The Artist Currently Known As: Alex Butler
Alex is a playwright and poet. Her play Endlessness just finished its run at The Cellar Theatre for Sydney Uni Dramaturgical Society (SUDS).
What are you studying? I’m doing a double major in Gender Studies and English. I’m in my second year.
Can you tell me what you like to make? I like to write. Pipe dream, I would love to be a playwright. I considered myself an actress for a while, but now I’m very content being in the backseat. I like prose poetry, it’s a bit more rounded out, and essays. I try to keep things funny and also a bit dark.
What do you read? I’m currently reading Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. You have to get on that shit so fast, read Stag Dance – she is just unlike anything else. I ate it in a day. I also recently read Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa. I love to read Japanese books, translated books.
The best translated book I read recently is by this woman, Eva Baltasar, called Boulder. This character — you never find out her name, it’s just Boulder. She starts up this relationship, her partner becomes pregnant and gives birth, and it’s harrowing because it’s about how power plays out between them. And how with queerness there’s a bit of a fissure when it comes to motherhood, because Boulder isn’t the mother. That’s very much like Detransition, Baby. It is also sort of about parenthood, motherhood, and how that validates gender, especially for trans couples and dynamics.
You just put on a play, which was fantastic. I know nothing about plays. Could you talk me through the process of putting one on? With SUDS it’s a bit unique, a bit ragtag, because it’s a student theatre. You get voted in, you get five hundred dollars, and you can do with that what you will. A lot of shows will put on a fundraiser to get more money. For us it was a bit tricky – I worked with my close friends, also producer and assistant director – because it was mine, I felt a bit mumma bear about it. I had to kind of shake that off. For a lot of shows, the cast and the core work together, and the core and the crew work together, and there’s very little overlap between the cast and the crew even though they're the whole foundation. So I really tried to get them together more.
I feel that in no other medium would you have that opportunity to see how powerful your writing is, in the sense that you get to visualise it. In comparison to other forms of writing theatre is quite a tactile one, because you have real people saying your words. And the show is different every night, because the audience is different every night.
You talked to Anastasia about the play, and when you were talking about queerness you said something that really stood out to me, which was, everything I write is going to be lesbian. I’m the same. I’m interested in the word lesbian. Do you find that for you, queerness is distinct from lesbianism? Nah. For a long time I didn't like labels. But especially since properly dating a woman, lesbian feels so warm and fuzzy for me, it's such a nice blanket over everything. It doesn’t suit everyone, and it does run the risk of being a bit exclusionary. I like it too. Do you like it? Yeah, I’ve been trying to think about why, but I find it very precious. I find it precious as well! I think too because you don’t hear it that often. No! Where’d it go?
Exactly! Peace and love to all the terms, but lesbian is one of the most sacred. Queer relationships are the most special I have. I have a lot of trans elders who I respect so much and impart so much wisdom, and feed me and keep me warm. Queer love! It sounds so sappy when I talk about it.
I know, but it is sappy, that’s why we need it. One of the most important scenes to me was the scene with the two women in the AIDS crisis. It was inspired by [my partner’s] grandma who, during the AIDS crisis, signed up to be an assigned friend to victims. She was assigned to this guy named Al and they’ve been best friends ever since. Al lives in Glebe and we go over to his house for tea, and he’s been HIV positive since the 80s, and he’s still kicking.
There’s something so singularly reassuring about seeing queer elders, queer old people. What’s your fave queer/lez media? There’s this tv show called It’s A Sin. It’s pretty incredible, but there’s no lesbians in it, which is weird. Falsettos, Angels in America… all about the AIDS crisis. Lesbian movies: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, kind of a cliched answer. What are yours?
But I’m A Cheerleader. Come on. RuPaul’s in it. Everything’s pink and blue. We saw it at the Ritz recently and I swear to god, we were sitting next to the guy who was in Paper Planes. Oh! Really! Yes, he loved it! Every gay person in Randwick was there, it’s just such a good movie. The sex scene is so tame, but it’s so sexy.
Another one just came to mind. Orlando is… ooof. Woolf just transcends gender, sense, time.
It makes me think how lucky we are. Ugh. I know, it’s just incomparable. Survivors! Not that anyone had a choice.
You can find Alex at @lun4r._.