Smalltown Boy Work in Progress Sharing

Smalltown Boy by Brenda Callis, is a play about grief, community, and growing up queer in Cornwall, explored through the explosive storytelling medium of drag.  

ABOUT THIS SHARING 

This sharing of Smalltown Boy, kindly hosted by Hall for Cornwall and Cornwall Pride, is the product of 6 months of research and development with Bristol Old Vic Ferment; working with an experienced, all queer team of drag and theatre artists to explore the fusion of these forms. The piece has already been shaped by queer and global majority young people in Cornwall and drag artists from Bristol through conversations, workshops and an earlier reading. This sharing will be a script-in-hand reading of where we have landed after our development period. There will be an open discussion to share thoughts at the end, and to feed into the next stages of the play.  

Thank you for supporting the early stages of this play! 

ABOUT SMALLTOWN BOY 

Smalltown Boy tells the story of Edie, a drag queen from Bristol, who in the wake of his boyfriend Leo’s unexpected death travels to Redruth, Cornwall, to confront his family. Having never been told of Leo’s upbringing, Edie suspects ‘small-town homophobia’ but when he arrives, he actually finds a world that Leo ran away from before coming out to. There, he finds Leo’s mother, Leo’s childhood sweetheart Hannah, and a sense of community he did not expect. As they all try to fit their discordant versions of Leo together, emotions and revelations begin to rise to the surface. How do you piece together a person who didn’t have time to find those pieces themself?