With a bang, neon lights come up on a tall, flame-haired woman standing in a nightclub bathroom.
"The best piss you can have? Obviously, it is the pre-emptive one … It's the pièce de résistance of wee wees," she declares.
So opens Darlinghurst Theatre Company's production of Overflow, a one-woman tour de force that grapples with the gendered politics of public bathrooms.
The play centres on Rosie, a 20-something British trans woman who shares her experiences of transness through a series of darkly comic, occasionally frightening, and often relatable bathroom anecdotes.
Think Fleabag, but trans, and in a bathroom.
"It was unlike anything I'd ever read. I feel like I'd always looked for something like [Overflow] but never found anything that really spoke to me and my trans identity," says Janet Anderson, who plays Rosie.
The notion of a "pre-emptive wee", in particular, is all-too-familiar to the 21-year-old performer. During the early stages of her transition, Anderson was attending Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and recalls countless uncomfortable bus trips home holding on "for dear life".
"I would always be busting on the bus home because I was too frightened to go in a gendered bathroom," she says.
"I didn't feel comfortable going into the men's because I was very clearly wearing make-up and had long hair, but I also didn't feel comfortable going into the women's because, at that point, I just felt like I wasn't as womanly as I 'should' be, and didn't feel like I deserved to be there."
Overflow is set entirely in a nightclub bathroom; over the course of 60-odd minutes, Rosie riffs on her surroundings and recounts various personal anecdotes — from easy friendships forged at the basin and the jubilation of sisterhood, to false allyship and contending with transmisogyny.
Periodically, a loud banging on the door reminds us just how unsafe bathrooms can be: a group of men has gathered outside, and the locked door is all that stands between Rosie and violence.
Like Rosie, Anderson has had her fair share of "bathroom dysphoria" — which she drew on to prepare for the role.
"I've had experiences being physically pulled out of bathrooms, or told that I was using the wrong one, or being joked about," she says.
"I feel like most trans people do [have those experiences]."
Last year, Anderson started the #LetThemSwim campaign in response to the introduction of transphobic entry rules at McIver's Ladies Baths in Sydney's eastern suburbs, which sought to ban trans women who hadn't undergone gender affirmation surgery. (The pool's management team was later replaced following community outcry, and the rules amended to allow "transgender women, as defined in the NSW Discrimination Act".)
For Anderson, the chance to tell Rosie's story feels like activism through art.
"There's something so powerful about just seeing a real trans human on stage. You don't need a lecture. You don't need to take notes or anything," she says.
"Just simply experiencing that person's honesty and that person's humanity is enough."
Trans artists take centre stage
Overflow is Janet Anderson's main stage debut; when she spoke to ABC Arts in September, she was a month shy of graduating from NIDA, when she will become the first openly trans woman to complete its acting degree.
The play is also breaking ground in terms of trans representation in Australian theatre: it is the first main stage production by an all-trans and gender-diverse team.
"I have waited for this moment for such a long time, and it's somewhat unbelievable that we've reached this moment," says director Dino Dimitriadis.
Dimitriadis was adamant from the get-go that the production be trans-led — but knew it would be a challenge in a sector that is still lagging when it comes to representation.
"I think there is very much a trans erasure that's happened in the arts … because, like so many erasures in our industry, the structures have not really facilitated the voices and support networks for those artists to make work and to be visible," Dimitriadis explains.
Dimitriadis has been making theatre for the past 15 years, with a particular focus on staging queer stories. They've seen a positive shift in the industry in that time — though it's hard to measure definitively, given that peak bodies such as the Australia Council do not currently track data on LGBTQI artists or practitioners.
Notable recent milestones include Queensland Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company's production of Triple X, the first trans love story to premiere on an Australian main stage, written by and starring trans writer and performer Glace Chase.
This year has also seen trans and non-binary actors in key roles across major musicals such as Hamilton (Marty Alix), the Hayes Theatre Company's production of Jekyll and Hyde (Brady Peeti), Fangirls (Blake Appelqvist) and Jagged Little Pill (Maggie McKenna).
Dimitriadis, who is currently part of the programming team for Sydney's Old Fitz Theatre, says: "As one of the few trans theatre directors in Australia I feel I now have a responsibility to push that conversation and to do it authentically to make sure that there are trans artists in decision-making positions."
Dimitriadis discovered Overflow, which is written by British trans writer and theatre maker Travis Alabanza, after reading about its London premiere on Twitter during lockdown in 2020.
"I read the script and thought, 'This has to go on now,'" Dimitriadis recalls.
They pitched it to Darlinghurst Theatre Company, as an all-trans production.
"It's literally the first moment that this could have happened. Even two years ago, I don't think we would have been able to do this [with an all-trans team]. I sort of jumped the minute I thought, 'Actually, now it's possible.'"
Beyond box-ticking
Dimitriadis says you can "feel the transness" in the production; every detail, from the club-like foyer set-up to the poetry tacked on the bathroom cubicle doors, has been thoughtfully curated.
"Working with [a trans and gender diverse team] deeply informs the texture of the work, but we're not sitting around talking about being trans, and that's what's kind of amazing about it," the director explains.
"We're able to just make the work through the lens of our lived experience and get on with it."
In staging the show, the team has proactively engaged with many of the points the play raises around safety, access and inclusion for trans and gender-diverse folk.
In the bathrooms at Darlinghurst's Eternity Playhouse, where Overflow is playing, audience members are invited to write on the walls and mirrors.
"God is a trans woman," reads one contribution.
The bathroom installation is part of a multi-pronged community engagement strategy, which includes trans artist development opportunities, affordable ticketing, and a community safety plan.
"We have someone hanging out here on the footpath making sure that there are no drunk people coming past and heckling," explains Tommy Misa.
Misa, a Samoan-Australian fa'afafine multidisciplinary artist and writer, is part of a small team (including queer lobbyist Lauren Foy and Māori and Samoan rapper-songwriter Jamaica Moana) tasked with community engagement and assessing the theatre space for accessibility, safety and inclusivity.
"We're welcoming people in as if it is our home," says Misa.
The response, they say, has been "amazing".
"[Trans] people have seen themselves represented in a way that you don't get to see often on Australian stages, and they are vocal about it and feel like they're part of the conversation."
Misa says they have worked on shows that superficially appear to be supporting trans and queer artists, with a focus on marketability and "finger click" moments, but don't commit to longer-term relationship building.
"I've worked on projects where the focus is on getting everyone's pronouns right … but then that's often where it ends."
Dimitriadis says Darlinghurst Theatre Company is one of the few Australian theatre companies actively engaging with the trans community to make work.
"Companies are not reaching out to trans people to ask them what stories they've got," they say.
"Like with all trans visibility, it's trans people who push the agenda. We are still having to advocate for our visibility."
Misa agrees, and says the most important work is happening "behind the scenes" on a relational and community level.
"We're having actual conversations, and communities [are] feeling like they can come to this show and see that it's for them — and by them, too," Misa says.
"I don't think you can just claim that a space is a 'safe space' — it's a constantly evolving thing."
'Safe spaces' for whom?
The notion of public bathrooms as 'safe spaces' is one that Travis Alabanza had long wanted to interrogate.
In 2020, towards the end of the UK's first lockdown, the British writer and performer received a playwriting commission from the Bush Theatre in London.
"The UK papers [were] talking about trans people in bathrooms [at the time]," Alabanza recalls.
"That wasn't a new discussion, but what I found so weird was that we hadn't been in a public bathroom for five months, because of lockdown.
"[And] despite there being a record amount of [COVID] deaths that week, here on the front page of the news was a debate about trans people in bathrooms — that none of us could use.
"I just found that so ridiculous, whilst also kind of surreal and funny. Those are normally the sweet spots for when I come up with an idea."
The debate over gender-segregated bathrooms has been ongoing in the UK and the US in recent years, spurred by transphobic campaigns to deny trans people access to bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
In Australia, state and federal anti-discrimination laws protect trans people from many forms of discrimination and harassment, including unreasonably denying access to bathrooms that align with their gender. These protections extend to trans people who have not legally or surgically affirmed their gender.
Even so, the inclusion of trans people and particularly trans women in so-called "female-only" spaces has often proved contentious (McIver's Ladies Baths being one example).
"What the play tries to look at is the way that these debates [frame] trans people as trying to infiltrate this 'safe space' that cisgender women have created," says Alabanza.
Claiming space
At its heart, Overflow questions ownership of "safe spaces" and who is entitled to safety.
True to the play's title, the bathroom begins to flood, and the banging on the door signals an ever-present and unseen threat waiting for Rosie beyond the relative safety of the cubicle walls.
The sense of impending danger is something that trans people deal with on a daily basis, says Dimitriadis.
"There is always a sense of foreboding, moving in the world as a trans person — we are not safe all the time," they say.
"But also, what I want the audience to take away … is that we are not defined by trauma and we are not defined by victimhood.
"Actually, we're defined by joy and friendship."
It's a sentiment echoed by Alabanza, and their play.
"Despite all the adversity that trans people face, despite how unsafe it is for us on the streets, we still have lots of power and joy in us," the playwright says.
"We're still deciding to go out and live our lives."
Dimitriadis says: "Now that there are enough of us visible, we're not going away.
"Even just one trans woman standing on stage and carrying the whole evening is a testament to that."
Overflow runs until September 25 at Darlinghurst Theatre Company.
