The following are photos, praise and review excerpts for my work.
I have worked as dramaturg, writer, lead artist and creative producer on multiple shows. My awards include Oliver Award Winner, Best Ensemble, 2019 for Noye’s Fludde
The shows featured below represent milestones in my creative practice, each one moving it forward in terms of form and ambition. Given the opportunity to do so, I will continue this forward motion and create an excellent, high quality and ethical community-focused show for a diverse audience.
“This,” I want to shout, “this is why theatre matters.” Catherine Love
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Community
first trimester, 2023, Battersea arts centre & Touring
Community Dramaturg, Lily Einhorn
First Trimester was a show conceived, written and performed by performance artist Krishna Istha. I worked to ensure that the artistry and questioning was an aesthetic and ethical match with the way we were working with the communities we invite on stage.
It was a show about Queerness and family, community and support, about how to make a baby when you are trans. It was a durational show in which he interviewed 130 participants, each for ten minutes, in a quest to find the perfect sperm donor. I felt incredibly honoured to have played a small part in this show, in making visible this ordinary / extraordinary experience, becoming part of Krishna and Logan’s village, and demonstrating to the world what family really means. I worked with the team to ensure that we were reaching out to a diversity of people, and, more importantly, that we were caring for them in the right ways, and that that care became legible on stage for the audience. The show had a huge creative team, everyone holding the space for each other simultaneously.
Logan Rea, Krishna’s partner, made a short documentary about their experience, which you can see here: http://tinyurl.com/SpermDonorsWanted
Critical Response:
‘They’re addictive, these brief swigs of characterisation and intimacy. Everyone has a surprise or two in them, as they compare Istha’s undertaking with their own family backgrounds, or expectations – examined or not – for their own futures.’ Frey Kwa Hawking, WhatsOnStage
ways of listening, complicité, 2021
Creative Producer and Lead Artist - Lily Einhorn
Other Lead Artists: Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, Paula Varjack. Collaborating Artists: Zahia Ait Assia, Sensabyl Beghdadi, Sabrina Boukhorssa, Nora Boukraa, Younes Djouani, Nadjib Lamraoui, Amine Medbouhi, Younes Merabet, Sihem Salhi.. Digital Stage Manager: Anya Tye
How We Listened by Lily Einhorn (published Complicité Newsletter 2021
‘Meeting people on zoom has become the norm: click, join, mute, smile, wait. The new rhythm of human interaction. So when something happens to disrupt this rhythm, the result is wholly, bodily, pleasurable.
Ways of Listening was a project which did just that. It united two lead UK artists, nine Algerian artists, one digital SM, and myself as creative producer in a cross cultural/borders/digital spheres creative collaboration. Over two weeks in December 2021 explored how we create together at a distance. We didn’t know where the journey would take us, only a rough idea of the direction of travel. We wanted to disrupt the rhythm. In our happy few we had Arabic, French, Colloquial Arabic and English. We enabled simultaneous translation on Zoom, and sat, staring at audio channels. This technology is wonderful. It lowers the sound on the language you don’t want to hear and allows you to listen in to the translation only. It’s fast and efficient.
And of course it didn’t work for us. Connecting with people is not about efficiency, but understanding. Our project was about listening, and we needed to do that with our whole bodies: to listen to the intake of breath before words tumble out, to tone and pace and hesitation. It matters to hear and be heard. So we worked ‘in the room’ together, using interpreters in a way that was messier, slower, but richer. We used other technologies. We created stories over WhatsApp, Gather and Cosy Room, Facebook and instagram: deliberately low-tech, free, and importantly working in Northern Africa where our collaborators were struggling with digital inequalities in stark contrast to the UK’s abundance - for those not in digital poverty - of fast internet access.
The final sharing allowed an invited audience into some work that without this digital technology they would not have been privy to. It was work in progress that had not had a chance to be rigorously critiqued, but it showed the start of a new way of working, possibilities, and connections for all of the artists involved. It disrupted the rhythm.
Producer and community producer: Lily Einhorn.
Directed by Lyndsey Turner, Conducted by Martin Fitzpatrick, Designed by Soutra Gilmour, Chorography by Wayne McGregor. Olivier award winner, Outstanding Achievement in Opera for the Children’s Ensemble, 2020. I was asked to come on board and take over producing this show in December 2018. I needed to impose a swift and decisive creative strategy for the recruitment and management of the 300 community participants, and design a process whereby the musical direction, direction, design and community care could be cohesive and collaborative.
Participant Feedback:
‘Being involved in this production, even in such a small way, reawakened my passion for theatre, which had always been a big part of my life, and brought me back to myself’
Critical feedback:
Erica Jeal, The Guardian, 7 July 2019 ‘The production strikes a balance between homespun and sophisticated, serious and light, ritual and performance.’
Oliver Award Winner, Outstanding Achievement in Opera: Children’s Ensemble
Noye’s Fludde, 2019, Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Commissioner, producer and dramaturg: Lily Einhorn.
Directed by Rachel Lincoln, Written by Eve Leigh, Designed by Alison Neighbour. Made with adults with aphasia, using form and design to enhance and support them creatively. Ladders were used to climb but also as supports to hold onto, text was projected onto the water and audio was recorded and laid over movement.
Participant feedback:
‘My mother has been locked in since she had her stroke, I never thought I would see her being herself again. Now I have seen her being more than herself.’
Audience feedback:
‘What a beautiful play. The light, the water, the sound, the movement, I’m blown away. Everyone should see this work.’
The Curtain, 2016, Young Vic.
Commissioner, producer and dramaturg: Lily Einhorn.
Directed by Laura Keefe, Movement Directed by Coral Messam, Designed by Fly Davies, Lyricist: Francesca Beard. Made with female carers living on a carer’s allowance of £67.25 per week. This show marked a turning point in the Young Vic’s commitment to making public facing community work, and was re-staged in 2016 at the invitation of David Lan and the board for the fundraising gala which raised £75K
Participant feedback:
‘Words just cannot express my gratitude to you all for giving me such a wonderful experience to voice my story/experience as a carer. The show has given me a sense of self-worth and value to my life as a carer.’
Audience feedback:
‘I can honestly say this is one of the most breathtaking shows I have ever seen. I was left stunned afterwards, sitting in my seat unable to move. So beautiful and so meaningful. Please congratulate all the women involved.’
Critical feedback:
Catherine Love writing on the show May 7th 2015 (here):
“We have not given anyone a voice,” insists the short programme note, “we have simply allowed those voices to be heard.” And that’s the sense you get from the piece, which is filled with this wonderful, poignant, ecstatic cacophony of voices. It’s also properly beautiful – all glitter and soft coloured light and flowing, joyful movement. At one captivating point, bodies shoal and move as one mesmerising mass under a low amber glow; at another, a swing becomes a simple symbol of freedom and play.
It’s difficult too. “I’m choking on my own heart,” says one woman – a line that sticks in my own throat. Often, the struggle of just navigating daily routine is painfully felt, as is the indignity of being swept aside by government and society alike. What’s also felt in the room, though, is the sheer joy of this space of creation and escape, a space that feels increasingly under threat. “This,” I want to shout, “this is why theatre matters.”
Turning a Little Further, 2015, Young Vic.
flashes, 2013, Young Vic.
Commissioner, producer and dramaturg: Lily Einhorn
Directed by Amelia Sears, Written by Silva Sermicyan, Designed by Alex Eales. Intergenerational multi-lingual community show. This was the first show at the Young Vic to use adults in a capacity other than community chorus and to work with a specially commissioned writer. It set the model for future Taking Part work that is still used.
Participant Feedback:
‘I never thought of myself as creative. You showed me how wrong I was. This will be a memory I treasure forever.’
Audience feedback:
I can’t believe these people are not trained actors! It was like seeing our community on stage.’
many voices, 2010, arts depot (attic theatre for refugee week)
Lead artist and writer: Lily Einhorn
Commissioned and produced by Attic Theatre in association with Paiwand Afghan Refugee Association
Co-directed by Lily Einhorn and Mel Hillyard. Once a week for 8 months we worked with a girls group at Paiwand Saturday school in Brent, in North London, working on theatre skills, creativity and writing. With the girls I developed a script showcasing their hopes and dreams for the future, which they performed at ArtsDepot during Refugee Week.
Getting parental permission for these girls, all who wore Hijabs and came from culturally different backgrounds to the one they found themselves living in, was difficult, but in the end we managed to have all but one on the stage, speaking to the audience abut who they were, what they wanted, and what they saw for their futures.
Partner Feedback:
‘‘They {the participants} have gained in confidence, they walk taller.’’
Audience feedback:
‘The audiences enjoyed some great “Simple Acts” by some fantastic young people from a wide range of backgrounds…’ Nazee Akbari, Director, Barnet Refugee Service
