The Hills (of Georgia) are Alive With Transgender Love in Southern Comfort
Kate Davis’ 2001 documentary Southern Comfort, a fave at Sundance, tells the story of Robert Eads, a female-to-male trans man dying of ovarian cancer. Over the course of the last year of his life Eads meets—and falls in love—with Lola, a MTF transsexual.
Now their story comes to the stage with Collaborative Art Project 21‘s off-Broadway adaptation of Southern Comfort, officially opening tonight and running through October 29.
Written by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis and directed by Thomas Caruso, it’s a musical recounting the same heart-wrenching story as Davis’ film, but incorporating the bluegrass and folk-music traditions that are central to the culture of rural Georgia, where Lola (Urinetown‘s Jeff McCarthy) and Robert (Smallville‘s Annette O’Toole) reside.
Adapting Robert and Lola’s story into a musical is an interesting choice, but CAP 21 has proven to be a great incubator for exciting new musical works, including 2008′s The Trouble with Doug (inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis) and 2006′s Womb With a View (which explores a lesbian’s journey through the process of artificial insemination).
We’re definitely anxious to how smoothly this Southern Comfort goes down.
Image via Matthew Murphy
At least this play doesn’t deny that Trans people are biologically and genetically the opposite gender of what they want to claim that they are.
This Trans man should have gotten treatment for ovarian cancer or went somewhere where she could get treatment for it, and then after the cancer was gone identify as male despite having a vagina and other female sexual organs, and being biologically and genetically female.
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Anyone who isn’t familiar with the background of this play needs to look up the Southern Comfort documentary and watch it, it is an excellent and moving depiction of what it is like to be transgendered in the rural deep South.