'More urgent and strangely quaint': After the Act, after the Supreme Court ruling

In 2022, Breach made a verbatim musical about Section 28. Three years on, Billy Barrett reflects on how it already lands differently

Ellice Stevens, Nkara Stephenson, ErickaPosadas in After the Act at the Royal Court. Photo: Alex Brenner

By Billy Barrett

“Sometimes I find myself thinking, am I living in the equivalent of Berlin in 1932?” Leigh Chislett wondered aloud, speaking to me and my writing partner Ellice Stevens in 2022. “That we’re in this period where trans rights and gay marriage are celebrated, and people like us are on the telly the whole time. But that in a few years, there’s some horrible backlash coming.”

Leigh, the manager of the sexual health clinic 56 Dean Street, had agreed to speak to us about his memories of the AIDS crisis as part of our research towards a new show we were making called After the Act. We were planning to mark the 20-year anniversary of the repeal of Section 28, the legislation banning the “promotion” of homosexuality in state schools between 1988 and 2003, with a new musical comprised almost entirely of verbatim transcripts from original interviews and archive material. Our aim was to speak to a broad range of people impacted – teachers, students and activists – and to blend their words together with those from old news clips and parliament debates to tell the story of the clause’s controversial origins and eventual repeal. Working with Frew, our composer, we’d then set them to a catchy, 80’s-esque dance-pop score.

After premiering in the New Diorama’s 80-seater studio in 2023, After the Act has since been expanded and refined with a run at the Traverse theatre in Edinburgh, and more recently a mid-scale tour around the UK. The fact of it being a musical has opened up our shamelessly political production to a much wider audience than we could have hoped for – in Liverpool, we even had a hen party in, who heartily booed our glitzy number featuring a dancing Thatcher. But one place we never expected to end up was the Royal Court – home to new writing, but not often new musicals. We re-open the show in the Downstairs space there next week – and in doing so, become one of just a handful of musicals to play there since Rocky Horror’s first outing in the upstairs space in 1973.

Zachary Willis, Nkara Stephenson, Ellice Stevens, Ericka Posadas in After the Act at the Royal Court. Photo: Alex Brenner

While we’re pleased that After the Act has had this extended life, it’s safe to say that, three years on, we are already in a different world. We may not be at the collapse of the Weimar Republic just yet, at least in this country, but most people have clocked that shit has got quite real. And as we remount the production, I’ve found that Leigh’s words – his fears of a new fascist wave on the horizon – keep running through my head.