Sweet Testament Divine Q&A

The Camden Roar festival is a new theatre festival celebrating 30 years of the Camden People’s Theatre, with scratch nights, works-in-progress, and plays exploring the diverse and storied history of London’s most iconic borough. Sweet Testament Divine will be performed as part of the Camden Roar, and it explores the story of a young trans person in the early 20th Century. We chatted to Radclyffe Baker about writing this show and the ways in which Queer history can help us understand the modern political landscape. 

Could you please tell us what happens in your play and what the journey is that the main characters go on?

Sweet Testament Divine follows the journey of a young typist in 1934 who steals an early form of testosterone and administers it himself. The play then explores how this affects his relationship with his family and loved ones in a time when transgender identity was understood very differently to today. Throughout the play, the biggest journey for all characters is learning how to love themselves.

Your play is inspired by archival material - can you tell us a little bit more about that? 

I was Writer in Residence at The National Archives in the winter of 2023, which gave me a wonderful insight into the work that they do there. I had imagined it would be dreadfully stuffy and dull, but my experience was anything but! The Archives is open to everyone, and you can request access to anything they have in their open collection. After a couple of weeks of getting used to the filing system and exploring a little, I found myself steeped in medical records of early clinical trials of an isolated form of testosterone in the UK. That’s where the idea for Sweet Testament Divine came about. Transgender people have always existed; what’s changed since 1934 is society’s awareness of people like us. So what would happen if someone broke the rules in an attempt to follow what felt right?

What was the most interesting thing you found in the archives? What was the biggest surprise?

The most interesting thing I found in the archives was a police file on the Suffragettes. The police had obtained a diary from Hilda Byron (Evaline Burkitt) which contained some baffling entries such as “Jan 31. To Ilford. No good.” It turns out the whole diary was a code for militant protests in the fight for votes for women! The most surprising was a Ministry of Defence file from the 70s called “Unidentified Flying Objects” and contained a booklet from the MOD that detailed all recorded sightings of UFOs all over the world, line drawings of their shapes, and the governmental policy regarding them! I was mostly surprised that it was open to the public to read in the first place. 

How much of your own personal experience did you bring to the play, and how did you find the process of turning your experiences into art? 

Encountering anything as an individual means you approach it in an individual way. Every person will find something different in the same story, and that’s part of the magic of storytelling! As a transgender person, it means that I approached the clinical trials at the archives with my individual perspective. The doctors involved in the trials were researching how to cure enlarged prostates and were successful – but what I saw was the origin of transgender male hormone replacement therapy (HRT) made possible. Personal experience and narrative flair often tip the scales of careful balance in the writing process, and so to avoid going either way too much, I took the play through multiple edits, added characters, removed others, and kept sharing my works in progress with writers and readers. It’s very easy to get tunnel vision after reading the same script hundreds of times, and readers will always find what you have been missing. The play that I am lucky enough to show at the Camden People’s Theatre on Sunday has been informed by my identity and understanding of the world, but it’s the culmination of months of research, edits, and feedback.

What’s your favourite part of the play?

My favourite part of the play is when the main character Little faces the consequences of his dishonesty and cowardice. It’s a difficult scene to watch – both characters onstage bring their baggage to the table and demand the other person deal with it. I won’t spoil it by saying any more, but it packs a punch!

Why is it important to bring transgender voices to the theatre in 2024?

It’s a tough time to be different in the UK. The election has only exacerbated this: migrants to the UK are being vilified, racism is a boiling hot pan that people are scared to touch, and transgender people are being used as a talking point to distract from the real reasons why the NHS is crumbling as we watch in dismay. Coming to the CPT is an opportunity 

for the audience to take a moment to listen to someone other than a politician talk about real people. The play reflects current issues but is set nearly a century ago, and that should be frightening! My most fervent hope for this play is that it communicates to the audience how ultimately, we’re all searching for love, whether it’s from our relationships or from ourselves, and the best way to achieve that is with compassion. 

Where do you see the show going after the CPT Camden Roar Festival?

I would love to extend the play to a full length of an hour. It’s a rich world and the characters all have lives I simply didn’t have enough time to expand on! I have former Suffragettes struggling against the rise of fascism in the 30s that could be a whole play all on its own! I was contacted by an animator who would love to turn the play into a short film, so that’s the next major project!

Sweet Testament Divine will be performed at the Camden People's Theatre on the 16th June 2024. Tickets and more information can be found at https://cptheatre.co.uk/whatson/Scratch-Night-Sun-16-Jun. Sweet Testament Divine is part of the Camden Roar, a theatre and performance festival celebrating 30 years of the Camden People’s Theatre – full programme and tickets at https://cptheatre.co.uk/festivals/camden-roar.