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No Love Songs for Lady Basses

11-16 June

Old Fitz Theatre, Darlinghurst

Theatre (Music)



No love for lady Basses by Sheanna Parker Russon is a thought provoking, loving expression of one young persons search for her place in the ‘inclusive’ arts industry. A person that loves to sing and who discovers, painfully, that there are no appropriate love songs for a lady with a base voice. I was immediately drawn by the perspective of this story sharing. It is a captivating and clever frame for the story of transition and I am grateful that the team put the work in to get it on stage and that I was in the audience. In particular Sheanna Parker Russon, whom I assume the story is about as she shares with us a deeply personal, sometimes painful and equally beautiful journey to become herself.


Parker Russon was an opera singer and trained actor, she talks to the actors dilemma of typecast, directors and the cis norm gaze and it imposing and judgement laden imposition. We learn of the physicality that weighs on her as she imagines a transition and how do her imperfections and her perfections (voice, love) translate. She offers a nuanced conversation about the difficulty of gender with humour. Perhaps returning a little too much to the humour. 


The team, Cassie Hamilton as director, Lillian M Hearne composer and musical director as well as musician on stage and Aisling Bermingham as sound designer and musician on stage they are a strong performance ensemble. The interplay of story offered through song is relatively fast paced, reveals delightful and diversity of musicianship. The music is a feature of the show and moves us through quite vast territory representing stages of Parker Russon’s life in need of embracing her womanhood. The performance team are gentle and emanating care and professionalism.


This show is a clear example of self-honesty and self-love. Parker Russon shares some of about her fears and the value of finding love with another. 


There are a couple of fabulous lines that stay with me;

“Suck my lady dick” and “I’m learning to fall in love with my transness.”

How I hope play number two is centred on that – falling in love with her transness. I found I wanted more throughout of a sinking into the love of self, love with another and an expression of courage that the journey is.


The Clit Conversations – In our premier play we delve into the ‘herstory’. Throughout Mesoamerica the concept of gender is not a binary nor genitals specific, to be living is to embody energies, feminine and masculine and each body holds these in shifting and changing proportions. 


This play highlights to me that the journey to claim an identity is a privilege that is heartfelt, nuanced and involves a wide range of repercussions. For Sheanna those repercussions were shared with us via her voice, her playlist, her musical joy and loves, while her puppetry skills bought to life some of the opposition she has faced. I walked away from the play feeling connected to her and hoping for the opportunity to hear/see more of her story and to delve into the energies that are in her identity as it evolves. I highly recommend.

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