Written by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Directed by Darren Luke Mawdsley 

 

A young nurse approached and pulled up a seat next to mine. A lovely boy; “I can’t believe John’s gay?” he said as we both stared at my dying partner. “Why ever not?” I replied, confused and exhausted. These were tiring days. “Well, because he’s so old” 

 

Where Butterflies Go is a verbatim theatre play created from the actual words of gay men and women in their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. There has been so much progressive social change for the gay community in the United Kingdom during the past fifteen years, but how does this look, feel and impact your life as a gay man or women approaching or in the midst of old age?

 

Where Butterflies Go created from over a hundred hours of interviews, explores all of our relationships with our past, present and future through a world into which we are all certain to inhabit.

 

"I never liked the word lesbian, it reminded me of that period in time with Nancy Spain and Gilbert Harding. There was a pursed lipped Victorianism to it; 'those people'."

 

"I hated it that standing up and being counted. I did it but I hated it. We all agreed to wear the Gay Liberation badge you know the purple thing. I'd be on the tube, sweat pouring down my back and men would stand close and lean over you in a 'what you need is a real man to sort you out, a man who knows what he's doing'. And the worst thing? Women would see it and they would back away."