In 2020, for the UK artist and playwright Travis Alabanza, writing a play became harder than ever. Commissioned for London’s Bush theatre, the play suddenly needed to be Covid-restriction friendly: a piece for a single performer, on a static set, to keep cast and creative numbers – and the chance of infection – down. It was no small task, but as Alabanza says cheerfully now: “The rent was still due!”
The result is Overflow, a 70-minute monologue set in a club bathroom. It received critical acclaim in the UK and then Australia in 2022, where it was led by an all-trans and gender-nonconforming team (a first in the country) for Darlinghurst Theatre Company. Now it is playing a triumphant return season at Sydney festival before embarking on seasons in Melbourne and Geelong.
If the play feels like it contains a kernel of lockdown panic, this probably can’t be helped – we’re now all too intimately acquainted with feeling trapped. But Alabanza wrote the work fuelled by a different strain of panic: the rightwing moral panic against trans people using public bathrooms that match their gender.
“Whilst the pandemic was continuing, despite public space not being able to be accessed, trans people in bathrooms were still being talked about,” Alabanza says. “I found that such a weird feeling – like, public space doesn’t even exist any more and we’re still debated about.”
Overflow places our protagonist Rosie (played in the Australian production by Janet Anderson) in a club bathroom where she’s locked herself in to hide from transphobic would-be attackers. To distract herself, she reminisces about encounters in club bathrooms like this one on nights past – the good, the bad, the sacred – while a leaking tap slowly fills a sink and threats lurk outside the door. Alabanza describes it as “a mediation on public space”.
During the same period, Alabanza also wrote their prize-winning memoir None of the Above. “Honestly, Overflow was kind of a godsend, because [the book] was quite heavy and in the ground and very historical, but Overflow was getting to reminisce about nightclubs and parties and clubbing whilst that was all going on,” they say.
Alabanza was flattered when director Dino Dimitriadis approached them to say the Darlinghurst Theatre Company wanted to stage the play, and gave their blessing. But on the flight over to Sydney for the premiere – such a long flight, the perfect amount of time for anxieties to kick in – Alabanza started to wonder: what if Alabanza didn’t like the production? And what would it be like to be in Australia, a place where transphobia is a pet subject with rightwing commentators?
But when they arrived in Sydney, Alabanza’s worries melted away; instead, they soaked up the experience like a sponge. They were “blown away” by Anderson, Dimitriadis and the whole team. “And I’m not just saying this,” Alabanza adds; they’ve learned that “if my work goes to someone that hasn’t spent countless nights at 5am at the end of a drag bar, they won’t quite get the language”.
Plus, the Australian team is creating new opportunities for local trans talent on and behind the stage. “I met everyone, and they were all trans and gender-nonconforming,” Alabanza says. “And I’ve never experienced that with my work. I’ve tried with my work to have as many trans creatives, but I’ve never experienced everyone. The energy was incredible. It felt like a club. It felt as much like a club as a theatre could.”
Anderson, who graduated from Nida in 2022, made her stage debut in Overflow and is returning to the role after receiving glowing reviews – including from Alabanza, who calls her “a star”.
“It’s rare for actors to get an hour to themselves on stage to show off the breadth of their emotion,” Alabanza says. “It’s even rarer for a trans girl to get that moment to be like ‘this is what I can do’.”
Why Alabanza makes art is in part because of moments like the one Anderson is having right now. “In the UK, and I’m sure the situation might feel similar in Australia, when we don’t have the ability to go to so many different stages in public life – the government, our workplaces, all these places where we’re shut out, art is such a great place to reverse those feelings and to feel alive.”
Overflow is on at the Eternity Playhouse as part of Sydney festival until 27 January; then Arts Centre Melbourne 31 January – 4 February and Geelong Arts Centre 8-10 February.
