Tonight was one of those rare nights when you stumble across something so special it takes your breath away (and makes you have a little weep too). As part of Black History Month, the Autumn Glories, an amateur community theatre group based in Lambeth, presented a series of self-written monologues called Grabbing A Bit Of History As We Go Along The Way. They’d hoped to perform them live, but were forced to film them over Zoom due to Covid.
The monologues were stories and oral histories, some of them funny, many of them sad, all of them poignant. There was dancing and singing, poetry, letters, photographs. And it was a joy to see women of a certain age have so much self-possession despite this being their first production as a group, having formed at the end of 2019. It felt like a true celebration of their voices.
Apparently they have another performance on the 28th, but I can’t find the details. If I do I’ll post them. Right at the end of a rather emotional Q&A, hosted by Lambeth Libraries, the company asked us to all to join them in dancing to this song. Which we did. And which is how I’m going to end this too.
Resources
Header: the Autumn Glories with Tony Cealy, photographer unknown.
