AN ORAL history theatre project about community, heritage and regeneration is being brought to Bromsgrove’s Artrix next Friday (May 12) by Jane English.
The artist said 20B Stratford Road was the only home she had ever known until the community she lived in was broken up and their homes were reduced to rubble.
Developed with Birmingham Rep, 20B charts Jane’s search for the story of what happened to her childhood home, a block of maisonettes in East London, through an investigation of regeneration and how it affected the community it displaced.
In the show Jane retraces the community she remembers from her childhood – she tracks down her former neighbours and interviews them over endless cups of tea and presents these conversations alongside her own account of the joys and struggles of living in a close-knit community though the 1980s and 1990s.
Part auto-biography, part oral history, 20B is a moving exploration of what home and community really mean and how it feels when these things are lost. With warmth and humour, Jane uncovers the narratives of the city, from post-war slum clearance to Olympic-era gentrification.
The show features interviews and personal perspectives alongside rigorous research to ensure the history is recorded with balance.
It explores the nation’s recent architectural heritage and contributes to archiving the experience of high-rise living in the 20th and 21st century.
Jane developed the project whilst on Birmingham Rep’s Foundry programme and with the help of Digbeth based arts organisation, Friction Arts.
This performance follows packed performances at MAC, Birmingham and Camden People’s Theatre and a staging at Oslo’s Rumi Festival, 20B.
20B was awarded an Arts Council Grants for the Arts award and the tour is supported by the Sir Barry Jackson Trust.
Tickets, at £10 (£8 concessions over 60s and students) are available from www.artrix.co.uk or by calling 01527 577330.
The show starts at 7.30pm and is suitable for those aged 14 and over.
