Scandinavia Has Been Good To Me

Stage performance/Available for booking

“The world is in a mess, the nation is in a state, and a good friend has disappeared. The only clues to where he has gone and whether he will return are a box of memories of past wanderings and a note - “Scandinavia Has Been Good To Me”. Enter Mandy Romero, transgender detective extraordinaire, to make sense of it all. Is there a “better place”? Is it anywhere you can get to by walking? What’s rave got to do with it? Or Japanese poetry, for that matter?

This is the Premiere of a new performance which completes the trilogy of autobiographical shows which began at The Bluecoat in 2010 with “Stevenage”.

In “Scandinavia Has Been Good To Me” Mandy carries forward the trilogy’s narrative from 1983 to ’96, a time when Liverpool and many other places were the focus for personal regeneration, and concludes with a homecoming, and a leaving.”

In about 2008 I was talking to some students about starting new projects, and I wrote down a list of titles for performance projects I wanted to create. On the list was “Stevenage”, “Glam Rock” and the title of this show, “Scandinavia Has Been Good To Me”. The other two were made in 2010 and 2013 and this followed in 2015. Like them it involved projections and sound-work and it also, like them, sketched in a section of my autobiography, in this case the years when I was freelance, 1983-96, which brought into focus a lot of personal growth and change and the transition from the expansive 1980’s to the highly-tuned 90’s, in the midst of which is my love affair with Scandinavia. It was premiered as part of the Liverpool LGBTQ Arts Festival, Homotopia, in 2015 and performed again the following autumn in St Helens.

This is very much current as a show. Whereas “Stevenage” was in promenade and I moved about a lot, by the time of “Scandinavia” I was mainly static and the drama exists between screen, stage and soundtrack. It also features voguing. All very exciting, if a real challenge to perform, but I am up for offers.