As Cowbois opens at the Royal Court Theatre, Charlie Josephine talks about weaving timely ideas about gender, sexuality and class into “a really great night out”
When Charlie Josephine binge-watched old cowboy movies as research for their new play Cowbois, they got a bit of a shock. “I found that they’re really racist, heteronormative and misogynistic,” says Josephine, the play’s writer and co-director, who uses he/they pronouns. “They’re also full of violence, and obviously I didn’t want to make anything like that.” Instead, Josephine seized the “clear, confident iconography” of the Western genre and decided to rewire it with queer energy. They describe Cowbois, which opens at London’s Royal Court Theatre on January 11 following an autumn run in Stratford-upon-Avon, as a Trojan horse that weaves timely ideas about gender, sexuality and class into “a really great night out”.
Josephine, who previously wrote I, Joan, an electrifying 2022 play that presented Joan of Arc as non-binary, takes pride in telling stories that centre working-class women and queer people. Cowbois does this with warmth and authenticity drawn from strands of history that most of us weren’t taught at school. Josephine points out that real-life cowboys were “much more diverse in terms of class, race, gender and sexuality” than “the middle-aged white guy” Hollywood likes to portray. While writing Cowbois, Josephine also consulted Female Husbands: A Trans History, Jen Manion’s book about trans masculine people from previous generations, and Before We Were Trans, Kit Heyam’s history of gender nonconformity around the world. “Those books felt really affirming – we’ve always been here; it’s just the language that’s changed and evolved,” Josephine says.
Cowbois begins with a “sexy trans masculine gender outlaw” called Jack Cannon (Vinnie Heaven) arriving in an isolated Wild West town kept alive by its female inhabitants; since the men left to join the gold rush, neither hide nor hair has been heard from them. Confident and charismatic, Jack inspires this tight-knit community to reckon with their gender identities and confront the patriarchy. Josephine says Heaven’s performance really leans into the Hollywood cowboy myth – that of “the handsome stranger who swaggers into town and causes revolution” – then gradually dismantles it. “At first he really plays up all the stereotypes in gesture, body language and movement,” Josephine says. “But then throughout the play, he lets that [swagger] drop a little bit and becomes more human. And that’s a really exciting journey for the audience to go on.”
As the characters’ sense of identity evolves, so does the way they present themselves. “It feels to me like a play about transformation,” says Cowbois’ designer Grace Smart. “And so I thought the best way to represent a ‘before’ and ‘after’ is through a really joyful switch in what everyone wears.” At the start, the cast are clad largely in beiges and browns that hark back to sepia-toned photos of Wild West saloons. “I wanted it to almost look like there’s a filmic filter over the entire production,” Smart says. Then, after Jack turns the town on its head, the characters rock punchier colours and snappier silhouettes. Smart says she was inspired by everything from vintage paper doll play sets to a 1969 photo of Diana Ross in cow print chaps. “It’s mad that it looks so modern,” she says of the iconic Ross look.
Cowbois may be a play about a muted community that blooms into a queer utopia, but Josephine says they were conscious of making it accessible to a non-LGBTQ+ audience. Because it was written for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s venerable Swan Theatre – where Cowbois premiered in October – Josephine was aware that it might be seen by “some TERFs and Tories” with less than progressive views about gender and sexuality. “I wanted to write a piece that would help them to accidentally fall in love with a trans-masculine cowboy,” they explain. “And so I chose to write it with a very classic structure that would make everyone in the audience feel comfortable. That was a creative challenge for me: to marry my queer heart that wanted to do something rebellious and visceral and sweaty with a kind of ‘straight’ storytelling structure.”
Josephine’s efforts have definitely paid off. Their Cowbois co-director Sean Holmes, the associate artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, says the play resonates with a broad audience because it “contains such a range of characters” and narratives. “When my 13-year-old son saw it, he really loved the character of James (Julian Moore-Cook) because he was drawn to his innocence,” Holmes says. He and Josephine made sure to assemble their cast and crew with diversity as a guiding light. “We were really specific about race because the play is set at a time when race was such a hot topic,” Josephine explains. The cast includes “a lot of working-class actors and neurodivergent actors”, Josephine notes, as well as queer actors playing queer parts and trans actors playing trans parts. “During the casting process, I wanted to introduce the RSC to loads of queer and trans actors,” they say. “Obviously they couldn’t all get a part, but I wanted as many as possible to be seen by an RSC casting director.”
Josephine and Holmes also placed a premium on pastoral care. “Yes, we wanted to make a shit-hot piece of work, but we wanted everyone involved to have a joyful experience,” Josephine says. “And even in moments of tension on stage, you can really see that this bunch of humans care about each other.” The result is a play with the potential to bring people together while entertaining them in unexpected ways. “You know, my stepdad is a white man who works in a factory and reads The Sun, and he’s still talking about a storyline that surprised him,” Josephine says. "And that feels exciting to me, in the same way that it feels exciting when a trans person is grateful to see trans representation on stage or a queer person is grateful to see two queer people falling in love. To achieve both those things in one show feels like a fucking huge achievement. I have to say, I’m really proud of that.”
Cowbois runs at the Royal Court Theatre in London from 11 January – 10 February 2024.