"It has the charge that really good poetry ought to have." This is how writer-director Tony Graham describes the language in a series of oral histories that captured his imagination.
They were collected on Islington's Andover Estate, in Finsbury Park, over three years of interviews by Professor John Gabriel of London Metropolitan University and his team. Among them are a retired ballerina who found herself suddenly homeless, a youth worker struggling against stereotypes at university, a resident known as "007" who can't get the council to listen, and NJ, who dreams of being allowed to play African drums.
Graham has now turned these stories into a verbatim theatre production, opening this month in Park90, Park Theatre's studio space.
The East End Review caught up with him just as rehearsals were getting under way. He talks of being drawn into the project by his own "curiosity about the people" whose lives he found so surprising when he first encountered the transcripts.
But then there was the "painfulness" involved in trying to select a small enough number of lives to make a coherent drama. Eventually six of more than 40 histories were chosen, and Graham got to work alongside the individuals depicted. Asked about his choice, he says: "They're not meant to be representative. They're individuals. Why should they be representative of anything apart from themselves?"
He worked with the original research team – Professor Gabriel alongside Dr Alya Khan, former Andover Estate resident Gulser Rose Kaya, the Andover Estate Youth Group and staff at Park Theatre, which has long-standing ties with the Andover Estate Community Centre.
The result is a blend of theatre, grassroots storytelling and digital media called The Talking Drum. "It's not a play," says Graham – contrary to the blurb on the theatre's website. "Oral sociology", perhaps, he muses. Or something else entirely. The title alludes to the traditional communication function of drums in African culture, which sums up the concept as well as anything might.
A cast of four – Sanya Adegbola, Andy de la Tour, Victoria Evaristo and Géhane Strehler – play the estate's residents, on a set designed by Rachana Jadhav, who also takes care of costume and video, with lighting by Jodie Underwood and sound by Tate Hingorani-Short.
What has kept Graham glued to this genre-defying project is a focus on bringing to a wider audience the stories of people not often listened to – and doing it in their own words. Play, oral sociology or poetry? Graham, for one, won't be pinned down.
The Talking Drum: Voices from the Andover Estate
Park90
Park Theatre
Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park N4 3JP
19–29 August 2026
