1. How is ‘The Speed Twins’ different from other plays out there?
The Speed Twins is set in a spectral version of the Gateways, the lesbian nightclub featured in the film ‘The Killing of Sister George’, and the three main characters meet there as old women - but one is in complete denial of her sexuality, one thinks she’s died and gone to Dyke Heaven, and the other looks as if she hasn’t aged a day since she lost the love of her life back in 1962.
2. What inspired you to write The Speed Twins?
Wanting to give voice and visibility to that older generation of lesbians who grew up in the post-war years of institutionalised hetero-sexist oppression: to celebrate the courage of those who followed their own hearts, despite all the obstacles, and to acknowledge the damage done to the lives of women who went under.
3. Why do you think some women still fear identifying themselves sexually, like the main character in ‘The Speed Twins’?
Queenie, the main character in The Speed Twins, is a respectable widow who prides herself on her life-long denial of her true desires and considers herself morally superior to those who ‘took the easy way out’. The challenge for Queenie is to admit that she forced herself to capitulate to sexual norms because she was afraid of social rejection. And for all the legislative progress made in recent years, lesbians may still come up against a double whammy of prejudice in terms of being both gay and female.
4. Do you believe that it is important for people to label themselves sexually?
I think it’s important for lesbians to be socially and culturally much more visible, and it would probably be better if we glowed pink in the dark so we didn’t have to make a choice about that. But in a truly grown-up emancipated world all people would occupy whatever position suited them on the sexual spectrum and not get hung up about labels.
5. Do you think lesbians are still stereotyped in the media?
I think we remain massively under-represented in all our multifarious manifestations.
6. Can a ‘lesbian’ character ever just be a woman who happens to be a lesbian, on TV/ theatre?
That was precisely our intention in Bad Girls, where the sexuality of all the women prisoners was incidental to their shared experience of incarceration.
7. How have you tried to portray lesbians in your work?
As often and as variously as possible! What’s different for me about The Speed Twins is that lesbianism is the overt subject matter, as opposed to the ‘homo-normatization’ we sought to achieve in Bad Girls. But polemics make for very dull drama and my top priority, as always, is to try and tell a good story about characters people can laugh with and care about, and in the most exciting way I know how.
8. Who is your favourite (lesbian) character that you have created and why?
Nikki Wade and Helen Stewart will always be close to my heart – we knew it would be a bit of a risk writing the first prime time tv drama series with a lesbian love story as the core romance, but it was a joy to see the characters come to life and become so well loved by audiences around the world. However, since leaving Shed, my ambition has been to write a lesbian trilogy by means of a play, a musical and a movie: all very different in style and theme but linked by a 1960s period setting, and each with lesbian characters in the lead roles. The Speed Twins is the first off the blocks, soon to be followed by Crush, a musical set in a girls’ boarding school, and I’m currently writing the screenplay of Looking For Trouble, a film about a young lesbian criminal, based on the early life of Chris Tchaikovsky, the late founder of the campaigning charity Women In Prison and our inspirational advisor on Bad Girls.
9. You are obviously a great inspiration to many people across the world. Do you think that it is important that people in the media like yourself come out to inspire others to feel confident in their sexuality?
YES!
10. What is your definition of ‘true love’?
My partner of more years than we care to count.