TransAction Theatre Company
'Performance from the Periphery'
​Questioning the boxes that divide and rule us, beyond binaries and borders, in solidarity and politics of allegiance
Charitable Mission Statement
TransAction collaborates with diverse artists to create a touring programme of high quality multi-art form queer-feminist performance. Our vision is to create performance from the periphery that continually responds to and reflect the diversity within contemporary culture.
About
TransAction creates innovative, transformative, cross-cultural queer performance about issues of inclusion, equality, identity, intersectionality and empowerment.
We work with diverse orgs, art-activists, interdisciplinary experts and marginalised grass-root communities.
Joey Hateley is the Artistic Director, with the stage name The Gender Joker, who collaborates with marginalised artists to write, direct, devise and perform interdisciplinary, accessible multi-media theatre.
Credit Holly Revell Photography
Current Work
TransMology
The story of how 'Joey met Harry', in a
pocket watch portal through space-time
The new accessible multi-media performance based of the true story of Harry Stokes, the Victorian Pioneer of Transcestory and Human Rights in Manchester UK
Support the Charity: 1112104
Please help us collectively educate, inspire and unify through entertainment, outreach workshops, participation and inclusive practice, to affect positive social cohesion and cultural change.
Please support the vital work to make this groundbreaking project visible for all to see live and online, for future generations and decades come. The new multimedia version of Harry's life is just beginning from 250 years ago, in politics of allegiance. 'United we stand, divided we fall.'
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Previous project partnerships since 2004
TransAction has collaborated with many partner's, organizations and performed at venues including, Contact Theatre, RSC, The Everyman, The Factory International for MIF R&D, CCA, Oval House London, BBC Radio4, Arnolfini, Hackney Empire, Dadafest, The Bluecoats, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, The Arena, godrag! Festival English Theatre Berlin, Homotopia, Liverpool Playhouse Theatre, Unity Theatre, Vital Xposure, Z-Arts, IOU, FilmPro, CAN, SpeakEasy, The National Theatre South Bank and The Young Vic London.
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Other collaboration's and performances have been with LGBT History Month, 'diRTy' integrated BSL DadaFest with InterPlay, ‘Drag King Richard III’ Bristol Shakespeare festival, Engendered Species devising solo with Peggy Shaw (Split Britches) Drill Hall London and Queer Contact, Homotopia, Trans-Scripts Verbatim, Sparkle, Vital Xposure, FilmPro, Gaydio, Bar Wotever, Duckie, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, IOU, Z-Arts, Stockholm PRIDE, CAN, Fresh Fruit Fest New York, Malmo Arts Festival, Montreal Meow Mix, Casa Trans Ecuador, GlasGay, Queer-Up-North, SpeakEasy, The Greenroom, Apples & Snakes, and toured self-devised multi-media show A:Gender across the UK, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Canada New York and film festivals. Joey has also worked with Ron Athey, Franko B, Stacey Makishi, Jonzi D, Vag Davis, Rikki-Beadle Blair, David Hoyle, Penny Arcade, Del LaGrace Volcano and Diane Torr.
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Follow Us
Media, Quotes and Publications
“Incisive and insightful work… that rips up our notions of gender and asks us to start again” DIVA
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‘A stirring performer that throws serious light on a current taboo.’ Time Out, London, Oval House
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‘Joey Hateley performs so many different identities, we don’t know what box they are in anymore!’ LatinArt
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"Thank you to TransAction Theatre Company." Prof Stephen Whittle, OBE, FAcSS, Press for Change
"Joey Hateley is a very talented performer...the most willing I have ever met to put their body on the line." Peggy Shaw
"The Gender Joker is a shooting star! Style, talent and panache combines to not only educate and entertain but illuminate what could otherwise be a dark and dreary political passage." Del LaGrace Volcano
“Tender, playful, provocative, and visceral... a wonderful example of compassion and diversity in action.” Kaite O’Reilly, playwright
"Joey Hateley is a highly skilled performer." Diane Torr
“PHENOMENAL." Mo B. Dick, Drag King History, USA+
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"Thank you for sharing your life story and work" Holly Revell, People Like Us
“Really powerful and strong, showing all the different levels and layers of how drag is not just a show or entertainment; but full of depth in real life stories that not a lot of people know about - WOW!” Bridge Markland @godrag! English Theatre Berlin
“Finally we get to tell OUR stories. We have been around forever - and always will be. Joey puts their heart and soul into performance.” Mzz Kimberly
“Dynamic, moving AND funny. This work has it all !” Greg Thorpe, GAZE LGBTQ+ Film Fest Director
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“Gender subversion at its most political and sexy!" Chloe Poems / Gerry Potter
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"Joey Hateley could be the next Jean Genet." Vaginal Davis
'Hateley delivered a tour-de-force performance skillfully
through a multimedia display and even launched into song, using ballads to illuminate the story’s twists and turns". Dan Borden (2022) godrag! Berlin https://www.freitag.de/autoren/pr-godrag/von-dan-borden-harry-stokes-ein-revolutionaerer-transmann-lebt-wieder-1
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"The gift that Joey offers is the opportunity to think and to talk about the binary nature of male and female. diRTy is an important and provocative piece of socially engaged theatre practice". Review by Colin Hambrook https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/reviews/dadafest-2016-dirty-joey-hateley-gender-joker/ DadaFest Intl, 01.11.2016 The Bluecoat, Liverpool.
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"As Joey Hateley reflected, post-performance: 'I was channelling collective consciousness of the group, led by a sort of shared belief or spirituality that was bigger than ourselves". Dr Allison Lisa Newman, (2011), Ron Athey ‘Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing’: Whitworth Hall, University of Manchester. Academia.edu
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"An androgynous appearance adds magic to ‘herms’ performances in which transformations unfold layer upon layer of gender constructions. Is he a he? Is she a he? Is he a she? Is she a she? Joey interferes with our assumptions and speculations, leaving the audience unsettled, entertained and curious." Diane Torr, (2010) co-author Sex, Drag and Male Roles; Investigating Gender as Performance. University of Michigan Press.
“Continuing to press the personal into political service using performance as a consciousness raising tool, Hateley mixes the factual with the fictional in making explicit the impact of discourse on the bodies, lives and identities we inhabit”. Deirdre Heddon (2008) Autobiography and Performance, Joey Hateley, ‘The Endurance of the Personal’. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire & New York.​
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​"Hateley’s true trans experience and body was presented literally and figuratively... convincing to audiences and critics". Drag King Richard III, Arnolfini, Bristol Shakespeare Festival 2013. Terri Power, (2016), 'Shakespeare & Gender In Practice', Palgrave Macmillan.
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"A-Gender, produced by Joey Hateley, Artistic Director of TransAction Theatre Company was a postmodern theatre piece. The multi-media technique of juxtaposing live theatre with pre-filmed video sequences, was pure new theatre". Clare Wallace, (2006) 'Monologues: theatre, performance, subjectivity'. Litteraria Pragensia
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"As Joey Hateley reflected, post-performance: 'I was channelling collective consciousness of the group, led by a sort of shared belief or spirituality that was bigger than ourselves". Dr Allison Lisa Newman, (2011), Ron Athey ‘Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing’: Whitworth Hall, University of Manchester. Academia.edu
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"Joey Hateley - daringly mixes up drag/queer photography, videography, performance poetry, academia and science to rip up our notions of gender and start again." Agricola de Cologne for VideoChannel https://downloads.nmartproject.net/CologneOFF_1st_edition_2005.pdf
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