Law & Life: Transgender Stories
Devisor: Charley Allanah
Presenter: Katie Green, ICLC (Inner City Legal Centre)
Venue: The Rebel Theatre
June 5-7, 2025
Law & Life: Transgender Stories features a cast of five trans people who generously share an inside view of their experiences with a lively wit, colourful anecdotes and songs. While devastatingly painful to hear, it is uplifting to see how their survival is intimately connected to their ability to recast their experience creatively.
The five are diverse and present different perspectives on the trans journey and the law. The sparkling Vonni who opens the show with a cheeky song and sexy strutting, is a former Les Girls cast member who performed alongside the legendary Carlotta. The amusing insights she gives into police corruption in Kings Cross are amusing only in hindsight as the reality was frightening for the vulnerable victims of police intimidation. Watching her, she seems ebullient but wounded, a survivor of a shameful time.
The iridescent rainbow costume of gender diversity advocate and queer community icon, norrie mAy-welby, flashes gleefully as they sing what well may be their anthem Stand by your gender. norrie’s battle with the law to grant them a non-binary gender marker on their birth certificate was winding and arduous. However, with the help of the law’s representatives – for whatever reason – norrie’s persistence gained a victory for herself and for the future. “Yee-Ha!” as norrie would say.
The personal struggles of the sari-clad Kavitha Savisamy and Jeremy Moineau, to become who they felt themselves to be rather than who they were expected to be, are moving and illuminating. It is refreshing to be made aware of the pleasures of femininity, the bangles, the fall and rustle of embroidered fabric, and consequently the injustice of having it denied. And sometimes, opposition to self-realisation seems simply cantankerous. Why not be called Jeremy if that is your name?
While we may feel the law has moved on, Charley Allanah has another injustice to put forward which makes us realise that the advance might not be as significant as we think. And there is always the sobering thought that what the law grants it can always remove – and swiftly. As norrie circles on her famous bubble-making bicycle and the cast sings We will survive, let us hope that the work of the Inner City Legal Centre in empowering the trans community receives the support it deserves.
