Chickpeas - A guest post by Hagseed Theatre

With Chickpeas, the goal has always been a simple one: to tell a love story. The play is a classic RomCom full of ‘will-they-won’t-they’ tension, set in a tiny rural village somewhere in the South West. As queer people who grew up in small countryside towns, we wanted to tell a story that felt authentic to this experience: of coming to terms with our own sexuality, and the painful reckonings with our first crushes, and subsequent first loves. Having said that, it’s also an incredibly silly play.  

We found our muse in a charity shop bargain bin. Up to our elbows in castaway romance novels and 70s cookbooks, a shining jewel emerged: an anthology of ‘Contemporary Lesbian Melodrama’. The book cover pictured illustrations of anguished, love-sick lesbians in the throes of tormented passion and stolen glances. Not ones to judge a book by its cover, we engaged in a whispered dramatic reading between the bookshelves and thus, Chickpeas was born.  

More specifically, this is what inspired the play within the play, ‘The Forbidden Fruit’, the steamy Regency lesbian melodrama that Stacy and Adrienne are rehearsing for the annual village hall show. Lady of the Manor, Prissy, gets it on with Fanny, her new Lady’s maid, in a raunchy, innuendo-intense tragedy of forbidden love. Writing this was a massive laugh, and we embraced every cliché and absurdity we had ever seen across lesbain media. There’s a period setting, a class divide, a grotesquely large age-gap, horny virgin innocence falling for a seasoned nymphomaniac, and (spoilers) maybe a not-so-happy-ending for the lovers.  

But we’ve seen this all before! From ‘Ammonite’ to ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’, troubling power dynamics and sad endings are a well trodden path for fictional lesbians. Chickpeas is a defiant response to this canonical misrepresentation of queer (particularly lesbian) love stories in the media. Stacy and Adrienne are real people with real problems, and they navigate the complexities and nuances of being young, stupid, and falling in love with someone. Being gay really has little to do with it. We have created a utopian village setting where the scariest thing for two lesbians is whether their crush likes them back, and this has allowed us to explore a woman-loving-woman relationship in a new light. Unlike Prissy and Fanny, Stacy and Adrienne are comfortable and open with their sexuality, neither is promised to a man, and they are free to flirt at will.  

Chickpeas has been through a Uni showcase, 2 scratch festivals, a mini-tour and is now embarking on a journey across the South West. Across venues and performances, we have found that the show has really brought people together. In Weston-super-Mare, a whole community of local queer people of all ages from in and around the town came to the show. We’ve had stunning older lesbians pressing £20 notes into our hands to ‘put towards the tour van’ (it’s a Ford Fiesta); we’ve had sell-out audiences; we’ve had tears - from them and from us; we’ve performed it all on a child-size chaise lounge. We eagerly await the swathes of emotion, silliness and excitement the South West will bring us.  

See you soon, 

Milly Mitchell  

(subtly co-edited by Georgia Casimir, as per usual) 

On behalf of Hagseed Theatre.