GArdening can be radical whether a gardener notices it or not. In 2010, fashion designer Ron Finley transformed neglected areas in his Mediterranean quarter of Los Angeles into vegetable stains. He was ordered to remove them without permission for gardening, but fought back with a group of activists and changed the laws of the city. Derek Jarman's at home in Kent, where he lived in his recent years and has expanded plants in an inhospitable garden, has become a pilgrimage. Many LGBTQ+ people consider it a symbol of successful existence in an undesirable space, just as Jarman had done as a strange man under a conservative government in the 1980s.
The transformative power of nature for marginalized communities has a central topic in Lavendel, Hyazinthe, Violet, Yew, the debut game of the non -binary writer and performer Coral Wylie, which was staged in the Bush Theater in London this month. With this research of queerness, generation trauma, family dynamics and less expressly breed, gardening serves as a powerful tool for personal and collective healing. “It is a radical act to take a place outdoors and make a home out of it,” says the 29-year-old because of a video call.
The actor author from West London joined the Bush Theater in 2021 as part of his Young Company initiative and brought together local storytellers aged 18 to 25 years. A short scroll through Wylie's green Instagram page shows a strong affinity for the natural world, much like PIP, the figure that you represent in the play. PIP is a strange 19-year-old who recorded gardening as a hobby from her father Craig. As he browsed through the attic, PIP comes across a violet jacket that previously died of Craig's deceased friend Duncan, a gay man who died of AIDS like Jarman in the 90s.
According to Wylie: “The piece was that my parents had a best friend, Wayne Sterling, who died of complications with AIDS in 1994.” Wylie received his jacket, similar to her character in the play. “I grew up when I told everything about him, how important he was and how much I behaved like him.” In the play Pip Duncan's diary finds in his jacket pocket with considerations about his life and garden companies, often with Craig. Duncan compares with Gorse, a shrub with bright yellow flowers – “twisted branches such as washing”. He also admires his “persistence” in “The Bitterest Cold”.
Wylie considered that they met Wayne that they might have discovered themselves much earlier. However, they also acknowledge that Wayne's presence in their parents' life has become what they are today. “In the theater, many people write about grief, and it felt important to write about it in this way – it was written for Wayne and for everything I am because of him.”
The discoveries in the attic -sparking questions about the connection of pips parents to queerness, the different interest of their family in gardening and the undeniable effects of grief. It is a sin actor Omari Douglas plays Duncan in production. “There is a simplicity in this kind of human drama about family, loss, grief and identity and people who try to find their place in the world,” he says.
The play changes between 2013 and 1993, between Pips World and Duncan in the 30s, two people who never met and were strange in very different times, but still have many similarities. For Douglas, the piece shows how you can “meet things in the world around you when researching your own identity,” he says. He points out that they not only have to adapt their understanding of themselves and others during this process, but also others who are closest to them, often “try to meet them where they are”, which connected to his challenges is.
These difficulties are particularly obvious to Craig, who endeavors to grasp the subtleties of his child's queerness and to find themselves in them, who deal with their identity through the belongings and life of his dead friend and life. This is in strong contrast at the time when the audience of Craig meets Duncan in the 1990s and often together. Your friendship is warm, light and full of understanding. A dynamic Douglas finds heart heating.
“It felt so comforting to see two black men from the Caribbean diaspora, a gay and a street that interacted, and the nuances and peculiarities [of their relationship]“He says and highlights the background of the piece in the natural world and picked up the stereotypical black men. “It was a fascinating journey to immerse these black men into this world – to eat, sleep and breathe.”