‘Law and Life: Transgender Stories’ Brings Vital Stories To Vivid

Law and Life: Transgender Stories is being recognised as a highlight of the Vivid Festival this year, and for good reason.

Presented as part of the Vivid Ideas program by the community enterprise, Inner City Legal Centre, Law and Life sees a group of five trans storytellers and one ally share their lived experiences navigating gender, identity, legality, and survival.

The event brings together an expansive cast of trans and gender diverse people. You’ve got Kings Cross legend Vonni, of Les Girls and Priscilla fame; lifelong activist norrie mAy welby, who made history in 2014 by becoming the first Australian to be legally recognised as neither male or female; and Kavitha Sivasamy, a founding lawyer and director of Justice Q, a specialist legal service run for and by LGBTQIA+ people out of Melbourne.

It’s not the ICLC’s first time platforming underrepresented stories. Earlier this year, they led a walking tour group of the Kings Cross with Sex Work: A Legal and Social History, which repeatedly sold out.

“The event is halfway between life storytelling event with lots of theatrical elements to keep people entertained,” said CEO of the ICLC, Katie Green.

“Funnily enough, we do bring in a lot of light and comedy and costume to the show while actually talking about some pretty serious things.”

“It’s not quite a panel,” welby said. “It’s a bit of a walk and talk and a strut and sing.”

The event is the brainchild of director, playwright, and producer Charley Allanah, who crossed paths with the ICLC a number of times before embarking on the project with them.

“I had been looking to get involved in more community work, and more work of different kinds,” she told CityHub. “So it was really perfectly timed for me.”

“As a community based Legal Center, we believe that putting these stories out into the Public Domain is integral to the social change that has to come,” Green said.

“This offers us an opportunity to have a discussion in the public domain that’s positive and humanising, so it also goes towards our goals of making the world a safer and more inclusive and more understanding space for our trans community.”

Allanah holds a similar sentiment about Law and Life, and said that she believes it’s more important than ever to platform the stories of trans and gender diverse people, especially in the current political climate.

“83% of Australians don’t believe they know a trans person,” she said. “They don’t really have any understanding of how it would be to live a life where you get told you can’t have a medication that would would save you from going through a puberty that you don’t want to have, or being told you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to reverse that.

“Every time we meet someone new, they’re asking us about our story and asking it again, again and again. These six people have put up their hands to say, we’ll tell our stories over and over again a number of times, so that maybe they can hopefully disseminate a bit of that story.”

“Stories of survival and triumph”

Despite speaking to Allanah, Welby, and Green separately, all three emphasised how transformative Law and Life had been for them, even sitting in rehearsals across the country.

“There’s this amazing kind of sense of community being built before our very eyes,” Allanah said.

“And people who are, you know, really as far apart in age, in cultural experience as you can be in this country, who are unified… it is such a profound experience.

“While there are no two trans stories or trans experiences are the same, there are these few threads of similarity that kind of bind us all together in really, in really fascinating ways.”

welby warns that not all of the stories are easy to hear.

“It’s not all fluffy. There’s a lot of reality in it,” they said. “Some of the stories might punch you in the gut, but there’s a lot of uplifting moments in it too. So if there’s any stories of bad things that have happened, they’re also stories of survival and triumph with a bit of song and dance”

Transgender and gender diverse people are being threatened in legal and political realms like never before. Documenting and sharing their stories with as many people as possible is not only an admirable theatre experience, but an act of resistance in the face of fascism.

“We hope that it will provide a renewed energy and enthusiasm, particularly in our gay and lesbian community members,” said Green.

“There’s just too few of us compared to, you know, too many of everyone else, and too many aggressive messages coming in the other direction,” Allanah says.

“We need our allies. We need our families, our friends, and our lovers, and our partners.”

‘Law and Life: Transgender Stories‘ is running from 5-7 June at the Rebel Theatre, Dawes Point.