I am writing blogs to celebrate 25yrs of Open Clasp work, collaborating with communities of women and making the best theatre we can with the aim of changing the world one play at a time. I’ve written about After Her Death, Falling Knives & Runaround Wives, Stand n Tan and Tonic (1998 to 2009). This blog will the next set of plays, A Twist of Lemon, Rattle & Roll and Blue Giro (2008 to 2011).
A Twist of Lemon – The Story
Butch Jackie, asks her four friends to take her for last holiday to the island of Lesvos and to have her ashes sit on Sappho’s face (a mountain top)
‘Set against the backdrop of adversity this production highlights the courage, strength and humility of young lesbians and lesbians in the North East and gives audiences a rare opportunity to witness the stories of a minority that, in the main part, are invisible to the rest of society. Like heterosexuals they fall in and out of love, experience the trials and tribulations of bringing up children, but their lives bare the imprint of a world where they, and their children experience prejudice and discrimination. It takes time for change, but how slow does this clock have to tick? Open Clasp says it’s time to wind it up’ (Annual Review 2008/09)
This show was co-created over two years with 68 lesbians from the North East and had a sellout tour in 2008. When founding the company I wanted to work with lesbians, wanted to see our lived experiences up on stage. Lesbians, along with other women’s groups co-created After Her Death, Falling Knives, Stand n Tan and Tonic – but in order to challenge homophobia the lesbian character/s had to be ‘good’, flawed but good.
We set up at a time of Section 28 and homophobia was commonplace, like Transphobia is now. I/we were lesbian mothers – our son, his sister and our many children went to school at a time when teachers couldn’t or weren’t supposed to promote our families as real.
Our actors, when leaving the stage, would often be asked ‘are you really a lesbian’ (our agreed response was ‘if I was one, would it make any difference’) and in the most part they would say no. It was a time when you wouldn’t come out to the groups you were working with, my long hair and lipstick led to an assumption that I was ‘straight’. This meant I heard it, the homophobia and could challenge but I still heard it. It was a different time, for me. Now I’m out and proud – being out now means I support others in groups who may still feel they can’t be. But with every tour there were moments when audiences would respond with ‘hate’ and revulsion – In this first decade of our work we were winding that clock, fast and hard…it was but A Twist of Lemon that saw the company have its first all lesbian storyline – now the clocks hands were about to come off. It was 2008 I felt it was time to include the diversity of our lives, with all the complexities that might bring, good and not so good.
The project was called Friends of Dorothy and the production A Twist of Lemon.
You could argue it was groundbreaking at the time, as was the research of Prof Catherine Donovan who advised on the production. Same sex domestic violence wasn’t talked about.
As I write the blogs our Producer Erin Connor is reading the scripts and said the following.
‘I knew Open Clasp in theory since 2010 when Fiona Macpherson used to sing their praises in Northumbria University. The first show I saw was Key Change in 2015. Going back and reading the scripts that led to this moment has been a really enjoyable experience. Key Change didn’t magically come out of thin air, it came out of years of working with communities, women, workshops, shows and local audiences and their investment in the company. Going back and watching that journey is important to understand how the company got here, and it’s just the craic of the journey. Key Change put the company on the map but After Her Death and the others paved the way for that. I’ve never seen four women who are lesbians on stage before. ‘A Twist of Lemon’ is just pure joy, and I can’t believe I had to go back to 2008 to see it.’ (Erin Connor, Producer with Open Clasp)
Special thank you to the legend and the woman with ‘funny bones’ Fiona MacPherson our Associate Director 1998 to 2009
Rattle & Roll – All change
It was 2007 and I was at the launch of Scarpa in Newcastle (Safeguarding Children At Risk – Prevention and Action) who’s aim was ‘to help 10- to 18-year-olds escape and avoid sexual exploitation and stop going missing’. I asked if there was anything we (Open Clasp) could do to help. They said that the work with young people was very much on a 1-1 basis but there was a group called GAP (a support group for those involved in sex work) that would welcome working with Open Clasp. At the same time, we had been asked to work with young women who were homeless via Youth Voice, Bridge Women’s Education Centre and women supported by After Adoption. We took the characters they created to other groups, Westend Women & Girls, Patchwork Girls, the Recovery Project (SECOS) for consultation. The core groups had worked independently, yet they had many things in common such as domestic violence and childhood abuse.
My job has always been to lead on workshops, then to write scripts in response. They must be hard hitting, funny and accessible. As with all the plays that have gone before this time, I wanted a happy ending but there wasn’t one to find, instead it highlighted a reality, a need for change.
I remember going back to the women with the first storyboard. The GAP women loved the idea I was presenting. Their character was Marie, and she was being released from prison (my suggestion was that she then goes to the community centre and starts a bake-off thing (something like that). They loved it but added ‘no that isn’t what she would do, she’d want to score’. I had to think differently about this story, the butterfly affect, cause and effect, chaos.
The Story – Rattle & Roll – set over 24hrs
‘Four women are trying to jump track. A new name, street and a settee mean a new start, a way out and a past left behind. However, a missing wheelie bin, a broken promise and Mother’s Day throw the women back on familiar ground, but this time they are on a collision course with a runaway train. Set against the back drop of regeneration and recession, Rattle & Roll is a story about chaos, the order behind it and the strengths of those women trying to survive it’.
I loved working on this script. It wasn’t linear, it was a puzzle that audiences had to piece together. We stepped up a gear with production values. Amy Golding was first time directing with us, Joanna Scotcher the set designer and Roma Yagnik was composer.
Our Audiences – I remember being in a church in town with the GAP project, their invited guests and how they roared, laughter and tears, they truly loved it. I remember mainstream audiences being, at times uncomfortable and one time, at the end of the play there was silence. It was a step away from the previous play’s formats in response to the groups and the lives they were trying to survive in. The blurb is interesting to revisit, ‘regeneration and recession’. Open Clasp are based in the West End, now we talk about years of austerity and when will things change.
Rattle & Roll was the first play we took into HMP Low Newton. Props such as handcuffs and crack pipes didn’t make it in, but we did. Our first audience inside the women’s prison. Four years later, in 2014 we went back in to create Key Change, but that’s for another day/blog.
BlueGiro
The third show to be highlighted in this blog is BlueGiro. I’m reading the Annual Review 2010/11 and my Artistic Report says:
‘As BlueGiro was out on tour we found ourselves, due to lack of funding, looking at the possibility of closure. We have been here before, but this time it felt very real and disheartening. And then the high, We were successful with our bid to become a part of the Arts Councils National Portfolio of funded organisations’.
That is surreal to read. We became an NPO in 2012 and remain part of the portfolio to this day. Fourteen years of producing work without core and to then have the recognition and investment in the voices of working-class women on stage was something we celebrated, but we never did then and not now take that investment for granted.
One in Four
The project to create BlueGiro was called One in Four and we worked with survivors of sexual violence. The production toured in Spring 2011. We worked with Eva Women’s Aid Redcar, Sixtyeightythirty in Hexham and young women’s groups across the region. We also ran focus groups with Tyneside Rape Crisis. 103 women were involved.
The Story
‘Jodie might have that indefinable ‘something that makes for star quality’… Set against the backdrop of a televised singing competition, BlueGiro tells the story of a young woman’s desire to grow and a mothers who threatens to stop the show’
BlueGiro follows they lives of a mother and daughter, neighbour and a voice coach. Jodie the daughter is putting herself forward for the televised competition (not unlike the X Factor). They all travel with her and things unravel when Jodie goes missing.
This is my first time directing one of the main productions, and I was mentored by Annie Rigby (Unfolding Theatre). Erica Whyman was a critical friend of the company and a go to woman for me on all things creative. I am extremely proud of BlueGiro, but I learnt when reflecting that I’m not a director. I direct with my ears, I’m a writer and sometimes writers think they can direct, and sometimes they can, but I learnt that if I were to continue in this role I would need to train/study. But I don’t want to direct. I’m at my happiest when in a room with women and writing in response.
We were invited to apply for funding to make this production, voices needed to be heard and we were the company to make that happen. The women we worked with had experienced rape and/or sexual assault but it was only when working with the women, when using the creative techniques to talk and share in a safe way, did we understand what story needed to be told.
It was years later when this subject matter hit me personally, and I was working on Sugar at the time, I can remember then thinking how do you survive something no-one should – I was struggling too. Resilience was the answer, the women on BlueGiro, Sugar and those threaded throughout the story of Open Clasp, have resilience but they/we shouldn’t have to. One in Four women experience sexual assault/rape (6.54 million), one in 18 men (1.34million) and one in six children sexually abused.
BlueGiro – audience comments recorded:
‘It made me laugh for the first time in ages which isn’t easy when you’re Bipolar! It also gave me a greater understanding of sexual violence’
‘It blew the myths out of the water in a very powerful way’
‘Having been there, and had it done, you told the story amazingly well. My cheeks were aching from laughing, heart pounding, eyes full of tears, you hit every emotion, its was FANDABBYDOZEY!’
When reflecting on this moment I can see that the ask was for us to focus on particular communities of women – This continues in the next chapter where we see the company working with just ‘older women’, only minoritized women and then women inside prison. When I think about this period of working with communities and producing work, its feels like a step change for a hundred different reasons, the creative team, staff and board of trustees. We had become an NPO, part of the portfolio and what was coming next we could only dream of (enter Key Change)…
Catrina
