Where creativity meets connection
Born from disaffection and punk rock, Nirvana became the touchstone of 90s rock music. Perhaps the most iconic moment in their seven-year career was an infamous appearance on MTV’s Unplugged show.
Offering strings and gentle acoustic guitars, it broke with convention for a trio renowned for savage bass riffs, thundering drums and the trademark howl of singer Kurt Cobain. The latter should have been on top of the world, after arguably becoming the biggest name in rock that year. But in the background, rumours circulated about chaos and self-destruction. A year on, and it would all be over, replaced by endless discussions about their impact.
They eschewed crowd-pleasers from their previous two million-selling albums, Nevermind and In Utero, instead performing covers and less familiar tracks. It included Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam by The Vaselines and their album favourite, All Apologies – a complicated tale of confronting your actions.
“In a way, my whole show is responding to that song,” says Emma Frankland, as she prepares to perform her new show, No Apologies. “There are so many lyrics that feel really resonant within it.” Although it’s now a fully-fledged theatrical work, it has some foundations in a cabaret act she created for Trans Pride and has continued to perform and evolve over the following five years. Back then, it was referred to as All Apologies, but along the journey into it becoming a fully-fledged work, it became apparent there was plenty more to say.
“I think there came a point, in this more recent process, where we thought maybe it's not all apologies… Don't make any apologies for who you are.”
“The more I read about Kurt, the more you see his complexity. Obviously, every person is complex. But there are so many factors at play. It's funny, really. I’ve been reading one of his biographies, and you know Kurt refers to All Apologies as one of their happy songs. It is quite hopeful at the end, but it’s got ‘that’ chorus.”
Riffing through examinations of internet chat rooms, mythology and radically mis-remembering Nirvana’s iconic 1993 MTV Unplugged concert, No Apologies is now heading to Brighton’s Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on Weds 16 April. Frankland tells me this particular show will be a deluxe version of the work, not least for its inclusion of a five-piece band. “Over the years, people have come up to me after gigs and said: ‘If you ever want to put a band together, give me a call.’ So I’ve just got back in touch with some of them. They’re all trans Brighton musicians. I’m just really excited. It's been amazing fronting a band.”
At the height of Nirvana’s success, Frankland was a little young to be swept away completely by the grunge phenomenon. “I do keep revisiting those influences that were on me at that time. I think part of what the show talks about is that experience of being a young queer, trans person growing up in the middle of nowhere during the 90s.” There's a surge of interest in the period recently, aesthetically and culturally. It’s made Frankland reflect on what it meant to be a teenager at the time. “What does it mean to have come up during Section 28, through the AIDS crisis, at a time when there were so many restrictions on being able to come into our fullness.”
The award-winning writer and performer has established herself as one of the most exciting theatre makers in Britain. With explorations around gender, identity and politics, her work effortlessly flows between playfulness, stimulating and irreverent.
Two years ago, she brought her co-adaptation of John Lyly’s classic Galatea to Brighton Festival, eschewing traditional venues in favour of the far-off Adur Recreation Ground. Her work has been performed internationally in Indonesia, Brazil, Canada and across the UK and Europe and she was featured in the 2013 British Council Showcase with an anarchic adaptation of Don Quijote. In 2019 she created We Dig, which physically demolished the iconic OvalHouse theatre with a cast of trans femmes from around the world and has written several episodes for Channel 4's iconic continuing drama Hollyoaks.
Each show starts with a nugget of an idea, which evolves into something simultaneously nuanced and distinctive. “I always try and generate lots of material, whether that's writing or thoughts or images or songs, whatever. And then at some point, there's like a big mountain of stuff, which becomes a bit more sculptural almost. You're working through, asking what the thread is. I think it takes time for things to reveal themselves.”
There’s always been that desire to work in theatre. There were lots of school shows and her father was into amateur dramatics, so her childhood was spent either onstage in pantomimes or sitting at the back of rehearsal rooms watching her dad direct shows. “I was the first person in my family to be professional. Now, all my siblings are working in the industry. I've collaborated with my brother on this and a lot of my previous shows. It's a real family thread.”
“Live performance, whether it's theatre or cabaret, is really important. As the digital sphere is becoming so crowded. You've got AI, or you've got security concerns, or you've got censorship beginning to happen online in very real ways. In a live space, we can just come together, say what we want to say, listen and be changed. You know, I've always loved that. And every show is different, isn't it? Because that's the nature of performance.”
The show is centred around discourse, and how certain debates can play out online. Amongst some digital communities, there are suggestions that Kurt Cobain was trans; speculation like this has been floating around for over three decades.
“This is not my thought. There's some evidence, but who knows? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. We couldn't know, but the way the discourse online takes that question and turns it into fury or something else is interesting.” She points out that something doesn’t have to be objectively true for it to be powerful or important. The conversations fuelling the consensus and speculation are the red meat driving No Apologies along.
As a powerful piece of performance, it’s intended to trigger conversations of its own. But this is 2025, and people get angry that certain conversations are taking place.
“I think so many people get offended by what they think something is, rather than knowing what it is,” says Frankland. “I'm interested in that… and how this piece is received as well. When I performed the cabaret version of it, I've only ever had positive responses in real life. That’s what I’m hopeful for now, but it will be interesting to see what the online response is. Anyone who's come has chosen to come. I think that's part of it. We've all consented to be there, in some respects. But I'm not looking to offend anyone.”
All of Frankland’s work is collaborative in some way, with this production directed by Harry Clayton Wright. “Audiences in Brighton will be familiar with his work. He’s a beautiful theatre maker and cabaret artist. He’s got a real eye for iconography and the bigger picture. It’s been really exciting.”
The show speaks about the importance of wishful thinking. “If we don't see ourselves reflected, we can dream ourselves into being. The opposite of wishful thinking is shameful thinking. She’s keen to point out that No Apologies isn’t a staid lecture on the gender identity of Cobain. “We can't know that. But what's important is the space that dreaming about it might take up. You know, how important would it be if there’d been an out, influential trans role model in the 90s? What might that have changed? What might that have changed for me?”
Frankland points out that trans discourse in the 90s wasn’t anything like it is today. “It’s not that trans people didn't exist, but you know, even the terminology that we use was different back then. I enjoy these unknowable things. They take us down some interesting routes.”
Emma Frankland brings No Apologies To Brighton’s Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on Weds 16 April 2025
Main image by Matt Crockett
Stuart Rolt
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