“Where would you draw the line?” is the simple, yet looming question left tantalisingly unanswered by transgressive performance artist Joey Hateley, delivering diRTy to daring audience’s ready to find their own truths. Integrated with British Sign Language Interpretation by Siobhan Rocks, diRTy is a surreal semi-autobiographical performance piece, inviting audiences to eavesdrop on the conversation between conflicting personas inside someone’s head.

As the writer-performer, Hateley interweaves gender subversion, personal secrets and cinema-graphic imagery to summon an internal army, desperately trying to break free from a cocoon of torment and shame. A perverted psycho-drama, visionary extravaganza and unique multi-disciplinary performance work, diRTy is a raw depiction of the taboos and excesses of humanity.

Joey says: “diRTy is a life-long challenge to share the deepest parts of my psyche. I am asking what fears and forces drive and inspire any of us. What experiences and choices shape the core of who we are? I’m exploring a sexual language that moves beyond binary boxes of gender, and the singular notion of identity. It is the most honest, exciting and terrifying thing I have ever done”. 

Suitable for age 16, with strong language, sexually explicit imagery and live filming, this stirring performance by Joey Hateley, with long term collaborator Siobhan Rocks, is directed by the infamous Jonathan V. McGrath (The Road to Huntsville – Edinburgh Fringe 2016). The artistic team recently finished a two week residency at The National Centre for Contemporary Dance in Dundee. 

Jonathan V. McGrath says, “As a director, I take care not to adapt the project or artist to suit my process, quite the reverse. It is with this ethos that I find such pleasure working across a wide variety of genres and performance styles, a diversity that keeps the work itself fresh and allows me to work with a very broad audience. No more is this true than in the challenging work Joey and I have undertaken in developing the remarkable piece of work that is dIRTy, a piece that demands so much from the performer and the audience.” 

Joey Hateley is the Artistic Director of TransAction Theatre who creates innovative cross-cultural performance from the periphery on issues of identity, inclusion, diversity and empowerment. Joey Hateley is a female man whose work questions Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex (LGBTQI) boxes, calling for a world beyond gender binaries, transcending boxes and borders of difference through politics of allegiance. 

As a theatrical innovator, educator and art-activist, Joey has worked with collaborators from Thailand to India, Peru, Ecuador and South Africa, touring work across the U.K., Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and U.S.A. arts festivals. Such productions have not only included dIRTy, but also Hateley’s internationally acclaimed, one-person show A:Gender and Engendered Species devised with Peggy Shaw (Split Britches) at the Drill Hall, London.

More information on TransAction can be found at: http://www.transactiontheatre.co.uk.

diRTy is touring from 2017 and supported by the Arts Council of England.

For further information and booking, please visit or call:

DaDaFest: http://www.dadafest.co.uk www.thebluecoat.org.uk / 0151 702 5324.