Happy Baby

Alive with the grief, ferocity and humour of queer life in inner city London, Happy Baby is JJ Johnsons debut play. The protagonist Joe navigates an open relationship with Sinad, sex with strangers, and trying to become pregnant via a system that really does not want them to. Unflinching and tender, Happy Baby confronts the barriers queer people face in becoming parents. Full of grief and rapture, fury and sass, JJs writing sparkles with theory and experience: love, pain, sex, friendship. Izabella Scott, author of The Bed Trick Im obsessed with this brilliantly innovative, frankly hilarious, impressively spot-on investigation of queerness, desire and family-making. Michelle Tea, author of Valencia JJs voice stopped me in my tracks; the clarity, the pitch, the taut, muscular prose. Like that moment when someone starts to sing and you know youre in safe hands. The trust was instant. Absolute. I was struck by their courage, their care, their gorgeous communityand the sheer fucking grind. I also laughed out loud so rare, so human. Joe asking the IVF doctor in the face of such profound loss to fight for us. The love, the generosity, the defiance. It broke me. This is a deeply specific, intimate story, with a quiet, noble heroism. A reclamation of agency. An artists eye finding beauty everywhere, suffusing light around the edges of a life that might have been. I am so grateful to them for sharing this. The best art changes us. I am altered. Orlagh Collins, screenwriter and producer JJ Plka Johnson is a London-based artist working across film, painting, and performance. Their practice explores queer and trans approaches to embodiment, intimacy, and collective learning through production and collaboration. Their debut feature documentary whats safe, whats gross, whats selfish and whats stupid (2024) premiered at BFI Flare. They hold a DPhil from the Ruskin School of Art and have exhibited in the UK and internationally and teach Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London. Featuring an introduction by writer and director Charlie Josephine, this is Johnsons debut play.