“I kind of knew we were going to vote leave,” Scottee tells me as we walk his fox terrier, Cooper, past the privet hedges and pebble-dashed semis of Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex. After two years interviewing LGBT people around the country, some 400 in total, he came away with a strong sense of the political mood: “People felt completely disengaged and disenfranchised.” Scottee himself felt similarly. Until Jeremy Corbyn came along, he was “completely disillusioned with mainstream politics”.
A regular fixture on London’s queer cabaret scene, Scottee had set out to get a sense of contemporary queer lives, and found sexual and political identities often inseparable. Many people, he says, felt like outsiders on both fronts. His new show homes in on that. Putting Words in Your Mouth, which opens at London’s Roundhouse this month, is a “lip-sync marathon” that gives voice to three interviewees whose politics are sometimes overlooked or dismissed by the mainstream media. Mouthing along to audio recordings, Scottee’s three performers – Lasana Shabazz, Travis Alabanza and Jamal Gerald – will deliver the interviewees’ thoughts on Brexit and Thatcherism, austerity and multiculturalism. It’s a kind of political drag – a way of adopting an alternative persona and performing the politics. “It makes me a bit nervous,” Scottee says. “I’m just showing people something that exists.” As to what exactly, he’s keeping stumm.
Westcliff-on-Sea is not, you might think, Scottee’s natural habitat. A Londoner, raised on a Kentish Town council estate, Scott Gallagher was scooped up by the queer arts scene after he left school at 14. He and his partner, visual artist James Unsworth, moved to the Thames estuary town, sandwiched between Leigh and Southend, this summer. They had lost patience with all things London: soaring rents, flatlining nightlife and the constant stares of strangers. “I just got bored with people taking photographs and laughing at me,” he explains. “Diversity doesn’t bring tolerance.”
Scottee’s an eye-catching soul with an idiosyncratic sense of style. He’s taken to raiding Westcliff’s charity shops and today’s outfit is “granddad chic” – custard cords and a maroon turtleneck. Cooper sports a Jolly Roger neckerchief. No one bats an eyelid. “You feel local very quickly here. I’m already part of a community, but you’re allowed to be an outsider.”
It’s a paradox in a place that’s full of them. Leave won 59% of the local vote, but Scottee swears it’s “not just a sea of purple rosettes”. Billy Bragg gigged locally the other week, and a Jack Monroe lecture pulled a sizeable crowd. Local MP David Amess, Brasseye’s infamous “cake” crusader, has voted against gay marriage. “Of course,” Scottee smiles, “I’m going to become a pain in Sir David’s arse.”
Contradiction is at the heart of Putting Words in Your Mouth. The show might give voice to a set of political ideas, but it doesn’t give them free rein. The secrecy around it is less for fear of spoilers than not wanting to put people off. He wants to catch his audience off guard. If there’s one thing Scottee doesn’t do, it’s preach to the choir. He’s scathing about what he calls “retweet theatre” where audiences rock up, nod along and leave with liberal, lefty values intact. “I want to pull the rug from beneath their feet,” he says.
Beneath this is a resignation – at least, a scepticism – about theatre’s ability to reach new audiences. “It’s working-class coercion,” he says, erupting into a mock shriek. “‘Look, we’ll give it to you for a pound. A pound! Now will you like it?’ Of course they won’t. If you don’t see yourself reflected, if the work’s shit, it doesn’t matter what it costs.” He drops his voice back to its usual register. “It’s way more effective to do that work outside of the theatre.”
The aim, always, is to subvert a particular audience’s expectations. Hamburger Queen, for instance, upturns the conventions of a standard beauty pageant. “People think they’re coming to laugh at fat people, but actually they’re locked in a room to listen to fat women’s experiences of the world and to get on board with body diversity.” His recent piece Any Excuse offers a group of friends a free hot-tub party and piles on the plonk, before pushing them to explain exactly what they mean to one another.
Scottee’s work often comes in camouflage. Its flippancy conceals its fight. A self-proclaimed “light-artist”, he’s determined to break down barriers between high and low art and his practice has always stretched to include party games and variety turns. It’s how he reaches people: start broad and brash, then get challenging.
That, he believes, is the key to bringing in new audiences – a change of approach not just a change of attitude. “People have got to stop talking about diversity and start fucking doing it.”
- Putting Words in Your Mouth is at the Roundhouse, London, 22 November to 3 December
