Barbican Guide
April 2021

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Season 2 of our podcast series Inspired features young creatives talking to well-known theatre and performance artists who have influenced them. Recorded as part of our Nothing Concrete podcast, Episode 1 sees Barbican Young Poets alum and interdisciplinary artist Riwa Saab talk to writer and director Kirsty Housley about her extensive career in theatre.

Other episodes feature international spoken word artist and Barbican Young Poet Amani Saeed in conversation with storyteller Amrou Al-Kadhi to talk about gender identity, faith and drag performance, and sound artist, composer and Guildhall School of Music & Drama graduate Rebecca Alero talks to vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener about improvisation, contemporary music theatre and performance art. Barbican Young Film Programmer and author Rogan Graham discusses acting and activism with actress and writer Susan Wokoma, while multidisciplinary practitioner Gabriel Akamo, and writer and performer Jeremiah Brown (both Barbican Young Poets) talks to actor Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù about his career, heritage and legacy.

Subscribe to Nothing Concrete wherever you get your podcasts.

With theatres dark, and rehearsals out of bounds, how are theatre companies staying creative?

To find out, we thought we’d catch up with one of our Open Lab alumni, The PappyShow. The company was formed to provide a space for actors and non-actors to train in physical theatre. Using exercise and training to devise and create work, the ensemble focuses on community cohesion and working together. If you’ve not discovered their work yet, you’re in for a treat.

‘This was meant to be our year,’ says artistic director Kane Husbands with a resigned laugh. ‘We'd just performed at the Southbank Centre. It was a major achievement to be recognised in that way and to be in such a big space. From there, we were going on tour.’

With a new show called Black Girl Magic in development, there was a powerful momentum behind The PappyShow, so when restrictions started in the UK, Husbands says like much of the Theatre world, they watched events unfold ‘through our fingertips’.

‘We weren’t in a place where we could just say “let’s stop for a year”,’ says Husbands. ‘We’re a constant presence for the people we work with – we’re like a family.’

Founder member, actor Kwami Odoom (the pair met while working on the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony) adds, ‘We’ve constantly been thinking, “what do people in our community need? What would be beneficial for them?” Some things we felt were beneficial, but we weren't the right company to offer them.’

In response to the resurging Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd, the company offered spaces for its Black cast members to come together and talk. There were also weekly chats which enabled conversations raised by the shows to continue.

‘As a company, we’ve always tried to make work that responds to the times, to what's going on,' says Kane Husbands. ‘We’re doing mentoring schemes, anti-racism training, and responding to the context that's currently there.’

Lockdown created an opportunity for The PappyShow to do some internal reflection. What came out of that time was a decision to commission nine artists to make new work, giving each a small budget to bring their ideas to life. ‘It was a case of saying to them “we believe in you – do whatever you want”, rather than “pitch us ideas and we’ll pick the best”,’ says Husbands. The work includes photography, short film and music, and will be completed over the next three months.

There was also a chance for the company to develop its digital content. With money from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund , it organised a programme of free workshops. Open to performers and non-performers, the initial 70 online spaces were oversubscribed almost instantly, so more and more were added. Now the company runs weekly workshops for over 100 people at a time. ‘People log on from all over the world,’ beams Husbands. ‘It’s fantastic being able to bring a little bit of our flavour to all these different homes.’

The success of the workshops means The PappyShow has been able to reach more people than it ever expected, or could normally as a small company with just one base in London.

‘We pride ourselves in trying to be the most accessible and inclusive we can be,’ says Odoom. ‘Our thinking has always been about “how can we include people who aren’t always included”. Working online is a new way of reaching more people.’

For Husbands and Odoom, culture is life-changing – not just for them as individuals, but for everyone they reach.

‘Culture was transformative for me,’ says Husbands. 'Growing up, I thought I would be working in the shop round the corner from my parents’ house in Birmingham. Now we’ve travelled the world together, and we talk about inclusion and diversity. It gives my whole life meaning.’

Odoom says it took until he was in his 20s to realise how important it was to see himself represented in culture. ‘My favourite Power Ranger was the black one, but it took me a long time to realise why,’ he says. ‘In the last 12 months, when [Steve McQueen-directed stories of Black British history] Small Axe was on TV, it sparked so many conversations – people remembering what that time was like. Culture creates conversations across generations and communities and helps us learn from one another, particularly in the digital age, where we put so much trust and power in the written word. But there is so much information that could be lost to memory if it’s not written down. Culture is a way of capturing that and sharing with others.’

We all need a touch of escapism at the moment, and 28-year-old pianist wunderkind Grosvenor will be our pilot for a trip through the imagination. He’s picked music packed with Romance, drama, energy, and fantasy. A familiar face in our Hall, we caught up with him ahead of the latest in our Live From the Barbican series.

Hi Benjamin! How’s your year been? What has occupied your time during lockdown, while you’ve been unable to perform live as much as usual?

In the first lockdown I initially took a bit of time away from the piano, more than I ever have before, in fact! I spent the time reading and cooking, among other things. It was refreshing and invigorating then to return to it again after such an absence. I was happy to establish a chamber festival where I am based in south east London, and that we could present some of the first concerts to return with an audience last year. It’s something that I may not otherwise have had time for. I also recorded a CD of Liszt – original works and transcriptions – which is of personal significance for me in 2020, because Liszt was a favourite composer of my grandfather, who passed away at the beginning of the year. In the recent lockdown I’ve been enjoying exploring a lot of different repertoire, reading through many different things at the piano, but the combination of the circumstances with the short winter days made for a much more challenging experience.

Can you talk us through the music you’ve selected for this Barbican concert, and explain what each work means to you; how it makes you feel?

The programme has two pieces that mean a lot to me. Chopin’s Third Sonata I fell in love with at around the age of nine, when I was given the recording by Dinu Lipatti. I was desperate to play it for a few years until it was within my reach musically and technically (my hands were small at the time). I picked it up eventually when I was a teenager. Gaspard De La Nuit similarly has been in my repertoire for a while, and I recorded this when I was 18 for Decca.

I love the Sonata for its mix of nobility, angst, lyricism, lightness, darkness and drama. It is a hugely varied piece filled with memorable melodies and material, telling a unique story. Gaspard De La Nuit is some of the most evocative and atmospheric music written for the piano. It’s a joy to explore at the keyboard, with its ravishing array of textures and colours. Perhaps my favourite of the three is ‘Le Gibet’ which is so uniquely haunting and hypnotic, beautiful in a way that is terrible and austere.

With this colourful, romantic music, I wanted to include something that presented a contrast, and so I've included Ginastera's Danzas Argentinas. The outer movements are percussive, vibrant and rhythmic. The middle movement is haunting and wistful and something I enjoyed playing during the lockdown - the open fourths and fifths made me think of wide open spaces, and exotic lands. My hope is that Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s Ave Maria becomes something of an oasis of familiarity and simplicity in the middle of all this. It is an incredibly difficult arrangement - the kind of piece where an extra hand would be helpful!

What are you most looking forward to about playing live again?

I'm looking forward very much to simply being in the Barbican Centre, a place with many happy memories for me. While concerts with an audience are the ideal, concerts in such a hall – with the unusual intensity of a streaming audience – are still special events.

Benjamin Grosvenor: Live from the Barbican takes place on Saturday 10 April.

Bringing together films from across the world, Chronic Youth is curated by the Barbican Young Film Programmers. The current cohort of film-enthusiasts aged under 25 has been working somewhat differently from usual over the last six months because of the pandemic.

Led by mentor, film curator and maker Suzy Gillett, the course saw 12 participants meet up online for regular Zoom calls, to hear from cinema professionals, and to plan the festival.

‘Being wholly online had the advantage that we could take people from outside London,’ says Barbican Creative Learning Curator Lindsay O’Nions, who oversees the scheme. ‘That’s important to us because while there are amazing regional venue programmes, there are still people who would benefit from this programme, and in turn, we benefit from their input and perspectives. It’s a great opportunity for us to be more inclusive across the UK.’

Musanna Ahmed, 25, is among this year’s Young Film Programmers. A regular contributor to Film Inquiry, The Upcoming, The Movie Waffler and Total Film magazine, he says he signed up after frequent visits to film festivals left him inspired by the selections. ‘I wanted to expand my film writing into a curatorial context because I wanted to connect audiences to an exciting slate of films that I may not have heard of or even considered, the same way film festivals had done for me.’

Nana Ama, a 23-year-old photographer, filmmaker and writer from London, says she was drawn to the programme ‘because I appreciated the power of film in informing and shaping culture. I wanted to learn more about the curation of film events, and how to bring a more diverse cohort of films to the fore. I strongly believed that diversity needed to be reflected not only in the cast or narrative of a film, but at every level: in the directors, the producers and the distributors. Through this scheme, I now understand even more of how every step in the journey of a film is important in guiding how it is brought to and interpreted by film lovers.’

When it comes to choosing the films, the group has had two priorities, says Ahmed. ‘Firstly, we’ve been looking at films from outside of Britain and America, especially from territories British audiences see less often in the cinema such as Ghana, Sudan and Jordan. We believe there is such rich storytelling to be found in the global sphere, yet commercialism means some of them don’t get the distribution they deserve. Secondly, we’ve been searching for films that have had the least visibility in Britain, meaning they may be receiving their UK premiere or have only had limited screenings several months ago.’

The group discovered another advantage of being online was easier access to guest speakers, who included filmmakers, producers, independent curators, film festival organisers, and more.

The programme is designed to work both in Cinemas and online. Along with the films selected, there’s a variety of workshops and talks.

‘We all appreciate that many people are experiencing Zoom and screen-fatigue,’ says Ama, ‘so we are constantly asking ourselves what the appetite for themes in a film might be and when people are most likely to have time to be able to watch them in this new climate.

Ultimately, though, there’s one thing that being online or in-cinema doesn’t make any difference to, says Ahmed: ‘The quality of the films would remain paramount so our programming choices would have aligned the same way as they have now.

Chronic Youth takes place online until Thursday 3 June.

Barbican Young Film Programmers is supported through your donations. Learn more about this, and our other schemes for young people, at barbican.org.uk/take-part.

For the second year in a row, all 20 Academy Award acting category nominations in January 2016 went to white performers. The Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite – created the year before – resurfaced and the atmosphere reached boiling-point. As writer/director Ava DuVernay noted, ‘It was a catalyst for a conversation about what had really been a decades-long absence of diversity and inclusion’.

There is still progress to be made, but this year’s nominations certainly give us reason to believe that times are changing.

In the 93-year history of the Academy Awards, only five women have ever been nominated in the Best Director category and only one has ever taken home the prize: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010. This year, for the first time ever, two of the five nominees are women: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland and Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman. These are powerful films, and while they differ greatly in their approach, they’re both extremely significant.

Nomadland takes place a few years after the Great Recession and follows Fern (Frances McDormand), who lives in her van and travels across the US taking seasonal work and meeting all manner of interesting folks along the way. With great loss in her past, Fern rejects conventional ideas of fixed living in favour of freedom, independence and the open road. This is reflected in Zhao’s fluid, relaxed camerawork; we observe Fern and the natural landscape with the same quiet distance. The outcome is a beautiful, raw exploration of grief, as well as the joy that can be found when living authentically.

Promising Young Woman is a blistering, post #MeToo take-down; all wrapped in a colourful, sparkling wrapper with a syrupy sweet pop-soundtrack. Carey Mulligan stars as Cassandra, a woman who prowls bars pretending to be drunk. Each time, a ‘nice guy’ approaches and attempts to assault her, she serves them a lesson they will never forget. Fennell brings consent and violence against women into mainstream cinema like never before; first by presenting a hugely entertaining spoonful of sugar in the form of Cassandra’s nightly escapes, before gradually introducing her painful past, followed by the medicine of a potential reckoning. It’s incredibly refreshing to see such complex female characters on display in films written and directed by women.

After the backlash in 2016, an emergency meeting was called in which Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and the board of governors approved targets for a membership initiative which aimed to double the number of women and ethnically underrepresented members within four years. This goal was surpassed and it would seem we can now view one of the outcomes of this endeavour in the 2021 nominations. This year has seen six black actors and actresses nominated, equalling the record set in 2017. The acting categories also present some historic firsts: with four nominations, Viola Davis is now the most nominated black actress in history, while Yuh-jung Youn is the first South Korean actress to be nominated for her role in Minari. The film follows a Korean family in 1980s Arkansas as they attempt to build a farm. It taps into the traditional immigrant experience of a couple coming to a new country with very little and working hard to build an easier life for their children. Steven Yeun, Yeri Han and Youn given brilliantly crafted, understated performances as the trouble husband and wife, and grandmother, while eight-year-old Alan S Kim is infinitely watchable as their precocious young son. The film is beautifully shot, with a finely tuned script that follows the family’s difficult journey in an authentic way whilst never allowing us to forget the sweetness and joy that can arise from the deep bonds of family.   

Another first comes in the Best Film category, as Judas and the Black Messiah is the first Best Picture nominee to have an all-black line-up of producers. LaKeith Stanfield plays Bill O’Neal, an FBI informant recruited to infiltrate the Black Panthers and report back on the activities of Party Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). Based on a true story, Stanfield and Kaluuya portray their real-life counterparts with a nuance that reflects the writing and direction. A lesser film would portray O’Neal as a wholly unsympathetic character, but Judas refuses to simplify and presents his allegiances for much of the film as ambiguous. The direction, editing and score are also unexpected; particularly early in the film, at times feeling experimental in their approach. It’s entirely fitting that a film which defies expectation in so many ways should mark such a historic first in its category.

Riz Ahmed is the first actor of Pakistani descent to be nominated and the first Muslim to be up for Best Actor, for Sound of Metal. Ahmed plays Ruben, a heavy-metal drummer whose life and career are thrown into turmoil when he begins to lose his hearing. After spending time in a community of deaf recovering addicts, Ruben forms connections and begins to open himself to the idea of a full life in which his loss of hearing isn’t something to be overcome. However, his obsession with obtaining the funds to procure an implant soon challenges this notion and begins to jeopardise his future. Ahmed is completely transformed and totally convincing as Ruben. Not only did he learn to play the drums, but he also immersed himself in deaf culture and worked with a deaf advocate to learn American Sign Language. The central idea of the film is one which rejects ableist notions of disability and focuses instead on the rich lives led by disabled people – a rarity in mainstream cinema. Though there’s still an alarming lack of disabled actors being hired or recognised for their work, it’s wonderful to see a film like Sound of Metal recognised on such a global stage.

There is still a way to go on representation, and action to be taken at every level of the industry to redress this. However, the 2021 nominations are a positive shift which should certainly give us hope for the future.

Members enjoy free access to many of the films on Cinema on Demand and save 20% on the rest of the programme. See what’s on and start watching our curated selection of films for free today.

Minari is currently available to stream on Barbican Cinema on Demand. Nomadland and Sound of Metal will be screening at the Barbican from 17 May.

Watch The Best Live Action Short nominees and get exclusive access to The Best Animated Short nominees on Barbican Cinema on Demand now.