The Quine that did the Strip at Inverurie
Graham Bell Tornado

Sat 18 April | T4
5:00 - 6:00pm
Duration: 60 mins
Access Key: BSL

The Quine that did the Strip at Inverurie is a multimedia show based on the life of transgender chameleon Graham Bell Tornado (aka Jackie Derrida, le comptessa, El Tornado and Geyserbird), a performance artiste and queer activist who grew up in Inverurie, rural Aberdeenshire in the 1970s and currently lives in Spain. The show traces a little known history of a generation of queer Scots who felt they had to leave the country to live their lives fully.

Their story is told through their relationship to the song which they have recorded and performed in different versions over the years. The unlikely story of a stripper in Inverurie was originally sung by June Imrie, the “Torry Quine”, a comedienne who was the first female newsreader in Scotland.

The show is a musical extravaganza tracing their first experiments in “bad drag” (read non-binary) in 1980´s Leeds during the miners strike, their performance beginnings at rave parties in Glasgow, in the first editions of Glasgay! with the queer collective Jessies with Attitude, the first transgender strip tease they carried out at the Erotic Oscars in London, and later collaborations with flamenco guitarists and with the legendary cabaret artist Rampova in Valencia.

It will mix live performance with audiovisual material from their vast and eccentric archive including rare footage of an action carried out at the first Glasgow Pride in 1996 alongside footage of The Quine theme sung in different locations including the Talk of London, the Traverse Theatre and an improvised version on the banks of the river Ury just by the town of Inverurie.