Nelly Boy
Zee Zee Theatre (2009)
SummerWorks Festival (2007)
Published in CISSY: Three GenderPlays by Dave Deveau, Talonbooks 2020
Nelly Boy explores what it means not to fit in and challenges one of the givens of humanity: gender. Though biologically a boy, Nelly is hardly male, nor female. A tumultuous teen in a family who can’t understand gender difference, Nelly takes the audience through a haunting tale of suburban life. An interrogator, in turn, attempts to put the pieces together in order to discover how Nelly was found running naked along a highway. This is a story about a person struggling to find space to exist between the black and white of the world.
“Smart, heartfelt, and sometimes funny” – Colin Thomas, Georgia Straight
“So raw and intimate you might feel you’re eavesdropping…Nelly Boy gets under your skin” – Jo Ledingham, Courier
“For 75 minutes you could have heard a pin drop in the small space of the PAL theatre. As the actors exited and the lights went to black, the words “brave, terrifying, sad” competed in my head… well worth seeing” - Gillian Lockitch, Review from the House
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