Josh Maughan is an award winning director, writer, and actor. Josh creates theatre that dismantles and reshapes worlds of queerness, politics, religion, and identity. Josh created his one man show ‘Nice Jewish Boy’ in 2022 which went on to win the Guild of Media Arts Award in 2023 after a sold-out London run and national tour. Josh’s latest piece, ‘Our 1972’, debuted with a sold-out and critically acclaimed run in London. We sat down with Josh who is currently in rehearsals for his new one-man show, Tealight which will run at the Hope Theatre, Islington from the 4th-7th of December.
Lucas seems to be stuck troubleshooting everyone’s chaos but his own—do you think his job in the complaints department of Grindr is a metaphor for how we all manage (or avoid) our personal messes? How did you land on that as a setting for his story?
What a great question! I think the complaints department at Grindr was a great way to contextualise the complex issues we explore in Tealight for two reasons. Firstly, yes, it’s representative of the psyche of a form queer emotional intelligence. I’m really interested in how queer people learn to be vulnerable and transparent later in life, when we often have to hide or put up a wall in our formative, key developmental years. How do we articulate what we feel, are we still pretending to be someone we’re not? What is the ‘profile’ we display in our everyday lives and interactions? Secondly, Grindr is a very tangible platform for queer issues, especially those with blurred lines. Yes, there are broad discussions of consent in queer culture and narratives – but we don’t tend to really investigate how our dating or romantic settings oftentime neglect personal autonomy. Challenging labels and the binary is crucial, but we must still value rigidity when it comes to our personal freedoms and boundaries.
The story of Tealight grapples with the contradictions of queer life today—if Lucas could write a complaint to the universe about one aspect of modern dating culture, what would it be?
What I love most about Lucas as a character – from both a writing and performance perspective – is how flawed he is, and the incredible journey of self-awareness that he travels. I think Lucas will really touch those in the queer community – and I know there are many – who have been taught that their worth is based on how they are viewed in a romantic or sexual sense. Queer culture is highly visceral, very exciting, and oftentimes notably sexually charged. It’s something I really love about being queer. But, Lucas has grown up quite insecure, he probably only came out at 18 or 19, and was immediately thrown into the ‘the scene’, as he calls it. In these environments – your gay clubs, your raves, your afterparties – the way you look, and what your body can offer, is judged before anything else. It’s understandable that we then begin to believe these aspects of our identity are our selling points – they’re not. Lucas, just as I would, would wish for queer friendships to be celebrated more. He would wish for sexual stereotypes to fade. Ultimately, he doesn’t want the first question to be ‘top or bottom’, or about a hookup – he’d much rather stan Zarah Sultana or Olivia Dean over Tapas, no matter how much he hates the portion sizes! 😉
Apps like Grindr are central to queer connections but also spark a lot of conversation about disconnection—did you draw from personal experiences or stories when exploring how they shape the characters’ lives?
Totally. I find it quite hard to keep my personal life separate from my writing – which definitely means I share a little more than I’d like to sometimes, but it’s always been a special, cathartic experience for me. Dating apps are tricky – I wish we didn’t need them, but it’s the world we live in. I’ve had my share of wonderful experiences and some not so wonderful experiences (which inspired a particular monologue-style takedown of Hinge in Tealight!) At the end of the day, I think they’re a great way to meet people but I think we should get off of them as quickly as possible and experience vibrant, face to face experiences. London is a fantastic place to explore new foods, new venues, new art with a new person in your life – I’m doing it currently and it’s given me great perspective for this show. On that note, Tealight would be a perfect date night for you and your dating app match – I promise!
With a title like Tealight, there’s a feeling of something small but bright, fragile yet illuminating—what does the title symbolize to you in the context of Lucas’s journey?
This is exactly it. A tealight is the physical tenant of the connection between two people, across from each other. Imagine you’re on the perfect date, squashed behind a tiny table, with a little tealight in the middle. It’s illuminating your connection. So, in that vein, Tealight represents what lies within the complexities of queer connections. What fills these spaces, what do we prioritise and what do we neglect – what do we let burn bright, and what do we extinguish? When it’s right between you and someone else, you’ll fight to keep that little flame alive no matter how much it may flicker.
Working with Freddie Acaster, Tobias Abbott, and Saskia Mollard again must have been exciting—what did this reunion bring to the creative process, and how did it help bring Tealight to life?
It really is the dream team! I’m beyond appreciative of my creative and personal connections with Freddie, Tobes and Sas. Because we’ve worked together before, the spaces we occupied when developing Tealight were immediately safe, honest, and communicative – which are key to creating meaningful and challenging work. It’s a beastly piece of text, and as a gay man myself, it would be easy for me to get swept away in its machinery – but our gorgeous team constantly reminds me how lucky I am to be creating queer theatre in such grounded spaces. It’s been a real privilege sharing this narrative under their guidance so far.