New theatre show ‘Ladyfriends’ explores LGBTQ+ and suffragette history

Fresh from sold-out work-in-progress shows at the Camden People’s Theatre in London, new show Ladyfriends is on a spring tour, coming to the Loco Klub for a three night run on March 15-17.

Telling the untold stories of Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, and drawing on archival materials written by fellow suffragettes, the production promises to be “a high-octane romp through love letters, third dates, and lesbian period dramas” that features confetti, PowerPoints, and power ballads.

Annie and Christabel are dating. Historians dispute this on the grounds of ‘inaccuracies’ and ‘lack of scholastic rigour’ and ‘the over-interpretation of the fact that women shared bedrooms’.

From writer/director Clodagh Chapman and producer Sarah Allen, the show is told by Ellie Mejía and Lucy Mackay in the principal roles of Christabel and Annie, alongside Christina Holmbek as the onstage camera operator. The team is completed by mandla rae as dramaturg, Sasha Georgette as assistant dramaturg, Izzy Odelola as sound designer and Natasha Lunt as creative assistant.

To complement the tour, an ancillary programme of workshops, mixers and open rehearsals is planned, with partners including The Proud Trust, Gloucestershire Archives, Contact Theatre and the University of Bristol.

The final Bristol performance will be followed by a post-show disco hosted by WNB Disco Collective, the queer nightlife pioneers behind Misscoteque.

Allen joined Bristol24/7 with some more insights about how the show originated, and its impact on LGBTQ+ youth in particular:

How did you first hear about Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, and what inspired you to bring their stories to life?

“Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst had sort of been on my radar for a while – it was actually when I lived in Bristol and started looking into local queer history that I originally stumbled across them. At first, I had what seemed like a really clear story about a queer couple erased from history – or, tangible evidence that historians were choosing to gloss over.

“It was when I dug further that I discovered… ‘ok, this is a bit more complicated than that’. Their story is full of grey areas, misreadings and misdirection, so it makes for a really exciting challenge as a theatre maker: how do I stage something that is, by definition, ambiguous? That’s kind of what drew me to their story! The challenge of it, but also the massive potential that comes with that.”

For artists and creatives working today, what are the opportunities afforded by the significant gaps in queer history?

“For me, those gaps are both really exciting and really daunting. They give us scope to imagine what might have happened, and to do that in interesting, critical ways. For any sort of artist, that’s an absolute gift: you’ve got this massively generative source material, and the capacity to add your own little flair onto it. Brilliant. You’ve also got scope in that to think about ‘the now’ – what new capacities do we have to imagine and refigure queerness, and how does that speak to the details that haven’t survived into the present day?

“But in that, there’s also a major responsibility. When you’re working with history, you’re generally working with real peoples’ lives – and I think there’s an inherent sort of duty there, to keep remembering and referring back to that. Not only that, but when you’re dealing with these really influential figures, you’re also needing to think about what you’re saying about the movements they’re a part of, and the present-day people who might find massive inspiration in them. There’s a lot of really sensitive touchpoints in there, which you need to work with – but you also want to portray your characters as three-dimensional, flawed people. It’s tricky, especially when you’re working within living memory.

“In terms of practically working with them, I always try to be honest about the ways in which the work is fictional. As a queer artist making queer work, you’re always going to bring something of yourself into the room, and that will almost always feed into the work itself. So Ladyfriends is a history, but it’s also a reception history. It imagines ‘what if they were together, what if this really happened?’, but it also asks what it actually means to look at the past and look for people like yourself. That’s a massive opportunity that comes with the gaps – you’re able to ask ‘what does how I fill those gaps say about me, or what it means to be queer now?’ But that can also be a really daunting and vulnerable question to ask, and it sometimes takes quite a bit of courage to face up to it.”

What is the impact of this story on audiences, and particularly on young queer people?

“Whilst the source material (spoilers!) might not have the happy ending we all want, I think Ladyfriends is ultimately a really hopeful story. The characters push against the edges of their form and their world until they’re allowed to be complex human beings – they’re able to be petty and vindictive and funny and honest, which is something that’s rarely afforded to queer women and non-binary people in particular.

“They’re constantly pushing towards the future, and to the possibilities that come before a story is ‘cooked’ – and this feels all the more important with the rise of the far right and the concerted attacks we’re seeing on LGBTQ+ people (especially trans women) in this country. So hopefully young queer audiences will come away from it feeling radically hopeful, in spite of a world that makes that really, really difficult.”

Can you tell us more about the programme of events running alongside the show?

“Our ambition with Ladyfriends is to create real connections within our audiences, especially between queer women and non-binary people. For me, that’s the great thing about theatre: you can bring a bunch of people into a real physical room together, and they get to experience the work in shared time and space. But to facilitate that properly means thinking beyond just the performance itself, and into the whole wraparound experience: how can we create a space that accommodates all the different connections people might want to have with one another, and all the different ways people might be brought into that space? How can we think beyond what we’d traditionally think of as a theatre experience to make something that really places the LGBTQ+ community front and centre?

“There’s also a talent development angle in there. The theatre sector is still so wildly inaccessible to so many people – so it’s important to me that I’m not ‘pulling up the ladder’ as I progress in my career, but that I’m actively making opportunities for those newly-emerging artists to get that foot in the door. So that means running workshops, but also opening out our rehearsal room to emerging artists – giving them the chance to actually see how a rehearsal room might operate.”

Finally, are there other untold stories that you’d like to explore next?

“Loads! Not just in queer history, either. I’m always excited by stories that feel surprising and funny and strange – in whatever form they might appear.”

Ladyfriends (A Period Drama) is at Loco Klub on March 15-17 at 7.30pm, followed on Friday by a club night run by Misscoteque (play suitable for 14+; club night 18+ entry). Tickets are available via www.headfirstbristol.co.uk. To keep informed of events programmed to support the tour, visit https://linktr.ee/ladyfriendslive.

All photos: Sarah Allen Productions

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