Richard O'Brien lays himself bare
Published on 21 Sep 2009
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/richard-o-brien-lays-himself-bare-1.921225 (http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/richard-o-brien-lays-himself-bare-1.921225)
The Rocky Horror Show creator reveals all to Mary Brennan about new musical The Stripper.
snip
All my life I've been fighting, torn in two and battling. Never being male. Or female
Now, the rest of us might rush to fill in all kinds of adjectives here. Assume that the man behind the Rocky Horror phenomenon, feted globally for both his writing and his incarnation of Riff-Raff – was talking about creative demons or crises of the "writer's block" variety. But no. O'Brien is unstoppering the pent-up misery of decades, clearing the air – and his mind – of the unhappy issues that attend someone who is "trans". He means transgender. And it's this state of disrupted being, and how – at the age of 67 – he is now dealing with it, that punctuates almost every aspect of our conversation about The Stripper.