East End Review

Tag: riots

  • The Hard Stop, an interview with filmmaker George Amponsah: Language of the unheard

    The Hard Stop, an interview with filmmaker George Amponsah: Language of the unheard

    Protesters in Tottenham voicing their anger at the police shooting of Mark Duggan.
    Protesters in Tottenham voicing their anger at the police shooting of Mark Duggan.

    Five years after the death of Mark Duggan and the subsequent riots, many Londoners from black and minority ethnic communities still struggle to trust the police. The 2013 inquest into Duggan’s death at the hands of police found the shooting to be a ‘lawful killing’, despite many witnesses testifying Duggan had not been armed. A gun was found at the scene, but it bore none of Duggan’s prints, blood or DNA. An expert witness went as far as to testify it was “very difficult” to imagine the deceased throwing the gun to the spot where it was found, some 20 feet away, after he had been shot twice. Marcus Knox-Hooke and Kurtis Henville, two childhood friends of Duggan, were determined to find justice for him and the resulting documentary, The Hard Stop, explodes historical tensions between law enforcement and London’s black community. The film’s director George Amponsah reveals what East London said about the film, what divides Londoners, and how to protest.

    How have Londoners responded to the film?

    We screened it at the East End Film Festival in June and afterwards had a panel with two police officers. Emotions were high: feelings of sadness, feelings of anger and a sense of injustice. There were a lot of questions asking those officers how they felt the police might change some of the patterns of behaviour reflected in the film – the main pattern being a history of not being accountable when things go wrong.

    Is there a clear dividing line between people open to Duggan’s story and the people who are not?

    I don’t know. To be honest, I’m not trying to be evasive in saying this but I’m a filmmaker. What I know is films and trying to tell a story. Part of the motivation for making The Hard Stop was that I wanted to make a film that was about an important subject and about my home. I was born in London. I’m British. In many senses I’d be satisfied with the film as long as it is something that provokes debate and discussion. Because what’s important to me in some ways is that Martin Luther King quote that appears at the beginning of The Hard Stop: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” It’s just important for a debate and discussion to be had rather than for a significant amount of people to think their voice and opinion is not being heard, and is being discounted – so much so that they find themselves taking to the streets and getting involved in the kind of disturbance that we saw in Britain in 2011.

    What advice would you give to young Londoners who want to carry on the conversation started with this film?

    Try and get involved in things that are constructive and creative. Try to find a way of protesting where you’re getting your voice heard, where it can’t be discounted, and certainly in a way where you know you’re not going to be imprisoned or find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

    thehardstopfilm.com

  • Alecky Blythe: ‘I don’t think theatre can change things greatly’

    Riot act: Alecky Blythe and Clare Perkins rehearse for Little Revolution. Photograph: Manuel Harlan
    Riot act: Alecky Blythe and Clare Perkins rehearse for Little Revolution. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

    Alecky Blythe’s play Little Revolution about the Hackney Riots ends its run at the Almeida early this month, though we might not have seen the last of it. It’s been suggested that the play should come to Hackney, a move that would at least mean more of the people the play is about will get to see it.

    And the play is certainly worth seeing, both for what it says and how it says it. Much has been made of Blythe’s verbatim method; the playwright ventured out during the riots three years ago, going as far as Wolverhampton, interviewing people and searching for material that could form the basis of a dramatic work.

    As it happens, Hackney resident Blythe found her focus for Little Revolution closer to home. She witnessed the looting of Siva Kandiah’s shop on Clarence Road, and returning the next day discovered that a group had been set up to help the riot-stricken shopkeeper.

    “When I went back I met Tony and Sarah, who told me they were setting up a campaign, and that they’d seen the show that I had on at the time, London Road. I could see I had access to a forward development, a narrative, and that there were people here getting together trying to do something about what had happened. So that’s why I focused in on Hackney.”

    What does the play bring to light about Hackney? As the play alternates between scenes of rioting, the work of campaign group Stop Criminalising Hackney Youth, and an incongruous- seeming plan to hold a community tea party, a more nuanced picture of Hackney begins to emerge.

    “I think the show brings to light the sort of simmering class tensions that are probably quite prevalent in more and more parts of London with increasing gentrification,” says Blythe.

    For Blythe the riots were a catalyst that opened her eyes up to class tension and division. “My play is trying to do something about it, whether it succeeds or fails. The community tea party tries to do something about it, Stop Criminalising Hackney Youth is trying to do something about it. It’s about people trying to connect and maybe misfiring.”

    The idea of recording real people then getting actors to speak their words surely makes Blythe’s relationship to her material more complex than the norm. What if one of the characters comes to see the play and takes offence, or claims they’re being misrepresented? “I’m always very, very nervous,” Blythe admits. But I try to explain to people that it’s not a biography of their lives, that I’m a dramatist. Yes it’s their real words but they were edited, and I tried to be up front as much as possible with those central characters.”

    When I caught a Saturday evening performance, the character of Councillor Ian Rathbone was a constant source of laughter, while newsagent Siva found himself patronised at every turn by his middle class benefactors. I ask Blythe whether she’s received much feedback from the people themselves.

    “Councillor Rathbone absolutely loved it and wants us to take it to Hackney,” she answers. “And Siva I think found it very moving. Being in it, I spotted him in the audience. Of course I started to think it must be so traumatic for him, and that maybe this was a bad idea. But he loved it and said he was moved to tears.”

    Little Revoultion is not Blythe’s first play about Hackney. Her play-writing debut was with Come Out Eli, about the Hackney Siege of 2002. At the time she was another struggling actor, and wrote the play essentially to get work.

    In each of her plays Blythe has used the verbatim method of play-writing she discovered at a workshop at the Actors’ Centre 12 years ago. Given that each character is real and the meticulous care taken with dialogue, it’s tempting to call Little Revolution a rewitnessing of the events of August 2011. Blythe points out, however, that while realistic, the play has been shaped through what she saw.

    “I’m telling it how it happened but through my eyes. One of the criticisms is there are not enough voices of the rioters or of the youth. The show illustrates how I tried, but those voices are really difficult to capture. People are responding to a white middle class woman – they would respond differently to a young black male. It’s a very personal thing, how I engage with people and how they engage with me, and whether they choose to or not.”

    ‘Community’ is at the centre of Little Revolution, attested by the Community Chorus, a crew of local volunteers that – it should be said – integrates seamlessly into the professional cast. These bystanders, rioters and residents are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. One wonders how many of these indirect real life subjects of the play have seen or know about it.

    “Rupert [Goold, the Almeida’s new artistic director] was keen to reach out to a broader audience, and the theatre has been doing first time tickets for five pounds,” Blythe informs me.

    Blythe sees no problem with the propensity of “middle class voices” in the play; she says it is as much about these middle class voices “trying to reach out to the other side of the street”.

    “I don’t think theatre can change things greatly,” she adds. “But I do think it can get people talking about things. If people come out of the theatre talking about these issues then I think that’s great because it’s made them think about it in a different way.”

    Little Revolution is at the Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, N1 1TA until 4 October.

  • Little Revolution review – revisiting the Hackney riots

    Them and us: Rufus Wright and Bayo Gbadamosi in Little Revolution
    Them and us: Rufus Wright and Bayo Gbadamosi in Little Revolution

    While most of the country watched in disbelief at the riots on their television screens, Alecky Blythe headed out into Clapton armed with a Dictaphone, where she seized every chance to talk to those caught up in the events of August 2011.

    The result of her recordings is Little Revolution, a completely verbatim play in which actors repeat dialogue transmitted to them through discreet earpieces. Blythe plays herself, one of a dozen professional actors, and is joined by a band of local volunteers who are the rioters, the ‘disaffected youth’ and awe-struck bystanders.

    The audience surrounds the stage (there’s no neat division of ‘them and us’) and in riot scenes hoodied hordes scuttle in and out with stolen goods in blue carrier bags. Blythe intersperses rioting and vox-popped observations from the sidelines with her main narrative focus: the looting of a shop on Clarence Road which puts its owner, Siva, out of business.

    Clapton Square couple Sarah and Tony hatch a plan to put Siva back in business, and enlist the help of Father Rob Wickham and Councillor Ian Rathbone. But the attempt to heal an open wound using the sticking plaster of a community tea party (sponsored by M&S) only highlights division between “the two sides of the road”.

    Imogen Stubbs is liberal Sarah, one of a clutch of biggish names in the cast including Ronni Ancona as market trader Jane and Game of Thrones’ Lucian Msamati as Colin, the enigmatic barber who speaks of a “little revolution…[that] hasn’t stopped here yet.”

    While the Clapton Square group hogs the headlines (to the delight of Councillor Rathbone, played with a merciless sense of buffoonery by Barry McCarthy), another campaign Stop Criminalising Hackney Youth, started by residents of Pembury Estate, makes little to no headway. “Their babies are already going to turn out to be criminals,” dismisses one passerby.

    Blythe, all the while, hears and records all, the glue between disparate scenes, though she’s more our bumbling guide than intrepid explorer, prone to nervous laughter and tomfoolery.

    The Tricycle in Kilburn long ago offered its own verbatim take on the riots, but Little Revolution tries a different tack, focusing more on this fractured notion of ‘community’, a word tarnished by inequality. From a playwright who herself braved the riots, Little Revolution is a brave and important play.

    Little Revolution is at the Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, N1 1TA until 4 October.