Going for gold: exploring the making of the arts-based health research artefact Golden Years, a short story and one-act play about ageing and mortality

ABSTRACT

Arts-based health research (ABHR) artefacts provide a means for exploring the experiences of diverse populations through using the arts. They are useful for reaching audiences beyond academia, promoting empathy, showcasing under-represented voices and offering insights into human experience not captured by more traditional research methods. To augment the growing usage of ABHR, there have been calls for more studies examining how ABHR artefacts are being developed. This helps dispel uncertainty about ABHR processes, provide criteria for judgement of quality and show others how they might proceed on a similar path. The purpose of this paper is to add to the ABHR body of knowledge by offering the exemplar Golden Years, a work of fiction with themes pertaining to ageing and mortality. To achieve this, the authors will describe their use of practice-based research (PBR), which centres the making of the artefact at the core of the research. The paper includes an exegesis in which the authors explain how tacit knowledge, feedback from peers and collaboration were used as methods. They also place Golden Years within a critical framework based on the principles of the bi-cultural research group Te Arai Palliative Care and End of Life Research Group in New Zealand.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based health research
• mortality
• ageing
• practice-based research
• LGBTQI+

Background

McNiff’s (2008) oft-cited definition of arts-based research communicates how art-making can itself be the site of research. It is ‘a primary way of understanding and examining experience by both researchers and the people that they involve in their studies’ (p. 29). Health researchers in diverse disciplines have taken note of its value. Due to its accessibility, the artefacts produced by arts-based research can reach audiences beyond academia (Boydell, 2011) and connect them to the experiences of those the art features (Spagnol et al., 2019). It may give a platform to under-represented voices (Parsons et al., 2013) and offer insights into human experience not captured through other, more traditional, research methods (Mellor et al., 2022). It may even be considered a radical approach to health research, one ‘vital at times of crisis and transition’ such as we find ourselves in now with the pressures produced by a global pandemic and the ongoing climate change emergency (Bird, 2022, p. 2).

Despite its growing usage, there have been calls for more studies examining how arts-based health research artefacts have been developed. The reasoning behind this is that it will help dispel uncertainty about ABHR processes (Archibald & Blines, 2021), provide criteria for judgement of quality (Lafrenière & Cox, 2012) and offer examples to others wishing to embark on a similar path (Archibald & Blines, 2021; van der Vaart et al., 2018). It is to this body of knowledge that this paper seeks to contribute. We aim to show the process by which we created the short story Golden Years and adapted it into a one-act play that was digitally recorded as a play reading (Williams, 2020). Golden Years tells the tale of Frances and James who have been friends since childhood. Now in their eighties and frail, they live next door to each other. This is their last time together before James moves into a care home. Both are gay and voice fears that James will be discriminated against in the facility.

To achieve our goal, we will demonstrate the rigour of our process, unpacking the evolution of Golden Years using the concepts of practice-based research (PBR) and the exegesis. Before we begin, however, it is necessary to present our definition of rigour. We agree with Tobin and Begley (2004) that rigour need not be confined to a single paradigm or established set of criteria. It is in the ‘how’ that we demonstrate the legitimacy of the research process, through the explication of its integrity and competence.

Practice-based research

Using such a definition for rigour allows us to consider ‘practice-based research’ (PBR) which unlike traditional methodologies, centres ‘making’ as the core from which the research springs. Skains (2018) describes it as an experiment ‘designed to answer a directed research question about art and the practice of it, which could not otherwise be explored by other methods’ (p. 86). Indeed, all the questions, problems and challenges that arise occur within the context of making, as does the research strategy itself (Scrivener & Zheng, 2012).

The notion of practice suggests a practitioner which in PBR the researcher becomes (Archibald & Blines, 2021). Instead of being guided by an immutable research question, the researcher, or practitioner, enters into a dialogue with the developing artwork. It feeds back information that often suggests new lines of inquiry not obvious at the research’s inception (Archibald & Blines). Such a viewpoint differs from positivistic research that seeks clearly defined answers that sit within the context of what is already known (Sullivan, 2006). In contrast, rather than regarding the inquiry as a linear march towards a solution, in PBR it is a process whereby what is not known is allowed to emerge in ways that promote new perspectives (Sullivan).

It should be reiterated that the artefact produced as a result of PBR is not a by-product of the ‘real’ research – any discursive knowledge uncovered in the process of making. The artefact is the knowledge and can be described as ‘a response to a set of on-going issues, concerns and interests … ’ that are grounded in a cultural context and contribute to human experience (Scrivener, 2000, n.p.). As Scrivener describes it in his article, this idea may be further elucidated by noting his differentiation between ‘problem solving’ and ‘creative-production’ projects. The former stems from the need to solve a problem while the latter arises from the practitioner’s interaction with the artefact as it emerges.

In relationship to influential ideas about arts-based research, PBR as we have defined it could be said to most closely align with Barone and Eisner (2012) who emphasise the practitioner’s art-making as the site of research. Yet there are different approaches that should be noted in brief here. Some privilege research participants as the art-makers; art is the medium through which they communicate their experiences to researchers (Coemans & Hannes, 2017). Others inhabit a middle ground, exploring the collaboration of practitioners and participants to engage with issues through research and public engagement (Larsen et al., 2018).

The exegesis

While our explanation in the previous section affirms the centrality of the creative artefact to PBR as we are defining the concept, it does little to suggest how the practitioner might reveal that their process of making is rigorous. One solution to this problem occurs in the form of the exegesis. In contemporary usage, this word has come to mean an explanation of a text or a critical discourse or commentary (Oxford University Press, n.d.-a) When applied to PBR, it accompanies the creative work and also incorporates the practitioner’s own voice. The practitioner details the methods used to create the artwork and provides a critical framework, or critique, of it within a specific context. It acts as a communicative artefact where ‘writers seek to draw greater congruencies between practice and its contextualization’ (Ings, 2015, p. 1278). As a result, the ‘knowledge that has remained implicitly within the artist [is] made explicit and seated within the context of the scholarly field’ (Skains, 2018, p. 86) Yet the exegesis is not meant to supplant the creative work as the purpose or goal of the research. Rather, it sits beside it as a tool useful for unpacking theoretical concerns that have emerged from the work itself (Stock, 2014).

The framework

Uncertainty lies at the core of creation, whether undertaken by artists or researchers (Archibald & Clark, 2016). Creative projects do not have a pre-determined final form; multiple solutions are possible and perhaps even preferable (Mäkelä, 2007). Authors may be compared to architects in that they work to specifications that allow for the crafting of more than one design outcome (Smith, 2013). Therefore, PBR is best referred to as a framework rather than a methodology with a defined set of methods. The methods used to effectively produce a finished artwork are best worked out in practice. In the next sections we will explore how inspiration, tacit knowledge, feedback from peers and adaptation and creative collaboration contributed to the crafting of Golden Years.

Inspiration

As is typical of my experience when starting a new work of fiction, the idea for Golden Years came like a bolt out of the blue. The beginning and end of the story (as well as the characters) appeared in a flash. What I didn’t have – also as usual – was the roadmap for how to connect the two.–Lisa Williams

Inspiration may seem an unlikely starting point in a methods section, given that the definition of the word ‘method’ refers to proceeding by ‘a defined and regular plan’ (Oxford University Press, n.d.-c) Whereas ‘inspiration’, derived from the Latin inspīrāre, which means in a figurative sense ‘a breathing or infusion into the mind or soul’, (Oxford University Press, n.d.-b), is often associated with an act of the gods. Humans are the passive recipients of the divine spark seemingly delivered at random. This may be likened to ‘evocation’ (Oleynick et al., 2014), a core characteristic of inspiration as conceptualised by Thrash and Elliot (2004), and which Oleynick et al. elaborate on:

Evocation refers to the fact that inspiration is evoked rather than initiated volitionally by the individual. In other words, one does not feel directly responsible for becoming inspired; rather, a stimulus object, such as a person, an idea, or a work of art, evokes and sustains the inspiration episode. (p. 437)

This is similar to LW’s experience of having the story come to her ‘out of the blue’ as mentioned in the quote at the beginning of this section. However, there is more to inspiration than evocation by a stimulus object. Transcendence precedes evocation; it ‘refers to the fact that inspiration orients one toward something that is better or more important than one’s usual concerns; one sees better possibilities’ (Thrash & Elliot, 2004, p. 957). This orientation to something better is produced by moments of insight, the sudden arrival into consciousness of a creative idea. However, inspiration is not to be mistaken for the insight itself. Rather, it is the response to the insight (Oleynick et al., 2014).

Through the ages, different generators of insight have been posited – the supernatural, nature and the external environment, the arts, the unconscious mind, and even exemplary people (Thrash & Elliot, 2004). It can also be charted as a procession from external, non-rational sources (such as the Muses) to rational, internalised ones that, at least in the West, are resident within the self (Hart, 1998). Or, as Hart maintains, the source of inspiration may actually be the result of a connection to a larger, transpersonal consciousness. The self melts away: ‘when our consciousness expands and experiences deeper interconnection, we do not experience the other (in this case the source of our inspiration) as separate from us, the experience arises without a distinct origin’ (Hart, 1998, p. 17).

Regardless of the origins of insight, inspiration is the result, which also contains a third component: motivation (Thrash & Elliot, 2004). After being inspired by the stimulus object, the individual is motivated to bring the insight to fruition (though this is not a given; they may choose not to act). Yet this is more than just a progression towards one’s objectives. It is the impetus of the new, of something better or more important that motivates the receiver of inspiration to action (Thrash & Elliot, 2004).

For LW, ‘completing the roadmap’ was the nexus where inspiration by (insight) met inspiration to (motivation). How she achieved this will be discussed in the next sub-sections.

Tacit knowledge

The definition of tacit knowledge may be summed up by Michael Polanyi’s statement: ‘We can know more than we can tell’ (Polanyi, 2009, p. 4). This statement arose out of his conviction that the supremacy of rational thought – an idea instigated during the Enlightenment but brought to catastrophic culmination during the twentieth century – must be re-examined. Other forms of knowing need to be attended to:

Michael Polanyi recognized that the denial of serious consideration to that which did not lend itself to complete clarity and precise measurement, indeed the refusal even to include this as a legitimate part of what we call human comprehension, was particularly dangerous because of its attractiveness to those who embraced, and even sometimes succeeded in persuading millions of others of, the egregiously distorted and simplistic ‘truths’ that were being represented in the destructive ideologies of his time. (Mead, 2007, p. 302)

Polanyi came to the conclusion that any conceptualisations of knowledge had to make room for that which might not be easy to articulate (Mead, 2007). Such tacit knowing is grounded in experience, often difficult to express in words and highly personal. Moreover, tacit knowledge is ‘deeply rooted in action, procedures, routines, commitment, ideals, values and emotions’ and includes hunches, insights and intuitions (Nonaka et al., 2000, p. 7). These could be informed by an internal tacit dimension in which the individual crafts deeply held beliefs about reality comprised of meaning, feeling and circumstances that evolve over time (Sela-Smith, 2002). Accessing these requires not so much the use of objective observation but ‘a willingness to surrender, to leap into subjective experience’ (p. 1). Or, as Gerber (2022) frames it, ‘a tolerance and receptivity to the unknown’, an attunement to intra- (as well as intersubjective) unconscious spaces that ‘initially drive the intuitive iterative and dialogic arts-based investigation’ (p. 42).

From these perspectives, Golden Years may be viewed as emerging out of LW’s subjective experience. For more than ten years, she has been a palliative care and end of life researcher in a bi-cultural research group whose area of study is focused on older adults nearing the end of life. She is also a member of the gay community. Swirling around in her unconscious were ideas, impressions and emotions that emerged as Golden Years' plot, theme, characters and setting.

In terms of the actual writing of Golden Years, Schön (1983) provides an explanation of tacit knowledge by situating it within domains of practice 2013 arenas for practicing one’s craft. Instead of applying only theoretical knowledge, practitioners draw upon a wellspring of past experiences they then apply when engaging with present projects. Though LW faced the blank page when she began writing Golden Years, she knew she could draw upon the tacit knowledge she had acquired during 30 years of writing novels, short stories, poems, essays and academic journal articles.

An example from the first two paragraphs of early drafts of Golden Years illustrates this point. (To read the entire text, please see the Appendix). In draft two, LW changed the text she wrote in draft one:

Draft 1:

‘Remind me, are we in our Golden Years? Or is this the twilight ones?’ Frances eyed the amount of gin in the shot glass, deemed it spot on and added it to the drink, a gimlet she was fixing James.

‘Golden, sweetheart. Twilight’s for vampires – that exquisite Robert Pattinson and his mob.’

Draft 2:

Frances eyed the amount of gin in the shot glass, deemed it spot on and added it to the drink, a gimlet she was fixing James. She placed his glass on the serving tray next to her own gin and tonic. The olives – always three for him, four for her – she spooned from the jar into the clay dish her daughter Evelyn crafted aeons ago in primary school. It too went onto the tray.

To a limited degree, she can articulate why she made the changes. By starting with a vivid description rather than dialogue, she better anchors the reader to the story, allowing them to ‘see’ a character rather than just ‘hear’ a disembodied voice. However, her overriding impression is that the changes ‘just felt right’, which points to the tacit quality of the knowledge underlying her decision to alter the text. It is one more aligned with a hunch or intuition, that which is difficult to justify if the only criteria for judgement is externally verified empirical evidence.

The process involved in this revision may be described as the practice of reflection, which the practitioner undertakes while in the middle of working, altering the design as they go along (Nehring et al., 2010). Schön (1983) likens this kind of reflection to the improvisation practiced by jazz musicians while performing, and he gives it the name, ‘reflection-in-action’. He also describes ‘reflection-on-action’ that generally occurs when the practitioner steps back from the work and reflects upon it with more deliberation – perhaps only for a few seconds, or maybe longer, even days or weeks. The above example from Golden Years incorporates both reflection-in and on-action. LW allowed weeks to pass before undertaking the second draft, thereby giving her time to reflect on the draft as a whole (reflection-on-action), and she also reflected-in-action as she made changes in the second draft ‘on the fly’ when she reworked the text.

Feedback from peers

While LW was confident in her abilities to use tools such as plot, character, tone, setting, dialogue and narrative available to her as a fiction writer, she recognised as essential soliciting feedback from peers to ensure the quality of the manuscript. Complete objectivity about one’s own work is impossible to achieve; calling upon experts in the field of practice to appraise the work is another means for promoting rigour (Grey & Malins, 2004). Ings (2014) though speaking specifically about graphic design – but applicable to all types of communicative texts – asserts that failing to engage in outside critique ‘can result in designs that fail to explore a wealth of available options or fall short of their communicative potential’.

Two examples show how LW took advantage of feedback from peers. She asked writer Julie Helean (JH), the author of two novels with gay characters and plot lines (Helean, 2011, 2016) to provide feedback on Golden Years. Again, referring to the story’s first paragraph as an example, JH suggested removing the reference to Frances’s daughter, Evelyn, mentioned in drafts 1 and 2 above:

We don’t really hear about Evelyn again and seems important to know where a lesbian got a kid from. Was she married before or was it purposeful? Personally, I’d leave Evelyn out unless you want to develop this story line more. (J. Helean, personal communication, November 19, 2018)

Later in the story, JH notes that so far there has been a lack of physical detail that describes Frances and James:

By now, I’m really dying to get a sense of what these two look like. Maybe just a tiny bit of physical detail. We are getting to know them by now and really need to form a picture of them sitting together. (J. Helean, personal communication, November 19, 2018)

After reflecting upon these suggestions and agreeing that they make the story stronger, LW changed the first paragraph. By substituting the reference to Frances’s daughter Evelyn with one about a well-known brand of New Zealand pottery popular in the 1960s, she still subtly underscores Frances’s advanced age. She also added detail about Frances’s appearance in the first paragraph in order to create an image right away in the reader’s mind.

Draft 3

Frances eyeballed the mount of gin in the shot glass, deemed it spot on and added it to the gimlet she was fixing James. She placed his glass on the tray next to her own gin and tonic. The olives – four for him, three for her – she spooned from the jar into a chipped Crown Lynn dish. It too went on the tray. Eighty-three but unbowed by age, she wore a paisley caftan and sported dyed orange hair styled into spikes.

Another significant change to Golden Years occurred after consultation with the filmmaker, scriptwriter and University of Auckland lecturer Shuchi Kothari (SK). We mention this change here because it provides a useful transition to the next section on creative collaboration that concerns the adaptation of Golden Years from a short story into an audio play. LW had studied screenplay writing with SK and sought her advice about whether she should rewrite it as a short film. SK read the story and commented during a telephone conversation about how the story, especially the ending, could be more cinematic, in line with the conventions of film that dramatises visual action and character (Field, 1988). She suggested emphasising events happening to the characters in the present moment of the story rather than alluding to ones happening in the future.

As originally written below, James reflects on both the past and on what he will do once he takes up residence in the rest home. The present is relatively static with Frances and James leaning against the deck railing; the action must be carried by the dialogue.

Draft 3

They leaned against the deck’s railing as dusk spread across the sky like an incoming tide. James rested his head on her shoulder. “Remember Arthur’s sequined red evening gown and his favourite wig – that platinum beehive he wore to his last Big Gay Out? I’m taking them with me. I’ll wear them to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Begin as you mean to continue?”

“Exactly. It’ll be my last fight, perhaps my greatest. I will burn the homophobic buggers to the ground every chance I get.”

Frances sighed. “It might be easier if we just climb the stairs, lie down on my bed and swallow rat poison.”

“I wish for nothing more, but the state my heart’s in I’d die before we achieved the second-floor landing.”

A grey warbler issued the evening’s benediction. The mosquitoes came out to drink their blood. Frances vowed to glue herself to her armchair and moulder away like her plums. James said she was being gross again, kissed her on the cheek and told her he loved her.

In contrast, the rewritten ending in draft 4 has Frances and James discovering in the moment what James would do with his deceased partner Arthur’s drag costume. Not only does the change allow for more action, it offers a wider range of emotion as we witness James’s anxiety over his bold move. Moreover, one last time Frances – as she has done since their childhood – imbues him with courage.

Draft 4

A second later James returned with a wig, gold lamé evening gown and cosmetics bag clutched to his chest. “My suit of armour. Courtesy of Arthur – mementoes going with me to the care home.”

Frances’s eyes lit up. “Oh marvellous. What mischief!”

“Yes, but we’ll have to hurry. They’ll be here any second.” He deposited Arthur’s things into her lap and stripped off his shirt and trousers.

“My god,” Frances cried when she spied his bare chest, “your boobs are saggy as mine.”

“You should see my balls.”

James stepped into the dress and Frances zipped it for him. She settled the wig on his head – a platinum beehive – adjusted its feather fascinator and painted James’s lips with Arthur’s favourite shade of lipstick, ‘Atomic Red’.

James cupped his hands under his breasts. “A shame I didn’t keep the falsies.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re perfect.”

“Am I?” James blushed. “I always wanted … but it was Arthur’s thing, so I never … ”

“You’re a queen, James Riddell, a queen. And don’t you ever, ever forget it.”

The doorbell rang. James squared his shoulders. “My last and greatest fight.”

Frances curtseyed as deeply as her arthritic knees would allow.“Ab-so-lute-ly, Your Majesty. You will burn those homophobic motherfuckers to the ground.”

Adaptation and creative collaboration

LW abandoned her idea to adapt Golden Years into a short film due to resource constraints and the complexity of getting a short film produced. Instead, in consultation with fellow Te Ārai research group members, she rewrote it as a one-act play. Though not as expensive and labour intensive as producing a short film, staging it was still beyond the budget and resources available. Therefore, again after consultation with other research group members, LW decided to rewrite, produce and record Golden Years as a play reading.The adaptation of Golden Years highlights the fundamental difference in writing for the stage instead of the printed page. The actors’ physical bodies and the dialogue must carry the action, and LW adapted the short story accordingly. She also introduced ‘at rise’ setting and character descriptions.

Stage play adaptation draft 1

The setting is FRANCES MULLIGAN’S house. An old Grey Lynn villa in Auckland, New Zealand that has seen better days. She and JAMES, her best friend and next-door-neighbour, are having drinks one last time before he goes into a rest home.

We see two deck chairs with a low table between them big enough to hold a tray of drinks and a couple of glasses. We hear cicadas singing their lusty two-note song.

Frances and James are making their way from inside the house to the back deck.

JAMES

Mind the corner of the sofa. Don’t catch your toe on the rug!

FRANCES

All right, all right, all right!

FRANCES enters, walking with great concentration. JAMES follows, tense and watchful, ready to catch her if she shows any inclination to fall.

With painstaking care, FRANCES lowers the tray to the table.

JAMES

Well done!

FRANCES

(sarcastic) Thank you.

FRANCES hands him his drink and takes her own. They raise their glasses.

Although she had structured this adaptation according to playwrighting norms, LW had limited experience writing for the stage or directing actors. She knew she needed to engage in creative collaboration in order for the adaptation to be successful. She concurred with Hargrove (1998) who stated that collaboration can result from an individual’s realisation that they cannot solve a problem that is deeply meaning to them without assistance from others.

Creative collaboration allows for the introduction of skills that individual practitioners may not possess (John-Steiner, 2000; Odling-Smee, 2005). Furthermore, creative collaboration can promote a synergy among project partners that is more than the sum of its parts. ‘Generative ideas emerge from joint thinking, from significant conversations, and from sustained, shared struggles to achieve new insights by partners in thought’ (John-Steiner, 2000, p. 3).

LW called upon Aotearoa New Zealand actor, playwright and director Thomas Sainsbury (TS) to help with the adaptation. TS was paid $1500 for his work on the project. He offered advice on the script, acted as director and voiced the part of the narrator for the digital recording. Two amateur actors who played Frances and James volunteered to take part in the project. The researchers gave them $100 in petrol vouchers in appreciation for their contributions to the project.

Preparation and recording of Golden Years took place over one weekend. LW had emailed copies of the script to TS and the actors, and so they came to the two-hour Saturday afternoon read-through prepped to talk about the manuscript. This was a time for creative collaboration; the synergy generated by reading the manuscript aloud brought forward new ideas. TS led the read-through and offered his suggestions for changes, with everyone else contributing – a collective reflection-on-action session. Afterwards, LW made the changes and emailed the updated manuscript to TS and the actors so that they could practice with the revised script before recording it the next day.

This creative collaboration continued during the recording session with LW, TS and the actors continuing to offer suggestions for changes to the script; what sounded good on paper when read, did not work when acted out in a recording studio. Since LW had been primarily a writer for print media, this was a new learning experience that grew her capacity as a writer, something that would not have occurred without creative collaboration with an experienced director and actors who could bring the manuscript to life.

Below is an example of how the script changed from its original adaptation to how it was produced in the sound studio on the day of recording. The alterations reflect the elision of description that interrupted the flow of the dialogue when read aloud by the narrator. Had the play been staged, the stage directions would have been useful but were distracting when vocalised in the play reading.

FRANCES

She had a grand bosom your mum. No wonder I was always coming around to your house. I must have been hoping for a glimpse. They were fantastic.

FRANCES

(staring into her glass) Though I didn’t know then that’s what I was doing.

JAMES

(sitting up) What darling?

FRANCES: Nothing.

Explaining the use of tacit knowledge, feedback from peers and creative collaboration as methods makes clear the processes involved in the creation of Golden Years. Yet to more fully establish its rigour as a creative artefact, it is important to understand its relationship to the research that underpins it. The next section describes the critical framework that informs the story.

Critical framework

Golden Years may be critiqued within the context of the Te Ārai Palliative Care and End of Life Research Group’s research principles and priorities. Comprised of Māori and non-Māori researchers in Aotearoa New Zealand, it uses a bi-cultural framework that approaches research from a holistic perspective. The group acknowledges ‘both the te ira tangata (physical/genetic composition) and te ira atua (spiritual wellbeing) of all people’ (Gott et al., 2017, p. 296) From this vantage point, culture must be viewed as central. Te Ārai’s position is that all people have inculcated at least one cultural world view that influences their end of life care needs and preferences (Gott et al., 2017). Furthermore, Te Ārai positions research participants as the experts of ‘their experiences and lived realities’ which fosters a research environment that foregrounds their voices (p. 299).

Also significant, and in line with the emphasis Māori place on the giving and receiving of taonga (treasured objects) as a measure of deep respect, the group seeks to create and give back works that encapsulate the knowledge participants contribute to health research, policy and practice (Gott et al., 2017). That we have done so in this instance in the form of a work of fiction is an acknowledgement of our alignment with the Māori valuing of pūrākau. Often translated from te reo Māori to mean stories, pūrākau are acknowledged to be containers of ‘philosophical thought, epistemological constructs, cultural codes and worldviews’ fundamental to Maori identity (Lee, 2009, p. 1) In essence, they are a site of, and an effective means for, generating and disseminating knowledge, an argument we delve into in more depth in other research (Williams et al., 2021). From this perspective, Golden Years may be considered like a pūrākau in that it encapsulates in narrative form knowledge and aspects of culture – in this instance, gay older people of white, European ancestry – relevant to gerontology and palliative and end of life care.

An unpacking of Golden Years reveals its emphasis on the concerns and lived experience of this group as espoused in the international and Aotearoa New Zealand health literature. For instance, older lesbian and gay men worry about entering long-term care (Caceres et al., 2020; Furlotte et al., 2016) and assisted living (Smith et al., 2010). Similarly, in Golden Years James and Frances express anxiety about his move into a care home. They fear he will be forced back into the closet due to the bigotry of the heterosexual culture that predominates there.

The characters’ frailty is also reminiscent of the real-life experience of older adults who are at an increased risk of ill health and death (Bessa et al., 2018). James would prefer to stay living next door to Frances, but he has no one to look after him. His needs have become too great; he is a compendium of co-morbidities. Frances too is frail; she has mobility issues and wears incontinence pads. The state of the mouldering plums in her garden is a veiled reference to her own self-perception: ‘The decay lifts my spirits no end. Such a juicy bounty of putrefying flesh’.

Frances also embodies the loneliness and isolation that many older adults endure. She laments that James’s care home is ‘almost an hour away’, making visits difficult, and she accuses him of abandoning her. The literature reveals that hers is not an uncommon experience (Morgan et al., 2020; Newall & Menec, 2019; Park et al., 2019).

However, fear of discrimination, frailty and loneliness and isolation are not the end of the story for Frances and James, nor their real-life counterparts. Independence and resilience are manifest in their daily lives. In their study about older adults’ perceptions of frailty, Pan et al. (2019) found that they resisted the term as being applicable to themselves. They valued the qualities of independence and resilience and saw them as fundamental to staving off frailty and maintaining a good quality of life. Moreover, positive identity affirmation as LBGT promotes resilience (Fredriksen-Goldsen et al., 2017), which Frances and James manifest in their opposition to homophobia. James believes the care home will be his ‘last and greatest fight’ and Frances’s vociferous support of him is uttered in her assertion that, ‘You will burn those homophobic motherfuckers to the ground’. These two have no intention of giving up and giving in to frailty.

Illuminating the critical framework through which Golden Years may be interpreted strengthens its claims to rigour as an ABHR artefact. It is underpinned by the Te Ārai Palliative Care and End of life Research Group’s bi-cultural research principles and protocols and by current academic literature about issues of significance to frail, older adults. In the discussion section that follows, we will explore implications of this research for ABHR.

Discussion

This article adds the concept of the exegesis to the body of knowledge about how ABHR artefacts might be evaluated for rigour. We have shown that researchers who wish to make use of the arts can draw upon diverse methods to convey vital health knowledge and information. Moreover, we have attempted to signpost that using PBR may foster an appreciation for ways of knowing beyond objective, empirical knowledge that asserts the primacy of rational thought. The cultivation of such ways of knowing has long included works of fiction such as Golden Years. Stories can convey the complexities of people’s lives, a truth not lost on advocates of narrative medicine. They understand the power of narrative to develop practitioner competencies so that they may understand and honour the meaning in patients’ suffering and act with empathy on their behalf (Charon, 2001).

Michael Polyani’s concerns about the disastrous consequences of ignoring what we tacitly know rings true today (Mead, 2007). Conversely, if we cultivate the tacit we may open ourselves to novel forms of expression that speak to audiences in deep and increasingly meaningful ways. For example, Golden Years' emphasis on Frances’s and James’s experience of homophobia offers an opportunity to denote how PBR might be a vehicle for addressing collective trauma.

Collective trauma may conceptualised as ‘the impact of adversity on relationships in families, communities and societies at large’ (Saul, 2013, p. 3). In addition to natural and human-made disasters, Saul cites the cumulative effect of factors such as oppression, poverty, illness or displacement as also causing its development. Consequently, those suffering the trauma experience a breakdown in communal support, and what emerges is a fracture of relationship. The ‘I’ experiencing the oppression is damaged and the ‘you’ becomes distant and hard to relate to. ‘But “we” no longer exist as a connected pair or linked as cells in a larger communal body’ (Erikson, 1976, p. 154).

Certainly Frances’s and James’s apprehension about his move into the care home reflects the bone-deep scarring that homophobia can inflict upon the gay community (Alessi & Martin, 2017), a wound encountered afresh for the gay community with the collective trauma caused by 2015’s mass shooting in Florida of 49 LGBTQ+ people and their allies at a local nightclub. A year after the shooting, ‘while the initial shock experienced so acutely by LGBTQ people and people of color may have started the process of grief, the collective trauma lives on’ (Guggenheim, 2016, n.p.).

Recovering from collective trauma requires a communal response, one that draws upon communal capacities for recovery after tragedy (Saul, 2013). Because of its flexibility, PBR can be adapted to the particularities of culture and community circumstance to assist this recovery. PBR allows for the situating of traumatised communities as the experts of their experience. Practitioners could draw upon their tacit knowledge and expertise in collaborations with them that produce artefacts that elucidate their wounding and their pathways to healing.

Yet worthy as tackling collective trauma is – or any of the other goals mentioned in the introduction: promoting health literacy, generating practice and behavioural change, cultivating empathy and dialogue – using art in this way does not exhaust its possibilities. When we judge its worth only in terms of its value as a research tool that helps achieve particular outcomes, we overlook what has been blatantly obvious since humans first engaged in arts practices. Art needs no justification; it transforms lives.

Conclusion

Practice-based research offers a means for addressing rigour in the field of arts-based health research. It positions the researcher as a practitioner who may document the process of creation in an exegesis, thereby providing a detailed account that can be reviewed for its integrity by others. The exegesis also allows for reflection on the artefact’s critical framework, thereby placing it within a body of knowledge. While not the end goal of the PBR process, the knowledge gained may, like the artwork itself, speak to audiences in novel and profound ways.

Strengths and limitations

A strength of this study is that the work referenced, Golden Years, was created within the context of a multidisciplinary, bi-cultural research group with established practices for crafting arts-based health research artefacts. Workshopping the play in front of a broader audience before recording it for presentation would have provided more detailed information useful for the exegesis and the establishing of rigour.

Data access statement

This study did not generate any new data

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank Carole Beu and Kerry Stephens who played the parts of Frances and James in Golden Years. They would also like to acknowledge Thomas Sainsbury for his contributions to the project as well as Julie Helean and Shuchi Kothari for their advice that helped craft Golden Years as a short story and a play.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Golden Years may be listened to on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WGQuOtwLFU&t=3s

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an internal grant made by the School of Nursing, University of Auckland.

Notes on contributors

Lisa Williams

Lisa Williams is a senior research fellow in the School of Nursing, University of Auckland, New Zealand. She specialises in Arts-based Health Research (ABHR) and Arts Based Knowledge Translation (ABKT) projects, adapting palliative care and end of life research into creative outcomes for diverse audiences. Originally from Florida, she immigrated to New Zealand in 2002.

Tess Moeke-Maxwell

Tess Moeke-Maxwell (Ngāi Tai, Ngāti Pōrou) is a senior research fellow in the School of Nursing, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her latest research centres on Māori experiences of death and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Merryn Gott

Merryn Gott is Professor of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand. She directs the Te Ārai Palliative Care and End of Life Research Group. Of Welsh and English descent she has lived in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2009.

Appendix Golden Years – short story

I’ll stick with you baby for a thousand yearsNothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years …

–David Bowie

Frances eyeballed the mount of gin in the shot glass, deemed it spot on and added it to the gimlet she was fixing James. She placed his glass on the tray next to her own gin and tonic. The olives – four for him, three for her – she spooned from the jar into a chipped Crown Lynn dish. It too went on the tray. Eighty-three but unbowed by age, she wore a paisley caftan and sported dyed orange hair styled into spikes.

‘Shall I carry that for you?’ James held out his hands. Elfin, myopic and also eighty-three, he peered at the world through thick red specs that matched his rumpled Hawaiian shirt.

‘With your tremor? You must be joking.’

‘All right then. I’m not picking you up if you fall.’

Nineteen steps. The distance from the kitchen to the deck. Frances tightened her grip on the tray handles. ‘The journey of a thousand miles …’

They progressed, an octogenarian caravan of two. Frances positioned her bare feet on the floorboards with the care of a tightrope walker; James trailed, announcing the hazards: ‘mind the corner of the sofa,’ ‘don’t catch your toe on the rug.’

At the halfway point they rested, leaning on the bookcase that housed Frances’s collection of lesbian pulp fiction. James wiped the sweat from his brow. Frances sucked in a ribbon of air.

On they went.

‘Well done,’ James chirped upon their arrival outside.

Frances lowered the tray to the table between the Adirondack chairs. The late afternoon sun painted a stripe across the corrugated fence that separated their two properties. The hibiscus bush flaunted its yellow blooms, and as if through miniature loud hailers, the cicadas sang their lusty two-note song.

Seated now, they clinked glasses.

‘To Betty,’ said James.

‘To Artie,’ said Frances.

James sipped with a solemnity that suggested he was receiving communion. Frances slurped, letting the ice knock against her front teeth.

‘Betty’s deathday this week,’ she said. She’d discovered her a year ago in the garden lying amongst the courgettes, a marrow clutched to her breast.

‘And Artie gone four. Four. I miss him every day.’

Frances sucked on an olive. ‘Betty? Only intermittently.’

They laughed. Betty was known for her temper.

‘She would hate what you’ve done to the garden,’ James said.

‘I’ve done nothing to the garden.’

‘Precisely. The state it’s in. Tsk, tsk.’

Over their heads, a blackbird hopped from branch to branch drawing their attention to the plum tree.

‘You haven’t picked up even one plum,’ James chided her, pointing to the rotting fruit ringing its trunk.

‘The decay lifts my spirits no end.’ Frances patted the underside of her forearm. ‘Such a juicy bounty of putrefying flesh.’

‘Now you’re just being gross.’

Frances shrugged. ‘I found you sitting in a tree like that one. Do you remember?’

‘I remember you punched me.’

‘You deserved it. I was jealous of your shoes.’

James twisted at the waist to look directly at her. ‘You never told me that. In all these years.’

‘As if you’d been put there to torment me. Day one of standard two and there I am on the lonely walk to school and there you are, a boy I’ve never seen before dangling a skinny leg pale as paste ending in a brand-new leather shoe. Mine were my cousin’s hand-me-downs. Scuffed and ’orrible and never been within cooee of shoe polish.’

‘Darling, I’m so sorry,’ James purred, his soothing tone undercut by genial sarcasm. ‘If I’d known, I’d have offered you all the lollies in my pockets. Not just the one.’

Frances stuck out her tongue. ‘Toffee nose you. Bringing your big city ways to the back blocks of the King Country.’

‘Why Mum gave me the lollies. Bribery being my only hope for survival.’

Frances swirled the ice around in her drink. ‘She had a grand bosom your mum. I was always coming ’round your house hoping for a glimpse.’

James snorted, and the olive pinched between his thumb and index finger squirted from his grasp. He leaned over to retrieve it, straining to reach where it had rolled.

Frances stared into her glass. ‘Though I didn’t know then that’s what I was doing,’ she muttered. ‘Didn’t know that’s what I wanted.’

‘What, sweetheart?’ James sat up with the rogue olive, newly festooned with dirt. He hid it under the lip of the dish on Frances’s side where he wouldn’t have to see it.

‘Nothing.’

The next-door neighbour’s cat, Leonardo, slithered across the lawn to disappear behind the agapanthus. His doppelganger, Maisie, crept after him.

‘Did I really punch you?’ Frances asked.

‘Left a bruise from hip to knee.’ James rubbed his thigh where he’d copped the blow.

‘Love a good bruise.’

‘Like fireworks in slow motion, aren’t they? Burst of red, then purple and green … fading away to yellow.’

They peered upward as if enjoying an imaginary fireworks display. After a minute, James dozed, and after a minute more, his lower jaw slackened to release a breathy hiss like a dentist’s suction.

His grip loosened on his glass, so Frances liberated it before it could spill. Tenderness shone in her hazel eyes. He was her first kiss, and neither had liked it. They used her hankie to wipe the spit from their lips and vowed never to do it again.

Frances stole a sip of his gimlet but quickly set it down when his eyes fluttered open. ‘You were snoring like a freight train,’ she said.

‘Oh, stop it.’ James smoothed his snow-white hair at the crown. He was sensitive about his bald spot and forever experimenting with new gels and waxes to conceal it.

‘When are they coming for you?’ Frances asked.

James consulted his wristwatch. ‘Twenty minutes. I told them to meet me here – left my bags on the front porch.’

‘Must you go?’ Frances hunched her shoulders as if to protect herself from a blow.

‘We’ve been over this, dear one. Return me to the heady days when my only ailments were diabetes and a dodgy prostate and I’d stay. I’m gutted to leave you, but I can no longer look after myself. It’s as pathetically simple as that.’

‘The care home’s almost an hour away. I’ll be so low without you next door, Jimmy. So low.’

James took her hand. ‘Remember when I found you at the march?’

Of course she did – Homosexual Law reform, 1985. Yet to punish him a little Frances shook her head no. James wasn’t fooled, but he let her have her mood. They’d celebrated happy hour together many a Friday night since he and Artie bought the bungalow next door twenty-five years ago. The four of them, then three, then two and now there’d be only Frances. It broke his heart picturing her making drinks for one.

‘I was just home for good from London fearing I’d made the hugest mistake of my life, and – ’

‘Ah yes.’ Frances banged her heel on the deck. ‘Sallies hate, gays love. Sallies hate, gays love.’

James sighed. ‘My brave, brave Frannie. The same fireball who fought off my bullies, all grown up and leading the charge for our rights. Finding you again was finding home.’

‘I’m sick of being brave.’

‘You don’t know how to live any other way.’

Frances pushed herself up out of the chair and trundled over to the deck’s railing. ‘You’re leaving me all over again,’ she said without looking at him. ‘Except it’s not like when we were fifteen and you ran away. Then, I could imagine you out there.’ Frances gestured with her arm, giving it a dramatic fling toward the plum tree. ‘Out there in the world living for both of us. Now, you’ll just be – ’

‘In Heaven’s waiting room?’

‘Straight Heaven’s waiting room.’

James joined her. He stroked her back; he could feel the bony ridges of her spine beneath her caftan. She’d grown so thin since Betty’s death.

‘The bullies may be old now, but they’ll be no less keen on stuffing you back into the closet,’ she said.

‘They will.’

‘A lifetime battling and here at the end of the day you’re giving it all away.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are. Soon as you go through those doors you’ll lose your pretty swish and put on a manly swagger.’

‘Dearest, if only I could,’ James roared.

His mirth infected Frances, which egged him on to try out that manly swagger. He beat his chest like a gorilla and stomped around in a circle.

‘Oh please,’ Frances begged, nearly legless from giggling, ‘I haven’t … haven’t worn my incontinence pads.’ Which set them both off afresh.

When they could laugh no more they fell into each other’s arms. Twilight spread across the sky like an incoming tide. A breeze swooped low to ruffle the dandelions; another plum succumbed to gravity and landed on the ground with a thud.

Frances drew away and stared at him, as if intent on memorising every detail of the face she’d loved for seventy-five years. ‘I worry for you, that’s all.’

‘Like no one else on this Earth.’

James linked his arm through hers and escorted her back to their chairs.

‘If only suits of armour hadn’t gone out of fashion,’ Frances said as they sat down. ‘’I’d shout you one accessorised with King Arthur’s Excalibur to chop off their bigoted, small-minded heads.’

‘Not a bad idea.’

‘Thrilling, actually. Think of the carnage.’

‘No, the suit of armour bit.’ James clapped his hands and jumped to his feet. ‘Wait here,’ he said and rushed indoors.

Before she could polish off the last olive – rightfully his – he returned with a wig, gold lamé evening gown and cosmetics bag clutched to his chest. ‘Mementoes going with me to the care home. Artie’s. He wore them to his last Big Gay Out.’

Frances’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh marvellous. What mischief!’

‘Yes, but we’ll have to hurry. They’ll be here any second.’ He deposited Artie’s things into her lap and stripped off his shirt and trousers.

‘My god,’ Frances cried when she spied his bare chest, ‘your boobs are saggy as mine.’

‘You should see my balls.’

James stepped into the dress and Frances zipped it for him. She settled the wig on his head – a platinum beehive – adjusted its feather fascinator and painted his lips with Artie’s favourite shade of lipstick: ‘Atomic Red’.

James cupped his breasts. ‘A shame I didn’t keep the falsies.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You’re perfect.’

‘Am I?’ he blushed. ‘I always wanted … but it was Artie’s thing, so I never … ’

The doorbell rang. James froze. His breath settled high in his lungs, fluttered there like a butterfly. As if of their own accord, his fingers snaked toward the wig to pull it off.

‘No,’ Frances whispered. She laid her palm on his chest. ‘You’re a queen, James Riddell, a queen.’

Under the press of her hand, James inhaled a deep, slow breath and let it out. He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. ‘My last and greatest fight.’

Frances curtseyed as deeply as her arthritic knees would allow. ‘Ab-so-lute-ly, Your Majesty. You will burn those homophobic motherfuckers to the ground.’

Golden Years – Audio play

The setting is FRANCES MULLIGAN’S house. An old Grey Lynn villa in Auckland, New Zealand that has seen better days. She and JAMES, her best friend and next-door-neighbour, are having drinks one last time before James goes into a rest home.

We see two deck chairs with a low table between them big enough to hold a tray of drinks and a couple of glasses. We hear cicadas singing their lusty two-note song.

Frances and James are making their way from inside the house to the back deck.

JAMES

Mind the corner of the sofa. Don’t catch your toe on the rug!

FRANCES

All right, all right, all right!

FRANCES enters, walking with great concentration. JAMES follows, tense and watchful, ready to catch her if she shows any inclination to fall.

With painstaking care, FRANCES lowers the tray to the table.

JAMES

Well done!

FRANCES

(sarcastic) Thank you.

FRANCES hands him his drink and takes her own. They raise their glasses.

JAMES

To Betty! The light of your life.

They clink and sit down.

FRANCES

Betty’s deathday this week. (Beat) There she was, lying amongst the courgettes.

JAMES

Marrow clutched to her breast.

FRANCES

And how about a toast to your Artie? Cheers!

JAMES

Cheers! (Beat) Gone four years already. Four! I miss him every day.

FRANCES Betty?

Only intermittently.

They laugh.

JAMES

She would hate what you’ve done to the garden.

FRANCES

What? I’ve done nothing to it.

JAMES

Precisely. Look at it. A scandal leaving the plums to moulder like that. You haven’t picked up even one off the ground.

FRANCES

The decay lifts my spirits no end. Such a juicy bounty of putrefying flesh.

JAMES

Now you’re just being gross.

FRANCES (shrugging) Found you sitting in a tree like that one. Remember?

JAMES

I remember you punched me.

FRANCES

You deserved it.

JAMES

Why?

FRANCES

I was jealous of your shoes.

JAMES

You never told me that.

FRANCES

Tormenting me. I’m on the lonely walk to school and there you are, a boy I’ve never seen before dangling a skinny leg pale as paste ending in a brand-new leather shoe. Mine were hand-me-downs. Scuffed and ’orrible.

JAMES

(with genial sarcasm) Sweetheart. If I’d known, I’d have offered you all the lollies in my pockets. Not just the one.

FRANCES

Snooty nose you. Bringing your big city ways to the back blocks of the King Country.

JAMES

Well, Mum gave me the lollies. She knew bribery would be this sissy boy’s only hope of survival.

FRANCES

She had a grand bosom your mum. No wonder I was always coming around to your house. I must have been hoping for a glimpse. They were fantastic.

FRANCES

(staring into her glass) Though I didn’t know then that’s what I was doing.

JAMES

(sitting up) What darling?

FRANCES: Nothing.

(Pause)

FRANCES

Did I really punch you?

JAMES

Left a bruise from hip to knee.

FRANCES: Love a good bruise.

JAMES

Like fireworks in slow motion. Burst of red, then purple … some green, fading to yellow…

They peer upward as if enjoying an imaginary fireworks display. JAMES nods off. His mouth falls open to release a breathy hiss like a dentist’s suction. His grip slackens on his glass and FRANCES takes the glass from him before it can spill. She steals a sip and sets it down just as his eyes flutter open.

FRANCES

Snoring like a freight train.

JAMES

Oh, stop it.

(Pause)

FRANCES

When are they coming for you?

JAMES

(consulting his wristwatch) Fifteen minutes. I told them to meet me here. Left my bags on your front porch.

FRANCES

Just like that.

JAMES

We’ve been over this, dear one. Return me to the heady days when my only ailments were diabetes and a dodgy prostate and I’d stay.

FRANCES: The rest home’s almost an hour away.

JAMES

I can’t look after myself anymore. It’s as pathetically simple as that.

FRANCES

I suppose.

JAMES

(taking her hand) Remember when I found you at the march?

FRANCES

Which one? There have been so many.

JAMES

Homosexual Law reform. 1985. I was just home for good from London fearing I’d made the biggest mistake of my life and –

FRANCES

Ah yes (chanting) Sallies hate, gays love! Sallies hate, gays love!

JAMES

My brave, brave Frannie. The same fireball who fought off my bullies, all grown up and fighting for our rights. Finding you again was finding home.

FRANCES

I’m sick of being brave.

JAMES

You don’t know how to live any other way.

FRANCES pushes herself up out of the chair and moves to the deck’s railing.

FRANCES

You’re abandoning me. Except it’s not like when we were fifteen and you ran away. Then, I could imagine you out there in the world living for both of us. Now, you’ll just be –

JAMES In Heaven’s waiting room.

FRANCES

Straight Heaven’s waiting room.

JAMES joins her.

FRANCES

The bullies may be old now, but they’ll be no less keen on stuffing you back into the closet.

JAMES

Well they can try.

FRANCES

Try? Will! How about what they did to Peg? Residents snubbed her so bad she wouldn’t come out of her room. Hastened her death. I know it did.

JAMES

Awful.

FRANCES

A lifetime battling and here at the end of the day you’re giving it all away.

JAMES

I’m not.

FRANCES: You are. Soon as you go through those doors you’ll lose your pretty swish and put on a manly swagger.

JAMES

(Roaring with laughter) Dearest, if only I could.

His mirth overwhelms FRANCES and she joins in giggling. JAMES beats his chest like a gorilla and tries a ‘manly swagger’, which leaves FRANCES legless from laughing.

FRANCES

Stop… oh, stop. I haven’t …haven’t worn my … incontinence pads.

JAMES

(laughing) Incontinence pads!

They explode into laughter all over again and fall into each other’s arms. Finally, FRANCES draws away, stares at him as if memorising the face of the friend she’s loved for seventy-five years.

FRANCES: I worry for you, that’s all.

JAMES: Like no one else on this Earth.

They link arms, make their way back to the chairs and sit down.

FRANCES

If only suits of armour hadn’t gone out of fashion, I’d shout you one.

JAMES

Accessorised with King Arthur’s Excalibur to chop off their small-minded heads. Not a bad idea.

FRANCES

Thrilling, actually. Think of the carnage. Right-wing, bigoted brains splattering against the walls.

JAMES

Hmmmm.

FRANCES

What?

JAMES

(jumping to his feet) I’ll be right back.

He rushes inside offstage.

FRANCES

(twisting in the chair to see where he’s gone) Don’t you leave me here!

Getting no answer, she downs the rest of his drink and eats the last olive. James reappears with a gold lamé evening gown slung over his shoulder and a wig and cosmetics bag clutched to his chest.

JAMES

They tell us to bring mementoes with us. What we hold most dear. This is Artie’s Marilyn outfit. He wore it to his last Big Gay Out.

FRANCES

Oh marvellous, Jimmy. You’re planning mischief.

JAMES

Yes, but they’ll be here any second.

He drops Artie’s things into her lap and strips off his shirt and trousers.

FRANCES

My god! Your boobs are as saggy as mine.

JAMES

You should see my balls.

James steps into the dress, Frances zips it for him. She settles the platinum blonde wig on his head, then scrabbles through the cosmetic bag to find a tube of red lipstick. She paints James’s lips. She takes a step backward to admire her handiwork.

JAMES

A shame I didn’t keep his falsies.

FRANCES

Doesn’t matter. You’re ample enough. Let me look at you. (Beat) You’re perfect.

JAMES

(blushing) Am I? I always wanted to have a go at drag … but it was Artie’s thing, so I never did.

The DOORBELL RINGS. They freeze.

JAMES

Showtime.

JAMES hyperventilates. As if of their own accord, his fingers snake toward the wig to pull it off.

FRANCES lays her palm against his breastbone to steady him.

FRANCES

You’re a queen, James Riddell. A queen.

JAMES inhales a deep, slow breath and lets it out. He squares his shoulders and lifts his chin.

JAMES

My last and greatest fight.

Frances curtseys as deeply as her arthritic knees will allow.

FRANCES

Ab-so-lute-ly, Your Majesty. You will burn those homophobic motherfuckers to the ground.

JAMES glides regally offstage as FRANCES waves goodbye.

THE END