Artist Feature: The Unflinching Joy of Chris Thompson’s Two Foreskins
Chris Thompson’s award-winning plays range in topics, from karaoke night at a far-right pub (Albion (2014)), to gay parenthood (Of Kith and Kin (2017)), social services (Carthage (2014)), and gay, bi, and trans youth in a safe house (Dungeness (2018)). His approach is honest realism, pithy commentary, and good olde English kitchen sink drama. In conversation, he’s demure, smiley, and humble. With his myriad projects in development — from theatrical works to feature films — we sat down to discuss his creative process, the underrated role of joy, and how podcasting changed his approach toward writing.
“It started by me wanting to find a way to speak without gatekeepers or needing permission,” Thompson told me, garrulously diving in on his hit autobiographical podcast, Two Foreskins Walk into a Bar. The British author and playwright launched the project at the start of 2023 as a means to be “totally radical and reject any kind of infrastructure system.” Thompson’s blue eyes light up discussing the freedom the podcast afforded compared to a novel or script’s finite formatting. The weekly serial self-publishing model allowed him a diaristic kind of introspection and honesty, rejecting “the old way of doing things.” Two Foreskins’ frank, confessional, and rather raunchy narration caught on, and a whole new audience found their way to Thompson’s prose.
This newfound candor emerged from a long lull we all know too well. But, while most of us were binging Tiger King through the COVID-19 lockdown, Thompson was facing a battle with cancer. “Once I rose from the dead,” he dramatically mews, “I wanted to find a direct line, to write something personal and as revealing as possible that wasn’t hemmed in by a script.” The podcast recounts a sexual awakening of its author, whose namesake narrator exits a 10-year relationship in London and relocates to New York, immuring himself to the pulsing nightlife scenes and the sexual palimpsest of his new city’s streets. It’s blunt, ribald, and more than a little camp.
“Joy is underrated, you know,” Thompson said. “Joy can be a real cathartic moment, about two souls laying themselves bare and you feeling really connected to me, via what I've written or performed. There's joy in the communing and shared spirituality of theatre and film.”
Two Foreskins has also been presented as a solo theatrical work, performed by the author Off-Broadway while in residence at the Crane Theater. Though this too was done on a novel basis. “I didn't ask critics in. I didn't want anything like the way I've always done it,” he said. “The title brings the gays in. And the gays came, and we had a good time. I found an audience.” It's just the first stop of many, Thompson hopes, with plans to bring his wily protagonist on the road in the future, touring Two Foreskins across the globe.
Thompson’s professional writing practice was born out of a 12-year stint working as a social worker for the UK’s National Health Service. “I was doing the difficult work. It was tough. And I was beginning to burn out, but also recognize that there was a creative part of me that I had put on hold, a part of me that I wasn't honouring or allowing to express itself.” These experiences provided fodder for the careful cultural commentary that courses through Thompson’s theatrical works. Sometimes directly, as in Carthage, which explores a life born in and out of the prison industrial complex. Or through the emotional strains in Of Kith and Kin, which plays out during a baby shower for a gay couple and their surrogate.
“I think the artist's job is to hold up a mirror, and if people don't like what they're seeing in the mirror,” Thompson told me. “Like, some people hate Two Foreskins, and I think they're kind of triggered subconsciously around the aspects of desire and shame.” This unflinching vulnerability gives Two Foreskins its teeth. While Thompson’s narrator works to unmake the mess of his present predicament, his world intervenes with queer histories of New York City, who haunt the streets and his life in hysterical and lyrical ways.
The podcast format, which Thompson refers to as a “serial novel”, was a rebellious model for the author — a way of investigating the conventions of narrative publishing or production. “Coming through COVID. And then cancer, I wasn't sure if I was gonna live — and then I did. I was sick of people being in my way. Sick of people deciding whether I get to speak or what I get to say. Critics are asking, ‘Was it good enough? as if I've just turned in my homework. I'm just less interested now in getting validation from those people and from those systems and structures.”
What this freed up for the author was a kind of radical honesty, a direct address to the audience that his work has always flirted with. While he considers novelizing the podcast, Thompson busies himself with four feature film scripts: the Popcorn Films production, Burn, Douglas Keeve’s Polly (a vehicle for actor Alan Cumming), Life After (co-written with Call Me by Your Name producer Derek Simonds), and the feature RID (written with director Greg Emetaz). Two Foreskins has also been optioned for television, so be it big or small screen, the horizon has plenty of Thompson in it. Though the podcast and its theatrical feature are an opportunity to once more shatter the divide between author and audience, his ideal project is touring the solo iteration of the memoir as a one-person stage show.
“I just love my little Two Foreskins play,” Thompson said. “I love that it came from such a place of rawness and sadness and hope. It came from pain in many ways, but it's bringing joy, and that feels great. Having performed it in front of an audience has been a really happy experience. Just standing there and laying myself bare in the hope that people find it helpful, or there's a communal healing to it, too.”
Published June 15, 2025
Published in Issue XIII: Heretic
