The immersive new stage version of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel has been co-created by award-winning director Jen Heyes and Olivier Award-winning writer and performer Kit Green who also embodies the lead role and a host of other unforgettable characters in this bold, contemporary, reimagining. QX spoke with Kit about her career and her role as Mrs Dalloway.
You are an Olivier Award-winning artist and a trans trailblazer. What have been the breakthrough moments in your career?
I think it’s all the moments when people recognised that making serious work about important issues doesn’t have to feel serious and important. I always say that entertainment is the lubricant we need to slide in the serious stuff.
You played Roberta Cowell—a pioneering transgender racing driver—in the 2025 play The Law of Mayhem. What do you think Roberta Cowel’s story tells us about attitudes at the time?
This was in Tabby Lamb’s play. Roberta was such a complex woman, in her public pronouncements and in her relationship with another trans pioneer, Michael Dillon, which Tabby captures so brilliantly. None of us is always heroic; a long life is filled with contractions and compromises. My job was to make her seem fully human.
You are a vocal advocate for trans visibility. Where do you think progress has been made to date, and where do you see hope for the future?
I think I’m not so much vocal as just clear that I have a right to exist and to be creative and to be fabulous. That is not up for negotiation in any way, shape or form. I think it’s important that we support those who are taking the legal battles through the courts at the moment, and for all of us to live with as much joy as we are able to muster every day.
Tell us about your latest role as Clarissa Dalloway in this new stage version of Virginia Wolfe’s play Mrs Dalloway. How queer is Mrs Dalloway in this production?
I’m playing Clarissa, but also all the other characters in the book, plus a couple we have invented, plus Virginia Woolf herself. I think this multi-character, multi-genre (it’s film, music and comedy as well as theatre), and many mood-swings approach is itself very queer. Queerness runs through the book – most obviously through same sex relationships – but also in a deeper way with a way of world-building that reminds me of bell hooks’ idea of ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
What do you hope the audience will take away from the show?
Even though the book is about death and survival and some of the darkness of life, there will be a lot of laughter, pop songs, stupid party games, dancing, and good old-fashioned gags. I hope the audience will leave feeling that the play, like the book, is about what it means to be fully alive, in all its beauty and absurdity.
There are also nice frocks.
What else are you working on at the moment?
I am just starting as a Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Ethics in AI. My mind is exploding with everything I’m learning, and I’m crazy excited about the work I’m going to be making. I’m also writing new songs for my next album – the last one, Four Letter Words, was out at the end of last year.
Mrs Dalloway runs from 16 – 20 June at Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, London E1 8JB, United Kingdom.
More about Mrs Dalloway on tour
Mrs Dalloway is a co-production between Storyhouse, Harlow Playhouse and CutToTheChase Productions.
It will receive its world premiere at Storyhouse from 29 May to 6 June. The production will then travel on to Harlow Playhouse where it will be staged on 10-11 June and the historic& Wilton’s Music Hall in London from 16-20 June. The final date of the tour is HOME Manchester where audiences can see the show from 24-26 September.
Tickets for Storyhouse, Harlow, Wilton’s Music Hall and HOME are on sale now.
