Edinburgh Fringe play reimagines JK Rowling trans row

‘TERF’ imagines the ‘Harry Potter’ film actors confronting Rowling about her views on the trans debate – Copyright AFP/File Natalia KOLESNIKOVA

Jessica HOWARD-JOHNSTON

A new play criticising Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s views on transgender issues comes to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Thursday.

The comedy production “TERF” imagines the “Harry Potter” film actors staging an intervention with the British author about her view that biological sex is immutable.

“It is an intervention by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint to Jo Rowling” to get her to change her position on the trans debate, Trelawny Kean, who plays the role of Emma Watson, told AFP.

Rowling’s frequent posts on X on the subject have made her a hate figure among many transgender rights campaigners. They argue, for example, that she has repeatedly misgendered a British trans broadcaster.

That has led them to dismiss her as a terf, a term of abuse that unpacks as “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”.

US writer and director Joshua Kaplan nevertheless argues that “TERF” is not a character assassination on Rowling, but about both trans rights and the loss of nuance on social media.

“It’s about how social media has infected the way that we have conversations, the way that nuance has been lost in almost every conversation,” he added.

– Backlash –

The production has already changed the play’s title — dropping one offensive word — and the venue due to fears of a backlash. The trans character in the play, “X”, will also remain anonymous in the programmes.

“We hope that our company are hardy enough to be able to cope with the nonsense around this,” said Barry Church-Woods, co-founder of Civil Disobedience, the production company behind it.

Church-Woods is “genuinely concerned” about the “more violent rhetoric that we have around these issues”.

Rowling lives near Edinburgh, where she penned many of the “Harry Potter” books which have sold more than 600 million copies worldwide and seen a successful film franchise and other spin-offs.

The Scottish capital hosts the world’s biggest arts festival every August, during which thousands of budding artists bring new plays to the city for the Fringe festival’s unprecedented exposure.

Kaplan said the play was being staged in Edinburgh for the Fringe, not because of the author’s links to the city.

Trans rights have become a political issue in Scotland, where the devolved government in 2022 passed a bill making it easier for people to officially change their gender.

But in a rare use of its veto powers against the Scottish administration, that bill was blocked by the UK government in London.

The Harry Potter stars who portrayed Harry, Hermione and Ron in eight films released over a decade have spoken about their “tricky” relationship with Rowling, as described by Rupert Grint.

Daniel Radcliffe, who played the titular boy wizard, has said he no longer has any contact with the author and is “really sad” about their falling-out.

– Family dynamic –

Rowling caused a furore in December 2019 when she voiced support for a researcher sacked for tweeting that transgender people cannot change their biological sex.

Radcliffe and Watson distanced themselves from the author, even after she provided context to her argument in a lengthy essay about her past as a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence.

She and her supporters denies she is transphobic. They argue that this is about protecting women’s sex-based rights.

“This is about the right of women and girls to assert their boundaries,” Rowling wrote in a recent essay for The Times newspaper.

But while her views have earned her the support of many feminists, she has become a hate figure for trans activists and even received death threats.

The play itself is “very funny” with a “family dynamic” between the three actors and the author, Kean said.

“It’s interspersed with scenes from Jo’s past that give us an indication of perhaps why she has the opinions that she has today,” he added.

Like the actors’ mixed feelings about Rowling, many Harry Potter fans have also struggled to reconcile their love for Rowling’s fictional world and the author’s opinions.

Kaplan wanted to address the “art versus the artist debate” head on in the play.

He was “trying to work through my feelings of how you can love the art, disagree with the artist”.