A Multimedia Play by Sister Frigidity

Chelsea Centre Theatre, World’s End, Chelsea 3 to 29 February 1992. Sign interpreted 7 February. 

Sister Frigidity was the Nun Name of Ian Lucas, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters were very active in the early and mid-1990s, blessing a variety of protests and in particular involved in AIDS causes as imps, goads, fundraisers and very angry Nuns.

From the leaflet:

MARK: Aren’t funerals big parties. Why fear death? It’s the other side of living.

How do we come to terms with living with AIDS? How do we express our grief and love? How do we adapt to the changes that HIV is forcing on us?

Using drama, film, mime and ritual, “Dolphins Can Swim” is a haunting, passionate and moving portrayal of the way Mark Richards and his friends celebrate their own mortality, emphasising the importance of control in everyone’s lives.

MARK: Time has become really valuable. How to focus it, use it. Time and how you take control of your own life.

“Dolphins Can Swim” expresses the anger, frustration and hope that have arisen from the AIDS crisis in Britain over the past decade, and looks forward to how, collectively and individually, we come to terms with the future.

LAUREL: When do we turn every funeral into a fucking riot?

From the Programme:

So it happened that Sister Belladonna was in his rubber habit, I was wearing my mini with fishnets, and we were having a pint with the regulars at the Coleherne in Earl’s Court.

Exactly a year ago we had first worn our habits at the same pub, to join a demonstration against the local police who’d raided the Coleherne and harassed customers a week before. While we were supping our bevies, a leather queen started chatting to us. All of a sudden, he burst into tears. “Why me?” he asked. “I must deserve it.”

“Bullshit!” we replied, bought him a drink, and discussed the effect of moralising and guilt around HIV with him. After drying the tears and a drink or two, like a phoenix he clambered onto a pool table used as a stage by the stripper earlier that evening.

Once upon a time, the leather queen had been a drag performer, and he started to dance one of his routines. Salome could not have been more beautiful. So there were two gay male nuns and an ex-drag-queen dancing on a pool table, surrounded by butch clones and leather queens. It may not have been Kansas, but it was some kind of home. 

Dolphins can swim, drag queens can dance, but we can all be Heroes.

Sister Frigidity

Read the Script