Riot Act Playtext

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by Alexis Gregory

‘You know what’s strange, I felt safer on the night of the riots, on the sidewalk in front of Stonewall, than I did in my own hometown.’

‘I’m a drag queen. I want to live. I want to survive. As an older person, I’m sixty-five now, I couldn’t give a f cking shit.’

‘In London, the idea of ‘safe sex’ was: don’t sleep with Americans. James was older; a mature student. He was twenty-two years old when he died.’

Playwright and performer Alexis Gregory interviewed one of the only remaining Stonewall survivors, a radical drag icon from 1970s London and a 1990s London ACT UP AIDS activist. This solo theatre piece channels six decades of queer history. Hard-hitting, provocative, tender, truthful, funny, political and personal, these are stories of queerness, activism, addiction, sex, drag, community, conflict, youth, ageing, fierce queens and a Hollywood diva.