Writer: Rose Coogan
Director: Benjamin Gould
Rose+Bud is the story of a young woman who can’t ride a bike exploring newfound adulthood, independence, and transness. She leaves her rural hometown to study in Derry, and allows herself to transition. Life changes, for better or for worse.
The play is well-written, relatable, and funny. Rose Coogan is the playwright, and plays a character who shares her name. The difficulty of autofictional theatre isn’t present for the most part; the audience laughs with Rose, sympathetic especially to the caricature vignettes of queer adolescence. References and allusions to Titanic, Buffy, and The Wizard of Oz are much appreciated, and woven into the set too, in graffiti on a riser painted the colours of a trans flag, and on an old-fashioned dressing screen.
Coogan and Conor Cupples have delightful and touching chemistry, slipping into a variety of roles: Rose and mother; awkward freshers; most importantly, the two conflicting sides of her identity. That the two actors shift between embodying the critical voices within Rose, and the real voices around her who she craves the approval of, underlines the messy subjectivity of her reality as social transition brings her through a second puberty, and the favourable and unfavourable cognitive distortions that come with it.
New trans art is always excellent news: there is simply not enough of it. There’s pride in seeing elements of trans art recur: autobiographical elements, a familiar humour, and the well of complicated euphoric and dysphoric experiences. Any piece of trans literature or theatre makes a necessary contribution to a growing corpus that’s good for trans and cis people alike.
Sustaining an engaging plot on an autobiographical basis can be challenging. The pleasing qualities of the play are not always present in the last thirty minutes, but it is nevertheless a fun watch and a well-made piece of theatre.
Runs Until 14th September 2024.
