FROM ME TO US*****

 

By Cal

Link:  This production premieres on 12^th November at 7.15pm

Available until:

This film is about a single gay man who wants to be a dad. I am a (non-single) gay man who wants to be a dad, but I think it’s very important to make it clear that this film isn’t just for gay men who want to start a family – any more than American Moor was just for BAME viewers, or the A Light in Dark Places series was just for people who have experienced mental health problems. Those plays are for everyone and I believe From Me to Us is too – it is a very good film on a very important subject which I believe everyone needs to know about.

Perhaps it will inspire more gay male aspiring fathers than anyone else, but this is a film for anyone who wants a child and wants to have it in the way which is, for them, the right way. For anyone who wants to help somebody else have a child. For anyone who knows someone in this situation. For anyone who wants to know more about the world we now live in. There are lots of terrible things going on in the world and a lot of things which still need to change. But some things have already changed for the better and this is a chance for people to discover and celebrate it. The film is also for anyone who wants to enjoy a very good and meaningful film.

This film is educational and it’s beautiful. It’s honest and genuine. I feel very lucky to be watching it at all – and particularly lucky to be asked to review before the premiere.

As writer Wayne Stephen Jackson says, it is a fragmented story – and it’s a story without an end. But that is what life is like. There are no endings. Only new chapters. Life jumps around from one fragment to another. So do our brains. Sometimes life seems to go backwards as we remember the past, or forward as we anticipate the future. From Me to Us is an exploration of a chapter in Wayne Stephen Jackson’s life, but the past and future are always intertwined with the present.

Most of the film takes place on an almost-bare stage. There is a table and a chair. A typewriter. A box with something special inside, which is revealed later. A clothes rail with six shirts.

The typewriter could mean many things. Perhaps Wayne prefers to use a typewriter. Perhaps it’s a stronger image than a computer because there are so many other uses for a computer; this could be a special machine for one purpose alone: to write a letter to his future child. Perhaps it’s a sign that some attitudes are still slightly stuck in the past and although the one-time impossible can now be achieved, you have to work that little bit harder. To push your life forward with greater force, as you strike a typewriter key with greater force. Not wrong, but more difficult. And you can still get there.

The shirts are all worn during the performance. If the film is a chapter in Wayne’s life, it is subdivided by the shirts. By the whole series of processes you have to go through in order to achieve what you want most in the world.  Perhaps there’s even a need to become a new person at every stage. Whoever you need to be to get through to the next one. So many hurdles to jump over, while other people just have to jump into someone’s bed. It’s still unfair in some ways, but what wouldn’t you go through for your child?

It’s all here. The processes. The challenges (this is not a film about how difficult it is – far from it – but it’s clear it’s not easy). The old law. The ways in which it has changed, and when. And the absolute excitement, wonder and sometimes fear at what lies ahead.

The film is mostly set on a stage, but there are short scenes in outside locations. Sometimes, Wayne speaks into a microphone. Sometimes, he doesn’t. Some of the play has a voice-over as Wayne types on the typewriter. Some scenes include two, or even three versions of Wayne, sometimes speaking in unison and sometimes not. It’s not always clear what these choices represent, but it could be any number of things – and they’re fascinating to watch. Perhaps with a microphone, he’s performing, and without it, he’s letting us watch him live. Perhaps it’s the feeling of being split in half; of being more than one person at once; of feeling yourself being under someone else’s microscope; being examined from different angles: the medical, the legal and the human.

Or perhaps the fact that this is Wayne’s story, but it is other people’s story too. Not everyone will be at the stage Wayne is at, but in different parts of the world (and even within this story), there are people in different fragments of this story, whether they’re lucky enough to be parents already or just starting to realise, as a child, that they’re not attracted to the opposite sex.

With a good film, you don’t always want to understand absolutely everything. Sometimes, it just needs to feel and look right. We are all individuals with our own thoughts and experiences and this is a film that can be related to, enjoyed, appreciated and learned from in so many different ways.

Just for an hour, Wayne’s life is our life as we share his personal thoughts and experiences, accompanied by Chris Benstead’s gentle background music. We see Wayne’s love for his future child. His fears. His hopes. His dreams – and the source of his dreams. But mainly his love.