Created by Semple (pictured), Unboxing Bravery is their story of the merge between their love of performance art and their queer identity. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm

A show coming to the OV Arts Centre in Nanaimo will explore gender and transgender allyship through the art form of drag, and telling one person's journey of finding themselves.

By day Lauren Semple is a consultant who provides training and facilitation for different business and community organizations around 2SLGBTQIA+ (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, plus) inclusion. By night Semple performs drag under the name Andi Rogynous.

Created by Semple, Unboxing Bravery is their story of the merge between their love of performance art and their queer identity.

The show first debuted in 2023 as a one-night show after Crimson Coast Dance artistic director, Holly Bright heard that Semple was writing a show and looking for a place to perform it. Semple said while writing the show she had to dig deep for it as it was a personal story.

“It's a personal show, as much as it combines sort of factual community competency and statistics and things like that,” Semple said. “I also bring into it my own story, my own journey with gender identity. Writing it was some parts were easy, some parts were more difficult”

Semple shares some parts of the show, which she refers to as “work in progress pages,” as the parts speak on the ever-changing state of transgender rights and the threat to them.

“We kind of look at it from the global, the North American and the Canadian perspective. The sad thing is, if I write those pages too early, I end up updating them every single week as a new election or a new piece of anti-trans legislation is tabled or something else happens,” she said. “So we often leave those pages until right before the show, because they're the hardest to write, and it's so important that they're timely and they speak to the current state of affairs. So those are the hardest ones to write, for sure.”

Right now, while she said the current state of being transgender is not great, there is still a lot of beauty and hope.

Semple highlights a recent study done by the UBC Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre that found the school resource SOGI 123 not only lowered the amount of bullying against 2SLBTQIA+ students but lowered bullying against all students regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“That to me, is just so heartening, and it's also sad because as we start to have more facts and more research, and we see sort of the impacts–the real impacts of some of these changes that are being made,” Semple said. “We're also having to fight increased misinformation and stigma, some well, like heavily funded smear campaigns and ad campaigns against a very, very small minority community.”

Semple said one thing they discuss in Unboxing Bravery is that it is not always sunshine, rainbows and pride parades.

“Here in Canada, we have some very real anti-trans legislation and the reversal and the pulling back of children's rights in this country, and it's in multiple provinces now, and it's continuing to grow,” they said. “Even here [in British Columbia], we just had a provincial election, and trans rights were on the line in that election– a lot of folks don't even know that they were. ”

While Semple said people who are part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community will find education, inclusion and laughter in Unboxing Bravery, they also said the show is for people who want to be or consider themselves an ally to the community.

“It's meant to challenge preconceived notions, things that folks may have read in comment sections online, challenge those bits of misinformation before they can take root,” they said. “But it also means to have people who don't normally have to question or explore their gender, take a second to look within and realize that maybe all the answers and all the boxes aren't so clearly laid out for them, either.”

Semple said the show is done through the art of drag during a time when there is an attack on drag performers.

They said they want to demystify the art of drag and take some of the edge and stigma away from the art form. Semple said they wrote the show to not be like a typical drag show, having more of an educational aspect which allows anyone to come and enjoy the show and understand the meaning behind it.

Unboxing Bravery will be shown at OV Arts Centre in downtown Nanaimo from November 15 to 17 and November 21 to 23. Tickets can be purchased at the Western Edge Theatre website.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.