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LETTER TO EDITOR:

Greens call on Government to apologise t0 victims of historic consensual gay sex convictions.

Cllr Phélim Mac Cafferty
Cllr Phélim Mac Cafferty

Last Friday (October 21) parliamentary legislation that would have wiped clean the criminal records of thousands of gay men was defeated by the Conservative government.

The offences were all from an historic period of time, when being gay was classed as a UK-wide criminal act, and well before the law was changed to be fairer for gay men.

Many of the estimated 50,000 older gay men affected by the proposal live in the Brighton and Hove area, including the Kemptown constituency. In addition to the agreed pardon, this law would have also wiped their “offences,” which all too often made people’s lives unbearable, or worse, destroyed them. It is a matter of shame that this legislation was defeated.

The government throwing out this bill is an insult to the many who over time, will have had unspent convictions on their record, that were passed during an archaic period when gay men were still treated as social pariah. This is a slap in the face for a part of the community who have historically suffered some of the worst oppression from society and who because of their age often experience alienation from the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community itself.

Pardons are one thing – but Greens want an official apology for the LGBT community who have had their lives disfigured by reactionary laws over the decades.

I would like to know what justification Mr Kirby, the member of Parliament for Brighton Kemptown, as a senior member of the Conservative government gives for members of his party throwing out this important proposal.

Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty
Green Party Councillor for Brunswick and Adelaide

 

 

 

Arts Council funds new play by local author

Writer and performer Rose Collis has been awarded research and development funding from Grants for the Arts, supported by Arts Council England, to create a two-act stage play based on her book Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment.

Rose Collis
Rose Collis

The play will be about the extraordinary life of Valerie Arkell-Smith aka ‘Colonel Victor Barker’.

Virago published Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment in 2001 to enormous critical acclaim:

‘Excellent… treads a careful line between sensation and sentiment.’…     Daily Telegraph

‘Rose Collis has delved meticulously…and produced a remarkably gripping and, at times, quite hilarious story.’                                     Val Hennessy, Daily Mail, ‘Critic’s Choice’

The funding coincides with the start of a two-week residency at the Gladstone Library awarded to Rose after she was shortlisted for its prestigious Writer-in-Residence 2016 programme.

web-600The Trials of Colonel Barker will be developed to rehearsed reading stage, in time for the second (Brighton And) Hove Grown Festival of new writing which takes place March 24 to April 2 2017. Rose’s current one-woman play, Wanting the Moon, was performed during the inaugural Hove Grown Festival in 2016.

Prior to the rehearsed readings, Rose will present two tie-in public engagement events: a free ‘Lunchtime Lecture’ at Worthing Library on February 28 and a talk at Jubilee Library, Brighton (date tbc). All events will have Q&A sessions, and copies of Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment will be on sale.

Participating artists for The Trials of Colonel Barker will include Keith Drinkel, Philippa Hammond and Guy Wah.

Rose said, “I am enormously grateful to Arts Council England for supporting another of my projects, and also to the Gladstone Library for the two-week residency which will be spring-boarding this exciting new project. Writing this play will provide an exciting and vital challenge in my development as a stage writer, breaking new ground to create my first two-act play, and my first for a cast of more than two performers.”

New York New York – So good they named it twice

web-300Jaq Bayles takes a big bite out of the Big Apple and digests the hidden gems of the city that never sleeps.

New York probably has more givens than any other city in the western world. So good they named it twice, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, never sleeps (wish we’d remembered that one when we were hanging around til 8am in our hotel room for somewhere to open where we could get a cup of tea), favoured date spot of King Kong.

But what about the stuff the songs and movies don’t tell you? A block is never as short as it looks on the map; a short-stack of pancakes is practically the height of the Empire State Building; you will get chatty with Irish bar staff who will insist on buying you drinks; you will get drunk – although not as drunk as the bride-to-be who is on the bar top pouring a bottle of wine all over herself. Oh, and if you go in February chances are it’ll be colder than The Day After Tomorrow.

However you approach it, the Big Apple offers more juicy bites of adventure than your average Granny Smith does sugar content, but where to begin?

Lobby of Empire State Building
Lobby of Empire State Building

My brief for this piece was to present five things to do in New York that don’t involve the Empire State Building. Practically impossible – I’ve already name-checked it twice and we’re under 200 words in… So let’s go against brief for a moment. You HAVE to do the ESB, and not just for the views, which are almost unparalleled (more of which coming). What you tend not to see in the movies is the interior – a knock-your-socks-off feat of Art Deco design. The main thing you don’t see from the ESB is… the ESB. But there’s one place you can go to remedy that – and other things that might ail you if you believe in the restorative qualities of alcohol.

web-600-4The Top of the Rock is widely billed as having the best 360° views in NY, given that it overlooks the ESB. But it will cost you $27 dollars to get to the observation deck at the summit of the 259m, 70-floor Rockefeller Centre. There are better options… Bar 65 Rockefeller Centre offers the same unobstructed views for the price of a cocktail, which start at $20. That’s the sneaky cheap way to do it, with added booze, but get there early as punters are catching on (it opens at 5pm).

Even when you can do them cheaper, some things you simply have to pay for. But if you’re on a budget, there are plenty of ways to do New York essentials for free.

 

Staten Island Ferry
Staten Island Ferry

Looking for Lady Liberty to shine her light on you but don’t want to fork out the $17 to get you up close and personal (plus the cost of the boat fare to get you there)? The Staten Island ferry is your free pass. The big red boats that run a constant Staten Island to-and-from service take you right past Liberty Island, with views every bit as good as those from the Circle Line tour. And did I mention the free-ness?

Lobby of Chrysler Building
Lobby of Chrysler Building

Need more of an Art Deco fix than Midtown’s ESB or Rockefeller Centre can deliver? Get your walking shoes on and head to nearby Grand Central station, with its fabulous vaulted ceiling, while just over the road the Chrysler Building rises up from its central lobby, Deco down to the floor tiles. Free, free, free.

Chelsea High-Line
Chelsea High-Line

Central Park? Free. But lord knows we’ve all seen enough of that on TV, so give your imagination a break and head to Chelsea where the High Line beckons – a one-and-a-half mile elevated section of a disused railway spur, redesigned and planted as an aerial park. It’ll give you views over Liberty Island too if you jump on near Chelsea Market, the giant urban food centre that’s as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the appetite. You don’t have to pay to look…

Flat Iron building
Flat Iron building

Not too far away there’s another feast for the eyes in the shape of the Flat Iron building. Indeed, it’s its shape that draws the crowds – an odd triangular effort that soars above Madison Square park (one of many New York spaces described as a ‘park’ that wouldn’t stand muster under a UK definition – mostly handkerchief-sized squares of scrubland with a smattering of benches), where you can admire the architecture over a Shake Shack burger at the original site of the chain that evolved from a hot dog-cart.

Which brings us on to ways of sustaining your calorific intake as you navigate those blocks that all look so tantalisingly close to one another on the map. If you’ve got deep pockets and like fine-dining, New York has no shortage of Michelin-starred eateries and popular brunch bars – but book ahead. If you’re dollar-light the choices aren’t lacking either – except in actual nutritional content.

Budget eating is as lacking in greenery as the parks, although we did see an egg-white omelette with broccoli go out of our favourite breakfast diner on one occasion. Indeed, 24-hour diners are cheap enough to be cheerful at any meal, as long as you only want to eat eggs, whether they’re over-easy, scrambled, boiled or whipped up into a pancake.

Most hotels, certainly in Midtown, don’t do breakfast, so diners are a good bet here. And if you happen to be heading back to your hotel, drunk after a night in one of those Irish bars? There’s no end of pizza joints that’ll serve you up a mega slice of your favourite toppings for a small amount of cash. You won’t remember the exact cost and you’ll probably wake up to pizza crusts at the foot of your bed, but at least you’ll have lined your stomach. Albeit after the event.

Guggenhiem
Guggenhiem

TRAVEL FEATURE: Rotterdam – A Revelation

Everyone has heard of and most people have visited Amsterdam at least once and loves its beautiful architecture, canals and wonderful life style.

Rotterdam City Centre
Rotterdam City Centre

I used to live there and while I had visited most of the major centres in the Netherlands, I had never been to Rotterdam

web-600-16Until now I had just assumed that it was just a huge port city, it is after all known as Europort – a very heavily industrialised port, the 10th largest in the world, with petrochemical refineries and storage tanks, bulk iron ore and coal handling facilities as well as container and new motor vehicle terminals.

No thanks I thought, I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Much of Rotterdam was reduced to rubble in the second World War but since then they have been very busy indeed, rebuilding a very modern city.

Centraal Railway Station
Centraal Railway Station

We were totally unprepared for the surprise; this city really has the wow factor.

A new fast train service takes just 25 minutes from Amsterdam to The Netherlands’ second city. In that short time you go from the 17th Century right to the 21st, arriving at one of the most startling railways stations I have ever seen. This stunning building almost defies description, apart from being a modern railway station it features a shiny steel-clad flying buttress reaching right over the plaza.  This building prepares you for the shock of a completely modern 21st Century city.

They call Amsterdam the city of the past and Rotterdam the city of the future. In the past 20 years the city has completely reinvented itself and they have not finished yet.

All the new landmark buildings and innovative construction is quite stunning, high-rise reflective glass and steel is everywhere. We stayed in the Marriott Hotel right in front of the station; this is an extremely modern and very comfortable hotel. Rotterdam isn’t high on many tourist’s agenda, so the price for this excellent four star hotel was just €81.50 a night – a bargain!  You can quadruple that sum for a similar hotel in Amsterdam.

The city centre is mainly pedestrianised, very easy to walk round with very modern trams gliding along. The streets are wide and even when busy Rotterdam never feels crowded.

Markthal – Market Hall
Markthal – Market Hall

Just a short walk from our hotel we discovered one of city’s architectural masterpieces the Markthal – Market Hall, this really does defy description.

web-600-6A feat of fun and functionality, Rotterdam’s stunning Market Hall holds offices and over 200 apartments, with a covered market hall and public space. Its grey stone exterior arches, in the shape of a horseshoe, over the vast interior open space which houses a fabulous food market with many fun restaurants and bars. Coating the entirety of the inside of the archway is an enormous mural featuring an impressive array of fruit, vegetables, insects and flowers.  The PR says that the building demonstrates how beautifully art and architecture can come together, they’re not wrong.

Almost next door to the Market Hall are the unique Cube Houses, an experimental housing system devised in the late 70’s.  Structurally, the cubes sit tilted on a hexagonal pole. Inside, the houses are divided into three levels accessed via a narrow staircase.

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Completing the tilted design, the walls and windows are all angled at 54.7 degrees, providing excellent views of the surrounding area. The only drawback – aside from claustrophobia is that despite a total area of 100 square meters, the angled structure means only a quarter of that space is actually usable. One is open as a museum, very curious and not somewhere where I could live but they are, amazingly, very popular.

It quickly becomes clear why this city is known as the architectural centre of the country and has been called Manhattan on the (River) Meuse.  But of course there is a lot more to this amazing city than its breathtaking architecture. The Luftwaffe didn’t destroy everything and there is still a lot of the old city which has been carefully restored.

Hotel New York
Hotel New York

One of the most famous landmarks is the Hotel New York, based in the former HQ of the Holland America Line which operated a direct service to America by sea. During the 19th and 20th century thousands of Europeans left for the Promised Land: America. It was an attempt to escape poverty and religious repression. It was opened as a hotel in 1992 and has been beautifully restored, well worth the walk to visit.

Delfshaven
Delfshaven

Rotterdam is very much a walking city, though trams are very cheap and efficient.  We hopped on a tram out of the central district just to see where it took us and we ended up in Delfshaven.  This picturesque yacht marina is one of the parts of the old city that survived the 1940 bombardment of Rotterdam. It has had a remarkable history and was apparently the departure point from which the Pilgrim Fathers left to found what was to become the USA.

There’s a  lot to see and enjoy in this surprising city, the gay scene is not large, a couple of bars and of course a sauna, but in any major Dutch city everywhere is potentially gay!

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www.gayrotterdam.com

en.rotterdam.info

 

PREVIEW: La Cage Aux Folles – UK National Tour

John Partridge and Adrian Zmed star in first ever UK tour of La Cage Aux Folles.

 

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Bill Kenwright presents the much-loved musical LA CAGE AUX FOLLES with John Partridge as Albin and Adrian Zmed as Georges, which will open in Oxford on Thursday, January 5, 2017 coming to Brighton on August 5, 2017 at the end of its nationwide tour and coinciding with the opening of Brighton Pride weekend.

John Partridge
John Partridge

John Partridge will play the iconic role of Albin, who moonlights as star drag act Zaza at the infamous La Cage aux Folles nightclub. Partridge’s extensive theatre credits include the West End productions of A Chorus Line at the London Palladium, CatsStarlight Express and Chicago. He is also well-known for playing Christian Clarke in BBC’s EastEnders and as a judge on TV’s Over The Rainbow.

Adrian Zmed
Adrian Zmed

Adrian Zmed will play Georges, partner of Albin and owner of the nightclub. Zmed co-starred with William Shatner as officer Vince Romano in the 70’s hit TV show T.J. Hooker, which ran for 90 episodes over 5 years, and for playing Johnny Nogerelli in the cult classic film Grease 2. This will be his first stage appearance in the UK although he is no stranger to Broadway musicals having previously led the casts of Grease, no fewer than 3 times, Falsettos and Blood Brothers.

Written by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman, and based on the 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret, La Cage Aux Folles follows the story of Georges, the manager of a Saint Tropez nightclub, and his partner, Albin, a drag artiste and the club’s star attraction.

They live an idyllic existence in the south of France but behind the curtains of this sparkling extravaganza, all may be about to change when Georges’ son Jean-Michel announces his engagement to the daughter of a notorious right-wing politician determined to close down the local colourful night-life.

Drama and hilarity ensue when a meeting of the parents forces them to cover up their vibrant lifestyle. Will Albin be able to play the role of his life to ensure that Jean-Michel can marry his love?

La Cage Aux Folles is a multi-award winning musical. The original Broadway production became an instant smash hit when it opened in 1983. It received nine nominations for Tony Awards and won six, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. The success of the musical spawned a London Palladium production and several international runs. The 2004 Broadway revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and the 2008 London revival garnered the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival.

This brand new production will be produced by Bill Kenwright, directed by Martin Connor, choreographed by Olivier Award Winning Bill Deamer, designed by Gary McCann, sound by Dan Samson (the team responsible for the sumptuous current hit, The Sound of Music), and musical direction by Mark Crossland.

Show-stopping numbers in the score includes The Best of Times, Song on the Sand and the iconic I Am What I Am, which has been recorded by musical legends Gloria Gaynor, Shirley Bassey and Tony Bennett.

The production will tour the UK from January 5 2017, after opening at the New Theatre Oxford.

PREVIEW: Rewind Fast Forward

A cultural archive through Liverpool’s queer nightlife.

Planet Tumbleweed - The light of the female species
Planet Tumbleweed – The light of the female species

An archive of recent Liverpool history made available to thousands across the North West, has inspired new short film commissions by three queer black filmmakers, which will premier in Liverpool as part of the Homotopia festival 2016.

‘Rewind Fast Forward’ is a cultural photographic and video archive from 1975-2005 which looks back at the music, club and fashion sub-cultures in Liverpool, and their intersections with local LGBT and BAME history.

The archive, was created by Sandi Hughes, a feminist filmmaker, DJ and poet who has put together hundreds of hours of film, thousands of photographs, nightclub flyers, posters and magazines which capture the marginalised and outrageous characters of Liverpool she mixed with during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

The archive also captures Sandi’s own experiences of racism, homophobia and sexism, covering personal events such as her childhood abandonment, divorce, custody battle and son’s death.

This year Sandi has been working with the community interest company Re-Dock to secure her archive for the future, thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery fund.

Sandi’s film, utilising her archive is called Planet Tumbleweed – The light of the female species, gives voice to women pioneers who have personally inspired the filmmaker, and who are under-represented and overlooked in society.

 She Was a Full Body Speaker
She Was a Full Body Speaker

Evan Ifekoya’s film is titled She Was a Full Body Speaker. The film deals with blackness, queer nightlife and trauma. It builds on Evan’s personal archive, as well as Sandi Hughes’s. Evan’s work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using moving image, performative writing and sound.

Hayley Reid has produced two short films for the project.  The first film is Auld Lang Syne, which is influenced by the #carefreeblackkids and the expression of joy and freedom during times of grief, pain and loss.

The second film is called Mersey on My Mind which is ode to the River Mersey.  Hayley is an advocate for reclaiming archives. She is interested in making film archives more accessible to artist video makers and unearthing new stories through moving image and audio.

Each film varies in length, making for a 45-minute programme which will premiere at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool on November 11 as part of the Homotopia festival with a post screening discussion with the filmmakers.

Rewind Fast Forward will go on to screen at a range of other venues, including Royal College of Art (London) and at the Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre (Liverpool).

Sandi Hughes said: “I’m really excited and made up to have this opportunity to show my film and share these experiences. I first started filming in the eighties, motivated by my experiences of alienation, and I want to tell my life story through the mouths and experiences of the people I have filmed. This is what I’ve done with ‘Planet Tumbleweed’ and the Rewind Fast Forward project.”

The project has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Film Hub North West Central, the British Film Institute Film Audience Network and the Liverpool Record Office.


Event: Rewind Fast Forward: A cultural archive through Liverpool’s queer nightlife

Where: Unity Theatre, 1 Hope Place, Liverpool, L1 9BG

When: Launches November 11

 

 

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