Writers: Chloe Christian, Olivia Dowd, and afshan d’souza lodhi
Director: Chloe Christian
There are many reasons why some 60% of all LGBTQ+ spaces in London have shuttered over the last 20 years, but the struggle and decline started long before. It has always hit queer women’s spaces harder, especially when there have been so few to begin with. Headlining Camden People’s Theatre’s festival, The Camden Roar, which celebrates the borough and its stories, Mirrorball’s GRILLS looks at one such place: the Camden Lesbian Centre and Black Lesbian Group.
The CLC was formed in 1982 and merged with the Black Lesbian Group in 1985. Together and separately, they provided social events, writers’ groups, workshops, and legal and emotional support in a world where Section 28 was a symptom and a cause of increased homophobia.
After funding cuts closed the centre, the venue’s archives are now 400 miles away, as a collection in Glasgow’s Women’s Library. It is an exploration of this archive by four modern-day queer people, one of whom is the daughter of the centre’s original management team, that forms the backbone of GRILLS. Taking snippets of material from the set’s four small filing cabinets, the archivists piece together what the centre was like from these fragments of history.
So many aspects of queer life from the 1980s crystallise in the small moments: the answering of the centre’s phone, never knowing if the voice on the other end would be an abusive caller, a heavy breather or a young woman desperate to find a place where they could be understood and welcomed; the constant battle to eke the council funding out as far as it could go. There is also an overwhelming sense of camaraderie, companionship, and occasional romance – the togetherness of a truly queer space that is the real loss when such venues disappear.
Such places never exist without conflicts, of course, and the difficulties that the CLCBLG faced are not shied away from. There is a sense that the merger between the two groups was never as equal as promised; reconstructed scenes place Ishmael Kirby and India Jean-Jacques on the BLG side of the divide, frustrated at always having to fight for Black-specific events when more anodyne equivalents, such as a line dancing night, get waved through (in the modern day scenes, it’s noted that there are as many management committee minutes discussing the group’s attitude to sadomasochism as there to the Black Lesbian Group’s business).
Also not shied away from is an attitude towards trans women that existed in some circles then, and persists in an aggressively mutated form in some quarters today. It’s noted that some in the CLCBLG wished to exclude those they termed “constructed females”. The role sharing in the cast means that Jaye Hudson is able to play both sides, from then to now and back, in a manner that puts a human face on behaviour that is all too upsetting for those being targeted.
But by far, the biggest spectre hanging over the centre is the Conservative government of the time, introducing Section 28 of the Local Government Act designed to prevent local authorities and schools from funding or “promoting” homosexuality. The section’s effect caused many groups to close, and those that did felt pressure to self-censor – something hinted at here, with Liv Dowd’s Niamh putting her foot down against workshops which once were welcomed.
Despite the seriousness of such events and the increased homophobia in a wider society which resulted, GRILLS never deals its cards with a heavy hand. Throughout, it is the joy, the strength, and the sisterhood that such venues offer that are celebrated. The archivist team finds a woman’s letter to her husband announcing she is leaving him after attending one of the group’s social nights. Whether it is true, or the remnant of a creative writing workshop, is unknown – but that’s also not the point. As each performer takes turns to orate the contents in their own best Brief Encounter-style RP, the expressions of queer joy in the letter and in the faces of the actors are reflected back by the audience.
And now the centre exists only in filing cabinets, where it is visited by just some 62 people a year. Outlets such as GRILLS are here to remind us of what we lose when such groups disappear. Section 28 may have targeted “pretended family relationships”, but the found family present in CLCBLG, and in so many such groups now long gone, was no pretence.
Continues until 22 June 2024
