Three-week theatre Festival of all things Camden!
The market! The lock! The People’s Theatre! Amy Winehouse, Madness and Blur. The British Library! Hampstead Heath! Withnail & I! It’s London’s most iconic borough, and many of its people and stories are well known. But not all of them. And so, to celebrate 30 years resident in Camden, CPT presents ‘The Camden Roar’, a three-week festival of theatre by, for and about the Camden neighbourhood and its people.
Camden People’s Theatre is delighted to announce the programme from fully-produced to nascent works-in-progress, each of which captures a unique facet of Camden and its history. The programme is made up of four finished productions, five works-in-progress, and three sharings of early-stage and scratch performances.These shows reflect heavily on the ways in which Camden has changed over time, our responsibility to the past, and the ways in which its history and present reality affect the lives of those who now call Camden home. A ‘psychogeographic festival’, The Camden Roar embraces the idea that geographical location has a profound effect on our emotions and choices.The full programme will include new and devised shows, installations, cabaret, and a community takeover day on Sunday 9th of June, and will finish with Tolmer’s Road Festival, a free family-centric arts festival in the heart of NW1 on 23rd June.
The festival will be headlined by exciting new play GRILLS. GRILLS is co-produced by Mirrorball and CPT and was commissioned by CPT and Old Diorama in 2022, when a work-in-progress was performed to sell-out audiences. Now developed and revived for a three-week run, GRILLS (an oft-used substitute for “girls” in the lesbian community of 1980s London) is a theatre production that explores the groundbreaking work of the 1980’s Camden Lesbian Centre and Black Lesbian Group. This was the UK's only dedicated lesbian centre and it closed in 1995. Through GRILLS, audiences will discover imagined relationships, real protests, and the palpable queer joy unearthed from found artefacts. GRILLS is a euphoric reimagining of Camden's Queer history. It asks: What happens when our cultural memory is shelved over 300 miles away? How do we truly progress when we struggle to connect with our elders? And what really happened at ‘Camden Dykes Get Your Claws Out’?
Embracing Camden’s Queer History: Camden has a long history of being a home and a haven for queer and gender-nonconforming people, both in its music and arts scene, further Camden queer stories are explored in work-in-progress SWEET TESTAMENT DIVINE, and scratch show THE CAMDEN QUEERS, both unpacking how Camden has provided a home for radicals and queer revolutionaries over time.
A bittersweet love letter to Camden: A programme explores not only the image of Camden as it is popularly seen but also as it is in reality in 2024: an area where an increasing proportion of the adult population is affected by alcoholism (as evocatively explored in DRAWING ON THE BOTTLE), where social housing is increasingly difficult to access (as shown through lived experience in ART FOR ART’S SAKE), and the old spirit is fading in the face of increasing privatisation (as we see in 236 CAVENDISH MANSIONS). These shows come together to write a bittersweet love letter to the borough past and present.
Camden: harsh realities and new hope: While the ghosts of Camden may run wild in the public imagination (as seen in SECOND LIFE and work-in-progress SHE SELLS SANCTUARY ON THE PRINCE OF WALES ROAD) these plays also explore a reality for Camden’s people that is often less glamorous. The Camden Roar Festival showcases Camden-based stories of creative struggle (as seen in withnail and without nail), refugee experience (as delicately testified to in CITIZEN), it’s lesser-known activist past (as the history of CPT itself demonstrates in THE HISTORY OF OUR BUILDING) and the instability caused by erosion of community spaces (shown in scratch show THE OLD DAGGER). Each show weaves a different thread in a tapestry which showcases the unique nature of Camden and its many identities.
Through this festival, and the ongoing existence of Camden People’s Theatre, these shows preserve the borough’s history, and demonstrate an ongoing hope for the future of the area as a place for artists to live, and then tell, their stories.
THE CAMDEN ROAR FESTIVAL: June 4th - 22nd 2024
Further information: The Camden Roar: Artist Call-Out | Camden People's Theatre (cptheatre.co.uk)