After endless cold months, summer has well and truly hit the UK. We’re talking outdoor brunches, 9 PM sunsets, floaty dresses – and fun, heartfelt, feel-good LGTBQIA+ stories. Now is the time to celebrate queer joy, with all its exciting ups and downs and colorful characters.
This is why we are super excited about 30 and Out, a lesbian coming-of-age story coming to London and Manchester after its successful opening at The Actors, Brighton’s iconic fringe theatre. 30 and Out is a story we can all relate to, featuring a woman struggling with societal pressures from all sides.
Performer Kit Sinclair in 30 and Out.
As she nears the fateful age of 30, our protagonist finds herself under increasing scrutiny from herself as well as those around her. Convinced that this number is as meaningful as the world would have us believe, she feels stuck in its tight timeframe and the expectation to “have it all figured out” before the big birthday. In the meantime, she juggles queer puberty, an unexpected glow-up, and gradually comes to terms with her queerness.
30 and Out is written and performed by Kit Sinclair, who has appeared in shows such as Eastenders and Casualty and the short film Aeroplanes. She is directed by Charlotte Ive, who has previously worked at The Arcola Theatre and The Roundhouse in Camden.
Sinclair and the production team care deeply about accessibility and representation, which is why the show has creative captions embedded into the design from the outset. They were also keen to capture the diversity of the UK’s lesbian community in their production and ended up recording a collection of interviews with lesbians across the country, of all ages and from different walks of life. These are woven into the show, making it much more than a monodrama.
For all its queer glee, the show remains profoundly ideologically motivated, with important messages to send to its audience. Producer Rebecca Prentice and writer-performer Sinclair comment: “As a producer/writer-performer lesbian couple, we spoke about having never seen our community represented accurately on stage. We wanted to feel the tension of being a deeply political, isolated identity as well as the glorious joy of loving however you want to, in leather harness and basement clubs.”
This important and celebratory show plays at the Pleasance in London, between 30 May – 3 June, and at the 53two in Manchester, on 7 and 8 June.
For other summertime recommendations, check out our favourite London rooftop bars here.
Love Team Nonchalant xx
Last Updated on 20th July 2023 by Nonchalant Magazine
After trying out several European cities, Ditta moved to London three years ago, and although she finds the weather, rent prices, and transport times abysmal, the capital’s music scene was vibrant enough to get her to stay. She currently works at a technology PR firm and spends all her free time in amateur theatre groups, at open mics, yoga classes, poetry readings, or at home watching Netflix and eating too many peanut M&M’s. She’s a native speaker of Hungarian, fluent in French, and could still get by in Russian and Portuguese with some polishing.
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