Programme, 'Drama Queen'

Drama Queen was written by gay Liverpool writer Shaun Duggan and was commissioned as part of the Homotopia Festival during Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year and ran at the Unity Theatre 13 – 15 November 2008. Duggan developed a love for writing and acting as part of the Everyman Youth Theatre in the 1980s, winning a play writing competition in 1986 as part of the Royal Court’s Young Writers’ Festival in 1986 with his play, William, based on the Smith’s song of the same name. Duggan went on the write for Brookside, including the famous lesbian kiss between Anna Friel and Nicola Stephenson, as well as Eastenders and the opening episode of Jimmy McGovern’s Accused for which he received a BAFTA nomination. Drama Queen is drawn from Duggan’s experience of being on the Liverpool club scene of the 1990s and 2000s, specifically of going to Garlands on Eberle Street. The play tells the stories of the promoter of a top Liverpool gay club and fellow clubbers as they celebrate the club’s 12th birthday and realise that 12 years of hedonism are starting to catch up with them. “I wanted to write about that decade spent going to Garlands and that whole world and the after parties and basically write something about Mark Jenkins, who was the promoter and is Liverpool’s answer to Andy Warhol in many ways” - Shaun Duggan, 2016, extract from Liverpool Voices Oral History Collection, Museum of Liverpool.