When Janet Anderson first starred in Overflow, the trans actor wasn't sure she was ready for the role: she had yet to finish drama school.
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The one-woman show at Sydney's Darlinghurst Theatre in 2022 was produced by an entirely trans and gender diverse cast and crew, a first for Australian mainstage theatre.
Anderson, 22, need not have worried - Overflow got five star reviews and will play at Brisbane's MELT festival in November before heading to Midsumma in Melbourne.
Anderson plays Rosie, a trans London nightclubber who finds herself trapped in a flooding toilet cubicle.
Bathrooms are gendered places, the performer explains, and they are the nexus of a debate about access that has seen gender diverse people vilified in the UK.
All this was part of the inspiration for the show by trans British playwright and artist Travis Alabanza.
"How everything seems to come back to having somewhere to piss is seemingly ridiculous, but that's a central discussion in the work," Anderson said, revealing her own confronting bathroom experiences.
At a bar in London on New Years' Eve in 2017, she was shocked to be pulled out of a women's bathroom by a bartender.
"It was chilling - even on a day that was so full of laughter and love, that that transphobia still existed," she said.
Onstage, bathroom incidents become a way into Rosie's life story, as the audience realises she had been chased into the toilets by a group of men.
It's theatre, but activism too, which Anderson said was an almost inevitable result of its trans perspective.
Anderson is committed to representing queer and gender diverse experiences onstage, but acknowledges she couldn't make a living from these sorts of roles, because there's simply not enough of them.
"If I say that I will exclusively do trans roles, then I might be twiddling my thumbs for some time," she said.
The makeup of cast and crew meant the show was informed by transgender experiences in a way that has not been seen in Australian theatre before, she said.
Storytelling by and for gender diverse performers is becoming more common, but there's still work to do.
More often than not, mainstream stories about trans experiences are written by people who have never met a trans person or do not understand their reality, Anderson said.
It does not make for an authentic result, but there are examples of trans stories told well.
The latest series of the Netflix drama Sex Education features meaningful, well-written storylines for trans characters, Anderson said, and these are stories most people haven't seen before.
Returning to play Rosie in Brisbane and Melbourne, Anderson is relieved she no longer has to juggle the part with her studies, having graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in July.
The show is doing nothing less than bringing an entirely new message to the Australian stage, Anderson said, with venues transformed into entirely inclusive spaces.
"Australia really still has some catching up to do, but that's not to say that the artists on the ground aren't absolutely putting the work in."
Overflow is part of Brisbane's MELT Festival from November 23 - 26 and at Arts Centre Melbourne for Midsumma from January 31 to February 4.
Australian Associated Press
