London, United Kingdom – Friday 05 November 2021, LBTH, FITF – Daedalus Theatre Company, Gerrard Winstanley’s Mobile Incitement Unit. 
East at Rich Mix – Photo: Simon Daw 
Mobile Incitement at the Freedom and Independence Festival 
A Place at the Table: Jennifer Muteteli and Anna-Maria Nabriye 
Selfish at The Arches, Glasgow: Graeme Mackay, Susan Worsfold and Onur Orkut 
APATT at AIUK – Photo: Harriet Stewart 
Mobile Incitement at Brixton City Festival 
East at Boi-Lit 16 – photo by Shoayeeb Chamak for BSK 
The Black Smock Band – part of the Silk River project 
Mobile Incitement at Brixton City Festival 
Saturday 05 August 2017, LBTH – Sef Townsend and Alia Alzougbi of East at Great Day Out at Victoria Park – Photo, Rehan Jamil 
Mobile Incitement at Latitude Festival – Photos: Andy Bannister/Payam Torabi 
East 3 at the Boishaki Mela 
Jennifer Muteteli and Anna-Maria Nabriye in A Place at the Table, CPT 
Woodland Walk pilot – Photo: Tan Nidhivir 
Mobile Incitement at Brixton City Festival 
East at Boi-Lit 16 – photo by Shoayeeb Chamak for BSK 
Mobile Incitement at Ovalhouse 
East at Boi-Lit 16 – photo by Shoayeeb Chamak for BSK 
East at Boi-Lit 16 – photo by Shoayeeb Chamak for BSK 
An East Storytelling holiday workshop 
Mobile Incitement at the Freedom and Independence Festival 
Woodland Walk pilot – Photo: Tan Nidhivir 
East Storytelling at The Big Day Out, Victoria Park 
Mobile Incitement at Latitude Festival – Photos: Andy Bannister/Payam Torabi 
Onur Orkut in Selfish, The Arches, Glasgow 
East at Rich Mix – Photo: Simon Daw 
An East Storytelling holiday workshop 
Graeme Mackay in Selfish, the Arches, Glasgow 
Grace Nyandoro and Seboelo Majozi 
Mobile Incitement at Latitude Festival – Photos: Andy Bannister/Payam Torabi 
APATT at AIUK – Photo: Harriet Stewart 
East at Rich Mix – Photo: Simon Daw 
Susan Worsfold in A Place at the Table, CPT 
Sef, Shamim and Paul at Boishakhi Mela 
London, United Kingdom – Friday 05 November 2021, LBTH, FITF – Daedalus Theatre Company, Gerrard Winstanley’s Mobile Incitement Unit. 
Susan Worsfold in Selfish 
Some of the East Storytelling community 
A Place at the Table at Amnesty International 
Some of the East Storytelling community 
Selfish at CPT – the set
Photo of Paul Burgess, Dan Cox and Andy Bannister (left to right) by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin at a rehearsal in Deptford, 2026
Daedalus Theatre Company and the Black Smock Band have worked together on many projects. You may recognise our director, Paul Burgess, as one of the members of the band! After years of collaborations, we think it’s time to spotlight the band in their own right. Grab a cuppa and settle in because it’s a read as heart-warming as the band’s music, which incidentally, you can hear live – and sing along with – on Wednesday 22nd April 2026 at Camden People’s Theatre. Book your tickets for QUEER REVOLUTIONARY SINGALONG now:
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.
Andy Bannister: In addition to being a musician, I’m a visual artist and a tutor working in higher education. I teach on a fine art course where I mainly work with students who focus on sculpture and combined media- this reflects what I do when I’m in my studio. In my current work, I’m exploring the impact of science and technology on culture and society, with a focus on the widespread civil opposition to the nuclear arms race during the Cold War period. There’s a crossover here with my activities as a musician, in terms of my interest in the role of folk music within protest movements and the emphasis on stories of resistance within the folk tradition.
Dan Cox: I’m a tour guide, writer, singer and accordionist. In all my roles, I am principally interested in telling stories. Stories can be told in all sorts of ways, including through music. Emotions connect all of us. We all feel happy, angry, sad, excited and so on, and music can tap directly into all those feelings. In everything I do, I try to reach into the human experience and convey those emotions through whichever medium I am working in.
Paul Burgess: I’m a theatre-maker and musician, with an interest in co-creative practice, ecological thinking and queerness. I trained as a theatre designer and regularly design shows, especially for Deafinitely Theatre, but have also directed devised projects for Daedalus such as Selfish, A Place at the Table and Dysbiosis. My idea of directing, however, is about creating conditions for creativity, rather than telling people what to do. Alongside this, I’m a co-director of Ecostage, the Society of British Theatre Designers’ sustainability lead, and an MSc student at the Centre for Alternative Technology.
What is the Black Smock Band?
PB: We’re South-East London’s premier gay, ecosocialist folk band… probably? That said, when we started, we were probably the UK’s only gay, ecosocialist folk band. Now, for all we know, they’re two a penny.
What is behind the name of the band?
AB: The name relates to the LGBTQ folk nights that the band grew out of. A good friend of ours (and founding member of the group, who now lives in Galicia) ran the folk nights in her flat in Vauxhall, which she used to re-name as ‘The Black Smock Inn’ on the occasions that it took place, just for the fun of it- when we decided that we were a group we needed a name so ‘The Black Smock Band’ seemed kind of logical at that point, and we’ve stuck with it.
How did you join the Black Smock Band?*
AB: Paul and Dan had known each other and played together for a while before I met them, at one of the folk nights that I turned up at – the band grew out of those sessions in quite a natural way.
DC: Back in the mists of time, I was a member of a queer walking group. One of the other members and I got chatting about folk music and they invited me to a “folk feast” at their place. I met several musicians and had a great time singing with them. We were then asked to perform at a pub a few weeks later, so realised we would have to become a band! Initially there were four of us. There have been a couple of line-up changes, but Paul, Andy and I have all been there since the start and are now the only ones left!
PB: As Andy and Dan said, we were all going to the same queer folk nights and the band sort of accidentally formed out of that. A few of us fell into doing music together, then a local pub asked us to play. And we thought, ‘oh, we must be a band now then!’
For those who aren’t familiar, what is English folk music? Why does this musical genre speak to you?
DC: English folk music is the music of the common people of England, mostly prior to the 20th century. It was played on whatever instruments people had to hand and sung by people who worked the land or in the mines and factories that powered the Industrial Revolution. Some songs go back as far as the 13th century, but the main bulk of English folk is from the Victorian age. However, the folk tradition continues strongly and new material is being produced by a huge diversity of artists to this day.
The history of England is often told through stories of Kings and Queens and Great Deeds, but there is another story of hardship, joy, love, despair and everything in between of the common, ordinary people. Their stories weren’t often written down, but they were sung, and many of those songs are still remembered today, thanks to people who collected those songs and preserved them – like John Clare. When I sing those songs, I am helping to preserve the memories of the people of England who are usually forgotten by “history”.
Could you share with us a favourite Black Smock Band memory?
AB: Playing at St Botolph’s Church in Helpston, Oxfordshire as part of the John Clare Festival a few years ago. We had been interested in John Clare’s poetry and his activities as a song collector for a while beforehand, so it was great to play at a festival held in his honour.
DC: It’s hard to choose anything specific, but those moments of community where voices come together, and music links us together, are hard to beat.
PB: The funniest might be when, due to a double booking, we ended up playing in a pub full of football fans, who we somehow managed to convert into ardent queer folk music fans. Probably only very temporary fans, mind you. One of the most profound things for me, though, was bringing Daedalus and the band together to create Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit, our gig theatre piece about the history of protest.
What is queer culture?
DC: Queer culture is often depicted in the media as being a very specific, stereotypical kind of culture – what most people think of as “the scene”, but there is much more to it than that. There’s nothing wrong with being a part of that mainstream scene, of course, but it was never somewhere I felt comfortable. When I met the other guys in the band, I finally felt I had found a little home in my own comfortable corner of “Queer culture”. Queer people often grow up feeling very isolated. For me, coming from rural Suffolk, it was a very lonely experience, so to find a sense of community with like-minded queers was a fabulous, life-affirming thing. Queer culture is hard to define, but it can be life-saving for the lonely.
PB: I don’t think one can define queer culture beyond saying it’s culture created by queer people that in some way engages with queer experience. And it’s essential to create space for this in our hetronormative society. For us, though, the initial aim was not so much to do with queer culture per se but to create a space where queer people could enjoy folk music in ways that felt safe and relevant. Now, with the world as it is, it feels more important to make that queerness more up front and political.
How powerful is live music?
AB: Playing live is really important in terms of forming a direct connection with an audience. When the mood is right, there can be a sense that people are actively listening to (and watching) what you’re doing on stage, and as a performer, you can really respond to this in the moment- so each performance is slightly different, depending on the audience and the environment you’re playing in. And it’s always great when people sing along to the words or decide to get up and dance…
DC: Live music can be incredibly powerful as a way of bringing people together in community, even if they’ve never met before. To sing and dance together is one of life’s greatest joys, and that’s how I want people to interact with us when we perform. It’s not about just getting up on a stage and singing and playing at people – it’s about coming together to sing, dance and feel the connection with one another.
PB: Before mass media, communities had to make their own entertainment. Live music was central to that, and that’s where folk music comes from. That need has never fully gone away – and in some places, like Ireland, that has continued to flourish, but for a while, I think it’s fair to say, it was pushed to the margins in England by top-down culture and mass media. A lot of the folk tradition, including much of the music, has been lost. Now, corporate media threatens to overwhelm us, to strip us of individuality, and take away our ability to tell fact from fiction, or human-made from AI. I think this means live music, and especially grassroots live music, i.e., music that is not under corporate control, suddenly seems really important again.
Can you recommend a folk song that speaks to our times?
AB: There’s a song written by John Connolly, which was recorded by the folk duo Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith a few years ago, titled ‘The Last Ploughshare’, which is about the consequences of the exploitation of the natural world for profit throughout history. It’s a powerful contemporary folk song that directly addresses the most pressing issue of our time.
DC: A song we keep coming back to is the Diggers’ Song, written by Gerard Winstanley as his ragged band tried to build a socialist utopia in Surrey in the aftermath of the first English Civil War. They were crushed by Cromwell’s men and their dream destroyed, but their spirit lives on. In these times, their message of community and organisation against the truly horrific things that still happen in this world remains as important as ever. War, poverty and all manner of horrors still dog humankind, but there is hope as long as people can still come together to sing and join in community.
Join the band for a gig and singalong at Camden People’s Theatre on Wednesday 22nd April 2026 at the Camden People’s Theatre.
Book your tickets for QUEER REVOLUTIONARY SINGALONG here:
Our work continues in Havering with Kaleidoscope, a grassroots organisation that has been working with young LGBTQ+ people in Romford since 2022.
Date: Tuesday 7th April 2026
Time: 5PM-7PM
Location: Lumiere Romford, RM1 3EE
Age: 16-25
Often queer people have been called unnatural, but nature is filled with wonder and ambiguity. Take the most apparently basic animal, the fruit fly; researchers have found that fruit flies have metafemale, metamales and intersex gender identities, and bisexuality. One species of fungus has 23,000 genders. Gay penguins have been well documented in zoos and the wild. Starfish are asexual.
This is a brand-new creative nature workshop designed by artists Kathryn Webb and Tasnim Siddiqa Amin to engage young LGBTQ+ people in a relaxed setting, where they will be invited to explore their relationship with nature through a queer and sensory lens. Participants will create their own artistic responses and collaborate on a group piece.
“I am really excited to connect with people from the queer community in Romford and the surrounding area (where I’m from myself). It will be interesting to learn and explore, to come together and share our thoughts on nature and queerness. The great thing about workshops like this is that there’s literally no right or wrong way to approach it, just come along and see where it takes you!” – Kathryn Webb
Photo of participants, Carrie Kendall and Paul Burgess at the first Creative Nature workshop with Kaleidoscope in 2025. Photo by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin.
This workshop builds on the creative nature workshop series, funded by Havering Changing, to engage working-class people living in urban environments and to reconnect them with nature in their local area. These workshops start with a walk in local green and blue spaces, followed by discussion and interdisciplinary collaborative responses. We have since then delivered this workshop in Tower Hamlets and Sheffield. Works were exhibited at the Royals Youth Centre in Rainham in 2024 and at the Omnibus Theatre and Queens Theatre Hornchurch in 2025.
DYSBIOSIS is a multidisciplinary project by Daedalus Theatre Company that blends storytelling, visual theatre and community collaboration to explore the relationship between the Global North and the more-than-human world.
About the facilitators:
Left to right: Kathryn Webb, Tasnim Siddiqa Amin and Nuke Lagranje. Photo by Amy-Rose Edlyn.
Kathryn Webb is an emerging, multi-disciplinary artist interested in catharsis and connection. Their previous work spans stage, screen, photography, and poetry. In 2025 Kathryn enjoyed working with Daedalus Theatre on Dysbiosis, a nature-focused project staged at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch.
Tasnim Siddiqa Amin (she/they) is an artist, theatremaker and activist. Her interdisciplinary practice spans theatre, performance and visual art. Tasnim is Assistant Director/Producer at Daedalus Theatre Company where she has developed creative nature workshops designed to confront environmental justice issues with working-class communities in Havering and facilitated collaborations with LGBTQ+, global majority and migrant communities across East London. As a member of the Tower Hamlets Creative Health Forum, Tasnim contributes to borough-wide conversations about integrating arts, health and community practice.
This workshop is for young people aged 16-25 years old. Any questions or access requirements, please email tasnimproduces@gmail.com.
Presented by Daedalus Theatre Company, Havering Changing and Kaleidoscope.
Andy Bannister, Dan Cox and Paul Burgess at Deptford Pride 2019. Photo by Dino Paciulli
Daedalus returns to Camden People’s Theatre 15 years after their acclaimed immersive documentary drama A Place at the Table, to present QUEER REVOLUTIONARY SINGALONG with ecosocialist folk band The Black Smock Band.
Join us this April for fiery folk tunes and leftie singalong classics, from ‘Bread and Roses’ to ‘Solidarity Forever’. Bring your singing voice and your revolutionary fervour! There will also be a limited number of floor spots. If you have a song that fits the vibe, and you’d like to share it, get in touch with the band via this link.
Date: Weds 22 April 2026
Time: 8.30PM
Location: Camden People’s Theatre
Tickets are pay what you can, starting from £3
Photo of Sef Townsend at A Season of Bangla Drama by Rehan Jamil (2017)
Our second East spotlight is on global storyteller, interfaith peace advocate and Londoner Sef Townsend, who is of mixed Jewish and traveller heritage. Sef co-founded the East Storytelling Project alongside Paul Burgess and Shamim Azad back in 2014. Tasnim Siddiqa Amin had a chat with Sef one Saturday afternoon about his 30-year career in storytelling, his love for the East End and his latest creative projects.
Listen to the interview here:
Tell us about yourself
I’m a storyteller. I’ve been telling stories for a long time. But what are the contexts that I tell? So, I go regularly to schools, and I work with children from really young until they’re really quite old, actually. I’m also involved in peace and reconciliation work. And I’ve worked in Israel and Palestine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, South Africa, areas of conflict or post-conflict. I have been brought in to try and create some conversations between people who, according to their background, are supposed to dislike each other.
I’ve worked in Northern Ireland [where] I lost my hearing in a bomb blast many years ago. This led me to my involvement in the peace process. And from there we went to South Africa to a particular post-apartheid setup where people who’d been involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland, either as combatants or as people who’d suffered by being bereaved or having, for example, lost a leg or lost their hearing or being affected by the conflict, shared our experiences with people who had been, and were still, affected by the conflict and divisions in South Africa, and they shared their experiences and memories and legacy of apartheid. We all benefitted so much. It was a way of people learning through sharing stories.
I’m very involved in intercultural activities, as I am with East. I do a lot of work with young asylum seekers and refugees from all over the world, mainly from conflict zones. From Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran. People come from conflict zones and have to very quickly settle into life here in the UK. It’s a very delicate work because you’re dealing with trauma. So all these things are the background to my stories. I use stories in all these different contexts, and I’ve been doing it now for 30 years.
What is your relationship with East London?
Well, because I’m of the same heritage [as] people who arrive in East London.
I arrived in London in 1980, so that’s 45 years. Before then, I lived in various places. I lived in New Zealand for many years. I’m a New Zealand citizen. I lived in the Netherlands as a young person. I lived in Sudan. So I had a background that connects with the world. And when I arrived in London, I would live in places like the East End. London Fields. I lived there. And I’ve been connected with the East End of London. Now I’m in Southeast London. I still consider that East London, but it’s on the other side of the river.
And listening to lots of stories about young Jewish men who would live in the East End of London, they’d often go across the river, across Tower Bridge, they wanted a different view on the world. And so they go across Tower Bridge, and they go to Southeast London, which is where I live now. It was different. You know, there weren’t so many Jewish people there. It just gave them a feeling of another world.
And so my relationship with East London is visiting many worlds. We meet people who come from various backgrounds. I’m often in Whitechapel. I love the Whitechapel market. I go to the Whitechapel Gallery. It’s very mixed around the Aldgate area. You know, you go to a trendy cafe, and Bangladeshi people are serving there. You go into Whitechapel High Street, people with their family are buying things that they need. It’s a vibrant, lovely area. I suppose it’s a relationship of loving it.
Could you share with me your journey with the East Storytelling Project? I understand that you are one of the co-founders.
Paul Burgess and Shamim Azad already had done a few projects. I was invited along just to show what I could do. And then we thought, well, it’s time to create something which celebrates people in the East End of London. People would come together and share. A person who had Jewish roots in Brick Lane would come and tell their story of their parents arriving in the East End and they would share it with people from a Bangladeshi background. There were some real insights. People were surprised at the similarities. The great mosque in Brick Lane, before it was a mosque, it was a synagogue. Before it was a synagogue, it was a church. And it was the real history of what had happened over the years in this part of the East End of London, a place of immigrants.
We wanted to share our stories, our parents’ stories, not just of their journey, but sometimes their folktales, stories they’d heard. And it came to the point after about a year of workshopping that people were expressing that they’d like to perform.
I was very involved in creating the workshops. I had this storytelling background which enabled me to take us through various exercises. Shamim and I got on very well as storytellers. We sort of spark off each other. Paul with his musicality. So we started creating performances.
We performed initially at Rich Mix and at the Brady Centre. And then I had an idea that after all the performances, that was it, and I thought we need to use these and make an archive. We can’t just have these stories disappearing. Let’s record them. And that’s how the East Archive started.
It’s now got stories from about 25 storytellers from almost as many countries. I mean, in addition to Bangladeshi, Somali, Jewish, we’ve got Korean. We’ve got Swedish. We’ve got Vietnamese. And there it is on the eastarchive.com. And it’s well worth seeing because there’s a real treasure there.
Could you share with us a favourite East memory?
The latest thing that we did, there wasn’t much funding, but we all wanted to do this thing. And so I think we had one meetup and one rehearsal. But I’d worked with Kauthar, who is from a Somali background. I’d worked in lockdown in sort of mentoring her into telling. And she’s a really vibrant, energetic storyteller. And I think you had brought along Marshall with his particular Bangla, queer, political; he’s very English as well as being very Bangladeshi. We had John Heyderman, who’s a great storyteller. I was the first to mentor him and I continue to be his mentor. And then we had Farah and some other tellers. There was Shamim, but myself, I was the one who was hosting. Paul was playing the violin. You were there encouraging people to come along and tell on the day. It was a very vibrant, energetic thing. With only one rehearsal, it was very good.
What are you currently excited about creatively?
Well, I’m currently excited about a book that I’m working on, which is Wild London Tales for Children. I’m co-author of two books with Anne Johnson. One is London Folk Tales for Children. The other is London River Tales for Children. But now the publisher wants us to do another book. And I’ve decided on Wild London Tales for Children. So that’s a creative process. It’s not easy writing. It’s not easy writing with somebody else. But it’ll be out there, I hope, this time next year.
In the last year, I’ve been to seven different countries, mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. I’ve got a project in Tunisia coming up in May. I was there recently doing a language course because I know Arabic, but I wanted to improve it so I could tell. So I’ll be there for the festival in May.
Although at my very old age, I was 78 in April, I sometimes think I should quiet down a bit. But I can’t resist people asking me things. I’m still regularly in schools still, and I do these different things. So as long as I can, I will.
Follow Sef Townsend on Instagram.
Photo of Marshall Savage at Kobi Nazrul Centre (2025)
Marshall Savage, also known as Mijan, is a Bangladeshi-British queer person from Bow. Marshall is passionate about LGBTQ+ rights and welfare not warfare. Marshall doesn’t come from a creative or academic background, but he loves learning new skills and embracing new experiences wherever they lead him. He is the newest member of our East Storytelling Project.
After a late evening of rehearsals for our latest East production EAST TO ELSEWHERE, local trade unionist Marshall and assistant producer Tasnim sat at Chaiwalla on Brick Lane with a coffee and roti to talk about the East End, activism and the importance of sharing stories of migrant women.
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Marshall, I’m born and raised in Tower Hamlets, in Bow specifically. I work for Tower Hamlets and I’m also a Trade unionist. I’m very heavily involved in activism, especially local activism and organising against the far right
Fun fact?
I am obsessed with vampires.
What makes the East End such a rich source of stories?
The East End is an amazing place; it was always seen as the armpit of London, where all the immigrants were shoved that no one wanted to deal with, from the Jews to the Irish to now the Bengalis. We have this incredible knack of creating a community wherever we are. Now Tower Hamlets and the East End are probably the most diverse cultural places in London, if not the world.
And how does your specific heritage influence the way you see the East End?
The way my parents migrated into this country and the struggles they faced, and me being an immigrant and queer, made me realise what it means to fight for equality, to fight for what’s right and look into the intersection of what it means to be a brown queer person.
What is storytelling?
Storytelling is sharing really important parts of your life, it doesn’t have to be word to word, it doesn’t have to be fact by fact, it’s how we interpret how we experience life. It matters because it’s the best way to share information, look at history, travellers, they are the best way to tell stories, how we connect with people, how we get people from different places to understand each other.
Why is it important to tell your mum’s story?
I feel like a lot of women of colour came here slightly unheard. My mum came here without any connections, she had to build her own community and that is a story worth telling, it is the story of many mothers and many women who came not just to London or England but who migrated to other parts of the country or other parts of the world, who stuck out and didn’t have a voice for themselves.
What has been your experience of the East Storytelling Project so far?
I walked in there not knowing what to expect. I thought I’d see more brown faces. 2 Jewish men, a beautiful black woman, 2 beautiful brown women, I saw people from different lives and experiences all encapsulating what the East End is.
Recommendation of a book that relates to East London?
One of the books I am reading right now is called United Queerdom by Dan Glass, who was a HIV activist and East End local. It talks about the East End struggle, the queer struggle and ongoing battles to fight for equality.
Photo by Rehan Jamil
Do you have a story to tell about kindness? We’re looking for Bengali storytellers from Tower Hamlets. If you have a story about acts of kindness, migration or how Tower Hamlets has shaped your life, we want to hear from you! This callout is for people with little or no professional experience in storytelling.
About the Project: We’re thrilled to announce East to Elsewhere, a new storytelling event celebrating the theme of Kindness from the EAST Project. This project will explore the rich history and diverse cultures of Tower Hamlets through stories of migration, community support, and kindness—especially stories of kindness shown by migrant communities to newcomers such as refugees and asylum seekers.
The kind of thing that we are looking for:
- Stories about acts of kindness within migrant communities in Tower Hamlets.
- Experiences of newcomers, especially refugees and asylum seekers.
- Historical migration stories linked to East London.
- Contemporary stories about migration today.
- Personal stories – if you feel like sharing!
- Stories that reflect the awesome diversity of East London and Tower Hamlets.
Eligibility:
Are you Bengali?
Do you have a connection to Tower Hamlets?
Are you interested in telling stories?
Are you new to storytelling?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, and are NOT a professional storyteller, we invite you to pitch your story!
Key Details:
Fee: £175
Apply (by email):
Send a max 250-word pitch by email, including: your name, phone number, and your connection to Tower Hamlets. Email us here.
If your story pitch is successful, we’ll give you a call to tell us about yourself and why you selected your story.
There will also be an open mic on the night of the performance. Everyone is welcome to share a story or try some new material with us on the night! Traditional storytelling, a real-life story, spoken word… as long as it’s narrative, and relates to the theme of kindness. Sign-up in person on the night.
Event Date: Friday 14th November 2025, 7.30PM as part of A Season of Bangla Drama. Tickets can be booked here.
Photo collage featuring Shamim Azad, Farah Naz, Sef Townsend, Michele Chowrimootoo, Paul Burgess, Tasnim Siddiqa Amin (left to right)
We’re delighted to announce that Daedalus Theatre Company will be part of the 22nd year of A Season of Bangla Drama, with the latest iteration of our East Storytelling Project: East to Elsewhere. Our performance at the annual festival, at 7:30pm on 14th November 2025 in Tower Hamlets, marks a turning point. Our last performance at Season of Bangla Drama celebrated a decade of the project. This year’s show marks the beginning of an exciting new phase.
Following a period of planning, dreaming and discussion with members of our storytelling community, we’re widening the project’s reach. Having recently taken Mobile Incitement to Exeter and run one of our Creative Nature workshops in Sheffield, our performance at A Season of Bangla Drama pilots the format we hope to use to, well, as the title says, take East elsewhere.
The performance itself will, nevertheless, be firmly rooted in our home borough of Tower Hamlets, with stories from the area’s various cultures and an open mic. The theme of this year’s festival is kindness. Stories and songs of migration – of belonging and not belonging – have always been central to the East Storytelling Project. This is only partly by design; it’s also down to where we are and our decision to deliberately seek out tellers from the borough’s different communities. Our take on the festival theme is the kindness – and the unkindness – with which migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are greeted, and the kindness that makes people take terrible risks in order to support or be with their loved ones. East Storytelling Project as a whole stands as a form of resistance to attacks on asylum seekers and refugees, instead offering a community of kindness and cultural exchange through shared stories and music.
Left to right: Jono Chant-Stevens, Dan Cox, Paul Burgess and Andy Bannister. Photo, Thomas Chant.
This summer, Daedalus performed its gig-theatre piece Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit at St Nicholas Priory, Exeter. Artistic director Paul Burgess reflects on the project.
We’ve been talking with the team at St Nicholas Priory for a while. It’s a fantastic building; the oldest in Exeter. Full of history, it felt like the perfect venue for Mobile Incitement. However, our first attempt, part of a planned tour in 2020, was cancelled due to Covid. This year, we finally made it. It was the first time we’d performed the show since we did it at the Freedom and Independence Theatre Festival in Whitechapel, East London, back in 2021. On that occasion, guest performer Saida Tani joined us to sing traditional Bengali songs.
Mobile Incitement, as we call it for short, was made in collaboration with The Black Smock Band – a gay eco-socialist folk band based in Deptford, South-east London. It tells the story of protest in England from the Peasants’ Revolt to the end of the Industrial Revolution, through historical texts, folk songs, and new writing. But what makes it particularly special is that everywhere we take it, we work with local people to make the show truly site-specific, with lots of local stories.
Photo by Hannah Davis of the Dysbiosis Collective and QTH Associate Producer Steven Bowyer at Queens Theatre
It has been four years in development, including some long pauses for fundraising. But we finally premiered Dysbiosis to a public audience last weekend. It took place at Queens Theatre, Hornchurch, which is also where it all started. We had performances on the main stage and an exhibition, titled Queering the Earth in the foyer.
The Dysbiosis Collective are Amy Daniels, Amy-Rose Edlyn, Fran Olivares, Kathryn Webb, Nuke Lagranje, Paul Burgess, Shakira Malkani, Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, Yael Elisheva and Zia Álmos Joshua.
Some highlights from the journey. Walking and drawing in Rainham Marshes with local residents. Running a workshop in a chapel in the middle of a cemetery in Sheffield. Doing a birdsong-filled sound walk in another cemetery, this time in Mile End, London. An exhibition of community artworks at the Royals Youth Centre in Rainham. Turning up to make a pitch to a Havering Changing residents’ panel with tea and homemade cake. Collaging with LGBTQ+ young people in Romford. Testing out ideas at Omnibus Theatre, as part of the 96 Festival of LGBTQ+ theatre.
We’re delighted to spotlight Amy (they/them), who first joined us in June to install our exhibition at Omnibus Theatre. This time, Amy returns as co-creator of Queering the Earth and stage manager for Dysbiosis. Throughout an intensive week of rehearsals at Queens Theatre Hornchurch, Amy will be bringing a wide range of skills to support the team. As a queer interdisciplinary artist and theatremaker deeply engaged in political and community work, Amy already feels like a long-lost member of Dysbiosis.
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice. You’ve worked across stage management, design, facilitation, and live art – how would you describe what drives your work and where your practice is heading?
I am a queer, multidisciplinary creative based in Tower Hamlets. I started out as a theatre designer/maker alongside working in technical theatre working extensively around West End and off-West End productions for over a decade now. In the past 5 years I expanded my practice in co-founding and directing queer arts company Bold Mellon Collective CIC as a creative producer, facilitator and curator of visual and live-art. Since February 2025, I have also been an artist in residence at Firepit Art Gallery and Studios CIC developing my own visual art & curatorial practice. I am especially interested in community-based projects which weave the intersections of the LGBTQIA+ community together and promote wellbeing through the arts. Politically active and socially engaging works drive me to create and currently I feel my practice going through an exciting transformation in blending these worlds and expanding capacity so I am excited to see where it takes me!
You first encountered Dysbiosis as an audience member at the Omnibus Theatre sharing, then co-curated the exhibition, and now you’re joining as stage manager. What has it been like to experience the project from these different perspectives?