‘Proud to Be’ to relate real stories of LGBTQ+ isolation and resilience

Created in lockdown by the poet and performer Mel Bradley and director Kieran Smyth, ‘Proud To Be’ begins a new season which will see live performances return to the Playhouse and streamed globally.

Part of Foyle Pride, ‘Proud To Be’ will be broadcast live from The Playhouse next Friday, August 28 at 8pm. The play can be viewed live on The Playhouse website at www.derryplayhouse.co.uk, by all subscribers to the Playhouse’s YouTube channel and through the theatre’s social channels by searching @derryplayhouse.

Proud To Be is a 75-minute performance of seven intersected individual monologues which illustrate how we are changed and shaped by our connections with other and the human interactions over a lifetime.

Each story is told from the perspective of the experience of being LGBTQ+ living in the north against a backdrop of religious identity, inequality and discrimination.

Writer Mel Bradley said: “As human beings, we are inherently designed to seek out connections with other human beings. In such a short space of time, faced with a global pandemic, the landscape in which we seek out those connections rapidly changed, isolation has exposed humanity to the unavoidable consequence of self-reflection.”

Playhouse producer and director, Kieran Griffiths, said: “This powerful play asks the question: ‘What does isolation mean to the most marginalised in society?’ It is an act of heroism when people share their vulnerability with strangers.

“There has always been something so beautiful about using the theatre boards as a platform for the truth. In these uncertain times, we need these stories of hope and resilience more than ever.”

‘Proud To Be’ will begin a programme of live performances inside the theatre that will be broadcast live, online, across the world via its newly installed live broadcasting infrastructure.

All performances will be free to all subscribers to the Playhouse’s YouTube channel. This approach will continue once the restrictions of the pandemic are lifted and the theatre is filled once again.

The Playhouse’s online programme will include behind the scenes films, artist interviews, access to rehearsal and broadcasts of past Playhouse productions. The initial run of new productions will be screened free of charge to all viewers, with the theatre encouraging donations online, before inviting audiences to financially support its new programme with an accessible new e-ticketing model.

The theatre’s second live broadcast will be the premiere of Anything Can Happen 1972: Voices from the heart of the Troubles by Damian Gorman, which will present previously-unheard stories about experiences of Northern Ireland. 1972 was an extraordinary year, when it felt like anything could happen, but it was a year of lives as well as deaths. Anything Can Happen 1972 is inspired by inside stories of both.

As part of the production, those who have lost people- in the Troubles, due to Covid-19, or in any circumstance - are invited to contribute to Anything Can Happen 1972. They are welcome to send objects or photographs of significance or importance to them, to be placed on the 130 empty chairs in the theatre. This act is so that the chairs have, other than absence, something very significant and important on them, to be lit by theatre lights in an act echoing Seamus Heaney’s famous work Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication, in which he describes ‘a sunlit absence’.

Griff Rhys Jones, Patron of the Playhouse, said: “I’m proud to be associated with a theatre whose award-winning work is an ark for engagement, peacekeeping and education. During this rather strange time, the Playhouse has been making plans. It’s going to launch a digital Playhouse to bring education, engagement and theatre online. We need your help to build our audience online; you can do this by subscribing to our YouTube channel.”

Noirin McKinney, Director of Arts Development, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, added: “The Arts Council is proud to be Principal Funder of the Playhouse and to support this innovative programme, imaginatively curated during an extremely difficult time for theatres and the Arts in general. The Playhouse has spectacularly risen to the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic and through this impressive programme, continues to reach out to audiences, helping to bring great art from their house to ours.”