A Controversial Play About JK Rowling Is Coming To the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
J.K. Rowling’s hateful campaign against trans people is the inspiration for a new play.
It’s called TERF—the title was considerably toned down; it was originally TERF C**t—and it will play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 2. It’s already lost one venue thanks to the original title. It was planned to premiere at Saint Stephens Theater, and has now moved to the Assembly Rooms. Playwright Joshua Kaplan has admitted in an interview with Deadline that it was a “misstep” to put the word “c**t” in there. But TERF, as you may know, stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and is not a slur—in fact, including “feminist” in the moniker is giving them a lot of undue credit.
TERF imagines the three main Harry Potter actors–Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson—staging an intervention for Rowling over her anti-trans views. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Kaplan described it as a “family play” with Rowling as the parent figure whose views horrify her “children.” Well, sadly, many of us have been there.
In reality, Rowling has fallen out with her former friends over their support for trans rights. More recently, she said she would never forgive Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for being “celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights.” Not that they have asked her to.
Rowling is wrong, of course. Trans women pose no threat whatsoever to women’s rights, and the politicization and vilification of trans existence doesn’t somehow give cis women more rights, safety, or freedom. That political issue is what Kaplan tackles in TERF.
TERF is already being targeted
According to Kaplan himself, the play is not a “hit piece” and it explores the experiences that caused Rowling to develop her views. One of these is her experience with her abusive ex-husband—a cisgender man.
Kaplan has also said he would welcome Rowling herself into the audience. She clearly is aware of the play, as she’s mentioned it when sniping at trans broadcaster India Willoughby. Whether or not she would actually go is, of course, another matter.
The producers of the play are all geared up for protests from the “gender critical” crowd. “We expect that most people, if they’re intending on disrupting what we’re doing, that will happen in the auditorium of the theatre. We have processes in place that are going to deal with that,” producer Barry Church-Woods told Deadline. The far-right publication Breitbart has already targeted Church-Woods’ mother, according to the publication.
The cast list for the play is already out. Texan actress Laura Kay Bailey will play Rowling, Piers McKenzie will play Radcliffe, Trelawny Kean will play Watson and Tom Longmire will play Grint. There is also one transgender actress in the play. She has not revealed herself because of fears for her safety.
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