In March 2020, we were in the midst of one of our most ambitious seasons celebrating our 40-year history when COVID-19 forced us to close.
We had to explore very different ways of working and through co-creation and some experimentation, we were able to keep making theatre with artists through online design workshops, The Letters Projection and Gate Generations.
The timeline below is a celebration of the artists we were able to work with and recognition of the extraordinary year we faced together.
January
Faces In the Crowd | Los Ingrávidos
We started the year with a brand new adaptation of Valeria Luiselli’s award winning novel, set in Mexico City, by Ellen McDougall and the company and a team of collaborators.
If you’d like to hear more about how we made the show, you can listen back to this podcast.
Faces In The Crowd: Performers: Neil D’Souza, Jimena Larraguivel, Anoushka Lucas, Juan Leonardo Solari, Santiago Huertas Ruiz ; Set design Bethany Wells; Lighting design Jessica Hung Han Yun ; Photography Ellie Kurttz
The Gate turns 40!
We celebrated the Gate’s 40th Anniversary at a special performance of Faces in the Crowd, and afterwards at a local Mexican restaurant with Alumni Artists including Tobias Menzies, George Ikediashi and Rebecca Humphries, and previous Artistic Directors, Natalie Abrahami, Carrie Cracknell and Erica Whyman. This was Alejandro’s first project as our Development Manager.
If you’d like to help us secure the next 40 years of Gate history, please consider donating here.
GATE LATE: Adaptation and Translation, with Christina Macsweeney & Maria Jose Andrade
The original title in Spanish, Los Ingrávidos, literally translates as ‘the weightless ones’. Christina shared the process of arriving at the English title, Faces in the Crowd, in collaboration with Valeria Luiselli.
Drama Club @Harrow Club
We began the second year of our Drama Club for young people at Harrow Club – led by Lucy Dear and Yasmin Joseph.
February
GATE LATE: Anoushka Lucas – unplugged gig
Anoushka played tracks from her debut album, Dark Soul, after the performance of Faces in the Crowd in which she performed.
Trainers: Or the Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere of this Most Disagreeable Season: a Theatrical Essay
We opened our production of Sylvan Oswalds’ brand new play – a queer adventure story and an experiment in what a trans/queer theatre might look like.
If you’d like to listen to the team talking about their work on the show, you can listen to their podcast here .
Fun fact: this season, starting with Mephisto: A Rhapsody in September 2019, is the first season that we have worked with our Manifesto for the Future. One of the pledges is to only use 20% new materials for any set, and while this was a challenge at first, by the time we got to this production, we managed it!
Trainers: Performers: Nicki Hobday, Nando Messias; Design Naomi Kuyuk-Cohen and Joshua Gadsby (also Lighting); Photography Alex Harvey Brown
GATE LATE: Sylvan Oswald and Broderick D.V. Chow, On Trainers, And Trans-Theatre
We discussed trans- theatre and formal experimentation with Sylvan and Broderick.
March
Open Mic Nights hosted by Dean Atta
Featuring some amazing poetry from Riwa Saab, Iona Lee, Lily Fontaine, Day Mattar, Jessica Norman and Nikita Gill.
Our second Open Mic Night marked our postponed production of Omeros, with a theme ’Returning Home’. Jessica Norman, Andres Ordorica, Christy Ku, Stavy Anagnou, Melanie Haagman and Sean Wai Keung, shared their work with Dean our host.
Clare , our new marketing manager who’d worked at the Gate for 2 weeks when we closed, moved both these events to Instagram Live. Since then, they’ve had over 2000 views – quite a lot more people than we could have fitted in our 75 seat theatre – a silver lining!
April
Yasmin Hafseji joins as our Associate Director
Yasmin Hafesji is a director and dramaturg. She started working at the Gate as Development Assistant in 2017, and then assisted on Dear Elizabeth in 2019. She joins Anthony Simpson Pike as Associate Director.
From Our Archive
We released recorded versions of The Unknown Island and Suzy Storck for audiences to watch from home.
The Unknown Island: Performers: Jon Foster, Hannah Ringham, Thalissa Teixeira, Zubin Varla; Set design: Rosie Elnile; Lighting design Lizzie Powell; Photography Cameron Slater
Suzy Storck: Performers: Caoilfhionn Dunne, Kate Duchene, Jonah Russell, Theo Solomon; Set design Cécile Trémolières; Lighting design Christopher Nairne; Photography Helen Murray
Harrow Club Stories at Home
Lucy and Yasmin created this digital resource for our Drama Club – Look Around: Stories at Home. The resource takes you through how to create a play in your home, with objects, a soundtrack, and story ideas, and is open to everyone, so get involved!
Young Associates
We began hosting a fortnightly zoom workshop for our Young Associates, including with guest practitioners – Lotte Hines, Gable Roloefsen, Tim Crouch and Atri Bannerjee. Our Alumni Artists also join for some of these workshops.
They were making a piece of work to celebrate the end of our 40th Anniversary season. This has grown on zoom, and has become GATE GENERATIONS – check it out!
The Letters Project
Yasmin and Ellen began a conversation with some of the Dear Elizabeth, Nina Bowers, Hannah Ringham, and Moi Tran, about the idea of a story told through letters. Nina had an idea about how much it felt present at this time of separation, and that we might consider making something together using the same form and process
We began writing letters to each other, and meeting once a week on zoom. An idea for a performance began to emerge.
Fabulamundi – our partnership with Europe
We continued our work with Fabulamundi, publishing blogs from writers across Europe reflecting on lockdown.
We also contributed to Margarita Laera’s study on theatre practice across the continent, and Ellen ran a week long workshop.
These will continue in 2021, beginning with a week long lab focusing on the Gate’s manifesto.
We went into pre-production for a brand new play by Tiago Rodrigues (Portugal).
May
Freelancers
Freelancers (70% of the theatre industry) were left behind when theatres closed. The SEISS scheme took much longer to emerge, and only supported around 50% of freelancers. Many of the problems and inequities that emerged at this time are sewn into the structures that existed pre-pandemic.
A report published by Freelancers Make Theatre Work highlighted the fact that the pandemic would have a disproportionate effect on emerging artists and freelancers, and particularly on Black, Asian, Ethnically Diverse, D/deaf and Disabled freelancers, and those from a working class background. The very real possibility that many would have to leave the industry began to emerge.
We held a Town Hall for all of the freelancers we’ve worked with since 2017, when Ellen took over as AD – over 350 people. Since this meeting, we’ve sent a regular newsletter sharing funding/work opportunities, updates on our work, and offering support for any projects from our furloughed staff team. We also set up fortnightly 1:1s with Ellen. If you’d like to sign up, or be included on our freelancer newsletter, you can reach us here, or sign up for a 1:1 here.
June
Black Lives Matter
The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, following the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the USA, and Belly Mujinga in the UK, forced theatres, including us, to recognise that we aren’t doing enough to counter the anti-Black racism that is a historic and prevalent pandemic in white supremacist culture, alongside other forms of racism, exclusion and oppression. We published a statement in support of the movement, and were rightly questioned on how deeply these values were embedded in our practice. The answer was not deeply enough.
We began work to change this. We started by holding a weekly all staff meeting focused on anti-racism, sharing reading resources and opening the space for conversations. We held an Away Day with our Board, and Associates, which focused on anti-racism training, led by Amanda Parker of Inc Arts . We began writing an Anti-Racism Action Plan
We are still working on this, alongside implementing structural changes to our working practices. The Action Plan will be fed into by everyone in the company, including every Board member, to ensure it is permanently embedded into the working culture of our organisation.
International Town Hall
Following The Yards’ Town Hall for freelancers chaired by our Associate Director Anthony Simpson Pike and with a panel including Ellen our Artistic Director, Tobi Kyeremateng, Vinay Patel and Jay Miller, we set up an International Town Hall, with artists Jumatatu Poe (US) and Gable Rolofsen (Netherlands), to hear an international perspective on the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s impact on freelancers, and strategies for coping, and rebuilding better.
To read or listen to the discussion, you can find it here.
Freelance Taskforce: Rachael Young
We ran an open recruitment process to find a freelancer we could support to join the Freelance Taskforce. Our community of freelancers voted on the applications, and a panel of our freelance associates, Rosie Elnile, Char Boden and Yaz Zadeh, and freelance Board member Nafeesah Butt, made the final selection.
Rachael Young’s focus on the Taskforce was working closely with Vijay Patel to assess and recommend improvements for working with Neurodiverse freelancers. You can read their charter here.
July
Prayer
Prayer, by Rosie Elnile, drew on 3 years of thinking and emerged as a digital piece of work when it became clear we couldn’t put it in our theatre. It is an unfinished offer, against capitalist perfectionism, that explores decolonizing theatre design and sustainability.
Since we launched the piece, it has been picked up by universities and academic boards – it’s in a GCSE textbook and on an MA syllabus, and has been the topic of at least one specific phd research project.
Pull Up Or Shut Up | Theatre Call To Action
We shared our data as part of a UK wide campaign for greater transparency around the make up of staff teams, boards, and freelancers in cultural institutions.
We will now publish updates to this data annually.
Click here for more information, and to view our statistics.
August
GATE LATE: The Politics Of Space And Theatre Design With Rosie Elnile
Rosie and Anthony Simpson Pike discussed Rosie’s work on Prayer. Rosie also wrote a piece about it, which was published in The Stage.
September
Letters
Written between March and August 2020, Letters tells the story of Spring to Summer; of pandemics and protests; of the personal and the public, and of people living in isolation reaching out to one another on paper.
You can read more about our process, and the letters themselves, on our Letters Project page .
Following the run, the show was picked up by SISMO International Festival (Netherlands), and also by Age UK Kensington and Chelsea.
We are still writing to each other, and planning future iterations of the project with Age UK Kensington and Chelsea, our Young Associates, and some new partners.
Letters: Performers: Liz Chan, Phoebe Fox, Irfan Shamji, Thalissa Teixeira. Photography Clare Nugent.
GATE LATES: Letters with Young Associates
We held 2 Gate Lates after our Letters performances. The first was hosted by Young Associates Evangeline Cullingworth and Barbara Smith, for our Young People’s Night performance feat. Kwame Owusu and Francesca Henry. You can find a recording of the conversation here.
The second was held by the co-directing team, reflecting on the process of co-creation.
Creative Green award Nomination and 5* for the Gate
October
Prayer Workshops
Leading from her work on Prayer, Rosie led workshops with 5 of our Alumni Artists – former design assistants at the Gate sharing their thinking as artists, and building on Rosie’s work to decolonise scenography. Find it here.
We are currently fundraising to support the next phase of these workshops.
GATE LATE: Island Poetry On Stage
Continuing our conversations around our post-poned production of Omeros, and coinciding with Black History Month, Yasmin Hafesji programmed and chaired a live online discussion with Malachi McIntosh, editor and publishing director of Wasafiri, and Nicholas Laughlin, programme director of the annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest, and editor of the arts and travel magazine Caribbean Beat.
New Executive Director and Joint CEO Shawab Iqbal
Born and bred in East London, Shawab was previously Executive Producer of Eclipse. He is a Senior Artistic Associate at the Bush Theatre and sits on the Arts Council’s London Area Council as a Mayor of London appointment.
December
A week of rehearsals!
We ended the year with a rehearsal week in person for an upcoming project. It brought together an amazing team of Tim Crouch, Khadija Raza, Josh Pharo, Devika Ramcharan, Roni Neale, Nina Bowers, Grace Saif, Amber Sinclair-Case and Tomas Palmer.
Blacklash
We were privileged to end the year by hosting Rachael Young’s inaugural event.
BlackLash was an honest and frank conversation about the experience of 2020 for Black artists. Listen back here, and watch this space for future events.