When a sitcom gets funnier as the series goes on, you know you’re onto a winner. So it is with Rybish, written by Barry ‘Archie’ Jones. Set in a recycling centre in North-West Wales, it avoids the rookie mistake of focusing primarily on the workplace situation. Instead, Jones develops a cast of well-rounded characters whose idiosyncratic personalities rub up against one another to form the basis of much of Rybish’s hilarity. There may be the odd joke at the setting’s expense, like standing on a ladder in the pouring rain, attempting to get a mobile signal. But Jones unearths most of the comedy gold from the interactions between his characters. It is the people that he has created that make Rybish such a success.
Sion Pritchard
Sion Pritchard is simply brilliant as site manager Clive. He ramps up the sullenness of his character Mark in Tourist Trapto take Clive beyond expressions of mild annoyance whilst tempering his exasperation so that his comments remain witty and teasing rather than scathing and cut-throat. He resembles the best of banter, light-heartedly mocking his colleagues with nicknames and put-downs that lovingly encapsulate their personalities. There is no malice in the man, as some might conclude; rather, he represents the masculine type that struggles to show emotion and masks their insecurities with humour and a certain aloofness.
Meanwhile, Eurwyn (Dyfed Thomas) wears his heart on his sleeve. He is a gentle and kind soul whose sweet nature is in stark contrast to the moody Clive. Whilst the humour created by the latter is often through his witty comments, it is the innocence of Eurwyn that draws laughter from the audience. It is never intended to be cruel however, and Jones ensures that in his script. He presents Eurwyn as a man of great wisdom and knowledge, though the way Thomas emphasises his character’s naivety has the effect of downplaying this. The result is a deeply empathetic portrayal of an archetypal, rather than stereotypical, Welshman who is devoted to his nation’s culture.
Dyfed Thomas
Alongside Clive and Eurwyn sits Nigel (Rhodri Trefor), a young lad who likes to think he’s more important than he actually is. He will often talk the talk but very rarely does he follow through with action. In fact, it is in the incongruity between what he says to camera and then does afterwards that is the source of much comedy. Jones does not simply pour scorn on Nigel however. Like the rest of his characters, he brings complexity through the subtle incision of moments that reflect genuine sentiment and vulnerability. Nigel’s reaction to new arrival Bobbi (Betsan Ceiriog) is one example, with his suspicion of her perhaps wrongly assumed by some to be veiled sexism. But when, in episode five, the ex-manager of the site wanders around making blatantly sexist remarks, Nigel stands with the rest of the crew in opposition. Such action reflects the strong camaraderie between them, of which Bobbi becomes a vital part.
Ceiriog, in her debut television role, is a steady and confident presence onscreen, affording Bobbi a self-assured and strong personality that means she becomes a vital part of the Cefn Cilgwyn family. She does so to the extent that, when it comes time for her to leave in the final episode, their sadness is akin to grief. It is felt so viscerally through the screen that I am already pining to re-join them for another series with the hope that Bobbi comes back. It would not be the same without her.
Betsan Ceiriog
It is very rare that I have felt such strong affection for a group of sitcom characters. I can think of only This Country and Derry Girls as contemporary examples where a similar strength of feeling has existed. The difference is that the characters in Rybish resemble a reality that is within my grasp. Contained in their specifically Welsh foibles, alongside their universally-felt flaws, is a reflection of something (someone) in my real world.
I suspect that the factual aesthetic and naturalistic dialogue also contribute to this sense of familiarity, the effect of which leaves one reflecting on the importance of community. For the concept of community that has been created here is something to behold. Whether a result of the cast and crew’s experience of filming under lockdown restrictions (they were in a bubble together while filming some of the series) or not, the familial-like ties that bind the characters of Rybish together is something to take to heart.
Writer Barry ‘Archie’ Jones has created something in Rybish that is not just memorable but lovable too. The title may be ‘rubbish’ but this sitcom is anything but.
Helen Joy interviews Jodi Ann Nicholson and Connor Allen for Get the Chance, a voluntary organisation run by Guy O’Donnell and a very enthusiastic group of volunteers reviewing the Arts.
Helen
Hi Jodi and Connor great to meet you both.
Jodi
Hi I am Jodi Ann Nicholson, the dancer on Plethu/Weave project together with Connor
Connor
Hi I am Connor, an artist, poet and speaker of the word of ‘Branches of Me’.
https://youtu.be/8woi_2_B6fM
Helen
How did you start working on this project?
Jodi
We were paired together through National Dance Company Wales and Literature Wales and we are both part of the Plethu/Weave project
Connor
We were paired and it skyrocketed from there.
Helen
Why do you say skyrocketed Connor?
Connor
I found that the conversations and the experiences we had just met and shot straight up. We carried on going and going until we hit the stars and once we were there in that beauty of space and we were able to create ‘the branches of me’. It was a nice exploration. I felt we truly met and it skyrocketed in the conversations we had, the warmth that we shared and the talent we brought to the table.
Helen
What was it about each of you that connected? Because quite often we are put together in projects and it doesn’t always necessarily work, you don’t find that mutual passion. What was it that you found in each other that enabled you to work together so well?
Jodi
So both of our practices separately share similar interests when it comes to exploring identity and in particular mixed race identity. So when we came together, Connor was an easy person to talk to and easy to listen to so we just bounced off each other had a great open, honest space to communicate with each other and we shared a lot of interest in our work.
Connor
I think for me it was meeting someone who was open and gentle as Jodi. We were able to have those conversations where we could connect and just talk and talk for hours, understanding each other. On a base human level it’s beautiful and on these types of project it just helps.
Helen
What was the message you were trying to get across? What is the project about?
Connor
Personally it is about that exploration of a mixed race identity in a society that sees race as black and white. There is a unique point in a mixed race identity where you visualise a family tree and it has black branches and white branches. It is both of those cultures and ethnicities that make us what we are. Growing up, my exploration of identity was unique because I was too white for my black friends but too black for my white friends. So I was thinking, well where do I fit in? I don’t feel like I fit in either part of this thread. That is what is great about working on this project and chatting with Jodi. We can then bounce off each other and say that yeah, I felt that and I can relate to that. So that we then started to formulate an idea. It was not just me. Growing up I felt a lot of times that it was just me. Why am I feeling like this, when no one else is?
Jodi
I would say a lot of the same as Connor has. Looking about what it is to be mixed race in a world where it is going to be white to be black and finding the balance and harmony and finding our voice within it. Because we are two people who have been looking at this separately for a while, to come together and realise that we do share a lot of these experiences. You start to realise that perhaps this isn’t just our individual dilemmas of identity. Maybe other people of mixed race and backgrounds share the same thing as well. I think it was important to get our voices out and work out what our voice is and hopefully share what other peoples voice is.
Connor
So then we can get universal. We have our individual experiences we bounce off and we can use that to get to the heart of why we feel like this. Once we get to the heart of the issue. I hate the word issue, it’s not an issue.
Jodi
Experience maybe
Connor
That’s why she is brilliant see! By having the universality of our experience and that of ethnicity others can relate to it.
Helen
This issue around visual identity and how we are seen and how we want to be seen is a massive one. It’s a human condition isn’t it? You are trying to find a way of illustrating and narrating how it feels to be in that grey area in between black and white and how that feels and how you share that and share it in a universal way. And you have done it playing to your individual strengths. So Jodi, you’re a dancer, Connor you are an actor, writer, poet. And you’ve pulled together those different ways of communication to produce a two minute track. How did it feel to make that film? Do you feel confident you have got those messages across? And what are those messages that you really want us to get?
Connor
I personally feel confident, not so much a message but that it has definitely opened up a conversation around these issues where people can relate to that or say ‘that line, that really stuck with me’. So a lot of films being created were about 90 seconds and we went back and forth so many times because we just couldn’t hit that limit. And actually we don’t want to sacrifice our art and our vision to try and move it down to there. We truly believe in the potential in this and to get the true message across it needs to be the length it needs to be and we got it to 2 minutes. We were not going to sacrifice any more. It was an important point for us to say that this is the story we want to tell.
Helen
I tell you what, I’ve grown to really like a lot of the modern poets in a way that I did not think I would.
William Dean Ford
I was working with a guy called William Dean Ford last week on a mental health project with some poetry and he quite often uses the Haiku format, but kind of repeatedly so it is a kind of Haiku in verses if that makes sense and I’ve been really struck at poetry as a means of getting through to people. I’ve been really struck by that recently and I think that because now we’re trained like Pavlov’s dogs into snippets of information, you know social media drives snippets of information all the time, everything is short and fast and I’ve been interested in watching the poets respond to that and being so careful and so sensitive about their use of words to make best use of that space. It’s been absolutely brilliant. Now I think they have a role that wasn’t there for a long time.
Connor
Yeah that means like there is power in words. Words carry so much power and weight that sometimes people forget that. In the same way that music can have a profound effect on you as you can relate to that and you hear those lyrics and they resonate with you in a way that other things don’t. Words are some of the most powerful tools we have
Helen
Yes they are and I’ve been fascinated in recent years with dance for exactly the same reason. Jodi you used that word ‘Economy’ and inspiring people to think about things in different ways and its part of what you are trying to do. Okay, if you can’t get it that way, try it this way it’s using all the things at our fingertips to say you need to think about this. You know you can’t ignore this, it’s really important
Jodi
When it comes to dance you have to communicate. Half or a good measure of our communication comes from our bodies as well as language and words so I think dance works well as it communicates in a different way and level than language or words.
Helen
Tell us about this video, ‘Identity – Black Lives Matter’ and your role in communicating what it feels like to you as a mixed race individuals.
Connor
For me personally, I did an interesting thing. I just watched it, turned the audio off so just watched Jodi’s dance and it is a different experience. For me this is linked, we know why we made it and our exploration. But for me it’s about what it means for whoever needs it. Its subjective, some people are going to watch that and it will deeply resonate with them, at a level that other pieces might not and other people are going to be educated, and say, ‘wow, I’ve never even thought about that, it’s really interesting.’ And there might be people out there watching and thinking ‘that’s a load of crap.’ And just skip past it. And that’s fine. It’s what it is to them. We will always have our back and forth, our moment of exploring and what it means for us as two mixed race artists. We are quite open and honest about that. It is about that exploration of identity and what that means – Where do we fit it in to this movement of Black Lives Matter in this pivotal moment in society and in history. Right now we are in a unique tipping point that Black Lives Matter and black lives are being shone in a different light. People are hearing our stories and listening to our voices. On the one hand there are a lot of people who are scared by that but at the same time there are a lot of people embracing and supporting that. It’s a unique balance for me. What I would like is for people to watch the film and to spark up conversations about what an intertwined identity means on both levels.
I read a really interesting quote by Donald Glover and Michaela Corel in GQ magazine. Donald talks there of how a lot of white people are scared to have those conversations as they might see themselves reflected back on themselves and that is a scary thing, to know that you might have said the wrong thing to someone or that you might carry those prejudices and you might not like them. I think because we live in a society of counter culture and outrage, people are quick to say ‘No you’re wrong and I’m right’. It is just about opening up that conversation because I truly believe that if you walk in the shoes of another person you have a greater capacity for empathy and that all it is about. Knowing that we have our experiences but there are going to be other experiences. As I was saying to Jodi, I can never relate to what it means to be a woman because I am not a women. I don’t have menstrual cycles I don’t carry children, and there are all these other things I can’t relate to I can’t resonate but what I can do because I’ve been raised by a Queen is knowing in some way what it means to go through those issues, those adversities is be an ally and support women and females. That is all we are asking. Even if you don’t fully agree with us, even if it doesn’t resonate, you can still be an ally, you can still listen and have that greater capacity for empathy. A lot of people nowadays say they don’t see colour, but you have to see colour to see our experience and then empathise with what we are going through. You might not be able to relate to but you can empathise what we are going through. Long story short, I just want the film to open up the door to empathy for other mixed race or black people who are feeling the way we are feeling.
Helen
I was just going to say to Jodi that you are communicating in a very different way from Connor, who is using the spoken word to get his narrative across and he is doing it in a very universal, embracing way. You are using the medium of dance and film. How do you feel when you put your work out there and people can interpret it in all sorts of different ways and not just the way you necessarily want.
Jodi
I am completely fine with that ultimately. I know that there is a space for interpretation when you put anything out there no matter what form it takes whether it’s through poetry, right through art or whether it’s through dance. When I put work out there, there has been a long process before it that I have worked out whether it’s by myself or with somebody I have been collaborating with, working out what it is I want to say, what it is I think and how I think it is best to communicate and to show this through my body, through film, through whatever medium I’m using. I am very open and I put it out there for there to be conversation about how people experience what I am talking about or what I am trying to get across. Sometimes its picked up and people think that is exactly how I feel, It’s exactly what I think and this is my experience and it’s a completely shared thing. Other people go ‘Oh, I don’t quite understand what you are talking about or what you are trying to show.’ And I go ‘well okay, why? Or what is it that you did get?’ And I think that is just as interesting and just as important to me as an artist. Because either something new will come out of it that I will then learn from or I’ll go, ‘Okay, I need to work on that as an artist.’ Depending on how important it is to me that a particular message is got across. I put work out there for the conversation about in this case, Identity. And how we experience each other and have space to have openness to experiencing other people and their lives.
Connor
Going off the back of that, I learned recently, a year back, there was this Russian practitioner called Kushelov and he came up with this thing called ‘The Kushelov Effect.’ He made three short films, and he got a Russian actress and he wanted to try and grab the visuals of what it meant and show what hunger, grief and laughter felt like. He wanted to film the three emotions in their entirety. He filmed this actress looking into an empty bowl, a coffin and something else and filmed the shot. He released this film of these three stages band it just went crazy, and people went ‘OMG, the actress has really got the true meaning of grief in her eyes and the innocence in her laughter, you can just tell it’
It came out years later that he used the exact same shot on all three films. So what that meant was, its just audience subjectivity. It is subjective to the audience. They put the take on that. Going off what you said then it is quite similar. We know why we made this, and why we make our work but as soon as it goes out there, it is up to the audiences’ perceptions to be ‘Ah, you meant that, didn’t you.’ Or, ‘I didn’t quite get that,’ it’s not really resonated. It’s just subjectivity, and what it means to the audience.
Helen
And I think there is something there about taking the fear out of the conversations. We are all struggling with using the right words, the right time, the right people and the right place. It takes away the honesty and the openness sometimes. So it is really important to have those conversations. That’s how people change, how they are educated. In my view it needs to be done in the most non-confrontational way as possible so that you are embracing all those different views.
Connor
You need those. You need different views but you need also that openness to say ‘okay cool so that what you have just said is not how we’re perceived but I can educate you on the right terminology or the right way to think about it.‘ So education for me is key. I could be screaming down a void, the black hole that is Twitter and saying ‘this is how I should be feeling now’ And that’s fine. J Cole is a rapper, he released a song recently where he spoke quite openly about that won’t culture and how he is not that. I think everyone has their ways of trying to tackle musicians who deal with that. Some people are very vocal and will do all their research and they will go out there and ban drugs. Other people like me, I’m very reserved and I would rather speak to individuals and plant these little seeds and hopefully then they will grow into fruition years later. I work in these communities in that way.
For me personally it is about education and we just need to be more open and willing to be like ‘You can’t say that because that offends me, or I don’t like that’. For example using the N word. Some members of the community will use the N word other people won’t.
Kendrick Lamarr
Kendrick Lamarr had an issue where he was in Australia on a world tour and he brought a white female fan up on stage and she started rapping along to one of his songs and then obviously the N word was in the song and so she said the N word and he stopped the show. And he said ‘whoa, no, you don’t get to say that.’ But in that instance for example, it’s in your music and she was a fan and she’s just singing along. So instead of automatically saying ‘You don’t get to say that cos you are white.’ Let’s have this conversation. Why can’t she say that because she is rapping along to a song and she is a fan? They are awkward conversations and you are trying to justify as to why a section of society gets to say well ‘you get to say that, why can’t I say that word?‘ Firstly there are two iterations of that word, one with an ‘a’ and one with an ‘er’ so it depends on what connotation you are using. By having more openness, gentleness and willingness to engage in conversation. It doesn’t have to be confrontational. You can have a nice debate and you are not always going to see eye to eye and that’s fine. You don’t have to agree with everything we are saying if you can say that you can see where you are coming from, I just don’t agree. That’s also fine, it’s the small victories.
Jodi
I’m with Connor, I think education is massive, important. There just needs to be space for people to speak their mind and learn from each other. I know from myself in general in life I can be really scared about talking sometimes because I am trying to make sure that once the words have left my mouth I am not going to regret it or change my mind afterwards. I think that if you don’t understand something or you don’t know then people need to give you the space to ask. Maybe you are going to get it wrong or you may offend somebody or you are not going to offend anyone, but there be space for it to be said because once we start talking about it we can start understanding it and each other and where we are coming from. We shouldn’t be scared about getting it wrong. You can get it wrong once, maybe not twice or three times. Which is why I think my work and this piece is about wanting to open up the conversation, this is what we have been talking about for the last month and what we have been thinking about ourselves for years. This is our point of showing you guys, now what do you think. Let’s have space to do that. Because when it comes to race it is important to have the conversations and feel confident to do so.
Helen
And it is up to all of us to create the environment to have that conversation. To make that safe space so that however those conversations are being had in whatever medium they are embraced and valued. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed listening to you. You are the most remarkable people and I don’t doubt you are going to have remarkable futures. I would recommend to anybody that they follow Jodi and Connor and in particular pick up on this latest video piece because it is absolutely beautiful. Can you tell us where we can find that video what it is called and how we could contact you if we wanted to have that conversation?
Connor
The pieces are called ‘The Branches of Me.’ It can be found on Literature Wales and National Dance Company Wales Twitter. It’s also NDCWales website and on You Tube.
Jodi
It’s on Instagram. All social media platforms used by literature Wales and National Dance Company Wales.
Connor
If you want to contact me, I am on Twitter, @connor_allen92 or my website, connorallen.co.uk there is a contact form on there.
Thank you so much both of you, this is so important. Anybody who is feeling that they are not part of something…. It’s dreadful really. We all need to feel part of something. We are herd animals and to feel excluded from a conversation in any sense is not a nice feeling, thanks for your time.
Interview transcribed by Richard Evans, Get the Chance.
2020: the year when hair was long and tempers were short. With everyone squirrelled away in their homes for months on end due to a pandemic unparalleled in our lifetime, we turned to the arts for comfort and distraction – and yet, as a medium in which social distancing is almost impracticable for artists and audiences alike, they are now in a battle for survival. COVID-19 has compelled writers and performers to innovate as never before, and BBC’s Staged is proof of what can be achieved with a little Wi-Fi and a whole lot of heart.
Easily the best entry in the rapidly-emerging lockdown genre, Staged is a note-perfect ode to the quarantine blues. Here’s the pitch: Simon Evans (who plays a fictionalised version of himself, and also directs and co-writes the series with Phin Glynn) was due to stage a starry West End production of Luigi Pirandello’s absurdist classic Six Characters in Search of an Author – until COVID-19 closed the theatres. Determined to get a head start on the new season, he decides to conduct rehearsals with the cast over Zoom – but corralling the duelling egos of co-stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant (also playing exaggerated versions of themselves) proves the most difficult task of all.
Anyone who has sampled the (un)earthly delights of Good Omens, Amazon and the Beeb’s glorious adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Python-esque apocalypse yarn, will be keenly aware of the heavenly rapport between Michael Sheen and David Tennant. There, Sheen was the angelic Aziraphale to Tennant’s demonic Crowley, but in Staged the roles are reversed, with Sheen playing wicked, wolfish devil to Tennant’s sweet, beleaguered pacifist. (They’d said in the past that were they to take Good Omens to the stage, they’d swap roles every night – Staged works both an audition for the role-swapping shtick and a testament to its success). Their chemistry transcends miles, screens and technical difficulties – released on June 10th in six fifteen-minute episodes (20-minutes if you check out Netflix UK’s extended editions), Sheen and Tennant charmingly bicker over increasingly petty minutiae, like the contentious issue of whose name comes first on the poster, which ends up being one of the series’ best running gags – and that’s really saying something for a show so cleverly scripted as this). It’s an utter delight to see them reunite again so soon, and I hope this proves just the second in a slew of future Sheen-Tennant (ad)ventures.
Featuring delightful cameos by Hollywood royalty from both sides of the pond (I won’t spoil them here), and turns by Adrian Lester as a superficially zen version of himself and Nina Sosanya as the only outright fictional character (Jo, an acidic theatrical agent), Staged is a fantastically produced show, more professional than most other Lockdown TV, from Dan Gage’s superb editing to Alex Baranowski’s whimsically jazzy score, and the writing by Evans and Phin Glyn, which is so clever and performed so naturalistically you often wonder whether its scripted at all, giving it the feel of a postmodern play. Evans and Glyn marvellously drop themes and dialogue early on that pay off by the end of each episode and/or the whole series, and even seemingly throwaway gags like a David Tennant mug and a daft theatre warm-up song are resolved in hilarious and often meaningful ways. Co-starring Sheen and Tennant’s real-life partners (Anna Lundberg and Georgia Tennant respectively, the latter of whom also produces) as well as Evans’ real-life sister Lucy Eaton, Staged is a family affair in the truest sense – complete with the quarantine-specific cocktail of passive aggression, pettiness and the pangs of affection true of loved ones living together in lockdown.
You feel in a decade’s time you could look back on Staged as a time capsule of this bizarre year –it captures the essence of what lockdown was really like, not just because the cast are plagued by the mundane scourges of lockdown life – home-schooling, monotony, general malaise of the soul – but also by intercutting with footage of deserted London thoroughfares, vacant supermarket shelves, teddies in windows and tributes to the NHS. Even production lines of loo rolls and the goats who took over the empty Llandudno! Sheen, Tennant and co often start their Zoom calls by staring melancholically off-camera, and Staged captures the awkward silences, the uncanny valley, the timing that’s just a bit off, about the medium of video conferencing. ‘We just need a focus for it,’ Tennant says at one point; he’s referring to their chaotic Zoom rehearsals but that’s a 2020 sentiment if I ever heard one. Focus is one of the many things in dwindling supply during this singular year, especially in the infamously fluid temporality of lockdown living, which renders the experience of time inconsistent and patchy (days feel like years, months fly by) which the show also captures.
For all it’s comedic brilliance, Staged doesn’t shy away from sorrow. There’s a subplot between Sheen and his next-door neighbour which goes from hilariously petty to genuinely moving, and encompasses the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over us all at this time. While Tennant claims he brings ‘charm’ and Sheen claims he brings ‘gravitas’, they each excel at both – as well as capturing that sense of defenceless inertia that is common to us all right now. And Tennant gets to sum up the collective malaise of the era in a wonderfully poignant monologue: “You just stop feeling useful, don’t you? The theatres close, audiences go away, roles dry up, you’ve got nothing to offer. You’re just hoping it’ll all be alright”. The series – and the year – has walked the surprisingly fine line between rage and hope. Sheen quotes Dylan Thomas’ famous lines, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night… Rage, rage against the dying of the light’, and David worries whether things will ever go back to normal.
One of the more subtle ideas in the show arises when Sheen comments in passing that, of all the things in the real world, he misses elephants most of all. A minute or so before this, Georgia explains that elephants in David’s play symbolise memory – so, for me, this was their way of suggesting that making memories is the thing we all miss most of all. “You’ve survived this long without elephants. You’ll manage,” Georgia tells him, and the audience. We’ll manage. We’ll get through. We’ll endure. The response of certain governments could indeed be described as a ‘cachu hwch’ (I’ll leave you to look that one up), but there are more good people in this world than bad, and in a time where fighting for our rights has become more essential (and more visible) than ever before, Staged is there to remind us that we will get through this – and that we can only do so together.
Staged is currently streaming on BBC iPlayer and Netflix UK.
Get the Chance member Helen Joy, interviews Poet Marvin Thompson. In this interview Marvin discusses his background. How issues such as Black Lives Matter have impacted on his current practice and Plethu a collaboration with Literature Wales/National Dance Company Wales and Dancer Ed Myhill.
https://youtu.be/QCipiXNO8_I
Plethu / Weave: Triptych Part 1 by/gan Marvin Thompson and Ed Myhill
Please note: This video contains deliberate use of a highly offensive racial slur and images that some viewers might find distressing. These elements are relevant to the context of the artistic work which explores Wales’ relationship with the transatlantic slave trade.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Bristol based poet, Lawrence Hoo. It was a truly enlightening conversation and we discuss all things Race, Class and Education. You can find out more about his latest projects at www.lawrencehoo.com or more about the Cargo project at @cargomovement on Instagram and social media. (Becky Johnson)
Read Part 1 below to see what he had to say:
Hi Lawrence, it’s lovely to meet you, can you give our readers some background information on yourself please?
Hi, my name is Lawrence. I live in Bristol, well I’ve lived in Bristol for almost my whole life, and I’m a poet.
I was born in Birmingham and grew up in mostly marginalised communities in Bristol. I spent a lot of my youth in and out of the care system. I went to 6 secondary schools and after that, I didn’t have any form of education. I was a feral kid on the street from the age of 6 and a runaway. When I was 19, I had cancer and I went through a bad stage of my life after that. I thought that the cancer was going to kill me anyway and I went back to living on the road. And then at 30, I became a father for the first time. To be honest, it scared the living daylights out of me. But that’s about it vaguely.
I wanted to see if I could make myself a better person and make more of my life. So I went back and re-educated myself and began to teach others how to use computers. I did that for four years and got burned out. So, I started to do my poetry.
My poetry came from a place of rage and from questioning why the authorities were allowing situations to occur in these certain environments rather than in the rest of Britain. All the laws that need to protect people exist but for some reason the action isn’t being taken to enforce them.
A point of that was when my partner was picking up our young son from nursery in Saint Pauls and she was approached. We then, campaigned against paedophiles being allowed to stay in the hostel which backs onto our nursery. It came out and we succeeded to make Bristol safer.
https://youtu.be/1I83TTFHa5k
And that’s why I use poetry as a platform to try and make these changes happen.
I acknowledge that a lot of your previous work and ethos is grown around Bristol and the things that surround you there. I know that similarly to Tiger Bay in Cardiff, Bristol is going through a huge gentrification process. I was wondering on what not only your thoughts are on this but also what impact you have already seen from this?
I think is painful to see the gentrification. It goes back to those laws again., they hold all of these problems in communities.
In Saint Pauls there would be safe houses to protect those from people who have committed crimes as well as hostels for those who have committed crimes. There was drug rehabilitation centres and parole offices, but they were put next to the only place in Bristol, where you could legally sell drugs on the streets. They put the drug users next to the drug dealers, they put the people at risk from sexual crime next to those who have committed sexual crimes and they put prostitution on the streets by schools.
They took all of these issues and put them into an area which was where the African Caribbean communities are, so they often associate these problems with the African Caribbean communities. But, if we take things back to sherlock Holmes times, there were people smoking opium and he would investigate the murders of prostitutes. All these problems came along a long time before we came to Britain.
The children who are growing up in Saint Paul’s, because of the violence, lose their innocence way too young. That’s what I find heart-breaking. The way Saint Paul’s was policed (well actually I say policed but it was more so ‘contained the issues so they didn’t affect the other communities’) means the influence and protection of those other communities, is so different to what happens in Saint Paul’s.
Building prices are going up which is forcing working class people to move out of the areas which they grew up in. With Saint Paul’s it’s the council assets. The things that the working class need the most will be the first things to go. There’s no chance for people to come back into the communities they’re from. And with the services are removed, the communities become very affluent causing the communities to shift and there is nowhere for those that grew up there to live in the area.
So adding onto that, what do you think of the increase of students and the spreading of students away from Gloucester road and into Saint Paul’s? Is this bringing a positive impact, or is it doing the opposite and removing opportunities for those that are from the area?
It was always going to be a natural progression that Saint Paul’s was going to be reclaimed because of where it is located. It’s just an expansion of an affluent area but, at the same time, all it has done is push out the communities that was there before. It just benefits one community and marginalises another. It’s heart-breaking.
I’ve grown up there and lived there. It’s always been my safe spot. Regardless of all of the chaos of the city, if you’re from African Caribbean descent, it’s a safe place. It’s just devastating. Gentrification is devastating. I don’t see any positives from gentrification.
As a homeowner, gentrification has increased the value of my property. But there’s not much of my community left. I feel like a stranger. Some people say yeah but you can make money from it, but I’ve lost my home. I’ve got my house, but the community is my family. That whole family aspect of life is gone. My home is gone.
I don’t think people actually understand what it’s like to lose that familiarity, that security and that family. What it’s like when its gone.
The university of Bristol is such a huge entity in the city, and it needs to do more. I’m working with the university now, but I want to work with it to help collect the wider communities of the city and to support them. Everybody says black lives matter. But working-class people’s lives matter.
The whole city is classist.
Its problem the main issue of the city. There’s the golden circle for a mile around the city which makes a very affluent area. But one thing that’s very rare to hear in this area is a Bristolian accent. A lot of Bristolians are cast out of opportunities here. I believe it’s time for those big institutions to connect and to gather communities to raise their platforms with them. A part of Bristol is accelerating so quickly but it is leaving a huge part of Bristol behind.
https://youtu.be/mhcy03dOIX8
So your latest project, the Cargo project, has recently received National lottery funding (congratulations). Why was the Cargo project initiated and how was it developed into the current version in which it sits?
In 2007 I did a collection called HOO stories. Which was a response to the abolition to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was an opinionated set of poems that held a non-Eurocentric view. It was holding up a light to the actions of Europeans and gave a positive light to people of African descent, allowing it to be seen from an African-centric view. It pointed out people that had contributed greatly to society but who had pretty much been emitted from history.
Cargo was an extension of this. Looking at what people have been told has been done and then showing what has actually been done as well as looking at what you have actually done yourself. Cargo showed African resilience and African’s generating opportunities.
The beginning of the collection probably looks at the first 400-500 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, when people were just classed as cargo. Covering that journey and how they were put in the conditions that made them in slaves as well as the achievements of those of African descent. It starts in Bristol and then goes into the slave trade, the Hacienda revolution, H Samuel Sharp, and the uprisings and then continues with those that fought against and contributed to civilisation. An empowering narrative for what is usually, a very disempowered history.
It was done because I live in Bristol and you cannot get away from Bristol’s history. Every building you look at is made from Bath stone which came from that industry. I live in a city that’s very painful to live in.
As a young black man, I couldn’t get my head around the fact that men didn’t fight to defend their wives and children. I always thought, my people didn’t fight then but I can fight now. When I realised that they did fight and rebel, that changed for me. I thought that people were so dehumanised that they stopped seeing themselves as human and it breaks my heart. But then, you realise that they did fight and what happened to them, was crimes.
But they saw that evil, and they fought and fought and fought. I wanted my children to not grow up with the same anger that I had and that’s where the collection came from. I want to give the children of Britain the opportunity to not be me.
It started off as an installation as four different shipping containers on College Green (Bristol). The idea of using shipping containers removed the permissions needed to display this information e.g. the approval of museums and galleries. We didn’t want to have to prove that our work had value to other institutions. So that although there were permissions needed, it was a lot more flexible than the others. But because of Covid-19, the idea of putting people in a confined space walking around stopped being possible.
Covid-19 took the installation and we thought, how do we keep this moving forward? How can we make it more digital? We wanted to give people accessibility to information. So we went forwards with the Classroom project. The installation although on hold, is still in process.
The Cargo Classroom project is so important and it’s brilliant that you’ve been able to kick off something as monumental as this. What do you believe is the next step to get this information into mainstream education?
We produce a product that they feel they can’t not use, that’s the first step. Making something that people want to use and then work towards getting that into the curriculum.
This is the crazy thing, for years, we’ve been pushing and pushing but because of what’s happened in the last 6 months, people have actually come looking for us. That has been a huge change. The most important thing for us to do, is to keep focussed on what we have already been doing and to not get involved in loads of things. This is what we were doing before we got national attention. We need to make sure we deliver what we set out to deliver before we then look at what the other opportunities are.
The funny thing is, I’m so excited for what were doing. The possibilities are insane. This is the right time, we have the right product and we have the willpower to push it.
The attention will soon fall off if people aren’t prepared to put the work in. What is happening currently isn’t new, we had a global black lives matter campaign 4 years ago. And literally, outside of America, in a few weeks, it had gone.
We don’t need huge numbers as long as we keep pushing the right buttons. The group who did the protest a few months ago are still going and are making sure its not going anywhere. This young group, I believe they’re going to keep it going and make some change, for real.
Here in Wales, where Get the Chance is based, there is a campaign calling for Black history to be taught to Welsh pupils in school which has received more than 30,000 signatures within days of it being set up, educating pupils on subjects like British colonialism and slavery.
Whilst many ministers in government (both in Wales and England) acknowledge the need to shine a light on how colonisation has been glorified, why do you think the latest bill passed through parliament was rejected?
Through fear.
I think a lot of this information has been oppressed for so long that if too much of the information came out too quick, it would undermine the whole of the UK government. The whole industrial revolution was built off the back of Africans.
What is actually owed? People ask are there reparations for the past? The gains are still received today. Companies are still using Africa as a resource. They gave the countries back their independence and to the people they gave back their freedom, but it was only on the surface level that they gave it back. They didn’t give back the land or the wealth that was generated from the land. Africa is not just filled with Africans. There are huge debts to be paid.
How would the English pay off the compensation that is needed? They could give them their natural resources, and then the interest of anything earned off those resources, and then, maybe, Europe would need the aid and Africa doesn’t. The economic balance would collapse.
We need to teach people their worth, their value and what was truly stolen from them. Not only their names, identities and homes were taken but so was the ability to nourish themselves from their ancestral background.
They’re afraid to teach the history because what happened was absolutely appalling and everyone would see that. England played its part right through the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the South African apartheid in the 1990s… The 1990s.
There’s just a lot of fear. With the crimes that were committed, there’s a lot of responsibility. People think Africa contributed a lot less to society than it has because a lot of African history has been emitted. But over time the internet will allow people to get this information, which before would have been through privilege. This will add some truth to history. And European governments will have to be accountable for their actions.
In part two (coming soon) Lawrence discusses Change and what changes we need to see (and make) to make a fairer and more equal future for us all.
Created by Mark A. Altman, a producer on The Librarians and Castle, CW’s summer sci-fi series Pandora follows Jacqueline ‘Jax’ Zhou (Priscilla Quintana), a young woman who enrols in Earth’s Space Training Academy after her home is destroyed and her parents killed under suspicious circumstances. It’s 2199, and humanity is recovering from a decade of war with their extra-terrestrial neighbours, the Zatarians (who are essentially just Romulans with better hairdos). Jax must navigate new alliances, friendships and romances while training to defend the planet in an era of fragile peace and ultimately unravelling her own mysterious origins.
It’s easy to write off any fantastical school as a Hogwarts rip-off, but Pandora’s alma mater is more akin to a sexed-up Starfleet Academy (already a high bar, given Trek’s sexy track record) or even Starship Troopers: The College Years. Now, it’s nowhere near as bitingly satirical as Paul Verhoeven’s stylistically cynical space-soldier romp – and Pandora does name its space academy in the blandest way possible – but there’s a layer of interesting social commentary under the preternaturally pretty sheen of your typical CW cast. It can, at times, lapse into a kind of thematic genericity – but when it hits gold, it glitters.
Nine episodes in to its thirteen-episode first season, and I’m hooked. There’s an indefinable magic to the series that has me eagerly anticipating each weekly instalment. The hardest element of the show, according to its producers, was assembling the right actors for the roles – and in this area they have excelled. The cast really commits to the characters and the story, and the chemistry between the central ‘Scooby gang’ feels natural and genuine, in spite of the rapidity at which it developed. I was invested in the team by episode two and as the show goes on, it shifts the spotlight onto different characters to flesh them out.
The natural leader of our merry band is, of course, Priscilla Quintana as Jax, a character who feels like the descendant of Talon (Jessica Green) from TheOutpost, another CW show which has a small budget and a big heart (aka my kryptonite). Quintana is a charming lead and makes Jax feel like a fully realised, even relatable, character when she could so easily have slipped into stereotype. I love that she genuinely cares about people and risks her own safety to do what she believes is right – whilst also being sarcastic as hell. The central mystery as to who – or what – Jax truly is, or could become, drives much of the series’ intrigue; the question of whether Jax – ostensibly the titular Pandora – possesses the calamitous powers of her mythological namesake has become its most relentlessly interesting aspect.
I think the major reason her friendships with her college buddies works so well is that the cast get along and they’re all having a riot. Much of the levity stems from two characters in particular: Atria Nine (Raechelle Banno) and Greg Li (John Harlan Kim). Atria is a clone who escaped her abusive creators to join the academy. Whilst almost everyone else is kitted out in the generic grey-green garb of most science fiction, Atria looks like she’s been pulled straight out of an anime – with her purple hair and technicolour outfits, she could easily come off as parodical, but Banno’s effervescent performance and her character’s internal quest for a soul promise more interesting character beats for her to come. Pandora is also refreshingly clear and upfront about its characters’ queerness, with Atria and Jax openly attracted to people of all genders, and Jax’s relationship with ex-girlfriend Cordelia Fried (Isabelle Bonfrer) taking centre stage in episode eight.
Greg, meanwhile, is a medical student so charming you almost overlook the fact that he is given next to nothing to work with story-wise. Kim played the roguish Ezekiel Jones on TNT’s The Librarians, televisual comfort food at its fluffiest and finest, who started off as a cardboard cut-out and ended the show’s four-season run as its best and most beautifully developed character. Here, he’s a college-era Han Solo with shades of ER’s Dr Ross. It’s refreshing to see a romantic lead who is a genuinely good guy, and not a tormented bad boy with a dangerous streak. Even though ‘Greg’ may not be the most swoon-worthy name in the book, Kim’s charisma and leading man charm is a real boon to Pandora – which is why it’s a shame that he’s side-lined so early on. After a strong start which positioned him as one of the main leads alongside Jax, and a serious contender for her affections, Kim simply doesn’t appear for a good portion of season one for reasons unknown and unjustified.
Greg has two major rivals for Jax’s heart, at least in the main cast: Xander Duvall (Oliver Dench), a teaching assistant at the academy, and Ralen Maht (Ben Radcliffe), son of the Zatarian ambassador, and whose enrolment at the Academy is something of an olive branch after years of warfare between his species and humanity. I’m fairly certain that Xander is being set up as Jax’s endgame love interest, which is a shame because of her four suitors he’s the least compelling thus far. Despite being some kind of super-badass TA with a secret mission and murky past, there’s no real emotional hook to his character, and he’s written to be so buttoned-up and officious that he can’t even rely on charm, as John Harlan Kim does, to plaster over the gaps – the writers seem to have decided he’s The One and that’s the end of it. I would be pleasantly surprised if they’ve planned a more interesting trajectory for him (à la Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) but I’m not optimistic.
Ralen, on the other hand, is much more intriguing. Although he’s initially sketched in the broad strokes of Star Trek’s Lt. Comm. Data – driven by logic and intellect over outward emotion, often to humorous effect – Radcliffe rises above archetype and crafts Ralen as a sweet, sensitive and soulful person torn between loyalty to his people and his newfound human friends. His striking performance is embellished by subtly effective makeup and a great wardrobe – he looks like if Tom Holland was possessed by a demon and subsequently raised by David Bowie and Spock. Ralen’s already great on the page and on the screen but Radcliffe is the reason he’s so compelling – not only does he get to shine in fight scenes thanks to Radcliffe’s gymnastics know-how, his physicality in dialogue-driven scenes gives the character a genuine alien feel that enhances the sense of otherness between him and his Academy friends.
Rounding out the fellowship are Thomas James Ross (Martin Bobb-Semple) and Delaney Pilar (Banita Sandhu), arguably the characters with the most potential going forward. Pilar is a nannite-enhanced human whose cybernetic implants allow her to access the Datastream (basically the internet but turned up to eleven). She’s given centre stage in episode six, where she is bullied and attacked by other students jealous of her beauty and academic prowess, in a way which interestingly investigates campus culture. As Jax’s roommate, Pilar shares the most screen-time with her so far, but I’m hoping she and Atria will grow closer because of their shared territory in bio/tech fusion.
As well as being the best-dressed on the show by a mile (I think half the budget went on his jackets, and I call that money well spent), Thomas also has the strongest arc so far, thanks to a wonderfully anchored performance from Bobb-Semple and some brilliant developments in episode five, where he is reunited with his fair-weather father, Billy D. (Richard Blackwood). Billy can read minds, Thomas can read emotions – and while Billy initially comes off as a suave psychic conman, the episode explores the complexity of their relationship and the dark origins of Billy’s powers and their connection to Earth’s wartime strategy against the Zatarians. Their complex father/son is a definite highlight of the series so far, and their story was genuinely emotional.
The episode, and Thomas in general, also brings some much-needed conflict into the main gang in a show in which everyone seems to have buddied up instantaneously, when he falls out with Jax for very legitimate and understandable reasons and causes a rift amongst the ‘Super Friends’. There’s a general wariness of Ralen, as the sole Zatarian student, but this brings conflict of a passive kind. The conflict involving Thomas occurs because he is a more active character, narratively speaking – and the show would do well to write more of its characters in this way. Conflict drives the story and reveals who the characters truly are because it forces them to make challenging and difficult choices – our cast of young heroes is diverse, charming and brimming with potential, but there’s simply not enough friction between them just yet.
The gang’s most obvious Earthbound antagonists, for now, are their professors. Profs Ellison Pevney (Tommie Earl Jenkins) and Martin Schral (Vikash Bhai) are basically Lupin and Snape in all but name – Bhai’s supercilious Schral even reprimands Jax for being late in an almost beat-for-beat recreation of Alan Rickman’s introductory scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – but the most pivotal is Jax’s shady uncle Professor Donovan Osborn (a nefarious moniker if ever I’ve heard one).
Played by Noah Huntley and looking like the bewaistcoated lovechild of Peter Facinelli and Eric Bana, Osborn may be largely confined to his (rather swish) office as yet, but he’s an intimidating and perplexing presence – is he a cog in the machine or the puppet master? The existence of Osborn alone raises several points of interest, not least the seemingly non-existent separation of powers in late 22nd century Earth – Osborn is not only a professor in wartime politics and battle strategy at the Academy, he’s also a high-level operative in the Earth Intelligence Service, which is (by Huntley’s own admission), a ‘futuristic CIA’. On a more superficial note, the man should really have his own fashion line in sci-fi couture, because his outfits are to die for. If you’re a fan of how the genre tweaks familiar clothing in ways that make them more science fiction-y, Pandora is the show for you.
Although its world-building can sometimes feel derivative, and the inner lives of its characters are still being formulated, Pandora is an intriguing and compulsively enjoyable show that has much to recommend it and heaps of potential for its future. It’s another entry in the ‘small on budget, big on heart’ genre I love so dearly, and it does a lot with what it’s got, incorporating exciting fight scenes, cool missions and constructing its plots around thematic analyses of xenophobia, intolerance, climate change, and colonialism. I hope the bizarre choice to call the alliance of planets a ‘Confederacy’ is critiqued in-universe and that we see more sympathetic Zatarians than just Ralen. A second season has already been ordered, and though the first has so far been a shaken martini of potential, I’m interested to see which box Pandora opens next.
Pandora airs on Syfy Channel in the UK on Thursdays at 9pm.
Hi Mymuna great to meet you, can you give our readers some background information on yourself please?
Hi Guy thank you for this opportunity, my name is Mymuna, I’m of Somali origin and was born and bred in Cardiff, Wales. I have a huge passion for equality and diversity but most importantly equal representation for Muslim women of colour like myself. I studied Health and Social Care at undergraduate level and my Master’s in Public Health; both obtained from Cardiff Metropolitan University.
I set up The Privilege Café as soon as we got into Lockdown as I was frustrated with the lack of diversity and couldn’t express myself as a woman of colour in spaces filled with privilege.
To date, I’ve facilitated 10 sessions on Zoom covering various themes including mental health, ‘unconscious’ bias and privilege in the recruitment process. The level of engagement has been incredible and the speaker’s insight knowledge and expertise have brought nothing but positivity to all those who have attended the sessions. I’m truly greatful to everyone who has been part of this learning and growing journey with me; Diolch o galon.
The Café is an open to all, its a safe space for all to engage, learn and to use their privilege for good.
As you have mentioned you run The Privilege Café, the Café is advertised as a place to discuss all things privilege. For those who have not yet attended how would you best describe the Café and its work?
I would describe the virtual Café as a safe, open forum whereas you say we discuss privilege among other topics which to date since starting on April 20th this year have included mental health and privilege, language and linguistics, ‘unconscious’ bias and various others. I created the Café as I was frustrated with this whole ‘systems’ approach which is very formal, agenda-based and wanted the Café to be the opposite of that. Once I decide on a theme and a title for discussion, I put out a call out on social media for anyone interested to speak for a 10-15 mins or so and then open it out for open questions and discussions. Like I said it’s a very informal space so anyone is welcome to come, learn and discuss ‘difficult’ topics but most importantly how people can use their privilege for good.
To discuss specifics White Privilege is an overarching topic in every Café. Why is this such an important area of discussion in the Café?
I think the words white privilege hold a very strong and weighty meaning for so many people not just people who are non-white. White privilege is a difficult concept to take on board and is not something you can pinpoint onto one individual. The unearned privilege or superiority white skin gives people is wider and deeper than something a lot of people deem to be ‘individual finger pointing’, you know the whole ‘I’m not racist’ sentence which usually takes up the space where more meaningful conversations could be had. This is why I have the mindset that white privilege will not be tackled in one session or ten sessions, but that it is the foundation and base of all conversations had at the Café. Positive mindset change takes time and it would be disingenuous and frankly hypocritical if I expected people to come one session and then I ‘ticked off’ the white privilege element. White privilege is a deep thread embedded in society and the same goes for the café. That thread will be untied, hopefully, through various discussions, themes, conversations and questions as the café evolves.
https://youtu.be/DwIx3KQer54
The Café is a space where contributors can share real points or lived experiences that many people find difficult. The Cafe is a safe space for these conversations. As the meeting host you frequently state it’s OK to ask questions. How did you decide how to format the Café and the conversations that take place there?
Its always OK to ask a question in my view, the Privilege Café being on Zoom doesn’t make that approach any different for me. As I said above, I didn’t want to have a ‘format’ so to speak, it’s much more of a safe, open forum which naturally involves asking questions to learn and engage more. I feel that the more I reinforce that it is OK to ask a question, the less intimidated people feel and if that’s what it takes for me to help educate people then that’s what I’ll do. Learning is always a two process and open questions, for me, give that relaxed, open atmosphere which is part of the DNA of my Café.
Has this changed as the number of Café’s have increased and the number of your guests?
No this approach hasn’t changed nor has it impacted the number of guests. I guess the more guests there are as in speakers the less time to answer questions but again I try to answer as many questions as I can though the chat as well as the open forum discussions with the help of my incredible speakers. The number of panel members really does depend on the interest after I put the call out and so again this reinforces my approach for my Café to be very informal, space and open to all.
During Lockdown the murder of George Floyd and worldwide public demonstrations under the Black Live Matter movement have highlighted institutional racism, inequalities and discussion around Privilege. Do you feel The Café has a role to play in tackling some of the areas above?
Yes, I feel the Privilege Cafe does have a role to play in terms of raising awareness of the issues you raised in the question and it is the exact reason why I created the Café in the first place. I felt that these topics were always seen as ‘add-ons’ in every space I went to and they were always on the ‘menu’ until I as the only person of colour the majority of the time brought them up during discussions and so with The Privilege Café I hope these issues are on the table and open for debate, discussion and hopefully positive change.
I first became aware of your work in The Privilege Café on social media. I found the Café and format to be a revelation in terms of the conversations in which you could actively participate. You bring together a broad range of people, providing new perspectives and the opportunity to learn. There has been a great deal of discussion during the Lockdown of a rejection of the “Old Normal” and embracing the “New Normal” For me personally discovering and attending the Cafes has been one of the most positive outcomes of Lockdown. Your attendance’s can be as high as 300 people, which is staggering. It’s evident your work is hugely important, what would you like to happen next?
Thank you for your comments and an excellent question. Ideally, I would like to take the virtual Privilege Café I have created online and take it offline, in the ‘real world’. I’d love to have a ‘Centre for Women’ where the Privilege Café takes up the main holding space. I’d love the Café to have separate rooms just like it does online where each room has a different speakers or panel members tackling a different theme each week. These rooms would cover topics similar to the ones I’ve covered on zoom which include mental health and wellbeing, education and employment.
Get the Chance supports the public to access and respond to arts activity, if you were able to fund an area of the arts in Wales what would this be and why?
I would fund Somali folk dance classes as this is a huge passion of mine as a Somali-Welsh female living in Cardiff; a city with a huge Somali population, one of the oldest minority ethnic group in the UK. Somali folk dance is exciting, fun and most of all its an amazing way to keep fit and healthy; yet this is not included in the ‘arts’ in Wales and this needs to change.
During Lockdown a range of arts and third sector organisations and individuals are now working online or finding new ways to reach out to audiences. Have you seen any particularly good examples of this way of working that you would like to highlight?
I don’t think there’s a particular way to engage or work with people, it’s about your network and how you use them wisely, transparently and honestly without trying to better yourself or achieve personal goals. I think what some organisations have found difficult is that they haven’t engaged as they should have prior to Lockdown and so now adapting to the new way of working has meant that those challenges will be that much harder. Advice I would give to these organisations is to be as honest as possible and openly admit that this is not tokenistic and that they haven’t done as well as they should have but this is the long term sustainable goal we want to achieve, oh and we will pay you for your time as we value your input.
In this exclusive interview, Yaina Samuels (Founder & Director of NuHi Training Ltd a social enterprise which offers bespoke education and training workshops for people with substance misuse problems) speaks to the Director of Get the Chance about her background, the challenges presented in Lockdown. Her love of gardening and lack of black presenters in the media. Yaina also discuss where she thinks arts funding should be focused.
Hi Yaina great to meet you, can you give our readers some background information on yourself please?
A few years ago, a friend once described me as a disruptive influencer. I thought at the time it was a bad thing. Reminded me of school, my end of term reports (for lessons that I didn’t like/couldn’t get my head around) always read “Yaina is a disruptive influence in the classroom”. That was then and this is now! For me being described as a disruptive influencer is very much a good thing. I’ve decided to also add the word innovator as it aligns well with the person that I am today. I consider myself to be a ‘disruptive innovative influencer’ seen through my life experiences, the work that I do and the things that I am passionate about
During Lockdown you have been sharing updates on work in your garden. Have you always been interested in gardening?
If it wasn’t for gardening, my emotional health and wellbeing would have taken a steep nosedive during lockdown. I am the type of person that likes to be actively involved in doing something. Living alone, being in lockdown, working from home on my laptop, was driving me nuts. I had to sort my head out and fast.
My passion stemmed from my early childhood experiences of visiting extended family who were keen gardeners. As a young child I loved visiting my grandmother’s house in West Close, in the Docks. She had a long path to the front door and there were always pretty coloured flowers and plants filling the borders, they smelt wonderful to my little nostrils.
Another experience: visiting my cousins in Ely meant that I would get to see what uncle Les was growing on his garden veg plot. He spent hours in the back garden, tending his plants, tying up canes for his runner beans, and weeding the ground. When we had a Sunday roast dinner at my uncle’s house, the vegetables were always freshly pick from his garden that same morning.
From the age of nine we moved to a housing estate in Newport we were fortunate enough to be housed directly opposite miles and miles of green fields. For years I would watch the farmer from my bedroom window ploughing, planting and harvesting his crops. In my teens, to earn pocket money, I worked at a local farm at the weekend picking blackcurrants.
You use lots of recycled materials in your garden projects, where do you get them from and which are you most pleased with?
I get my recycled materials such as wood and pallets from skips by the side of the road. I can’t drive past a pallet without stopping and putting it in the car. I’m obsessed with pallets; I go to bed at night watching YouTube tutorials of creative things to make with pallets. Ideas come to me when I’m sleeping, next morning I can’t wait to get out of bed to get started.
I got into the habit of carrying my jigsaw tool with me as I quickly came to realise that pallets come in different shapes and sizes and some need cutting to fit into my small car. Friends who follow me on social media have also messaged me to offer me pallets.
You have also been growing your vegetables, which you have had to defend from garden predators! Have you managed to save any veg and made any nice meals?
Growing veggies brings forth both pain and joy. For the first few weeks I had a nice harvest of rocket lettuce, chives, mint, rosemary, parsley, garlic, and strawberries. So far, I’ve made several dishes of tabbouleh salad – main ingredients parsley and mint. I shared much of my rocket and mint with my lovely neighbours. My cucumbers, cabbage and courgettes are growing slowly but surely, as I put them in a raised bed. However, my lettuce has been totally annihilated by the invisible slugs that come and go in the night, the only evidence being their slimy silvery trail.
There are very few black gardeners in the media, what can be done to increase representation and support people into considering this as a career path or as a pastime?
My biggest passion has always been plants, gardening and nature. Up until last year I had never seen a black woman garden presenter on TV, I was a follower of Charlie Dimmock, that’s all we had. Imagine my joy when I first saw Flo Headlam on Gardeners World in 2017, about time too! Then I remember Juliet Sargeant a black garden designer winning gold at the Chelsea Flower show in 2016 for her creative expression of modern-day slavery.
Flo Headlam and Juliet Sargeant
The black gardeners that I have mentioned above are from over the bridge in England. I would love to see Wales cultivate and nurture our very own homegrown black gardeners – Wales is missing out on so much by not embracing this unique and diverse talent.
Get the Chance supports the public to access and respond to arts activity, if you were able to fund an area of the arts what would this be and why?
If I were able to fund an area of arts I would most definitely choose presenting or hosting. We need more black people presenting topical issues that relate to all. The media is a very powerful tool which is, all too often, used to spread hate and promote divisiveness in relation to black people. As a black woman born in Cardiff, with strong Sierra Leone roots, I feel hopeful that change is finally coming on a global scale. Such a shame that it took the death of George Floyd to get us to where we are now.
During Lockdown a range of arts and third sector organisations and individuals are now working online or finding new ways to reach out to audiences. Have you seen any particularly good examples of this way of working that you would like to highlight?
For me Zoom conferencing has all the components needed for running a successful activity online, engaging with people who may not normally attend such events. Also allowing people to join and just listen without having to walk into a room full of people, which to many community members, is a pretty daunting experience.
The added bonus of Zoom is the break out room facility where a large group can be broken into smaller groups for discussion. I feel that online engagement is the future. Being able to access a service or event without leaving the home will enable far more people to participate and get their voices heard in relation to issues that affect them and their communities.
The Netflix true crime mini-series Don’t F**k with Cats is not a documentary. If you expect a documentary exploring the who, what, how, and why of a crime, you will be disappointed. You will also miss what Don’t F**k with Cats is all about. The show is about the porous boundary between reality and social media. It’s about us watching videos created for social media, the reality behind the videos, and how real social media are in bringing people together to act in ‘real’ life. The weakness of the show is that director Mark Lewis is not fully aware of that.
Don’t F**k with Cats follows is a bunch of amateur sleuths investigating a killer. It is an entertaining and disturbing Miss Marple on Facebook. Gripping, fun, and shocking, but showing little awareness of what true crime is about and spoiling it all by blaming the audience for being voyeurs. The show fails to grasp the relationship between reality and cyber-reality, how social media make us actors not mere audience.
It begins when a shocking video of a young man killing a couple of kittens is posted online. Facebookers in horror, anger, and condemnation. Then Deanna Thompson, a data analyst for a casino in Las Vegas, who uses the alias of Baudi Moovan on FB forms a group to track down the killer. Baudi and a man using the alias John Green are the key investigators of the group looking for clues in the video to identify something that might lead them to the location of the killer.
The killer is a narcissist seeking attention. When the group has taken the wrong turn, he seems to throw them a bone to get them to chase him. Does the investigation encourage the killer to commit more crimes? I personally doubt that the killer, Luka Magnotta, would have stopped killing had the group stopped chasing him. People become serial killers because they get away with crime after crime, and their crimes escalate. Don’t F**k with Cats should have included an expert commenting on this, especially given the fact that the amateur sleuths ask themselves the question.
Don’t F**k with Cats is not a documentary! It is a show playing with our curiosity while at the same time wanting to expose our thirst for blood, real blood. We are the sick people watching and enjoying the crime. Filmmakers like playing innocent (see this analysis of Vice), but if they choose to lead us in a direction, they are to blame. Not to mention the fact that they do so to profit from it. Crucially, Don’t F**k with Cats does not focus on the crime. It gives us no details of it, nor does it explore the personality of the killer.
The show focuses on the investigation. It is the investigation done by ordinary people that is engrossing. Director Mark Lewis should have had a little more awareness of the structure of his own show and how it ‘reads’ to the audience, and have spared us the preaching.
Don’t F**k with Cats fails to focus on the most interesting and socially relevant element: the investigators are ordinary people. It is us. We do not experience social media passively, like a film or TV show. We are actors. We discuss, condemn, form opinions, and influence people using mainstream and non-mainstream media. We create misinformation and spread conspiracy theories. We also collect evidence, we shine a light onto police brutality, we organise protests. All on and through social media. The old saying, ‘Police don’t solve the crime, people do’ is at the basis of Don’t F**k with Cats. It is its strength. Someone should tell the director.
[This review contains spoilers for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker]
Imagine, if you will, that the ‘Scavenger Rey has royal lineage’ twist had been the plan from the beginning of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and not just The Rise of Skywalker’s tacked-on cynical move to appease sexist fanboys? If you want to know how to do that plot properly, look no further than Vagrant Queen, Syfy’s latest swashbuckling series set in a galaxy far, far away.
Co-produced with Blue Ice Pictures, Vagrant Queen is that rarest of gems: an under-the-radar show that truly deserves the spotlight. Created by Jem Garrard and based on the Vault comic book series of the same name by Magdalene Visaggio and Jason Smith, the series stars Adriyan Rae as Elida, a scavenger on a desert planet who has long been running from her secret past. Elida, aka Eldaya El-Fayer, was once the child-queen of Arriopa, a sprawling celestial empire in another galaxy (not ours), until she was deposed by a band of revolutionaries led by Commander Lazaro (Paul du Toit) who shot Elida’s mother (Bonnie Mbuli) in front of her. Over a decade after she went into hiding, news that her mother may be alive after all leads Elida to team up with the roguish Isaac (Tim Rozon) and the effervescent Amae (Alex McGregor) on a hazardous quest to learn the truth and overthrow the corrupt government that stole everything from her.
VAGRANT QUEEN — “Sunshine Express Yourself” Episode 107 — Pictured: (l-r) Adriyan Rae as Elida, Alex McGregor as Amae, TIm Rozon as Isaac — (Photo by: Riyaaz Dalvie/Vagrant Productions/SYFY)
Space train! Karaoke death battle! Spaceship murder mystery! What more could you possibly want from a show? In its DNA is the antipodean oddness of Farscape, Mad Max, and Thor: Ragnarok, coupled with a Mystery Men-style wackiness that ticked every one of my boxes. Colourful, campy and cool, it’s a delightfully zany mishmash of all your sci-fi faves – Star Wars, Killjoys, Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy – but with a tone and style that’s completely its own. Whilst a lot of low budget sci-fi restricts its setting to a single spaceship and a handful of samey locales, Vagrant Queen is filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, and takes its audience to a smorgasbord of smorgasbord of distinct, memorable and diverse locations, making it a genuine delight to see where the characters will go next. The series isn’t afraid to end a fight scene with a cheesy pun or a pop culture reference, but it’s all done with a winking self-awareness that is so refreshing in our recent glut of grimdark genre fiction. In a landscape of po-faced programming, Vagrant Queen was bright, breezy breath of fresh air that didn’t take itself too seriously. My kingdom for a bit of light entertainment!
VAGRANT QUEEN — “Pilot” Episode 101 — Pictured: Adriyan Rae as Elida — (Photo by: Marcos Cruz/Vagrant Productions/SYFY)
Showrunner Jem Garrard has assembled a multi-talented team of brilliant women both in front of and behind the camera – not only is every episode written and directed by women, Vagrant Queen’s lead character Elida is a Black queer woman who is wonderfully complex and multi-faceted: impulsive, kind, cynical, loyal, occasionally cavalier, and delightfully unafraid of punctuating a punch with a dorky pun, Elida is reluctantly heroic and compulsively likable. Adriyan Rae is utterly magnetic in the role, moving effortlessly between comedy, drama and action – by the end of the show you’ll want to go for a drink with her and take down a totalitarian government with her! Rae, a multi-talented Renaissance woman (she was a scientist before becoming an actor, singer and model) with recent credits in Atlanta and Burning Sands, is definitely one to watch.
Although Elida starts out as something of a lone wolf, she quickly assembles a motley crew in her quest comprising of Isaac Stelling (Tim Rozon) and Amae Rali (Alex McGregor). Isaac is more Jack Sparrow than Han Solo, haplessly selfish and frustratingly self-centred, but Rozon (of Wynonna Earp and Schitt’s Creek fame) manages to make the character relentlessly endearing in spite of his many transgressions. Amae is a whip-smart, endlessly kind and joyously optimistic engineer who is probably the only reason Elida and Isaac haven’t killed each other yet. I wish we’d seen more of Amae’s bartender brother Chaz (Steven John Ward), but their bond was excellently sketched even in the brief time they shared the screen. McGregor is utterly charming in the role, and it’s easy to see why she and Elida fall for each other.
To see a healthy, loving and well-written queer romance in any show is something to celebrate, especially in an era in which showrunners are more than happy to bury its gays (*cough* The 100 *cough*) or string its audience along with the promise of an LGBTQ+ love story while never intending to make it canon (looking at you, Teen Wolf). Representation in Vagrant Queen is straightforward and unfettered right out of the gate: we first meet Amae in bed with another woman, and often see her flirting with other women throughout the show. The sweet, sparkling chemistry between Rae and McGregor is right there in their first interaction, and the bond they strike up through various (mis)adventures makes for both a breathlessly swoony and emotionally healthy romance – they support each other, trust each other, listen to each other, protect each other, and truly care about each other as friends first and (potential) lovers second. Not only is this a particularly brilliant queer romance, it’s just a gorgeously written romance full stop, one which doesn’t function solely on angst for angst’s sake (*ahem* Vampire Diaries).
The show’s fun, feminist and cheekily badass vibe has shades of Lost Girl and Wynona Earp, but sometimes it goes full-on Saw – and the character responsible for most of the bloodshed is the meticulously unhinged Commander Ori Lazaro (Paul du Toit). If you were to mash together Joaquin Phoenix’s roles as Emperor Commodus and Johnny Cash with a pot of hair gel and a pair of elf ears, you’d get Commander Lazaro. Du Toit may be having the most fun of the entire cast, which is really saying something – and it’s easy to see why. Lazaro is a completely looney tune; a preening sadist with both a raging superiority streak and an inferiority complex (a dangerous combination). This is a galaxy which feels genuinely dangerous, especially for our three ramshackle heroes, and it’s largely down to du Toit’s unnervingly psychotic performance.
My only real point of contention is that I think the show is often too gory for its own good. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of gore – but it has to fit the tone of its story. The campy ultraviolence of Punisher: War Zone matched its hyperbolically brutal tone; the casual carnage in Deadpool is an essential part of its cynical metatextuality. Vagrant Queen’s not afraid to Go There™ – and that’s commendable, but its gore often feels disturbing for the sake of it – there are things that Lazaro compels lackeys and prisoners to do to themselves that will haunt me for a long time, and while it reinforced his credentials as a worthy villain, it often feels gratuitous and unnecessary given the otherwise tongue in cheek tone. At the same time, it’s commendable of the show to have the courage of its convictions and go to some truly dark places…
…Because this is a show which is 100% itself. It’s refreshingly proud of its strangeness, and its scrappy, unpolished charm is a real draw in an age of by-the-numbers blockbusters. This is a show that cares. It cares so deeply – about its characters, its story, its world, and its audience. It knows when to be goofy, when to be cool, and when to be emotional. Everyone on this show is giving it their all, from the hapless loyalists to the Republic guards (essentially Goth Stormtroopers) who all have distinct, quirky personalities. One particular standout is Thembalethu Ntuli who plays Nim, a canine-faced humanoid who steals any scene he’s in and is in too few of them. Ntuli’s performance is so good he makes you forget that the CGI on his face is little more a marginally enhanced Snapchat filter.
There is a genuine warmth and sincerity infused in every frame – and shows with a low budget and a big heart are my kryptonite. It’s clearly having a ball and wants you to join in with the fun. It’s a terrible shame that Syfy thoughtlessly cut the party short when it was only just beginning – and also a huge mistake for a channel with the least inspiring line-up of shows that don’t come close to filling the void left behind by Vagrant Queen. It could have been their new Killjoys – but instead, with Van Helsing ending and Wynonna Earp as their sole remaining draw, most of their remaining content is composed of rookie shows in their first seasons – like Vagrant Queen, which had so much potential that I can only hope another network has the guts to put their faith in.
With very few exceptions, it is unwise to judge a series on its first season alone. They need time to breathe, to experiment, to play, until they’ve settled into a tone. Cancelling a series after one season is like throwing a first draft in the bin – and Vagrant Queen, like many shows cut down before their time, got better and better with every episode. There’s a common misconception that a pilot has to hook you for a show to be worth investing in. I’ve been guilty of switching off a show mid-premiere, only to give it another try and become involved. Killjoys’ first season was shaky but promising. The Expanse’s first episode was almost unwatchable, but a mid-season turn got viewers hooked. Dark Matter had an intriguing pitch but its slow burn approach to character and plot rewarded viewers by the end of its first season. Season one is where you work out your tone; season two is where the story you want to tell truly begins. You need to give a series the time and space to find its footing and build its audience.
VAGRANT QUEEN — “Requiem For The Republic” Episode 106 — Pictured: Tim Rozon as Isaac — (Photo by: Marcos Cruz/Vagrant Productions/SYFY)
For my part, I feel that every series should be automatically locked in for a first and second season when a network green lights them – a single season is just a graveyard of missed opportunities otherwise. There seems to be an increasing aversion to investing in shows which aren’t an immediate worldwide sensation. Networks are giving hope and opportunity to creators without actually giving them a chance to build new worlds with long-lasting mileage. It seems that if a series isn’t an instant hit, it’s binned – and there’s a trend of co-productions not lasting long at Syfy (I’ve never got over them cancelling Dark Matter three seasons into a five-season plan). Haven’t networks learned from Firefly that cutting down a promising show before it’s even hit its stride is a mistake in the long run?
VAGRANT QUEEN — “Sunshine Express Yourself” Episode 107 — Pictured: Adriyan Rae as Elida — (Photo by: Marcos Cruz/Vagrant Productions/SYFY)
After The Rise of Skywalker crushed my love for Star Wars into a fine pulp, Vagrant Queen was like the fix-it fic I desperately needed. Knowingly campy, pulpy fun with fantastic costumes, striking makeup design, a goofily psychedelic tone and technicolour palette that makes it one of the most distinctive and innovative shows on TV right now, Vagrant Queen is a neon-splashed, gung-ho space adventure that has an enormous amount of fun and wants you to bring you along for the ride.
Creating opportunities for a diverse range of people to experience and respond to sport, arts, culture and live events. / Lleisiau amrywiol o Gymru yn ymateb i'r celfyddydau a digwyddiadau byw
(5 / 5)
(3 / 5)
