After a very successful (albeit limited) season at last year’s Midsumma, Em Tambree’s queer love story, ALTAR, will this year be making its international debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Over the course of three weeks, catch Tambree and their team as they explore themes of true love, self-acceptance and religion—all in one powerhouse performance.
If you’ve seen any of the promotional material for ALTAR, you may already be familiar with its storyline: today is Sutton’s wedding day. Dana has been invited, but Dan will be in attendance. Dan who was once Dana.
What you may not be familiar with, however is exactly how the performance plays out. “So, Dan and Sutton were childhood best friends,” playwright Em Tambree tells Not Safe For Queers. “Sutton has, like, just gotten married when the play begins, and they’ve invited their childhood friend, Dana, to the wedding. But Dan—who was once Dana and who has since transitioned—attends.”
“So the play begins the second that they see each other for the first time in 10 years.”
And while the story draws on Tambree’s experiences growing up as a queer person in regional Australia, ALTAR’s themes are universal. Throughout the play, audiences are presented with themes of queer love, self-acceptance, religious trauma, and sacrifice—all while interrogating the dreaded what if…?
In fact, during the development of ALTAR, it’s the concept of what if that played heavily on Tambree’s mind. “I thought a lot about what it would be like to run into someone back home who’s made a lot of different choices than I’ve made. Like, what would it be like if you saw someone that was such a big part of your initial coming out way later down the line?”
From there, Tambree was insistent on creating two full-fledged, interesting, and complex three-dimensional queer characters without relying on tropes to carry the story.
“The transness in ALTAR is a response to a lack of,” Tambree begins. “I wanted to show the audience that trans people have so much going on that goes beyond what we see in the media. We so rarely get the opportunity to see trans people as successful, satisfied human beings.”
“So Dan never plays into any of the tropes of trans pain or suffering. They’re an adult; they have so much more going on for them. They’re talking about things that are apparent in their life right now: they’re talking about their career, they’re talking about the people they love, they’re talking about their friends.”
In turn, what Tambree and their team has created is a piece of performance art so powerful that during its limited run during Midsumma in 2024, it received more than 100 audience submissions with one describing it as, “beautiful, poignant, thought provoking, sharp, witty, sentimental, and deeply romantic”, and another branding it as, “a universal story about what it means to truly love someone”.
For Tambree, “it’s ultimately about what you’re willing to sacrifice for the life that you want. Like, neither Sutton nor Dan aren’t living the life that they wanted, but they’ve both given up things to become the person they wanted to be.”
Em Tambree’s ALTAR will make its international debut at Edinburgh Festival Fringe from July 30 — August 25. Tickets on sale now.