New Queers on the Block
EBM HUMPHREYS
As a big fan of local performance-art powerhouse, Home Live Art, I was delighted to learn that their latest venture Giddy Up is being curated by independent producer Hannah Rose Fox – whose face you might know from Queer History Collective events at the museum. Fox, who started with HLA in 2022 as project manager for community-based initiative Good Stuff, agreed to talk to us about her vision for the new programme.
Lucy McCormick
Giddy Up is the latest iteration of New Queers on the Block, a fifteen-year collaboration between Marlborough Productions and HLA. It is intentionally about long-term programming. Organised from five towns, NQOTB opens pathways for new queer artists, sidestepping barriers to mainstream participation and bringing fresh perspectives to mainstream audiences. Independent producers from each hub form a peer-group whose support is of immense value to Fox, helping her “to take risks in trusting [her] own intuition.”
Accessibility is a key focus for Fox, whose role with Good Stuff was to make sure groups had what they needed. Having curatorial control on an arts programme for the first time, she has placed Giddy Up firmly at the intersection of stage-based and Queer performance. While there is much to love about grass-roots performance in unlikely places, the theatre space is an age-old, well-loved medium, so Fox is keen to see it embraced by queer and radical artists. She is on a mission to “normalise the pathways to staging performance” so that exceptional work is not confined to London locations.
“Queer performers often end up at less-accessible venues, because the barriers to proving a show is commercially profitable can be great.” Venues are increasingly concerned to value economic viability over experimentation, whereas what funders care about is well-being, especially for under-represented communities. Historically, queer social spaces have been nightlife-led, inevitably featuring alcohol and other substances, excluding those whose disabilities make physical access difficult.
Fox studied events management and later worked with Impact Community Hub for social entrepreneurs. But, “missing the design element,” she made her way to Brooklyn, NY for an MA in Trans-Disciplinary Design. Here, arts practice paired with social justice issues, and Fox cut her teeth in community engagement. She focussed on Brooklyn Library, where staff were doing a lot of grassroots work at community level, without recognition. Fox designed innovative ways to engage with interviewees, seamlessly combining research with intervention – something reflected in her priorities for Giddy Up.
The project has three elements: first, the programming, through which Fox “can build up relationships with venues and their teams and find my curatorial footing.” Second, she wants to bring together the many volunteers involved at venues in the many LGBTQIA+ groups who make things happen in our town, with the art itself. Community becomes a route to audiences. Giddy Up especially seeks to serve Global Majority, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled audiences, which brings us to the third element: Evaluation. “It’s about learning what makes going to the theatre for a show feel like a normal and accessible experience, hence reducing barriers to participation in the arts, not just from the stage but from the stalls.” What are people seeing when they come to shows, are they looked after, do they feel safe?
Another challenge is finding venues willing to stage community productions, so it’s great that as well as working with The Stables theatre, Fox notes that the White Rock Theatre Studio has become “a really flexible black-box studio space, which offers so much more potential for creative programming than it has in the past.” The stage was taken out, a better sound system has been introduced, and there is now a ground-level front door.
GIDDY UP – WHAT’S ON!
So what’s actually happening? Well first up, we have the genuinely exceptional, “bold, brash and out there” Lucy McCormick, a woman I find it hard not to idolise. Equally at home with bona fide Shakespeare or raunchy, immersive pop-spectacular, for her live show Triple Threat, which showed at Printworks, Lucy sang, danced, covered herself in mayonnaise and glitter, wailed to make an Irish funeral-keener proud, and crowd-surfed. For the faint-hearted who might consider mayonnaise and glitter a bit over the top, worry not, because Lucy and Friends is a very different show.
Fox is equally excited for Stacey Makishi, whose genuinely innovative ‘show’ Walking Each Other Home, combines performance, ritual, interactivity – and party. However it is a contemplative work, focussed on grief and grieving, and promises to be a memorable and deeply reflective experience.
The third big splash for year one will be Wet Mess, an award-winning artist working across drag, theatre and live art, whose ‘genderpunk’ shows have been described by The Guardian as “not only thrilling and wild but somehow sweet and life enhancing.” For Trans Pride, Wet Mess will perform ‘TESTO’, a show about “the messiness of life with teeth and one chin hair; exploring transitions, testosterone … and the magical in the mundane.”
That’s not all – there is also a scratch night for local Queer artists to join a paid artist-residency scheme to test ideas, take risks and develop their work, culminating in a performance at Tried and Tested in September. The call-out is already open, so if this sounds like you, check it out now.
“IT’S THEATRE, BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT”
Under this strapline, at its heart, Giddy Up is all about collaboration – curators with community groups, venues, funders and Trans Pride; and HLA and Marlborough whose collaboration birthed New Queers. Fox’s vision is to incorporate learnings from working creatively with the community into top-quality arts-programming, which expands audiences and fosters integration between groups with different social and cultural backgrounds and expectations. And it really has something for everyone … so giddy up!
Hannah Rose Fox launches Giddy Up, a new three-year programme of performance from LGBTQIA+ artists taking over the stages of Hastings, this month
For all Home Live Art events, check out homeliveart.com/ For details of Stacy Makishi, see stacymakishi.co.uk Lucy McCormick: lucymccormick.com
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