By Matti Colley
On Wednesday 5th August, Oldham Positive Action Network (OPAN) and Oldham working class theatre company Dare To Know came together to put on a day of community, culture and creativity titled “I AM OLDHAM” part of the second year of the Dare To Create Festival.
Myself and WonderGround Lincoln Festival founder Georgia Preece travelled up from Lincoln to cheer on our friends from OPAN and to find out more about what makes Oldham the vibrant town that it is today.
One of the events of the “I AM OLDHAM” day was a theatre performance of a play called “Dead In Oldham” by members of Dare To Know’s Community Project and OPAN. “Dead In Oldham” originates from local award-winning Oldham playwright Cathy Crabb and the script has been added to and changed over the years to reflect the stories of the people who she has worked with.
The current script has been informed by the intentional sharing of authentic local stories and is performed by members of Dare To Know’s Community Project, as well as OPAN Lived Experience Advisors. During the creative process, they asked and answered questions including “how do you create the feeling and vibe of a real community when it is logistically impossible to represent everyone on stage?”
“Dead In Oldham” starts with two people sharing their love of local storytelling – one person writes fairy tales with characters based on people they have met in day-to-day life and the other person focuses on “whodunnits” – complex, plot driven types of detective story focussed on uncovering a crime of some description. They aren’t sure what they make of each other’s storytelling efforts to begin with but they are willing to hear each other out and explore potential for collaborating with each other.
During the course of an hour, the audience gets introduced to a diverse range of Oldhammers including:
- A young father who breaks up with his partner because of her overspending
- A security guard who has become cynical about his job
- An older Muslim woman who takes her campaign for women lifeguards to be on duty when she is swimming in her local pool to Oldham Council after being mocked by the manager of the leisure centre
- A jobseeker who feels that the benefits/welfare system lacks empathy and doesn’t do enough to help vulnerable Oldhammers in need
- An Oldham Athletic fan (Latic) who enjoys being in crowds and showing off his love for his favourite club with bravado
These characters intersect in a variety of scenes, imagined to represent the positive intersectionality of community interactions, as well as highlighting some of the existing tensions that exist within the town as a result of cultural and religious differences.
What really struck me was:
- How the positive, warm, welcoming community spirit found waiting in a foodbank queue contrasted sharply with the impatient urgency and tension of waiting in a Job Centre queue and how I felt those feelings viscerally as an audience member
- How easy it can be for words and phrases to be miscommunicated and then not clarified for fear of being seen “to be wrong” which then impacts on our ability to maintain community relationships
- The bravery it can take to be the first one that stands up for oneself and others in a space to challenge long-standing mental models and behaviours, especially if that leads to potential financial hardship and social isolation
- How one conversation can help someone to begin the process of making the changes they need to feel more empowered in their life and the cumulative effect that can have with that person getting involved in community actions and projects that strengthen community cohesion and spirit.
“Dead in Oldham” represents the messiness that comes with building and maintaining community relationships and friendships with each other. There’s a recognition of how challenging it can be to build trust in some spaces and how easy it can be in others. But there was a general thread throughout the whole play of how proud the characters (and the actors) are to be from the borough of Oldham, from North Chad (Chadderton) through to Saddleworth North. There was a clear intention to resist playing into class-based stereotypes that might have surfaced otherwise during the crafting of the script.
There is also a sense for me of imagining as a form of empowerment, which reminded of the 1967 essay “Death of an Author” by French Literary Critic Roland Barthes, which you can read here:
Barthes argued that a text or script should not be restricted by the author’s intensions or personal biography.
The storytellers in “Dead in Oldham” held the narrative together and yet they themselves are not concrete figures -i.e. real life people. The audience doesn’t find out much about their background but then there is no need for them to know the storytellers’ background stories to create meaning from the performance. It comes from the viewing the performance for ourselves and finding meaning from it.
The play isn’t scripted to tell audience members how to feel about Oldham – it is an invitation encouraging people to think more deeply about place, community cohesion and celebrating common humanity. And that can empower and liberate and inspire people to action.
If there’s one action I’m taking away from seeing “Dead In Oldham”, it is to recognise that culture constantly transmits through everyday life and helps us to come together under the surface as well as in the open and that the arbitrary labels to determine “what matters”, matters much less. Challenging perfectionist models of producing culture helps us to tap in to what matters to us and brings us together.
Thank You To Dare To Know and OPAN for sharing this wonderful performance of “Dead In Oldham” with myself and Georgia and people from all across Oldham. I can’t wait to see what next year’s performance brings!