Liverpool and Theatre of the Unification

I'm going to start by saying this; this is to inform the work I want to make. You might want to do something different and that's cool. I am very aware that my perspective on this is a 32 year old, very handsome, straight, white, male, living on a niceish road in a rough part of Liverpool. You probably will be something different. You will have different experiences and different traumas and different rages... And that's cool. See what I'm about to say as something to respond to because what I'm about to say won't be right for everyone but it feels right to me in this paticular moment.

Ok. Now I've done a breif disclaimer I just want to talk quickly about the week in Culture I've had. I went to Violette Records WORD on Wednesday that is organised by ROY (not a poet). Tuesday I saw I THINK WE'RE ALONE by Frantic Assembly and Sally Abbot. Thursday THE SPINE by Nathan Powell and 20 Stories High. Saturday TAKE STOCK by George Caple and Elliot Kinsgley and finally Chris Tomlinson and YEPS ANIMAL FARM. Heavy week. Won't be doing that again. Knackered. But there is something that I think is worth getting into that unites all these pieces.

Now WORD is, effectively, a night of poems and short stories that are curated by ROY. They were awesome and each brought a different perspective to life in this city... But all of them acknowledged we are in this city together and that if we look at it in a kindness and compassionate way that celebrates it and asks it to be kinder it can give us more than we can imagine. I THINK WE'RE ALONE, I already wrote about, asked us difficult questions about race and class whilst still acknowledging that we're united by more than we're divided by. THE SPINE did similar. Within this story about academies it addressed instristic racism and class intertwined with the complex humanity of being in that system whilst offering, at the end, the idea that giving to a community might be worth more than being angry in isolation. TAKE STOCK is out and out celebration of love and respect of artists in the city and ANIMAL farm in the act of doing, at the story, is the idea that coming together to do something and fighting for equality benifits all of us.... We're taught to hate each other daily not only by the right wing press but also by a large portion of the left. So why don't we (I, you do what you want) think of theatre as a collective call or responsibility in which we argue that the world will be better for us all if we tackle those problems. Why don't we unify a society and say we need to sort some shit out. Why don't we chose to leave a theatre feeling more together instead of more alone? There are evils to face in this world that we cannot imagine and we need each other. All of us. We need to bring ourselves closer to not push ourselves away; we have a toxically masculine culture, a patriachy, racist power structures, and neo liberalism to dismantle. The last thing we need is all of us who suffer at the hands of these things divided and not seeing it's the same enemy we're all facing; a male, white, posh establishment hell bent on whording its own. So why not think of Art as something to unite the world against a common enemy instead of divide it further just so you feel like you have an identity?