The six players in The Pink Sheep of the Family are not professional actors and that makes them all the more authentic ★★★☆☆

On the stage hang six huge columns of net curtains containing six characters. First we hear their voices: ‘Some of us have four rats’, ‘Some of us worked in the media’, ‘Some of us have two children’. Then they come out one by one, a little shy they show themselves to us, the audience. They are the performers of the performance The Pink Sheep of the Family. Six trans men and women who tell in fragments about their lives, dreams and fears, then and now, and in the future.

Zuidelijk Toneel initiated this production, which can now be seen at the Queer Theater Festival in Amsterdam. The six players are not professional actors, they are just themselves, which makes them all the more authentic. They come in all shapes and sizes: young, old, sturdy, fragile, shy, tough. They were all ‘born in the wrong body’, and whether that expression still matters is a subject of mutual discussion. The older trans man had to make do with that one sentence in Lou Reeds in 1971 Walk on the Wild Side (‘Shaved her legs and then he was a she’), the trans person of today can go to a theme evening in Nieuwegein. That is the difference.

Being transgender is living in layers: layer of fear, layer of courage, layer of comfort, and so on. In mutual encounters, monologues and asides, this performance thus follows a sometimes funny, occasionally moving and always honest search for their own deepest being. In scenes strung together, letters to grandmothers and parents are read, and experiences are shared about sometimes difficult lives. And again and again a camera clicks, capturing these tranches de vie for now and for the future.

The six end up at a large table where, among other things, they muse about that future. Will it be in a care center or a farm with chickens? Everyday questions.