Posts Tagged queer theatre

Boobytrapped: A Sharp, Funny and Emotionally Honest Dive into Identity and Masculinity

July 21, 2026 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Click on image to buy ticket

Boobytrapped is sharp, funny, emotionally exposed, and built on the kind of lived experience that can’t be faked. When I first read Freddie’s answers, what struck me wasn’t just the craft behind the writing, but the clarity of purpose. This is a play that knows exactly why it exists and exactly what it wants to say — about bodies, identity, masculinity, queerness, and the strange, messy business of becoming yourself in a world that insists on telling you what you are.

There’s a generosity running through the interview too. Freddie doesn’t dodge the difficult parts — the frustration, the fear, the absurdity — but he also refuses to let heaviness swallow the humour. That balance is hard to pull off, and it’s part of what makes boobytrapped feel so alive. It’s a story built from real conversations, real contradictions, and real encounters with people who don’t always get it right. And that honesty gives the play its charge.

Below is the full interview with with writer, Freddie Haberfellner.

1. Your script treats a bodyswap not as a gimmick but as a way of exploring identity and perspective. When did you realise this supernatural twist could become the foundation of the story?

First of all, thanks so much for having me! The idea for a bodyswap play kind of just landed in my brain one night! I was roughly eight months on testosterone and somewhat starting to pass, had just received a date for top surgery (with more than a year’s wait ahead of me) and was spending more time around cis gay men. As a result, I was thinking a lot about what makes someone a man, how differently the world treats you based on how you’re perceived, all the different ways in which all of us attempt to affirm our gender and identity. On one hand, I was really surprised by how much I had common with the cis gays, how easy it was to feel like I was one of them and how welcome some of them made me feel. On the other hand, I was really shocked by the casual misogyny, bodyshaming and transphobia I encountered. I asked myself what I would have been like as a cis man, or how these guys would cope with being trans even for a day… and so the bodyswap seemed like the perfect way to find out!

2. Simon and Kevin wake up in one another’s bodies — but they also confront one another’s insecurities and assumptions. Which aspect of that dynamic was the hardest to write honestly?

Finding Kevin (the cis man)’s voice was definitely the biggest challenge, balancing his humanity whilst portraying the toxicity and prejudice I’ve experienced from a lot of cis gay men. I think the early drafts really reflect how much I was struggling because he barely spoke and when he did he mostly just said ‘What?’ He was really missing nuance, perhaps because I’ve been quite pissed off with (some) cis people for how they treat the trans community, or how even the ones who say they support us won’t show up as much as we need them to at this critical moment in time. But, as a writer, it’s not my job to tell people off! I had to figure out why Kevin treats Simon badly and find empathy for his pain, too. At the end of the day, we need to be hard on systems, not people – often easier said than done!

3. The show arrives at a moment when trans people are often spoken about rather than listened to. Did writing boobytrapped feel like a way of contributing your own perspective to that conversation?

Yes, absolutely. Putting on plays – both my previous show F*ckboy and now boobytrapped – is definitely my small way of standing up for my community. To say it’s frustrating to see the way we’re being spoken about would be an understatement, and the fact that the voice of misinformation and, let’s be real, hate speech is so loud and supported by some very powerful people is terrifying. We’re seeing over and over again that decisions concerning trans people’s basic human rights are being made without a single one of us being consulted, without unbiased research that is readily available actually being considered. I hope trans people like myself feel seen, understood and affirmed, but I’m also hoping that cis people seeing the show might learn a thing or two, and leave the theatre ready to double down on their support for the trans community.

4. The show is playful and funny, but it’s also set against the backdrop of debates around gender identity and the social climate referenced in your press materials. How do you balance humour with those heavier themes?

My therapist would tell you that humour is just how I cope with any difficult situation (I think they might be on to something there!). But being trans is silly, because being a human being is silly! Going through puberty again as an adult, dealing with the emotional and hormonal rollercoaster of that whilst holding down a job (or several)… it’s a goldmine for comedy in my opinion. But I think it’s so common in the queer community or any marginalised group to find the laughter in dire situations in order to maintain hope. Translated onto the stage, I always find that if a play is only sad, serious or heavy with no moments of joy and levity I’ll eventually check out emotionally, so it’s really important to me as an artist to always find the silliness and through that, perhaps, the humanity of a moment. And there’s more than enough trans tragedy out there: the prevailing narrative for too long has been that our lives are hard and miserable, full stop. While it’s true that our lives are made harder than they need to be, being trans is also an incredible gift that has brought me so much joy.

5. Body-swap stories often hinge on empathy and understanding. What questions did you most want audiences to ask themselves through Simon and Kevin’s journey?

One of the reasons I wanted to write this play was the insecurity I witnessed in myself and pretty much everyone around me regarding our own bodies. Wanting to look different, be different – bigger, smaller, more muscular, softer, harder… however we look, we always seem to think someone else looks better. I’ve been looking into the looksmaxxing movement and I’m simply horrified by the damage these young men do to themselves in order to reach some ‘ideal of masculinity’. But, of course, some people are of the opinion that I as a trans man am mutilating my own body by accessing gender-affirming care. I strongly reject that notion, yet it can’t be denied that there are similarities. So why do any of us feel the need to change our bodies? Why do we have these fixed ideas of what men and women look like? Why do our bodies determine how we are treated, what language people use about us? And how can we make peace with ourselves and the bodies we find ourselves in?

6. After touring Fckboy across Europe and receiving several awards, what part of that experience fed most directly into boobytrapped?

I love this question! I’ve absolutely loved performing F*ckboy but it’s also a very challenging and exhausting show to do. It is just my little self on the stage and I’ve definitely felt the pressure of that. So I think I was really craving collaboration with other performers and I’ve definitely found that with my wonderful co-star Ermis Makides as well as the whole team. My good friend Romeo Lau has been beyond brilliant as a director, Ro Winchester’s contribution as intimacy director has made some really difficult scenes easy and fun, and Callie O’Brien’s sound design really brought it all together. We’ve genuinely had such a blast workshopping and rehearsing this show, as well as previewing it at Prague Fringe. Plus, we’re all trans and non-binary people and it’s just been so special to be in a room with brilliant queer creatives who’ve poured so much love into my latest brain creation!

7. The gay-club setting feels vivid and central to the story. What drew you to that environment as the place where this extraordinary situation begins?

As so many transmasc people did, I grew into my queerness in sapphic spaces and I was very lucky to find some incredible community there with true care and togetherness. Once I realised that I was a) a man and b) really into men, I started spending more time in spaces predominantly frequented by cis gay men and, genuinely, I was really surprised by the difference in vibe. By no means are sapphic spaces perfect but, in my experience, they’re better at making everyone feel safe and welcome. So there was something really intriguing about starting the show in a place that, at first glance, is more welcoming to one of the characters than the other but, once you look closer, maybe isn’t the best place for either of them to be. A central theme of boobytrapped is definitely about feeling at home in your own body, but there is a wider theme of feeling at home in general. The gay club is the first of several potential homes we visit throughout the show. Slight spoiler here, but the characters also end up in the club’s accessible toilet which is where the body swap happens. I felt that was a necessary nod at the current attack on trans people’s right to use public toilets (as well as other gendered spaces).

8. The partnership with Waverley Care adds another dimension to the production. How did that collaboration come about, and what does it mean to you?

As a company, our goal isn’t just to make theatre but to use our art to inspire social change, to bring people together, make them feel less alone and raise awareness of queer struggles. Collaborating with a charity has been a goal of ours for quite some time and I’m so thrilled that we get to support Waverley Care’s vital work. Whilst sexual health isn’t a direct theme of the show, there definitely is a lot of talk about sex so their work almost feels like an extension of the play! We’ll have informational leaflets available to our audience members to hopefully raise awareness of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and general sexual health, and audiences will have the opportunity to donate too if they can. I’m also really excited to be doing a writing workshop with some of their service users. The focus will be on using your lived experience to create art but keeping yourself as emotionally safe as possible in the process. With two plays inspired by my life under my belt, I’ve learnt quite a lot along the way, and have also seen how empowering it can be to create art in this way. So being able to share this experience with other queer folks is an immense privilege.

9. Simon and Kevin’s relationship is messy, tender and often funny. What surprised you most about writing two characters with such different perspectives on masculinity and identity?

From the offset I knew that I wanted the play to be a romcom – there’s a dire lack of love stories especially for trans men – but I also knew that there would be some real obstacles for the characters to overcome. I didn’t want to trivialize or downplay the transphobia that happens at the beginning, but was also determined to show that people can learn and grow when given the opportunity. Whilst writing, I had a lot of wonderful conversations with my AMAB friends which really helped me to see all our similarities. The way we are all insecure about our bodies, about whether we’re desirable, whether we’re doing gender correctly (whatever that may mean)… With time, I realised that the two characters really are quite similar even though their struggles manifest in very different ways. They’re both damaged, they both make mistakes and hurt each other, but I’ve been genuinely surprised by the moments of care and softness we’ve found in between all the body swap madness.

10. If audiences leave theSpace on The Mile having seen the show, what do you most hope they take away from the experience?

I really need this on a shirt because I say it so often, but with any play I do I’ll genuinely be happy if I’ve made one person feel less alone. What I hope is that people leave the theatre with a strengthened sense of empathy – for themselves as well as each other. I hope their bellies ache from laughing. And I hope the cis audience members especially will have learnt a thing or two about the trans experience, and I hope they feel inspired to bring that knowledge into conversations going forward to help us raise awareness and fight the horrific amount of misinformation circulating at the moment. I hope trans and queer people seeing the show feel seen and held, and perhaps a little more in love with their own brilliant bodies.

Click here to buy ticket

 

Leave a Comment

A Public Display of Affection: Jonathan Wilson on Memory, Survival and Quiet Rebellion

July 18, 2026 at 6:48 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Click on image to buy ticket

Jonathan Wilson arrives at the Fringe with A Public Display of Affection, a piece that slips between testimony, memory, and performance with the ease of someone who has lived every inch of the story he’s telling. Rooted in Toronto’s queer history of the 1970s and ’80s, the show doesn’t behave like a museum piece. Instead, it breathes—funny, dangerous, tender, and defiantly ordinary in all the ways queer life has always been. Wilson begins as the “queer elder” at the lectern, but the façade doesn’t last long. What follows is a reckoning with survival, desire, chosen family, and the quiet rebellions that once made even holding hands feel like an act of resistance.

As he brings the work to Edinburgh, Wilson isn’t simply exporting a Canadian story. He’s returning to the country his parents once called home, folding questions of belonging, memory, and inheritance into a performance that refuses nostalgia and insists on truth. In an intimate space like Gilded Balloon’s The Snug, the show becomes less a lecture and more a conversation—one that asks younger queer audiences to imagine their own futures while remembering the people who never got the chance.

This interview explores how the piece evolved, what histories risk being erased, and why Wilson believes humour, imperfection, and community are as essential to queer survival as any political victory. Counter Culture asked him to explain.

You’re bringing a critically acclaimed Toronto production to the Fringe. What shifts when a show rooted in 1970s and ’80s Toronto queer history suddenly meets an Edinburgh audience with a completely different cultural memory?

I’ve learned that although the street names change, the emotions and the struggles are the same. Edinburgh audiences probably haven’t heard of Yonge Street or the St. Charles Tavern in Toronto, but they understand first love, shame, chosen family, and trying to build a life when the world keeps suggesting you shouldn’t exist.

The piece begins as a formal “queer elder” talk and then unravels into something far more intimate and dangerous. Was that structural rupture always part of the concept, or did it emerge as you explored how testimony differs from nostalgia?

It wasn’t planned at all. It happened organically when I discovered I was a terrible historian. The play began as a series of readings for students studying queer history, and I felt an unspoken pressure to be a “good” example. Thankfully, the darker, funnier, and more truthful stories of my friends kept interrupting. The moment I stopped trying to be an authority and started becoming a witness, the play finally knew what it wanted to be.

The press release describes the show as a journey through love, loss, lust, and survival. Which of those threads proved hardest to balance without tipping the piece into sentimentality?

Survival. It’s very easy to turn surviving into a sort of sainthood, but of course we weren’t saints. We were messy, funny, horny, selfish, generous, frightened kids trying to get through another day. But we weren’t simply surviving. We were falling in love, dancing until sunrise, making terrible fashion choices, flirting outrageously, and creating families from scratch.

You chart moments where even holding hands felt like rebellion. How do you stage that kind of quiet defiance in a way that lands with audiences who’ve grown up in a more visible, though still imperfect, queer landscape?

By resisting the urge to make it look heroic. Holding someone’s hand shouldn’t be brave. The tragedy is that it was. It should be gloriously ordinary. I hope younger audiences don’t leave thinking, How courageous they were. I hope they leave wondering why something so beautifully mundane was ever considered dangerous. So much queer history is presented as a warning. I want this show to be an invitation to imagine a long life and an earned elderhood.

Critics have called the show “a forgotten slice of Toronto LGBTQ history brought to life.” What part of that history do you feel is most at risk of being rewritten or erased today?

The ordinary lives. The street kids I loved. My chosen family. The young people on the margins who can still disappear, even within a so‑called respectable queer history. We remember the marches, the police persecution, and the court victories, as we should. But we forget the shared rooms, the back‑alley bars, the friendships, the first kisses, the tacky wallpaper, and the people who never became famous enough to be remembered.

You blend razor‑sharp humour with devastating honesty. Given your background in Second City, improvisation, and comedy, how did you decide where humour helps the story, and where it would undermine it?

Laughter opens us up to hear truth — but importantly, the laughter isn’t there only to soften the truth. It is part of the truth. Queer people have always laughed at funerals, flirted in impossible circumstances, and found joy where no one expected it. That’s an important part of our history too.

Your past work includes My Own Private Oshawa, The Normal Heart, and The Lion King. How does A Public Display of Affection sit alongside those roles in terms of emotional weight and personal investment?

There’s nowhere to hide. When you’re playing Ned Weeks in The Normal Heart or Timon in The Lion King, someone else has written the words. This time, every laugh, every silence, and every difficult memory belongs to me. It’s easily the most exposing thing I’ve ever performed. Even my earlier solo work reflected the version of myself I was capable of sharing in my thirties. This show is what that story looks like after another thirty years of living.

Bringing the play to Scotland feels less like exporting a Canadian piece than finally bringing my own family story home. My parents left Scotland for Canada in the early 1960s, so growing up, Scotland was always referred to as “home.” I’ve written some of that tension into this new version of the show, and it has taken me somewhere even more personal than I expected. Because of course… there’s no place like home.

The show insists on remembering at a moment when queer histories risk disappearing beneath progress and assimilation. What’s the one memory you felt absolutely had to remain unfiltered?

The feeling that disappearing was always a possibility. Not in some abstract political sense. Literally. Friends vanished. Spaces vanished. Entire generations vanished. The danger isn’t forgetting the dates. The danger is forgetting what it actually felt like to be alive.

Gilded Balloon’s The Snug is an intimate space. How does that closeness shape the performance, especially when the material moves between humour, danger, and testimony?

You can’t fake intimacy in a space like The Snug. There’s nowhere to perform at people. I’m simply with them. Some nights it feels less like theatre and more like a conversation that’s wandered somewhere unexpectedly honest. Those are usually the best nights.

If you could speak directly to younger queer people encountering this history for the first time, what’s the one uncomfortable truth you hope the show gives them permission to hold onto?

You don’t owe anyone perfection. Every generation inherits unfinished work. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll disagree with the generation before you. One day you’ll probably horrify the generation after you. Welcome to the club. But don’t confuse having more rights with no longer needing each other. Community isn’t something history gave us. It’s something every generation has to build again.

Click here to buy tickets

 

Leave a Comment

Inside Spin Cycle: A Queer Love Story Caught Between Cycles

July 17, 2026 at 6:34 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , ,

There’s something about a Fringe show set in a laundrette that immediately makes you lean in. Maybe it’s the hum of the machines, maybe it’s the way people behave differently when they think no one’s watching. Spin Cycle takes that instinct — that quiet, nosy curiosity — and turns it into a queer love story that slips between memory, myth and the mundane. It’s tender, strange, and a little bit disorienting, like overhearing a couple argue in public and realising you’ve wandered into the middle of something you shouldn’t understand but somehow do.

Click on image to buy tickets

Talking to the team behind it, you get the sense they’re not interested in neat answers or tidy emotional arcs. They’re more concerned with the mess — the stains, the rewashing, the things we keep trying to fix even when we know they’re already worn through. What follows is a conversation that feels as intimate and slippery as the play itself.

Spin Cycle unfolds in a laundrette — a place that’s both public and strangely intimate. What made you realise this was the perfect setting for a queer love story that refuses to stay neatly folded?

ZOFIA: A Launderette is such a liminal space. Its whole reason for existence is to be a place of transition: you enter with dirty clothes and leave with clean. I felt that it is the perfect setting for a play that exists to examine that feeling of being in the midst of transition, being somewhere between forgetting and remembering, between loving and not. I also think the phrase “air your dirty laundry” is aptly fit.

You add memory slippage, absurdism, and a wash cycle that bends time. How did you find the balance between emotional truth and theatrical strangeness?

BETHAN: The absurd space versus the tense scene work is a part of this play that’s very exciting to build on. In many ways the launderette feels like a third character, or entity. It plays a vital role in pushing Noel and Kitt to try again at the top of the play. There’s a sense the space may even have some control over their fate as a couple and maybe is pushing them to some conclusion but as we learn, Kitt and Noel can’t help but have the same conversations over and over again. Their dialogue is pacy and naturalistic and as far as we know they are emotionally truthful. Unless someone knows more then they let on?….

The play champions Irish heritage and queer, gender-non-conforming characters. How do those identities shape the emotional engine of the story?

RHIANNON: The characters queer identity or ‘irishness’ isn’t there to make any kind of political statement, they’re simply who the characters are. Those identities affect how they move through the world, how they understand love, belonging and themselves. The play places two different experiences of Irish and lesbian identity side by side. Noel is a working class, non-binary artist from Northern Ireland whose identity is shaped by financial insecurity, community expectation and navigating a world that wasn’t built for them. Kitt is an Irish-American who has inherited wealth and whose connection to Ireland is rooted in family history rather than lived experience. Spin Cycle, at its core is a love story and it explores how love can exist between two people whose understandings of home, privilege and self are radically different.

“Eyes lock. Hearts thump. But something is off.” What’s the “off” for you?

ZOFIA: It’s the feeling of Deja vu. Deja vu is described as “an illusion of memory whereby—despite a strong sense of recollection—the time, place, and context of the “previous” experience are uncertain or impossible.”

The show has been described as Eternal Sunshine meets The L Word. What feels accurate about that comparison — and what doesn’t?

ZOFIA: Spin Cycle and Eternal Sunshine both seek to answer the same question- why is heartbreak intrinsically tied to the joy of love? There are themes of memory and repression in both as well, although Spin Cycle remains more ambiguous than Eternal Sunshine. As for The L Word, well, there is plenty of Talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, riding, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking, dreaming in both.

The laundrette becomes a suspended world where past and present collide. Did you imagine it as a memory, a metaphor, or a place where truth stops hiding?

BETHAN: The launderette may have more hope for their relationship than they do. It’s certainly somewhere where hard conversations are forced out. It is somewhere the truth stops hiding and it feels like somewhere that has existed forever and will continue to until the cycle reaches an end the launderette is satisfied with. The liminal space has been an important factor in creating a neutral zone for Noel and Kitt to explore their guilt, lust and ultimately loss. Thematically thinking of the setting as the launderette, are we washing something until it’s ragged and worn and finished, or are we cleansing something and rescuing stained memories?

Class quietly shapes the story. How consciously did class weave itself into the writing?

BETHAN: When we started this project it was a short twenty minute scene with a hint of a class divide. As we have lived with the characters, certain nuances emerge as obvious directions to take them both. Noel and Kitt really do clash in many ways, notably Kitts inherited wealth from her grandad and Noel inherited orange sash from theirs. It felt important to flesh out where each may have struggled or bloomed forming their identities and their place in the world.

Bethan Rose talks about a “complicit sense of voyeurism.” What do audiences recognise in Kitt and Noel that makes the play feel so familiar?

BETHAN: The couple have a struggling power dynamic and you see them fall apart in front of you, remembering and forgetting in real time. I think audiences will recognise many of the feelings they go through. There are moments where you don’t want to be listening into their conversations, like you’ve accidentally been spying on them. There are also moments where audience members will recognise patterns in the relationship and even take sides. Discomfort and familiarity arises when met with parallels to your own life.

You’re an entirely queer creative team. How did that shape the rehearsal room? BETHAN: At the end of rehearsal we all kiss.

If Kitt and Noel could step out of the laundrette and speak to you, what truth do you hope they’d finally rinse clean? RHI: If I met Noel outside of the Laundrette – I really hope that they found a good therapist to help rinse away their shame about who they are and where they come from. ZOFIA: If Kitt were able to step out of the Launderette, I would hope she could be honest about her entitlement.

Click here to buy tickets

 

Leave a Comment