The fantastic return of Blueprint-wildly imaginative fringe theatre festival at the Queen’s Theatre.

We have seen the return of the popular Blueprint festival at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch. Local activist and campaigner Ruth Kettle-Frisby visited this exciting fringe theatre festival and today writes:

Blueprint 2023 Part 1

October 2023 saw the return of last year’s wildly imaginativefringe theatre festival Blueprint at Havering’s own cultural hub, Queen’s Theatre.

Blueprint Festival is fearless! It’s all about platforming exciting new projects from underrepresented artists, giving the entire event a distinctly inclusive, accessible, and intriguing feel. Blueprint is not afraid to take creative risks, overturning both aesthetic and social conventions to conceptualise theatre as a dynamic symbiotic relationship between the production teams (not always limited to the performers themselves) and audience.

Here in Havering, we are spoiled with a smorgasbord of enticing plays and experiences, with plenty of opportunity to fit at least one or two in, many of which are shown multiple times over the week and tended to be on the shorter side.

Day 1 – Mental Health Day – aptly featured two solo performances: the delightfully illuminating Evening Conversations, by witty playwright and performer, Sudha Bhuchar; and Kenny Emson’s powerful A Different Class. As a White woman, both performances provided me with an intimate window into others’ perspectives.

Evening Conversations was skilfully performed by Bhuchar, who actively interacts with her audience in her friendly, down-to-earth, and yet pleasingly lyrical storytelling style. Incorporating a compelling three-part story of Mahabharata character, Bhishma – culminating in a beautifully executed, poignant yoga pose – she plays multiple family members in a seamlessly dynamic perspectival exchange. 

Peppered with dry, ironic humour, Bhuchar unfolds layers of her story like an onion, trying to situate a sense of enduring self amidst the destabilising process of aging on top of existing social tensions.  Bhuchar fluidly interweaves and offsets political and personal histories of India and the UKwithin the semantic and cultural currents of Western modernity, particularly as they appear to her alongside the cold shoulder of affable Wimbledon communities today.

Bhuchar nods unapologetically to everyday features of the systemic oppression of women of colour with a wry smile as she begins to untangle the intersection of racism and sexism across time and space in her life.  She astutely captures the paradoxical expectations of women living in Britain today: to fulfil traditional roles and to invest in emotional labour, while fighting against injustice and somehow protecting their mental health in mindful surrender. Everybody there was completely engrossed, many of whom – as well as being wildly entertained – were visibly emotionally touched by Bhuchar’s empathetic candour, their rich varieties of valued personal experiences overlapping with hers.

In perhaps a nod to Pulp’s seminal album A Different Class, the audience passively, but intimately observed Tag’s potent exchanges, reflections and revelations in stark darkness. Minimalistic, periodically fragmenting tubular neon lightsdelineated the angular contours of the stage; like particularly foreboding 90s glow sticks, they strikingly signalled scene and mood changes; the buzzing and pulsing of dance music building intensity. 

The play explores working class men’s mental health, including the sensitive topic of men’s suicide, which – tragically – is ‘the leading cause of death in men under 50’ (https://www.england.nhs.uk/blog/tackling-the-root-causes-of-suicide/). 

Seasoned performer at Queens Theatre, Simon Darwen, was the embodiment of Tag and of everything he and the other male characters he played represented in terms of the fragility that can occur at the intersection of class and traditional conceptions of masculinity, with their strict and forbidding parameters. Tag and his best mates knew the rules, and it was living within these tribalistic boundaries that caused generations of confusingly insidious harm, interlaced with electrifying sparks of idealism and excitement; friendship and belonging.

Darwen plays the role with the energy, sensitivity and momentum it needs to do justice to a culture that will speak in very direct ways to so many different men from Essex and beyond. Trained professionals were available in the Learning Space for anyone who wanted to talk, and I was delighted to learn that A Different Class will be taken on a community tour by Havering Changing to be performed in colleges, gyms, youth centres and working men’s clubs. I feel confident that this play – with its message of hope – will become part of a transformative movement for change that is blossoming here in Havering, with the help of groups like The Proper Blokes Club, who provide safe environments in which men are free to walk, talk and share without fear of judgement.

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