Review: Thirty-Six at The Loading Dock, Qtopia Sydney

Review by Kate Gaul

How long do we expect to live? It is a question most of us have the luxury of postponing. In Thirty-Six, Bayley Turner reminds us that for many transgender people, mortality is not an abstract thought reserved for old age but a companion that arrives far too early.

The work begins with a birthday. Turner has reached her thirty-sixth year, having quietly crossed the age that folklore and misinformation long suggested transgender women rarely survived. While that statistic has long been discredited, the fear it generated remains painfully real. The violence, discrimination, inadequate healthcare and social isolation experienced by many trans people continue to shape lives in ways that make questions of ageing, dignity and legacy feel deeply urgent.

Created by Turner with celebrated Scottish playwright and trans activist Jo Clifford, now in her seventies, Thirty-Six unfolds as a conversation across generations. It is part memoir, part reflection and part love letter between two women whose lives have been separated by decades but connected through shared experience. Together they ask not only how we survive, but how we grow old, who remembers us, and what it means to be seen.

It is a remarkably gentle piece of theatre. Rather than building towards confrontation or outrage, it invites us to sit with uncertainty. The stories unfold with warmth, humour and honesty, allowing the audience to recognise that while the specifics of transgender experience may differ, the inevitability of ageing and death belongs to us all.

Bayley Turner gives a heartfelt and quietly captivating performance. There is an ease and confidence in her presence that immediately establishes trust with the audience. She never appears to be performing at us; instead, she welcomes us into an intimate conversation. It is a generous performance, rich with vulnerability but never asking for sympathy. Turner embodies womanhood with grace and assurance, allowing her own lived experience to illuminate the work without ever reducing herself to a symbol.

Director Kitan Petkovski wisely resists the temptation to overcomplicate the material. The production breathes. Moments of silence are allowed their full emotional weight, while shifts in tone from humour to melancholy happen with effortless fluidity. There are inventive theatrical touches throughout, particularly the deployment of multiple live cameras that capture and project Turner's image from unexpected perspectives. These projections become more than visual decoration; they quietly suggest the fragmented ways identity is witnessed, documented and remembered.

One image lingers in particular: Turner lying across a table while the cameras continue to observe her from above. It is at once peaceful and unsettling, evoking examination, ritual and remembrance without insisting on any single interpretation. It encapsulates the production's greatest strength in its ability to create images that resonate beyond explanation. Petkovski's elegant direction and the thoughtful design elements continually draw the work back into the theatrical present. The production trusts its audience to think rather than simply react.

The response at Qtopia reflected that trust. The applause was warm but restrained, the atmosphere reflective rather than exuberant. It felt as though the audience understood they had not simply witnessed a performance but been entrusted with someone's lived experience.

Thirty-Six is a play about being transgender. It is also about growing older, facing death, searching for community and hoping that, when our lives are over, we will have been recognised for who we truly were. Those are profoundly human concerns. The fact that transgender people must so often confront them earlier, and with greater uncertainty, is precisely why this story matters.

There is enormous courage in the quietness of Thirty-Six. It refuses sensationalism, choosing instead empathy, conversation and grace. In a cultural landscape where trans lives are too often debated rather than heard, this gentle, deeply humane production offers something more valuable: the opportunity simply to listen.

Image Credit: Meagan Harding