The Dorothy Project

In the last episode of Season One, Alice talks musical theatre and diva worship with Lucy Moss. Along with her creative partner Toby Marlow, Lucy is responsible for the musical Six - a runaway hit at Edinburgh, in the West End, and soon, Broadway. Six brings Henry VIII’s wives to the stage as a kickass girlband and lets them set the historical record straight. (It’s amazing.)
The pair’s other project, Hot Gay Time Machine, which they wrote with friend and collaborator Zak Ghazi-Torbati, tells the story of a gay man’s life through song and multiple costume changes. Like Six, Hot Gay Time Machine triumphed at the Edinburgh Fringe. It has won the Eddies Award, the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence, and the Brighton Fringe’s LGBTQ+ Award. 
We talked about what Lucy and Toby each bring to creating their hit shows, what makes their relationship so fruitful, and the relationship between gay men and the queens they worship.
I tried to get Lucy to tell me what they’re working on next but she was tight-lipped...

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Liv Morris and her friend George Heyworth formed Bourgeois & Maurice on a bit of a whim back in 2007, and things have really escalated since. As a duo, they’ve released four studio albums, made a web series, a podcast, numerous theatre shows, and they’ve also won Time Out’s Alternative Eurovision competition twice. 
In the last twelve years Bourgeois & Maurice have performed around the world, and at prestigious London venues including the Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre and Sadler’s Wells. In 2017 they won the HOME Manchester T1 Commission prize, which sees them creating a new main stage show for the theatre premiering 2020.
I wanted to talk to Liv about what feels like a classic, and really fruitful relationship - between a straight woman and a gay man. About making art together, and what they both bring to the party. And about whether Liv having a baby (not with George!) has changed things.

Catia Ciarico is a programmer and producer at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a historic venue which hosts a unique mix of club nights and performance. She’s responsible for programming everything from Belinda Carlisle to The Chemsex Monologues.
Catia trained at drama school and as a clown, before becoming a stand-up comedian. But it was when she found producing roles that Catia really hit her stride. She’s worked with Swank, one of Britain’s biggest street theatre companies, as well as producing and programming at some of the most iconic venues in London including Madame Jojo's. 
We talked about the parallels between being a Dorothy and an immigrant, and why Catia held her own hen do in a gay club. She also changed my perspective on female drag queens...

A Dorothy Project first, as Alice speaks to our first male interviewee - Andrew Lumsden, who was a key part of the UK Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s. They discuss the life and work of his Gay Liberation Front comrade Mary McIntosh. TLDR: she sounds like an absolute baller.
Mary was an academic as well as an activist, and her contribution to the rights held by British gay men today is massive. In 1968, she published an academic paper arguing that homosexuality is not a psychiatric or medical condition, based on a survey she conducted of gay men in Leicester and London. In her time on the Criminal Law Revision Committee, she advocated for the lowering of the age of consent for gay men. She also studied the letters of gay prisoners from the 16th century onwards, observing the 18th century gay subculture of ‘mollies’.

Mary and her partner Elizabeth Wilson contributed to founding and shaping the direction of the London Gay Liberation Front. Throughout her life McIntosh continued to forge links between the gay liberation movement, the women's movement and lesbian movements.

Alice talks to queer scene supremo Amy Zing. Along with her best mate Glyn Fussell, Amy co-founded the influential club night Sink The Pink. 
Since its inception in East London over a decade ago, Sink The Pink has outgrown venue after venue, becoming one of the biggest alternative club brands in the country and helping bring drag into the mainstream. The Sink The Pink team have gone on to develop the hugely popular queer pop music festival Mighty Hoopla, and club night Savage.
After moving from London to Margate, Amy founded Margate Pride and the queer youth group OUT Margate. She also had a baby!
We talked about Sink The Pink’s changing demographic and the power of going mainstream, the special relationship between women and gay men (and the term ‘fag hag’) and Amy’s experience juggling being a mum with working in nightlife.

Actor Nicola Coughlan is a Galway native (she just does a very good Derry accent) who plays Clare Devlin in the global smash hit sitcom Derry Girls.
She also starred in 18th Century brothel drama Harlots, and has just started work on the huge new Shondaland production Bridgerton, alongside Dame Julie Andrews. On stage, Nicola was lauded for her work in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Donmar Warehouse.
Off stage, she’s a MASSIVE Dorothy. Nicola campaigned for marriage equality in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. She’s also a huge fan of drag, who’s been found tipping crisps over her head in tribute to Sasha Velour and glueing down her brows to complete an Alaska costume. 
We talked about her LGBTQ advocacy, living in San Francisco as a teenager, and her friendship with Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness. 

Nicki French is a singer and actor. She represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2000, finishing 16th with ‘Don’t Play That Song Again’. Nicki has since become a stalwart of the Eurovision fan scene, including the annual London Eurovision Party, to which she brings up to 23 costume changes. Her new EP of Eurovision covers, ‘Let’s Play That Song Again’, is out now.
Nicki’s cover of fellow Eurovision entrant Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ was a top five hit in the UK and US in 1995, selling over five million copies worldwide. She has performed in gay clubs from the very start of her career and is currently signed to the HI-NRG label Energise Records, along with other Pride season favourites Hazell Dean, Sinitta, and Sonia.
Since 2007, she has also been working as an actor in pantomime and musicals, including The Wizard of Oz and Annie.
We talked about Nicki’s Eurovision experiences, making music for gay clubs, and playing musical theatre legend Ethel Merman.

Holly Shortall co-hosts the hit pop culture podcast Popsessed with her friend, the broadcaster, journalist and DJ Conor Behan. She is also an HIV activist with ACT UP Dublin. My first interviewee from outside of the UK, Holly is a favourite of UK and Irish Gay Twitter, which is how I came to know her.
She lives in Dublin, and works in marketing and communications (yep, everything I’ve just mentioned is side hustle.)
We talked about finding your tribe online, her work with ACT UP (actupdublin.com), and how she sees the role of an ally.

Professor Chloe Orkin is the Chair of the British HIV Association. She is a Clinical Professor of HIV Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, on secondment to the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at University College London. She is a Consultant Physician at the Royal London Hospital where her clinical duties include running a busy HIV and HIV/ HCV research unit. 
Professor Orkin led the ‘Going Viral’ blood-borne virus testing week campaign, and under her leadership BHIVA has been acknowledged as an early champion of the U=U campaign. Professor Orkin sees herself as a medical activist, working to improve the lives of people living with HIV in the UK by providing medical evidence that challenges stigma.
She trained as a doctor in her native South Africa at the height of the AIDS crisis before moving to London, where she met her partner - who also works in HIV medicine. 

Fanny Minka is quite possibly the world's only travel-blogging drag queen. Originally from Australia, she was influenced by the release of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at the tender age of 13 and has been a radical diva in transit ever since. A Londoner for the past 15 years, Fanny has been part of Sink The Pink's drag family for nearly six of those. She spends any spare time (and money) travelling and writing about it on her blog, Minka Guides. 
Fanny is unusual among drag queens for a few reasons - as well as the blogging, she’s a cisgender woman, and she started doing drag with her husband. So she has some really interesting perspectives on the performance of gender, on how the queer scene has changed and continues to change - and whether the concept of a ‘Dorothy’ could even become obsolete.