Where Will We Live? - a new verbatim play by Changing Face Collective - reveals the human stories behind the hyper-regeneration of Lambeth.
(Ayesha Casely-Hayford and Olivette Cole-Wilson in Where Will We Live? at Southwark Playhouse. Photo: Dashti Jahfar, Changing Face Collective)
Premiered at the Southwark Playhouse 25 - 28 November 2015, all five performances were 100% sold out.
Its success is testament to the concern local people have about rising rents and evictions - 90 council estates in London are threatened with demolition.
Changing Face Collective gathered and transcribed 100s of interviews from people in Brixton and Lambeth housing estates and asked me to write the script. My first play.
I am a freelance journalist. I identified the main issues and grouped the material accordingly. The powerful stories leaped out and I caught them. I sifted the words for clarity and buffed for rhythm. My aim was to engage and inform a mainstream public. In collaboration with director Lucy Curtis and over several months (responding to what was thrown up in rehearsals as well as unfolding real-life events), we evolved a tight and textured verbatim play for seven actors playing 22 characters. These are people’s real stories, in their own words.
Lucy Curtis’s imaginative direction and the seven gifted actors - Ayesha Casely-Hayford, Ivana Mazza-Coates, Olivette Cole-Wilson, Christopher Sherwood, Hilary Derrett, Steven George and Tony Mcpherson plus musicians Jeremy and Pablo Paracchino - brought Where Will We Live? to life.
A word about the title. Originally inspired by film director, Spike Lee, arguing against the gentrification of New York, it came, out of the blue, from Marian (played by Ayesha Casely-Hayford) having to explain to her daughter about eviction:
“ “She was askin’ me ‘Mummy, why are we going to court?’.
I had to explain, ‘the landlord is trying to take us out of the house’, and she says, ‘Why?’
Then because she has seen the new buildings and she’s so excited, saying ‘Oh, are we moving into one of those houses?’
I said, ‘Well, that’s the question - and then she goes, ‘Well, where will we live?’ And I say I don’t know.’“
Where Will We Live? receives a Four-Star review in The Stage
My blog on Where Will We Live? on Medium
My article on Where Will We Live? on the Guardian