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OUTing the Past: performance and broadcast at LSE

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Time 18:30
Date 06/02/20
Price Free

Three different talks on how cabaret, broadcast media and theatre can be used in activism and to liberate LGBT+ people, with Rainer Schulze, Jan Bridget and Peter Scott-Presland.

Who was Suleika Aldini?

Rainer Schulze
Suleika Aldini was a cabaret artist in West Germany from the 1960s until the mid 1990s. For many years, at the height of her career, she performed at the Chez Nous cabaret bar, (West) Berlin’s oldest and best known “travesty theatre” (as they were called at the time), which celebrated the artistry of female impersonators and trans women. Her life as a cabaret artist is well documented, not least through a huge collection of personal photographs, but very little is known about her life before or after. Suleika’s life is an untold story, which documents both the unending struggles of a transgender person in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but also the joys it held for her.

The Jan Bridget video archive

Jan Bridget
The collection includes videos of news items on LGBT issues, eg section 28, forces, age of consent, etc. Jan will be talking about how she has used video in the past as part of a training package around raising awareness of and addressing homophobia. It also includes television coverage from when she co-ran the Lesbian Information Service for ten years from 1987. The video archive has recently been deposited at Ruskin College and will be available for research use.

Entertaining the Troops

Peter Scott-Presland
Peter Scott-Presland, the founder and director of Consenting Adults in Public (CAIP), the LGBT Theatre Company which flourished 1979 to 1987, covers CAIP’s early story. Avowedly part of 'the community' and therefore amateur in status it nevertheless provided the first drama workshops for LGBT people to explore identity and feeling, and put on the first play to address HIV/AIDS in this country. Based in London, it went to the Edinburgh Fringe twice and toured extensively. Mary Whitehouse commented on one of their shows 'I haven't seen it, but I'm sure I disapprove of it. An exploration of the relationship between politics and performance.

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