by A piece is a living being. Not only because it is carried out every night from a line -up to another audience and its changing energy. The process of optimizing the script does not stop as soon as the curtain is on the first run.
“It is extraordinary if I think about where it started six years ago, I think Iman is on design 29,” says director Hannah Hauer-King. “We have reached 30, Hannah,”, dramatist Iman Qureshi cheerfully updates her employees.
Qureshi and Hauer-King were first addressed by the Soho Theater in 2019 to create a piece that became the Ministry of Lesbian Affairs. After a successful first run in 2022, the Kiln Theater in Kilburn is now playing with an excellent line -up that Liz Carr from Stummows -Ruhm contains.
The Ministry of writing gave the couple the opportunity to smuggle and unpack the topics and debates in the lesbian community – those that have only become more current and urgent in the years. But after his conception, their main task was to compensate for the scorecard.
“Iman and I are both gay women, and we have spoken a lot about the fact that there are really incredible pioneering work for gay men in the theater, all talk about Jamie, Angels in America and we just don’t have it as gay women,” says Hauer-King. “Iman thought I wanted to write a lesbian opus.”
“Iman thought I wanted to write a lesbian opus”
Hannah Hauer-King
While lesbians in the media have recently become more mainstream, they still often remain in tedious tropics such as Kill Your homosexuals, where queer people are killed as tragic action equipment or include many sad women in contemporary costumes that are longing to stare at sea. And while London’s gays go against developers, there is still only a handful of lesbian bars and club evenings that fly the flag under which queer women can celebrate.
“I am not the most experienced writer in the world, but I sat down something really ambitious, and let us give us a line -up of eight, let us have a big game,” says Qureshi. “What often happens with lesbian stories in the theater is that we are being pushed into studio rooms. We have these very limited runs and really small stages. I wanted to go big or go home.”
The Ministry is a very ambitious piece that combines comedy with darker topics and musical elements. This is followed by a group of queer women who have teamed up to form a choir in the hope of performing at a Pride festival, but threatens to fight the community to tear them apart. The first act is heartwarming; The second act will break your heart.
“We don’t have the luxury of this short form, as might gay men do”
Iman Qureshi
“With the first half of the piece I wanted to seduce and invite and say how great we are as a community, as a culture and show the world what we are about,” says Qureshi. “We don’t have the luxury of this short form, as might gay men and gay male culture do.” Yes, there are many jokes about the lesbian preference for Cat Parenthood and Fleece shift. But it’s not just about the warm fuzzies.
“The game turns on a cent in the second half and becomes much darker and more serious,” added Qureshi. “It deals with problems that share us like male violence or struggles within the lesbian community, especially in transthobia.”
From the outside, culture can flatten out the queer relationships between women to a kind of human -free utopia with quick commitment, common wardrobes and endless craft stores. But lesbians and bisexual women have been shaped by departments since equality of the sixties and seventies. Lesbian separatists of this time suspicion bisexual women and trans people because of their alleged brotherhood with men, an ugly opinion that metastasized with the current cultural war.
“Instead of being very natural allies, they can become enemies”
Hannah Hauer-King
The Ministry tries to treat these problems with compassion and do not try to alienate both sides of these hidden cracks. The creators see it as a misguided struggle for resources and recognition. “It happens so often in minority groups that want to be desperately recognized and is desperate to get time, time, energy and concern,” says Hauer-King. “Instead of being very natural allies, they can become enemies. It is a distraction, she says, from the” true threat, namely CIS men “.
These editions cooked in 2019 when they wrote the play for the first time. Now they have passed the judgment of the Supreme Court. “Tragically, it is even more relevant. It is even more high operations than the last time,” says Hauer-King.
The lesbians have become a flashpoint in right -wing attempts to separate transcoats from the solidarity and security of the LGBTQ+ Drell. “I have the feeling that my identity was kidnapped by it, I would say, edge, very vowel margins,” says Qureshi. “The idea that you have to protect against the ‘terrible trans women’ in a special way. [We’re] To stop from this rather terrible group of people who say they do to save lesbians. “
“I have the feeling that my identity was kidnapped, I would say, fringe, very vowel margins”
Iman Qureshi
Nevertheless, Qureshi and Hauer-King are careful when the piece is refused to lecture on its audience. They want to promote the cohesion of the community, to answer the question of how they can coexist and reoré against the true existential threats. A character says something offensive on duty, but they expand their circumstances the grace and do not strive for forgiveness to create a mutual understanding. “We urgently need, desperate, urgently,” says Hauer-King.
Another important topic is the topic of consciousness for disabilities in queer communities that are examined by Carr’s character FI that uses a wheelchair, while the choir does not seem to find any accessible space to practice.
It is a constant frustration. I recently took part in a fundraising campaign for Dyke March, which was a staircase flight in one place without an elevator, which I will tell the couple and was hit with a chorus of the agreement. “There is a line in the play that is like this: Why are lesbian bars always in cellars?” says Hauer-King. The Staging Ministry has a meta element that requires full access to both its occupation and the audience.
“There is the irony of a piece that talks about accessibility when so many theaters are inaccessible”
Iman Qureshi
“When we tried to find a home for the reworking of this piece, the accessibility of the theater was a big problem. They may be accessible. They may have space for the odd wheelchair in the audience, but the changing rooms must be accessible. The stage must be accessible so that the toilets must be accessible,” says the theater. ” There is the irony of a piece that talks about the accessibility when so many theaters are not accessible. “Kiln, like Soho Theater, takes access to the accessibility seriously and was a natural home for restoring.
To be a well -known name like Carr and songs from a variety of taste and epochs is part of the plan to keep the attractiveness of the ministry as far as possible. “It allows it too [the play] Be a little Trojan horse. People come in and hopefully be deducted from the recognizable music, the humor and joy of a choir, ”says Hauer-King.
A large part of the rewriting focused on the second act and shadowed in more light with the dark and the music numbers reworked. “What is funny is that we didn’t notice until the first preview that it is a comedy,” says Hauer-King. “[Now] We really got involved that it is a musical comedy with very important and hopefully moving topics. “
The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs in the Kiln Theater, until July 17th, TITRINGEN and information here.
