Transgender actress pulls out of West End play in casting row
Performer quits, saying producers ‘didn’t try hard enough’ to get transgender person for leading role
A ROW has erupted at a West End theatre, as an actress pulled out of a play over its failure to cast a transgender performer.
Kate O’donnell withdrew from the new stage musical adaptation of Patrick Mccabe’s novel Breakfast on Pluto after Fra Fee, an Irish actor, was selected to play the leading role of Patrick/pussy Braden.
O’donnell, who is herself transgender, was cast as Braden’s mother in the production, due to be staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London in October.
Producers insisted they had tried to find a transgender performer for the role, but O’donnell complained they hadn’t made enough effort. The casting decision prompted outcry on social media.
O’donnell told the BBC: “I could not be in a show where a trans woman is once again seen as a man in a dress as this perpetuates the idea that this is what a trans woman is and leads to violence, even death.
“I know that the production has countered the uproar about this: they did try to cast a trans person. But I would suggest that they didn’t try hard enough.
“I was offered the part and realised with the heaviest of hearts – because West End theatre production roles do not come along every day, especially when you’re a trans performer – that I was going to have to decline the role.”
The term “transgender” refers to a person whose gender identity does not correspond to the sex they were born.
Breakfast on Pluto is described as a “musical of self-discovery” which follows Patrick/pussy on a journey from a small town in Ireland to London in the Seventies. It has so far been performed in Galway, Dublin and Birmingham.
In 1998, the novel was nominated for the Booker Prize and it was turned into a film in 2005, with Cillian Murphy in the lead role.
A statement from the show’s producers said they “respect” O’donnell’s decision to pull out of the play, but that the show’s creative team had conducted a “wide search” to find a transgender performer to play the lead role.
It added: “In addition to holding auditions in London, we reached out to the Irish transgender community through multiple channels, and auditioned a number of performers who identified as transgender for the role of Patrick/pussy Braden.
“We acknowledge that we all need to do more to support the trans community and the development of trans artists and we are looking to amplify and celebrate trans voices in other ways as part of the production.
“We understand how many barriers there are to trans performers in this industry.
“We hope the showcase will provide an opportunity for directors and casting directors and trans performers to network, and to further diversify the sector.”
They added that a “key member of the core creative team” and production consultant Rebecca Root are both transgender, and that a showcase for transgender performers will also be run at the Donmar Warehouse.
O’donnell recently appeared in the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre and is artistic director of trans arts company Trans Creative, which runs the annual Trans Vegas festival in Manchester.
Advice from Gendered Intelligence, a charity which supports transgender people, states that having a non-transgender man playing a transgender woman increases prejudice because “many people internalise the myth that being trans is a performance, a deception, that trans women are ‘really men’.”
‘I could not be in a show where a trans woman is once again seen as a man in a dress’