Trailer/trash

MK Fringe

Frankie and Shyanne live their lives if they’re stars of their very own movie – they just don’t know it.

It’s a buddy movie without the popcorn, a road trip without the car.

Playing against type and exploring the American Dream, sexual exploitation and gender identity, Trailer/trash is a fierce comedy that embraces the young and feisty Frankie, a waitress in a backwater diner who hates her job, her body and longs to be a man, and an ageing Afro- American stripper, Shyanne, who dreams of becoming a star in Las Vegas, but has lived too long with a lifetime of regrets.

I call this “trash theatre”; their lives are lived out in a theatrical version of a movie set, somewhere deeply south in the USA. Despite fragments of seemingly empty lives played put in front of their imaginary audience, Frankie and Shyanne remain rich and colourful in their dreams since these represent the hope of better things to come. It’s the American Dream, after all.

MIKE ELLISTON