I met the Reverend Billy – also known as Bill Talen – at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios in east London near the end of his Trump Depression Hotline Tour across England in October 2017. Based in New York since the 1990s, the Reverend Billy and his secular-political Church of Stop Shopping use public preaching and singing to protest against rampant consumerism, corporate greed, ecological injustice, and Trump. Reverend Billy and I discussed what’s important in using the arts to change the world, including local activism, collaboration, music, and love. The Trump Depression Hotline Tour is directed by Savitri D; the musical director is Nehemiah Luckett. www.revbilly.com

Episode 7 :: Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

Breach Theatre co-directors Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett met me to discuss It’s True, It’s True, It’s True. The show restages the seventeenth-century trial of artist Agostino Tassi for the rape of teenage Artemisia Gentileschi, who would become one of the most famous painters of her era. Combining courtroom drama, stagings of some of Gentileschi’s most famous – and feminist – paintings, punk music, and a powerful three-woman ensemble, It’s True, It’s True, It’s True confronts sexual, social, and institutional violence against women. Billy, Ellice, and I talk ‘post-verbatim’ theatre, devising, performing Artemisia, #MeToo, rage, care, design, structuring, and staging nakedness, sex, and violence. It’s True, It’s True, It’s True was an award-winning hit at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe and London’s New Diorama Theatre and returns to Edinburgh as part of the British Council’s 2019 Showcase before a UK tour. https://www.facebook.com/breachtheatre/

Episode 9 :: BreachTheatre :: It's True, It's True, It's True

To open part 2 of the seminar programme - Dr Catherine Silverstone, Reader, Queen Mary University of London presents an opening address. This is part of a Preview Seminar: Protest - Remembering Derek Jarman, that marked the 25th anniversary of Jarman’s death and reflects on What Jarman’s legacy is, as an artist and activist, today? Special guests come together to discuss the creative worlds, controversies and friendships that surround Jarman’s pioneering - interdisciplinary practice.

TRACK 5: Seminar Programme - Part Two / Protest, Outrage & Remembrance
Introduction / Dr Catherine Silverstone, Reader, Queen Mary University of London; Remembering Jarman - Death and Legacy 
To open this session, Silverstone discusses how efforts to remember, commemorate, and celebrate Jarman’s life and work enable a consideration of how (and which) lives are remembered publicly, within contexts of HIV/ AIDS and queer civil rights activism.

About Speaker
Catherine Silverstone is Reader in Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary University of London. Her research is focused on the cultural politics of performance, with particular interests in sexuality and death. Catherine edited a special issue of Shakespeare Bulletin to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death in 2014. She is also the author of a monograph — Shakespeare, Trauma and Contemporary Performance (2011) — and articles on topics including Jarman, queer club performance, and coming out films. Other publications include an edition of Titus Andronicus for The Norton Shakespeare (2015) and the co-edited collections, ‘On Affirmation’ for Performance Research (with Fintan Walsh, 2014) and Tragedy in Transition (with Sarah Annes Brown, 2007). She is currently working on a project on queer legacies in performance, which develops her work on Jarman. Catherine is also a founder member of the Sexual Cultures Research Group at QMUL.

Further Information
A range of iconic works were explored in the context of the highly anticipated IMMA exhibition, Derek Jarman, PROTEST! that opened on 15 November 2019. This significant retrospective offers the timely opportunity to explore many interdisciplinary aspects of Jarman’s life and work. Through Jarman’s work, the seminar traces key social, political and cultural shifts of the period 1960 – 1990s. Exploring many of the socially volatile topics that charged Jarman’s activities, his feelings of alienation, associations with the punk movement, and protests by intellectuals against the repressive totalitarian state of Thatcher England and Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act. Through the continuum of ‘Protest’ , topics of exploration include: Painting and Life; Memoir and Writing; the HIV / AIDS crisis; Stigma and Cultural memory; Protest and Personal Freedom and LGBTQ activism.

Speakers included: Sean Kissane (Curator, IMMA); Olivia Laing (author / writer, UK); Elisabeth Lebovici (art historian, critic, France): Dr Robert Mills (Professor, Medieval Studies, UCL, UK): Charlie Porter (writer, Turner Prize Juror, UK); Richard Porter (artist / Pilot Press, UK); Jon Savage (writer, broadcaster, UK); Dr Catherine Silverstone (Reader, Queen Mary University of London); Peter Tatchell (Human rights campaigner, UK), Karim White (Thames & Hudson Publishing, UK) and Tonie Walsh (LGBT rights activist, journalist, Ireland). Invited curators, artists, writers, educators and activists share their views on Jarman’s contemporary relevance and the precarious cycle of politics today.
This seminar took place on 14 November 2019 at IMMA. Return to the dedicated playlist ‘SEMINAR PROTEST - REMEMBERING DEREK JARMAN’, to listen back to other speaker’s responses and presentations.
Image Credits: Derek Jarman. Courtesy Basilisk Communications Ltd.

SEMINAR: PROTEST - REMEMBERING DEREK JARMAN (5) /  Dr Catherine Silverstone

This month we spoke with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw of Split Britches about their new show Last Gasp.  Inevitably we also talked about the ongoing Coronavirus crisis, creating art during a pandemic, Greek mythology, and how we can all stay sane during these uncertain times.

Show Notes:

http://www.split-britches.com/about

http://www.split-britches.com/lois

http://www.split-britches.com/peggy

http://www.split-britches.com/make-something-manifesto

http://www.split-britches.com/performance-archive

La Mama Podcast Episode 9 Lois Weaver And Peggy Shaw

FK Alexander and I met in 2018 to discuss her recent show VIOLENCE and (I Could Go on Singing) Over the Rainbow, a 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe breakout hit. FK is a Glasgow-based live artist whose shows are often durational, ritualistic, and experiential for audiences, foregrounding violent actions and noise but rooted in tender intimacy. Confronting big and often difficult feelings, not least loneliness, their effects are destructive but also restorative. They are consistently fascinated with pop cultural fantasy figures, such as ‘girl next door’ Judy Garland, and Queen of Hearts, Princess Diana. We discuss FK’s devising practices, motivations, and obsessions, and how order and sobriety in day-to-day life allow her to dig deep into violence in performance.

Episode 11 :: FK Alexander :: VIOLENCE & (I Could Go on Singing) Over the Rainbow

Stage left podcast explores performers' approaches to making their work. I teach and write about contemporary theatre and performance at Queen Mary University of London.

Episode 11 :: FK Alexander :: VIOLENCE & (I Could Go on Singing) Over the Rainbow

Stage Left

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