We’ve been Instagram sharing reels from some of our artists, including East lead artists Sef Townsend, Shamim Azad and Paul Burgess, along with intros to artists such as Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, Hasan Ahmed and Farah Naz. Catch them on our Instagram feed, and maybe give us a follow!
Dear friends,
Welcome to our October newsletter.
Ten Years East – tickets now on sale!
Join us for a relaxed evening of compelling stories and unforgettable songs from across the diverse cultures of East London.
Ten Years East is a celebration of love as a language that crosses borders and breaks boundaries, that remembers lost homelands and dreams of new frontiers. After a decade of performances, workshops and gatherings, the East storytelling project now presents an exciting lineup of musicians and storytellers in this family-friendly event.
With material spanning the globe to reflect the rich cultures of our East End, from English folklore to Bengali tales and Jewish songs, you are warmly welcomed to celebrate Ten Years East.
Part of this year’s A Season of Bangla Drama, Ten Years East celebrates a decade of our East storytelling project, with an evening of stories and songs. We have lots more to tell you about it over the next few weeks, but first we want to share a clip from the Season of Bangla Drama sharing day.
One of the great things about this festival is that all the companies involved get together for a day a month or so before the opening night to meet each other and learn about each other’s projects. It’s always a lovely event, and is part of what makes A Season of Bangla Drama such a fundamental part of our local arts community here in East London, and indeed the wider Bangla arts community in the UK. The photo above, by the ever-brilliant Rehan Jamil, is the official group photo.
This year, each company’s intro to the rest of the group was filmed by Seema Khalique and edited into a 30-second mini-film by Marble Sinew. Here’s ours:
If you’d like to come and see the show, it’s at 5:30pm on 19th November at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green. You can find out more and book your tickets here:
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In the meantime, here’s the September issue.
Dear friends,
Welcome to our September newsletter.
Firstly, we’d like to share our next spotlight on a member of the fantastic Dysbiosis team. This month we’re featuring Daedalus’s Assistant Producer/Director Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, a queer Bangladeshi-British visual artist, theatremaker and writer from East London. In her spotlight, Tasnim talks about the project and its relationship to her creative journey.
“I found it interesting how all of us with our different backgrounds came back to mythology, folklore or fantasy to creatively express that huge word “nature”. In an age of science where spirituality has largely been confined to organised religions it is interesting to me that when we think of nature we oppose it with science still which is a binary way of thinking, and so associate the unexplained and intangible with nature.”
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.
I’m Tasnim, a queer Bangladeshi-British woman from East London and I am a visual artist, theatremaker and writer. I am Assistant Producer/Director for Daedalus Theatre Company.
What does queer ecology mean to you?
I don’t do very well with long words haha but after spending a week unpacking and consistent Googling I would say queer ecology describes a critical, intersectional and decentralised approach in the way we look at how people, plants, animals and smaller organisms interact with their environment, both locally and globally.
What did you discover about yourself and the way you work during the Dysbiosis R&D week?
I discovered that I really thrive in pressured creative environments bouncing ideas of creatives from different disciplines. It dawned on me that to pursue a project you don’t need to have it all figured out, having an idea is good enough. I never knew I could work with venues this way, the way Paul was doing, to say hey I have an idea and I want to bring along a bunch of people that I’ve never met from different creative disciplines in a rehearsal room at your theatre and see what happens.
Welcome to this quick roundup of news from Daedalus Theatre Company.
If you’ve been stuck in London these past few weeks, there’s not been much of a summer. But with September around the corner, we’ve been busy brewing some exciting projects and plans.
Ten Years East at A Season of Bangla Drama – save the date!
We’re really thrilled to announce that East Storytelling Project has been selected for this year’s A Season of Bangla Drama, with an evening of stories and songs from across the diverse cultures of East London. In line with the festival’s theme for 2023, we’ll be exploring love in its many forms. It’s also ten years since we started East, so we have a line-up of tellers and singers from across the decade. We’ll also be performing at the venue where it all began: Rich Mix in Bethnal Green.
Here’s a summary of the festival programme and for now, please save the date! Our show, Ten Years East, is on the evening of 19th November.
Artist Spotlight: Kathryn Webb
Hi everyone,
We’ve created street theatre with local teenagers. We’ve taken our queered, musical version of English radical history to venues ranging from Latitude Festival to Tower Hamlets. We’ve created a performance with primary school kids to share their ideas for a better world. We’ve been part of Eid celebrations, the Tower Hamlets Boishaki Mela and A Season of Bangla Drama. We’ve worked with students at our local uni, Queen Mary. Our storytelling project East has brought together people from across the amazing diversity of East End heritages, including Bengali, Jewish, Somali and Vietnamese, to learn stories and songs from each other. We’ve created opportunities for deaf and hearing storytellers to collaborate and share skills. We’ve given refugees a voice, and we’ve made safe creative spaces for queer artists. We’ve given hundreds of people from all walks of life a chance to develop their creativity, and thousands of people a chance to watch, listen and participate in arts projects.
While we prepare for the next stage of Dysbiosis, our journey through queer ecology and environmental justice at Queens Theatre Hornchurch, we’re introducing some of the amazing artists we’re privileged to work with on the project. First up is Kathryn Webb.
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.
Hi! My name is Kathryn and I’m a queer, neurodivergent, working-class creative from Cranham. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been into ‘making things’. In primary school, me and my bestie used to shoot our own version of Doctor Who, complete with ketchup blood, on a camcorder in his back garden. Nowadays my creative output spans theatre, film, poetry and anything in between. I’ve been mentored by Sky Arts, Creative England, Rianne Pictures, and made a short film for the BBC100 Project. My work stems from an interest in marginalised voices, folklore, and queerness. Previous theatre work has been staged at Theatre503, Arcola, Golden Goose, Pleasance, and Omnibus.
What does queer ecology mean to you?
To me, queer ecology is about questioning what we take for granted when we think of nature, science and reproduction. Unpacking the colonialism and white supremacy of the ‘truths’ we’ve been given and expanding our horizons to see beyond binaries. Nature is brimming with examples of queerness – it’s no joke that we’ve always been here and always will. Through this process, I’ve been empowered to challenge the notion that we exist to procreate.
We had an amazing week developing a new project at QTH, so we should start with a huge thank you to the venue for being so welcoming and supportive. Thanks also to all the creative practitioners involved for their generosity, intelligence and imagination. Clockwise from left, in the picture above: Shakira Stellar, Fran Olivares, Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, Paul Burgess, Nuke Lagranje, Kathryn Webb, Yael Elisheva and Jo Palmer. We also had remote contributions from Zia Almos Joshua and a talk on eco-scenography from Andrea Carr. Some more creative professionals will be joining us as the project develops.
Bringing the community-building ethos and cross-cultural story exchange methodology of our East project together with the visual theatre work of director Paul and the combined art and theatre background of assistant director Tasnim, the project is a critical look at the Global North’s relationship with the more-than-human world, using a lens of queer ecology to question not only the engrained world-views of mainstream Western thought but also some of the heteronormative and binary assumptions of the environmental movement. New themes emerged during the week too, not least how folk stories and myth act as an intermediary in our relationships with Nature. But the big question for the R&D was more methodological, and goes right to the heart of Daedalus’s mission: how to bring together a multiplicity of voices to create a truly collaborative performance that can hold different styles, viewpoints and perspectives. Over the years we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, but we also know that every project is different, and it’s exciting to start the journey of finding what’s right for Dysbiosis.
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