of nowhere) Because that cave is called; The Gloup.”

And he said ok.

What followed was 2019, and it blasted my tits clean off.

As a certified bogwitch; the admin-industrial complex of live art was quite the wechsel. I came to this tour because a theatre that had faith in my exuberant, scrawling, exhausting excess and were there ready to give it rocket fuel. But also, I became an UNLIMITED commissioned artist in the process; which is a whole story, a saga, A BEHEMOTH OF A YARN NO WORD COUNT WILL EVER CONTAIN!

And it’s precisely that our ways of saying are so limited that we must take these chances despite the questionable framing.

For example I stepped onto the 2nd most elaborate stage of my life at the Attenborough art centre. Who were kind enough to support the work, but did not provide a day, before THE DAY for us to do a technical run through, thus did not support the artist.  Because thats the business BABY! (We’ll take some responsibility for that Gloop – Team Marly x) I had, no idea, what any of it even looked like. Fortunately full faith in my tech team AND THE infinite frame of live art (plus the Marly)  got me to the GLOUP. & By the GLOUP, GLOOP Delivered the promise of GLOOPTOPIA! Because everyones aware of access until it comes to crunch time when you just actually have to do it.

Thats the business. Baby.

And if you don’t want to be a disabled artist you’d better go off to a world without anyone as anywhere anyone is means business, booby.

WHICH IS WHY I DO SO WELL ALONE ON STAGE! Only I had a BSL signer. Two actually. Which was another BIG challenge to integrate, but we did it! How many deaf people had actually been integrated into the audience, however, is a question for the venues.

Suffice to say, some people are doing the work.

Speaking of which every new venue we went to was new work. A touring show has a certain nuance to a successful performance that was a hard balance to strike. My producer stepped in as vocal coach in the last minute, with the toilets as a rehearsal room, to give me the lesson of a life! In communication #justtourthings
This experience revealed to me new heights of sophistication I could reach with the right direction; now something I aspire to!

My finale show’s, finale, was an explosion like nothing else ever. To herald it I say, my french, vegan, lesbian Gorgon; Persephone; says; “Now let me show you the last thing, you will ever see!” And I finally showed the world my map of the world; every flag of every nation patch-worked together in a grid, covered in cascading bubbles whilst I’m wearing the most gorgeous and expensive thing I own (nude.)

That was March.

Next week; Corona Virus cancelled the world.

The gratitude & pride I have for the privilege of this experience is unbridled, UNPARALLELED.  That I can sit in this quarantine, with the last thing I did be the fulfilment of the promise I made when I was first ever asked “what do you want to do?” Final Words; Fuck. Boris. Johnson.

Photos: Kaleido Shoots