Bringing an entire production from the mountains of northern Thailand to Liverpool is no small feat, but challenging yourself is a good thing, right?
Back in 2017, I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, teaching drama in international schools and pondering the endless problem of how to get my GCSE and A-Level students through their courses when they never had any live theatre to watch!
With a fellow drama teacher friend in tow, we went to watch the local am-dram company’s production of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ for the third run since I had moved there in 2009 – yawn! We left feeling deflated and decided to head for a drink: pumped by the margarita I announced it was time to make our OWN theatre – if there wasn’t anything decent to watch, we would MAKE something decent to watch! And ta-daaa! Dark Horse Theatre CM was born.
Dark Horse now has 4 large-scale sell-out productions under its belt – one of which is ‘Transistor’ an original play by that very talented dramatic friend I mentioned earlier, Kelly Holliday. When COVID came along, things slowed down, and one Dark Horse and I returned to our home countries leaving Kelly on her lonesome in Chiang Mai. She kept herself busy working on her script for ‘Transistor’ which had been in the pipeline for years, but she just hadn’t had the time to sit down and get it written – lockdown was the ideal scenario for blasting it out.
Transistor was born from conversations in the teacher’s staffroom, discussions about language and the debate about pronouns. Kelly wrote Transistor to explore where the tension surrounding this comes from and just how hurtful words can be. The dark-comedy drama explores issues within a family and some of the extreme 2nd wave feminist viewpoints about the Trans experience. This July, Liverpool is celebrating a ‘City Full of Pride’ for PRIDE week, and we were lucky enough to get the perfect slot at the Hope Street Theatre during this time. Whilst Transistor presents a hard-hitting Trans storyline, it also celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and is written and designed to encourage dialogue and understanding. Liverpool has long been a city that accepts all and is open and liberal in its mindset.
As a LJMU Drama alumni, bringing ‘Transistor’ to Liverpool was a no-brainer. The city is the creative hub of the north offering a plethora of music, art and theatre all year round. Our cast and director represent 5 different continents and we can’t wait to bring the play to the Hope Street Theatre.
Book tickets for Transistor – 25 – 29 July 2023 at The Hope Street Theatre
