Royal Court play Cowbois aims to put ‘trans joy’ centre stage

A Royal Court play aims to bring trans stories to a new audience in London with an LGBTQ+ take on the Wild West.

The producers of Cowbois say the play, first seen at the Royal Shakespeare Company, is for everyone but particularly those less familiar with trans identities.

Writer Charlie Josephine said they wanted to highlight “trans joy”.

They also wanted to show forgotten transgender histories, in a playful and joyous way.

“I knew I was writing for people who were less familiar with trans people,” says Charlie, who also co-directs the play and uses he/they pronouns, says.

Because of this, Charlie says they stuck with a classic narrative but threw in a less classic romantic lead – a trans-masculine bandit named Jack.

Charlie says they hoped to create empathy in the crowd and a “playful curiosity about gender”.

This was particularly apparent through the character of the sheriff, Charlie explained, who they described as a cis-gendered man who learned he could like wearing feminine clothing.

But the play does not focus on the trans characters’ identities. In fact, when one of the characters, Lou, comes out as transgender, their new name and identity is hardly spoken about.

Charlie says: “I didn’t want to write something pointing at the problem. I wanted to show – here’s another way we could live.”

Sophie Melville, whose character instantly supports Lou’s new identity, explains why she thinks her character reacted like this.

“It shouldn’t be a big deal for Miss Lilian, like it shouldn’t for anyone else. Humans are humans, we should all be free to express ourselves however we want. This play celebrates that.”

And there was a reason Charlie chose cowboys as a theme. “I wanted to be a cowboy growing up, as this young queer trans kid. But rewatching it I was like, they’re really misogynistic and racist.”

This led Charlie to go on to research the LGBTQ+ history of cowboys.

One historian who researches the LGBTQ+ history of the American Wild West, Dr Peter Boag, says: “I was astonished by the number of people who dressed and lived lives in the American West different from the sex they were assigned at birth.”

He believes some of these people may have dressed like this to evade the law, or were women hoping to access male privilege, but not always.

After digging through newspaper clippings, legal records, and archival records, he said he found that hundreds of people had lived in genders that differed from the ones that he said they were assigned at birth, for their whole recorded lives.

He says: “I have many examples of people who I am comfortable calling trans. They were just every bit as much a part of society back then as they are today.”

The play wants to shed a light on this, Charlie says.

“Trans people have always existed,” Charlie adds. “I wanted to flip the Hollywood version of cowboys that we think about.”

Sean Holmes, who co-directs the play with Charlie, said the production showed theatre was moving in the right direction.

“What theatre does is it shows human behaviour. And what theatre does, especially at a time like this, is it shows us that we’re all more like each other than we might realise.”

Bea, a non-binary Londoner who also goes by the name Alan, came to the theatre with their dad Phil.

They said the play’s trans representation had the family in tears. A particular scene stood out to Phil: “When Lou said, ‘how I feel on the inside and how I feel on the outside matches’, that was amazing.”

Initially written for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Cowbois has now been brought to the Royal Court.

The team behind the production hopes the play will give Londoners a fun night out.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected]