What a time to be alive. Well, alive-ish. In Australia’s current transgender political climate, simply existing past 35 is defying the odds.

Co-writer Bayley Turner lays it out: that grim statistic, the average life expectancy for transgender people, isn’t just a number – it’s a weapon. “Because who’s funding research about transgender people?” Turner quips. “Who’s paying to learn more about us?” That’s the question Turner ­– and this play – wrestles with, and the answer, like life, is pretty hazy.

Bayley Turner: Thirty-Six. Photo © James Reiser

Co-written with UK theatre icon Jo Clifford (The Gospel According to Jesus Queen of Heaven), Thirty-Six opens with Turner staring down her 36th birthday, inviting audiences into her world. It’s a celebration, or perhaps the funeral she’s been planning since her teens, and the dress code is decidedly not black.

This memoir of sorts is refracted through grief, joy, and the complexities of transition (a form of which, we will all face). It carries the framework of Clifford’s 2022 play, Sister Death, which was passed to Turner to “have a crack at.” The result is a sincere reshaping of a life marked by the symbolic...