“You think: ‘Oh, older people, they’re not going to be so exciting.’ But you know what, we are! And we were from the very beginning. Very witty, funny, creative and full of life and of course, because we’re older, we have better stories than younger people – there’s more of them!”
Persia, a trans woman in her seventies who lives in Brighton, is one of a group of older LGBTQ+ people sharing their life stories in Hear Us Out, a new digital festival that kicks off virtually on Thursday, in the last week of lockdown.
And she couldn’t be more excited about taking part, she tells HuffPost UK. The festival is the culmination of theatre director Dinos Aristidou’s idea to celebrate the many older LGBTQ+ people who live on the UK south coast, and to give these elders a platform to tell their truth – by speaking someone else’s.
The main event is a free, live-streamed performance on Saturday November 28, featuring a series of true, five minute stories – anonymously told to protect privacy, but also to add a layer of drama. Performers will read each other’s stories verbatim – not just repeating the other person’s words, but the ums and ers, the pauses and the spaces between those words.
“It’s very validating, like you’re being witnessed – and that’s very powerful because we all want to feel heard,” explains Carol, an actor in her sixties who lives in Hastings. “Sometimes to expose ourselves, if parts of our story are quite painful, is risking becoming vulnerable in a way perhaps we don’t want to be.”
The stories in Hear Us Out vary in tone and subject, but the overarching theme is celebratory. “People have been through challenging things, joyous things,” says Janet, 56, who identifies as a disabled dyke, is retired and still writes poetry and prose. “These aren’t straightforward coming out stories. They’re stories of lived lives and experiences that went along with those lived lives.”
Theatre is a “powerful tool”, she adds. Performers in Hear Us Out have lived through years of oppression and legislation; they have been through a lot. “I know people whose story is so challenging and painful for them, it’s not possible for them to speak their story themselves,“Janet says, but the idea it is made available to a wider audience with their permission: that is fantastic.”
Carol compares the process to “channelling” another person. “By putting words into someone else’s mouth, we’ve had to really consider how they tell it: reproduce the tone, the spirit of that person,” she says. “It allowed me to step back from aspects of my own story. To be, not neutral exactly, but fully take it in, without feeling overwhelmed or embarrassed or ‘have I said too much?’”
Inclusivity is at the heart of the work, say all the participants. One of the benefits of the production taking place online, due to Covid-19 restrictions, has been to open up the project, run by Brighton’s New Writing South company, to people who may have found the pressure of performing on a physical stage too much.
“My best friend is a shy introvert, but she found that doing it online as opposed to in a theatre, which was the original idea ... well, she would have buckled doing that,” says Carol. “But she has found a voice, it has amplified her voice.”
Carol would have preferred a real theatre herself. “I struggle with technology at the best of times. I can get stressed very quickly if it’s not working,” she admits. “And we had to film ourselves, become filmmakers. What else do you want: my blood?!”
But Janet see the long-term potential. “It’s a beautiful thing to be able to retain this in this form so it can then be listened to and shared on all manner of media into the future – it’s a fantastic way of holding onto people’s histories.”
The production includes the voices of LGBTQ+ people who have struggled with drink and drug addiction. Antony, a poet with a colourful backstory, having worked as a commercial lawyer in the City, a shopkeeper on New Bond Street and a Benedictine monk, says finding their common ground was a privilege.
“We’ve all faced the same challenge and are coping in such different ways,” he says. “Coming through such pain and hardship, as a heroin addict, an alcoholic, people were driven into [these situations] by their sexuality. It’s lovely to feel that one has something in common with other people who’ve suffered like that.”
As Carol adds: “It’s not all ’ha ha ha, hee hee hee”, is it, being gay or lesbian? Just because we can claim to have the best parties. Life hasn’t been a party – far from it! There’s not been enough partying!”
The crux of the project, says director Dinos Aristidou, is the notion of stories that connect us, that bring about connection: how we may not have lived the same lives, but all our LGBTQ+ stories are in dialogue with one another.
“It’s the story from silence to speaking out to celebration,” he says. “Because it’s an older people’s project, I was also very keen that it shouldn’t be simply a reminiscence project. I wanted it to be a celebration of people’s present, and the stories that got them to this moment, rather than a selection of memories.”
There is plenty of life yet in the cast of Hear Us Out. Most are only in their sixties and seventies, with some participants younger still than that. But being platformed later does have its perks, says the cast. “At a time in your life where chronologically you get less interesting, where people show less interest, it is wonderful to have our opportunity to share our thoughts,” says Carol.
Verbatim theatre has previously been used to represent the lives of the victims of other types of hardships. The musical London Road, which opened at the National Theatre in 2011, used real interviews with the people affected by the Ipswich murders to create a drama responding to those atrocities.
The form could go even further, Carol believes: “It has huge untapped potential: if politicians had to take the words of their constituents, what a learning that would be. It’s such a tool for developing compassion and thinking about what it’s like to be the other.
“And we are in a time where the other is othered more than ever.”
The Hear Us Out digital festival runs online from November 26-29.