Feature: 'I'm So Grateful for the Faith Shown in Me Here': The Enduring Positive Legacy of Chickenshed Theatre and Their Show RUSH

Gary Naylor, well into his second decade as a regular visitor to Chickenshed, trekked to Southgate to see its Spring 2023 show, Rush, and talk to its creative lead and three of its actors.

Created and developed by Chickenshed's diverse creative team and student groups, Rush explores the colonisation, movement and betrayal of people on three fronts; through the eyes of three women, whose experiences are linked by their shared ancestry.

'Theatre Changing Lives' is the slogan of Chickenshed and, awash with humanity in all shapes and sizes (literally and metaphorically), you can witness it happening in real time. What might not be so apparent, at least until you're actually there, is that one of the lives it changes is yours.

Chickenshed is nearly 50 years old, a half-century of producing great theatre, great education and, most importantly, great people.

"It was a whole wave of respect", says BA final year student, Gabriel Palmer - like many of his fellow students, he plays a role in the productions, acting, singing and rapping in Rush. "At my induction, a tutor shook my hand and said that he really wanted me here. And that pushed me to be the best person I could be. In school, I felt like they just gave up, that they wanted me out of there. These little things they said and did for me here were new. I don't know where I would be without Chickenshed, probably doing something that isn't good for myself." Gabriel has ambitions to develop wheelchair boxing - "Why does the chair stop me from punching someone! I want to inspire people." He does, he really does.

Fellow student, Amber Ogunsaya-William's schooling was interrupted by illness and that led to a feeling of being alone, like being in a bubble. After losing her chance to do her GCSEs with her classmates as she was in hospital, her drama teacher suggested Chickenshed and once there, the tutors did not want to know about what she couldn't do, what she hadn't done, but about what she could do, what she will do. "They said that I could deliver the coursework any way I wanted - dance it, perform it, make a collage. It was like a dream! It was that 'home' feeling. We have to do a placement on the course and, because of this show, I'm going to Africa to teach English, Drama and Art. They've changed my life 1000%."

"My family had direct experience of the Windrush Scandal, sent back to St Lucia after a lifetime in London. I'm so pleased to be in the show", (she plays Young Missy, the girl who encounters the Powellite racism of the 60s from her white boyfriend's family in a harrowing scene). "I've been through that kind of stuff as a part of an inter-racial couple and as the only black kid in primary school".

Jack Alder (who plays Young Missy's fiance / husband, Stephen) says that he started at Angelshed, one of Chickenshed's satellites. "I didn't know what I was going to do after school. I came here for my interview and I'd never felt so appreciated for who I was - I'm a big lad and I've had people saying stuff all my life. I'm so grateful for the faith shown in me here." Jack ran out of words (nevertheless, he was still saying plenty) but Gabriel helped out - "They treat you like real people."

Growing up isn't easy for a lot of kids and these stories show that the inclusivity that sits at the heart of Chickenshed's work can find potential in young people who have been told - sometimes, appallingly in brutally direct terms - that they don't have it. I can attest from personal experience that a spark of confidence, once lit, can blaze forth and there's no greater satisfaction for an educator than to have played the tiniest part in that journey. Those fires are ignited every day here.

Rush's director (styled creative lead, a better fit with the show's ethos of collaboration), Ashley Driver, came to Chickenshed after a more positive school experience. A teacher recognised that he was a practical kid with talent and channeled him towards Chickenshed and he found it so welcoming that he did his degree here and is now is a tutor, a creative lead and a director.

Rush is his idea, a show that was born of his Tottenham birth and Antiguan heritage, how that background linked to the Windrush scandal and the awakenings prompted by Black Lives Matter. Three timelines weave in and out of the play, focused on interconnected themes: colonisation, immigration and gentrification. "If you look at the dictionary definitions of colonisation and gentrification, they're not that different" he remarks. "It's about a group of people arriving with privilege and power and then asserting their dominance over an area."

That element comes through in the play of course (there are parallels with Standing At The Sky's Edge which recently completed its run at The National Theatre and with last year's verbatim play, My Generation) but, as with both of those productions, there's plenty of joy in the show to more than balance the suffering.

Much of that serotonin hit comes through the show's movement and music, bodies swirl, twist and dance suggesting how life can buffet you and lift you, soundtracked by a compendium of songs by black artists past and present that show just one way in which our island's culture has been enriched and extended by those with roots in colonised peoples. And the singing is fantastic! Whether individually or, thrillingly, collectively, songs by the likes of Jimmy Cliff, Lord Kitchener and Freddie McGregor, drawing on calypso, ska, reggae, rap and plenty more, punctuate the three timelines, lending a personal and political perspective to the narratives. And a delight for eyes and ears that is unmatched anywhere on stage right now.

After a couple of hours watching Rush, we know more about the British in Africa in the 19th century and Africans (Afro-Carribeans really) in Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries and, if much of that story is unedifying, cruel and dehumanising, much of it is empowering, exalting and exciting too. Like its cast and its home, challenges have been met, challenges remain and still more lie in the future - but the human spirit proves indomitable.

And indomitable too is theatre, an ancient art delivered with such flair and grace in this unique experiment at the end of the Piccadilly Line.

You can read more about Chickenshed here.

Photo Credit: Chickenshed

To post a comment, you must register and login.