Pansexual Pregnant Piracy is a raucous queer comedy with songs telling the swashbuckling true story of eighteenth-century pirate Anne Bonny. Disguised as a man, Anne soars across oceans searching for booty (treasure) and booty (ass) alongside fellow pirate/partner/captain Calico Jack. But when hot wet babe Mary Read crawls aboard, the ship’s course isn’t the only thing that’s no longer straight. Can they flee the shadow of the Pirate Hunter General who dreams of taking down piracy and pansexuality? And what does it mean for their queer seafaring when their bellies brew more than just rum?! We spoke to the creators Robbie, Ro and Eleanor from AIRLOCK on the creation of the show.
Can you tell us a bit about yourselves and AIRLOCK’s work?
Robbie: I’m a director, writer, and intimacy director and coordinator. I’m one of the Co-Directors of Airlock with Ro and Catja Hamilton. Airlock makes theatre that focuses on unheard or surprising queer stories. We’re currently enjoying the comedy chaos trajectory of our shows.
Ro: I’m a writer and performer, doing the former across stage and screen, and the latter mostly on stage. I am an interloper into Airlock. I was kindly adopted by Robbie and Catja after making Robbie direct a play I wrote when I was a baby (read: 23). Airlock just wants to make queer stories that are surprising and not sobfest coming-out-is-hard stories. Not because those aren’t beautiful and important, but because we want to balance them with joyous and unapologetically batshit crazy comedies.
Eleanor: I am a writer and performer which means I basically enjoy writing things and then casting myself in them! I like writing comedy and musical comedy and do improv on the side. I have worked with Airlock on two shows now, Lesbian Space Crime and Pansexual Pregnant Piracy and it has been lovely.
When did you first come across the story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read?
Ro: Probably an Instagram account, one of those ones that throws images of ‘queers from history’ into the back of my eyes at 8am (sounds rude but I’m the one scrolling). It feels a little more famous than other transmasc-y pirate stories. Did Keira Knightley dress up as a boy in Pirates of the Caribbean? I genuinely can’t remember, but maybe that’s when the seed was planted in my brain, watching those films and thinking COOL, so when I saw the news about Anne and Mary elsewhere 15 years later, it lit up the same synapses.
Robbie: Yeah I think it was through social media but it’s also the kind of story that I feel I’ve heard around just by virtue of being a queer creative interested in queer life and history!
Eleanor: Can confirm Keira Knightley did dress up as a cabin boy in Pirates of the Caribbean. I used to be super into pirate history and fiction books as a tween so I had almost certainly come across them before as they are relatively famous as a pirate pair, partly because their story has lots of extraordinary elements. I think it was Robbie or Ro who forwarded me an Instagram story on them and it was a no-brainer to make them the heroes of the next show.
What made you choose to use the story to create a show?
Ro: We had to do so little! We ought to be sacked as writers! The story was written. It had a beginning, middle, end, trysts, lovers, babies, death and destruction and queer yearning all already there. Our job was thinning it OUT can you believe, as well as wrangling it into a format we could feasibly perform in 70 minutes in a small black box.
Robbie: It’s already such a wild story. Some of the story beats in the real story were actually just too wild so that we felt it muddied the waters and we couldn’t have it all.
Eleanor: It’s nice to do a true story where the real people (and their cutlasses) are well in the grave and can’t come and sue us.
Why do you think it is important to represent pansexuality in theatre?
Ro: Look, as someone who has been attracted to everything since I could be attracted to anyone, I very, very frequently forget that not everyone is Bi/Pan/Omni etc. I have, more than once, as an adult, been surprised to remind myself that my gay friends wouldn’t find someone of the opposite gender attractive, or that the heteros in my life (shout out xoxo) could never dance the night away with someone who looks like them. Frankly, it baffles me, it seems a little perverse and bizarre to be so restrictive but I respect their identities xoxo. Why is it important? I guess because it’s true, it exists. Some people are pansexual, and it’s not halfway to gay or straight, it’s its own whole, beautiful sexuality, and an unpopular and difficult one to stage. It’s important because not a lot of people ‘get it’ but it’s a real group of people.
Robbie: Definitely an ignored letter, it’s even just shoved in the “plus” of LGBTQIA+.
Eleanor: Yeah, I would echo that its mainly just important to be represented generally, and so that trickles down into what I want to see represented in theatre. Not to mention, as someone who has relationships with multiple genders, it makes the love story inherently just more interesting to me to write and to watch. I feel pansexuality in particular is a little bit of a misunderstood sexuality that has to deal with all the bi-erasure of bisexuality in addition to the added downside that people get double baffled that it can even be different to bisexuality. The more theatre and film can challenge heteronormative stories of relationships, I think the more we’ll see queer relationships on stage as just a given.
The show challenges traditional historical narratives. What message or messages do you hope audiences take away from this reimagining of history?
Ro: I respectfully and coyly disagree, I don’t think we’re challenging the more straight-laced (whey) narrative. Historians have done a pretty good job of describing the lives of these two characters using what they have at their disposal without begging questions of the obvious queerness. Fine, well done! We can’t say that’s not true because no one has certain answers about obscure figures from history. However. There is a huge, freeing benefit to looking at the story with a queer lens instead, painting Anne as a transmasc, pansexual icon, calling their relationship a polycule, exploring the euphoria and dysphoria of dressing like the opposite sex. Why not? We are just as correct as the opposite argument, because no one has any certainty here! So, it’s a reconceptualising maybe? Queering? I’m not telling anyone this is how it was. They can believe what they want. I hope audiences know that when they leave – if you can spot the queer patterns in historical figures, you can imagine that life for them, that’s fine, they’re dead, no one cares, and it might give you comfort to see people living like you through history. But neither retelling is more right than the other (unless you are in my head, in which case they are 100% queer icons from history).
Robbie: Queers have been around since the dawn of time and so we aren’t going anywhere! It’s not a modern invention.
Eleanor: I think with doing any show that has historical characters, you should always be a little cautious about putting our labels on them. It’s unlikely Anne Bonny or Mary Read would define themselves as pansexual or have an idea of their sexual identity in the way that we do today. But, that absolutely does not mean they could not act and feel and have sex or relationships in a way that today we might define as being pansexual or queer. It’s not a total re-imagining of history – pirates by the very nature of their profession were people who rejected social norms and there’s a fair amount of history on same-sex relationships within crews. If anything, we’re guilty of joining in the well-trodden tradition of romanticising pirates full-stop!
If Mary Read and Anne Bonny were alive today, what do you think their jobs would be and why?
Robbie: Anne would have been one of the Oompah Loompas in the cursed Glasgow immersive Willy Wonka experience. Then they would have made off with some of the kit when it all went to hell. I think Mary would be a stunt performer. Cos she’s rad and would like dressing up and hurling herself off cars.
Ro: Anne Bonny would be living in Ireland (as she was actually Irish!) robbing and cutting down no-gooders and sort-of-gooders. She was a bad’un, in a sexy and exciting way so she’d probs just be in prison. Mary would have survived and lived a happy life. Maybe an architect or another cool profession where she’d wear a pencil skirt.
Eleanor: I think Mary would be a fashion designer. I honestly think Anne would be locked up or if not would be a high-flying CEO who has secretly embezzled lots of cash. I think the urge to rob lies hard with her.
If you could each sum up the show in one word, what would that be?
Robbie: SWASHBUCKLIN’. Cos if we aren’t using “swashbucklin’” to describe a pirate show, then when are we gunna use it.
Eleanor: FUN! It’s just a lot of fun, we’ve got some fantastic characters in fantastic costumes doing some sick moves and singing banging songs to a jokes storyline.
Ro: Why?
Pansexual Pregnant Piracy runs at Soho Theatre until 13th April. More information and tickets here: https://sohotheatre.com/events/pansexual-pregnant-piracy/
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