East End Review

Tag: Sophie Hemery

Juliet Jacques: ‘Being transexual has politicised my creative work’

‘The personal is political’: author Juliet Jacques

The world’s largest philosophy and music festival is currently in full swing – in a small market town in Wales. But HowTheLightGetsIn in Hay-on-Wye is “very Hackney”, I’m told.

Take from that what you will. It’s certainly true that a number of the impressive line-up of speakers and musicians hail from – or at least have resided in – East London’s (not-so-humble) borough.

According to its website the festival isn’t about “big names for big names’ sake,” though; it’s more about “ideas and wonder” and “the heretics of our time”.

One of the most heretical names, then, to be speaking at this hub of thinking and questioning is Juliet Jacques – a Hackney resident no less.

Jacques is a writer best known for writing the first serialised account of the gender reassignment process for a major British publication; in 2011 her Guardian blogs were long-listed for the Orwell Prize.

Last year, her memoir and analysis of transgender politics – Trans – was published to great acclaim. “Being transexual has politicised my creative work,” says Jacques, but, though her gender has inspired some of her work, her journalistic interests range from politics, to film, to football, and she is currently studying for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.

One of Jacques’s guiding principles is that “the personal is political”. In Hay on Wye she will be speaking at a debate entitled Strange Affects and Collective Emotions, which asks whether shared emotional worlds can be relevant – or even pivotal – in social and political change. It is clear which side Jaques will take – her own belief in the combined power of “the head and the heart” is unshifting.

As a trans woman, Jacques has “an acute sense of the unfairness of the world”.

“The political is personal,” too, she says. “The Tories’ attacks on the NHS, mental health services, unemployment and disability benefits, the arts and on alternatives to capitalism have felt like a targeted attack on me, my friends and everything I care about.”

And yet Jacques fears the power of “shared feelings [is] often better mobilised by the right than the left”. So a festival dedicated to philosophy, she believes could be a potential antidote. “Any counterpoint is crucial,” she says. “A dialogue of this size can lead to new ideas, which filter into society in unpredictable ways.”

Through the celebration of critical thinking – and the refusal to succumb to “anti-intellectualism”, which Jacques believes is “rife” – Jacques is of the opinion that festivals such as HowTheLightGetsIn hold “a genuine capacity for change”.

The high-minded debates will no doubt entail some ground-swelling and mobilising ideas – but Jacques is already committed to living out her convictions, even in her local loyalties. One of her favourite things about Hackney, she says, is having “so many good venues and art spaces nearby”.

Café Oto on Ashwin Street (once cited as Britain’s “coolest venue” by the Guardian) ”really is a gift”, she says, promising: “I will personally offer, here and now, to fight any future residents of those new flats on Dalston Junction who complain about the noise.”

HowTheLightGetsIn is hosted by the Institute of Arts and Ideas concludes on 5 June.

https://howthelightgetsin.iai.tv/.

May 28, 2016
Sheer Height redress the gender balance with new Arcola show

The Sheer Height company on-stage. Photograph: Thomas Scurr.

In a draughty pub somewhere south of the river I discuss gender inequality in theatre over a cup of tea with actors Jenny Wilford and Charlotte Couture.

The pair are the founders of Sheer Height, a feminist theatre company which this month is holding a one-day festival, Women Redressed, at the Arcola.

Showcasing new writing from UK playwrights, as well as excerpts from established plays, the festival aims presents theatre that plants female characters firmly centre stage, and which probes perceptions and expectations of gender.

Despite our shivering, the conversation was heated. A few years out of drama school, the actors are disillusioned with the roles they are consistently offered.

“It’s a saturated market, so it’s hard to get in the room to audition, for starters,” says Wilford. “But what always frustrates us are the parts we see coming up time and time again; we’re still seeing recurrent casting calls for the romantic interest, the mother, the sister – always family or romance or sex, in relation to a male lead.”

“In the 19th century, Henrik Ibsen wrote really strong, interesting female protagonists,” Couture offers. “And then at some point it kind of fell apart…” adds Wilford, wryly.

Couture and Wilford are brimming with facts about gender inequality in theatre. “Did you know 2008 was the first time the National Theatre staged a female playwright’s original work on the Olivier Stage? Or that The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie – the longest running West End show – is frequently the only play written by a woman staged in the West End?”

Dissatisfied with the state of their industry, Couture and Wilford took matters into their own hands. In 2014 they set up Sheer Height, naming it after Shere Hite, a feminist known for her pioneering work on female sexuality.

Since forming, the company has staged a sell-out performance of Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic and November last year saw the inaugural Women Redressed festival at the Arcola. It was a sell out success, leading Couture and Wilford to bring it back for another outing this month.

The actors believe that, as women in drama, their work is inevitably politicised – though they believe it shouldn’t have to be. “It’s a difficult balance,” says Wilford. “Female playwrights and actors just want to work without labels or having to be political… but also – we want to make some progress here!”

“We have clear guidelines for script submissions,” says Wilford. “The idea is to have female characters at the core of the plot, which itself should explore gender issues and challenge perceptions.”

“We really think about what we’re presenting in terms of having a diverse programme,” says Couture. “Last time we had plays about abortion, domestic violence, sex work, the office environment, same-sex relationships… but we also put on plays about female friendship – and, you know, about women just having a good time! I think that in itself is really empowering.”

In light of cuts to the arts, Wilford and Couture believe now is a particularly troubling time for women in theatre. “Lack of funding means theatres are very reluctant to take risks. So, often, they’re going with safe options – which usually means commercial productions, established plays and the same revivals over and over again,” says Wilford.

Women Redressed
20 March
Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street,
E8 3DL
sheerheighttheatre.co.uk

March 17, 2016
#WelcomeToHackney: bar’s reaction to a stabbing inspires play about gentrification

Photograph: Zbigniew Kotkiewicz

Emilia Teglia, founder and artistic director of Odd Eyes Theatre, is putting on a play about cultural clashes in Hackney (dare I say ‘gentrification’).

As such, it was pertinent when we met for coffee that we were faced with two adjacent establishments: a fashionably dingy, wooden stool-ed café full of beards, and a traditional East End caff, complete with full English breakfasts and fluorescent lighting.

It was also a bit awkward, since I assumed we’d go to the flat-white-vending locale. Luckily, Teglia is a woman of principles over coffee bean snobbery, and we went for builder’s tea next door.

Teglia was inspired to write #Haters by an event last year, when a man sought help in a ‘hipster’ Hackney pub, The Bonneville, after being stabbed. “The thing that really spurred me to write this were the comments on social media,” Teglia says.

The initial tweet, by a pub employee, kicked up a storm: “#CSIClapton due to events on Lower Clapton Road this evening, we will unfortunately have to close #WelcomeToHackney”. Followed by: “Some kid got stabbed over the road and decided to run into ours. Great look for our first week.”

Teglia was shocked by the online abuse that followed, from both sides. “It’s like the mass psychology of fascism, this peer pressure on social media. It’s scary, this faceless mob mentality,” she says.

“My first instinct was to say there are no winners. The comments were blatantly aggressive and really stupid, often people saying ‘oh you can’t come here and change our community’. And I’m thinking, well, I liked the fair rents before, but I didn’t really like the knife crime.”

Teglia moved to London 16 years ago, and was initially homeless. “I can relate to both sides,” she says.

“I can see the struggle of opening up a place or putting on an event – the responsibilities and also the excitement. On the other hand, I’m a private renter and a single mother – eventually I’ll have to leave my support system here behind and move out. So I can really feel for both sides.”

In founding Odd Eyes Theatre, Teglia hoped to create “social theatre to open up conversation between people from different backgrounds,” and her latest production – #Haters – is no different.

The play follows two characters on the day that leads up to an event based on the incident at The Bonneville, and is informed by interviews with residents from Hackney – including people who live in the same building as each other, but are required to use different entrances.

“I realised only yesterday,” says Teglia, “after one and a half years working on it, that #Haters is actually Romeo and Juliet. It is about two communities imposing their values on an individual and, instead of building constructive communication to build something new and different, they bring people apart.”

Odd Eyes Theatre has a strong focus on inclusion and participation, and Teglia has aimed to make the production process and event as accessible as possible. “As well as the professional cast, there’s a participation element within the play, workshopped with people from various backgrounds.”

In the research phase though, as well as through rehearsals, what has struck her most has been the fact that – in spite of community conflict – people never fit neatly into identity categories. “I’d interview one person, and think they represent a particular group. And then, as I talked to them, I realised they didn’t fit perfectly anywhere – and that’s what this play is about.”

Teglia believes people are “absolutely ready for a more integrated community. People want their voices to be heard, and I believe London has a respect for individuality that just doesn’t exist elsewhere. It’s why people migrate here.” She believes we need to do away with the nebulous idea of ‘who was here first’, and embrace dialogue to bring people together.

#Haters is being performed at 7.30pm on Friday 11 December at Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA
richmix.org.uk

December 7, 2015
The author following in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft stencil by Stewy

In Search of Mary by journalist Bee Rowlatt is a love story inside a love story. In actual fact, it is part travelogue, part biography; a history of groundbreaking feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and a walking in her shoes. Rowlatt was inspired by Wollstonecraft’s own book – Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, first published in 1796 – which narrates her intrepid travels, spurred on by a mission to recover stolen treasure for her lover, Gilbert Imlay. Rowlatt’s book, in turn, is testament to her admiration for Wollstonecraft. Or, as she admits, her outright ‘groupie’ status.

I meet Rowlatt at BBC Broadcasting House, in the midst of her busy press schedule and on the day of the book launch. Rowlatt is proud to call her own relationship with Wollstonecraft is “a full blown love affair”. A love affair which, like Wollstonecraft’s own, led her to embark across lands and seas – but in search of Mary, rather than of stolen treasure. And like Wollstonecraft, Rowlatt travelled to Scandinavia and beyond with a baby on board.

Before her overseas explorations however, Wollstonecraft’s home of Stoke Newington provided fertile ground for her radical roots. “It was absolutely critical in the making of her,” explains Rowlatt. Living in the then radical village allowed Wollstonecraft to tread new paths in more ways than one: she was a young woman living from her writing – “virtually unheard of at the time”. She also founded a school whilst living in the area, and came under the radical wing of the publisher Joseph Johnson and the Reverend Richard Price at the Unitarian Chapel on Newington Green.

The chapel today, which proclaims itself ‘the birthplace of feminism’, is still “remarkable, full of interesting people,” says Rowlatt – and it boasts perhaps the country’s only atheist minister. Rowlatt is a strong believer in honouring “these pockets of radical history, in a time when London is being increasingly scooped out and turned into luxury flats.”

What would Mary think of the area today, I ask. Rowlatt looks concerned and replies after some thought: “I think she’d be pretty appalled.”

“Wollstonecraft came from inequality and dragged herself up, so she really cared about the 99 per cent… it was the fundamental injustice that made her angry.” She eagerly adds though, that Wollstonecraft was “an inveterate optimist – it was in her DNA – she believed in the perfectibility of mankind.” And womankind, certainly.

Rowlatt was surprised to find that her attitude to motherhood and feminism changed significantly during the trip. “I started off from a position of outrage and ended up realising how bloody lucky I am,” and has come to believe that even a “toehold on both worlds” – of work and motherhood – is worth celebrating. I ask her if she thinks the same is true for men. “Don’t compare men to women,” she says, “compare them to their dads.” Like Wollstonecraft, Rowlatt’s belief in the perfectibility of mankind seems to prevail.

Nevertheless, Rowlatt is outraged that Wollstonecraft’s legacy as a pioneering feminist and influential author “hasn’t been commemorated in the way she deserves”, and is involved in the Mary on the Green campaign, which calls for a memorial statue of Wollstonecraft on Newington Green. Rowlatt continues to be in awe of the spirit that led Wollstonecraft to embark on her juggernaut of a journey, and her own was in large part a eulogy.

In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys is published by Alma Books. RRP: £12.99. ISBN: 9781846883781.

November 6, 2015
Acoustic Sundays are ‘invigorating the community’ with sweet music

Unplugged guitar picking … Acoustic Sundays

When I first moved to Hackney, I stumbled across an event in a crypt on a Sunday afternoon. It isn’t as creepy as it sounds. In fact, what I found there filled me with a slightly overwhelming sense of warm joy and joyful warmth. If that sounds like hyperbole, I can’t really admit that it is.

Acoustic Sundays are a bit like church services, but secular, chatty and fun – and with optional gin. Every month, a smorgasbord of up-and-coming musicians perform to an eclectic, friendly audience, fuelled by food and drink from local businesses.

The events are organised by SoundAdviceUK, a Hackney-based organisation that describes itself as “a music and media community that supports live music at no cost to the musicians”.

This Sunday’s line-up includes street musicians The Debt Collective, South London guitar band Eastern Barbers, the Laura Marling-inspired Lucy Evans and Diligent Indolent, a singer-songwriter who plays, in his words, “metal-inspired acoustic janglings”. The music starts at 2.30pm with an open mic session, with booked acts starting at 3.30pm until 8pm.

SoundAdviceUK is staffed by volunteers and unfunded, so all acts perform out of the goodness of their hearts but are rewarded by a professionally edited video of their performance.

The event is about “invigorating communities”, says Dominic Kasteel, co-director of Individio Media, the production company that runs SoundAdviceUK. Like most of us, Kasteel believes “happy communities are important” and says Acoustic Sundays aims to create an atmosphere “akin to a joyous Sunday afternoon in a rustic, Mediterranean-esque village square”.

Acoustic Sunday Circus is on Sunday 4th October 2015 from 2–8pm at St Peter’s Crypt, Northchurch Terrace, De Beauvoir, Hackney, N1 4DA. Entry is free.

October 2, 2015
Film night to screen moo-ving tale of dairy farmer

Bovine inspiration: Farmer Stephen Hook of Hook & Son with ‘queen of the herd’, Ida. Photograph: Emli Bendixen

The Moo Man has many qualities one might not expect from a film about milk.

The documentary, which is being screened this month at Growing Communities’ Moo-vie Night, has a dreamlike quality. It is intimate, funny and quite captivating.

Sussex farmer Stephen Hook, who has a stall at Stoke Newington’s farmers’ market selling ‘raw’ (non-pasturised) milk, tenderly strokes his happy-seeming cows and addresses them by name. Ida is the “queen of the herd”, he says.

But this picture of the dairy industry is increasingly rare. Stephen is solemn as he laments: “Family farms are being lost… that’s what makes me angry, it really does.”

In an economic climate of plummeting prices and rising production costs, more than half of Britain’s dairy farmers have gone out of business since 2002, with 9,724 remaining as of this August – a fall of 0.5 per cent from July. Indeed, British dairy farmers have recently protested in various supermarkets after major milk producers announced more price cuts.

These issues can seem remote for city-dwellers, who are inevitably alienated from the production of much of their food. According to charity Wide Horizons, over 35 per cent of UK children have never visited the countryside, and LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) found in a survey of 2000 British young adults that 40 per cent did not connect milk to an image of a cow.

For urbanites then, The Moo Man may shed light on the reality of life on a small dairy farm, as it documents the farmers’ determined efforts to secure the cows’ welfare and produce an ‘ethical’ product. Going thoroughly against the grain, Hook attempts to save his family farm by rejecting cost-cutting dairies and supermarkets, and instead fostering a familial atmosphere with his team and herd.

The Moo Man will be screened by Growing Communities, the Hackney social enterprise that aims to bring people closer to food sources, as part of their Urban Food Fortnight and Organic September. Viewers will be offered milkshakes and cocktails made with cream and milk from the farm, and there’ll be a Q&A session with Stephen Hook afterwards.

“It’s vital to pay fair prices to support these small family farmers, who are the basis of a more sustainable food system and have really high animal welfare standards,” said Growing Communities market manager Kerry Rankine. “This film shows just what it takes to keep a small farm going.”

The Moo Man
11 September
St Paul’s Church Hall, N16 7UY
billetto.co.uk/en/events/growing-communities-moovie-night-the-moo-man

September 11, 2015
Filming inside ‘another world’ at Hackney ballet shoe factory

Photographs: Nick David

Walking down Well Street in Hackney, you’d be forgiven for missing the Freed of London ballet shoe factory. But according to the filmmaker Jack Flynn, inside the factory lies “another world”.

Established in 1929, Freed of London manufactures pointe shoes for dancers globally – from young beginners to prima ballerinas. The small factory produces 48,000 standard and 112, 000 bespoke shoes annually – that’s 700 shoes every day.

But who are the people working the machines? This question captivated filmmakers Jack Flynn and Nick David who, in a four-minute, beautifully-crafted short film, tell the stories behind the story of Freed.

“We love the honesty of the film,” says David. “It was a very simple approach, but that’s when you get the magic.”

“Initially we wanted to document the manufacturing process,” adds Flynn, “but what became apparent after a couple of visits, were the stories of the people who worked there.”

Every worker has their own ‘maker’s stamp’ – “mine’s a crown,” says one – and all express a strong sense of pride in their craft. “Not many people can do the work,” explains one employee.

The workshop seems worlds way from the pristine theatres of world-class ballerinas, yet its rhythmic contraptions are almost dancingly hypnotic. “The contrast between ballet and the factory floor was really obvious,” says Jack, “yet we saw a real connection with the sheer physicality of both disciplines.”

In other ways, however, there is a disconnect between the crafts. One shoemaker has been in the business for 25 years, but is yet to go to the ballet. “I’ve seen it on telly,” he says, “but I haven’t gone to theatres or nothing like that. I don’t get the time to.”

Freed’s workers are undoubtedly devoted. Tony Collins started work in 1969 and has been there ever since. Sheila Goodman met her husband of 35 years at the factory. They’ve been working together for 40 years. “We didn’t tell no one that we was getting married!” she recalls. “We got married on the Saturday and on the Monday we were back into work. We didn’t even have a honeymoon!”

The factory’s walls are testament to the spirit and diversity of its workers. One wall is covered in football memorabilia and another cats and Hindu iconography. “I’m curious as to who’s wearing my shoes,” muses one worker. “Without the audience there’d be no dancers, without the dancers there’d be no makers. Life goes round in a circle… It’s unlike anything else.”

September 9, 2015
London Feminist Film Festival gets underway

Feminist classic: The Company of Strangers. Photograph: NFB Canada

This year’s London Feminist Film Festival (LFFF) opens today, showcasing films on a wide range of subjects and issues by women directors from across the world.

Fifteen films in total will be screened throughout the four-day festival, which is taking place at Dalston’s Rio Cinema as well as the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn.

Some of the themes covered include women in UK hip hop, children’s views on gender, sexual harassment in public space and Jewish feminism.

This Saturday there will be a screening of six short films and, on its final day, the festival will hold a ‘feminist classics session’. Each session will be followed by a panel discussion.

The festival begins this evening at the Rio with The Lady of Percussion, a film about a female drummer trying to make it in the male-dominated Cuban music industry. This is followed by Through the Lens of Hip Hop: UK Women. After the screening rapper Pariz-1, who features in the film, is set to perform.

Tomorrow (21 August) will see the UK premiere of She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry by Mary Dore, a history of the “outrageous … brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971”, while Saturday’s screenings include the European premiere of It Happened Here.

This documentary follows the stark and disturbing prevalence of sexual assault on US university campuses. The film will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Jessica Horn, a women’s rights consultant and a founding member of the African Feminist Forum. All profits from this screening go to Rape Crisis England and Wales.

The final day of the LFFF kicks off with a matinee screening of But They Can’t Break Stones by Elena Dirstaru, which offers an insight into women’s rights in Nepal, and is preceded by a short by Maryam Tafakory about FGM.

At 4pm the festival will dig up a feminist classic: Cynthia Scott’s 1990 film The Company of Strangers. The film blends fiction, documentary and improvisation to track the (mis)adventures and of a bus-full of elderly women, stranded in the Canadian countryside. The film won Best Canadian Film at that year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

The festival finale that evening is another UK premiere, Esther Broner: A Weave of Women by Lilly Rivlin, which documents the evolution of Jewish feminism through a portrait of Esther Broner, founder of the first Feminist Passover Seder service in New York in the 1970s.

The LFFF’s director and founder Anna Read said of the festival:“There is still so much discrimination and oppression of women everywhere in the world – we screen films showing women fighting back and navigating a space for themselves and other women in this sexist world.

“We aim to show films which deal with the important issues of the day and which can inspire others to get involved in feminist activism in one way or another. So often we see a narrow, stereotypical misogynist view of women in films – LFFF prides itself on showing films with positive role models for women and girls. So, in essence, we’re trying to create a space for feminism and women filmmakers and to perhaps change the world just a tiny bit.”

The London Feminist Film Festival runs until 23 August at the Rio Cinema, Dalston and the Tricycle Cinema, Kilburn.

For the full programme and venues, see: http://londonfeministfilmfestival.com/lfff-2015-programme/

August 20, 2015
Trew Era cafe – review: the Russell Brand revolution will be caffeinated

Trew Era café. Photograph: Sophie Hemery

Unlike the reputation of its politicised proprietor, Trew Era café is inconspicuous. Nestled between a barber and a printing shop, it’s easy to miss. Russell Brand’s venture – a potentially awkward coalition of coffee and community action – is located just metres away from the New Era Estate in Hackney, whose residents recently fought off eviction, arm in arm with Mr Brand himself.

This particular arm of Brand’s ‘Revolution’ is a non-profit social enterprise, funded by proceeds from his book and run by people in abstinence-based recovery from addiction. At its opening, Brand announced: “Politics is dead, this is the end of politics. What we are discussing now is what comes after… and it will start with small enterprises such as this, which put the power where it belongs – with people.” Cue eye-rolling from those who don’t believe Russell Brand to be the arbiter of societal sea change.

And yet call me an undiscerning apologist, but I think it’s nice. It feels sincere, warm even; a far cry from popular complaints about Brand’s apparently shaky integrity and narcissism. Granted, the seating is coolly uncomfortable and the décor ‘stripped down’ chic, but it is certainly the only coffee shop I’ve been to in Hackney that isn’t almost exclusively frequented by MacBook-toting white people.

Indeed, New Era resident Ann Taylor proclaimed at the opening: “This will be our meeting place.” And she wasn’t lying. Every time I have been to Trew Era, something remarkable happens – strangers talk to each other. During my last visit, I ended up abandoning my emails in favour of a rather heart-warming conversation with an 80-something woman waiting for a Dial-A-Ride taxi and a couple of long-serving primary school teachers. Amongst all the talking and activist posters, it actually feels like there’s such thing as community.

The coffee and sandwiches are arguably secondary in the midst of revolutionary ambitions. Nevertheless, as they say, the revolution will be fuelled by flat whites and toasted sandwiches. There is breakfast food aplenty and cakes made by locals. The main menu changes often, depending on who’s working and is locally-sourced, organic and vegetarian. Recently there has been a vegan chilli and various vegetable soups. There are also appropriately healthy juices, including one called Chai Coff Ski. The prices are reasonable (as they should be). As a benchmark, a latte is £1.80.

Everything that I’ve tried is tasty, though you get the feeling that if you wanted something completely different, that’d be fine too. If this café is to be the headquarters of a post-politics, people’s revolution, you’d better show your face. If not, it’s definitely worth a visit anyway. You don’t even have to meet Russell Brand. But you might; I did, and he bought me a coffee.

Trew Era Café
30 Whitmore Road, N1 5QA
fb.com/treweracafe

June 25, 2015