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Every spectator is already an actor in her story; every actor … is the spectator of the same story.
Jacques Rancière1
This article concerns acting in one's story in public spaces, speaking the unspeakable in mixed company, and the possible effects of such acts on performers as well as on community audiences. It addresses a performance project on which I am attempting to gain critical purchase as a cultural outsider but artistic insider. Titled Uncomfortable Conversations, the play participates in recent attempts by FORWARD, a London NGO, to approach key social issues through the arts. In summer 2016 I began workshops with UK African diaspora migrants to devise their first foray into theatre. Active in the UK and Africa, FORWARD focuses on gender violence against women (including female genital mutilation or FGM, and forced/child marriage),2 and participants had been previously mobilized about these issues in meetings. However, it is one thing to speak abstractly about ending harmful practices, and another to embody taboo issues onstage in mixed company with outsiders present. This is especially true for women for whom the public sphere is anywhere outside the home; virtuous womanhood is silence, deference and modesty in the presence of elders and males, and honour is paramount.3 Performers were migrants from African countries, including Sudan and Somalia, which are particularly stigmatized in current immigration debates.
During February and March 2017, I devised/wrote and directed the script for two performances at the Paddington Arts Centre in North London. We used the public meeting room (rather than its stage) as a more familiar and comfortable performance space. Although most of the women had originally said that they would participate in workshops but never appear onstage, they all decided to perform. Even by community theatre standards, devising and rehearsal times were extremely limited: just six weeks of Wednesday mornings. Three women dropped out because of unspecified immigration issues or because they had been forbidden to attend for fear of damage to their husbands’ reputations.
Rehearsal times and spaces were necessarily improvised. Actors performed script-in-hand (none had ever memorized lines and English was not a first language).4 Our only full run-through was on opening night. Despite the limited publicity of a week's postering and word...