In this original and poetic work, Lara Rae tells the raw and heartfelt story of her half-century long (and counting) gender odyssey. Dragonfly presents us with two actors, one male, one female, who illuminate the inner life of a trans woman from her Scottish childhood in the 1960s to the present day. Matching our inside to our outside is always hard, but for trans people it’s often a matter of life and death. Stripping away the visual cues that both define and imprison transgender people, Dragonfly is a call to all of us to forge creativity from chaos. So often, it is the external changes in trans lives that the world is exposed to and confronts. Here, as Lara says, is the “inside voice” of a trans child, ever present, ever demanding to be heard, ever rising upward, to growth, peace, security and love.
News & Reviews
“It’s a wrenchingly personal, honest and open story, told through exquisitely poetic language… Ultimately, though, Dragonfly is about more than just the details of Rae’s life story. It’s about how we construct and perceive gender, and how that can hide a person’s true identity not just from those around them, but even from themselves — and about emerging from that. Dragonfly tells that challenging and rarely heard story with elegance.” —CBC Manitoba
“Funny, gritty, tragic, and crucially, relatable. This is a brave new work.” —Winnipeg Free Press
About the Author
Lara Rae is a writer and stand-up comedian. Her play Dragonfly, won the 2020 Chris Johnson Award. Lara is one of the co-developers of the internationally acclaimed television comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie and the creator of the radio series Monsoon House starring Russell Peters. Lara was the first trans woman to host the CBC flagship news program The Current. Lara’s food project, PANTRY, feeds people in Winnipeg’s West Broadway neighbourhood.
About the Performers
This audiobook version of Lara Rae’s Dragonfly stars the actors who originated the roles of “They and Them” in the premiere Theatre Projects Manitoba production, Sarah Constible and Eric Blais. Sarah Constible is an actor, writer and director hailing from Winnipeg, MB. She is also a founding member of the folk band, The Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir. Eric Blais has worked in theatre, film and television for over 25 years as an actor, stunt performer, and director. He holds a Masters of Fine Art from York University and has taught acting at York and at the University of Winnipeg.
