By Nicolle Freni
Exploring My Lesbian Feminist Creativity
In late 1978, after I learned I had cancer and underwent hard hitting but eventually successful treatment, Tierl Thompson and I decided we could no longer sustain our business running WRPM (Women’s Revolutions Per Minute) record company. Thankfully the dynamic Caroline Hutton took it on and ran it successfully for many years. During my own brush with death, I was visiting Holloway Prison daily to see my ex, Nandita, as I was worried for her mental health and safety. Fortuitously, I met someone who worked in the prison education department. She eventually led me to her other workplace, Spare Rib Magazine. Eventually Tierl and I contributed our story of getting through my illness to the magazine. Through these contacts, I met a small collective of women, who were part of Sheba Feminist Publishers. I contributed to a Sheba book, Turning the Tables (a feminist cookbook) and enjoyed meeting Araba, Rae Ann, Michelle, and others who worked there, plus women connected to Sheba, including the powerful writer, Jackie Kay.
This was a golden age for feminist and lesbian feminist arts in London. Besides theatre and music there was Sisterwrite Bookshop & Sisterbite Café (https://grokipedia.com/page/sisterwrite) in Islington, where my poet friend Kay Stirling worked, and where feminist and lesbian activists met to navigate our tricky relationships; and to decide who was holding the banner on our marches! My dear friend Taylor Love-Taylor (with Alison Reid) brandished the flag for us in Camden at the famous alternative/left bookstore Compendium, where they stocked WRPM Records. (Around then, Tierl went on to join the Women’s Theatre Group and co-write a play, Dear Girl, and later a book by that name for the Women’s Press.
Inspired by lesbian and feminist theatre, after my recovery from cancer at the beginning of the 1980s, I returned to Essex University to study Theatre for an MA, and immediately after in 1983 found a job at South London’s Lewisham College where I started a Drama Foundation Course, and did some of the most important work of my life. Theatre became a tool to empower working class, diverse (and sometimes gay!) kids to discuss their own issues and interact with the issues of the day, from Greenham Common (we improvised a play on it), to apartheid in South Africa. We put on a play, Dream for Liberation for Archbishop Desmond Tutu when he came to Lewisham and met us all as part of getting the Freedom of the Borough Ceremony. The play was also on at Goldsmiths, whose Drama Department we often co-worked with. Tierl Thompson joined me in directing and improvising many dozens of plays together for 10 years.
Nicolle & Kate
Some of our plays were put on at Oval House Theatre in South London at Kennington Oval, where Artistic Director, Kate Crutchley was inspired by and inspired us to achieve our best work with the young people we taught, who honestly, taught us! Kate’s support included taking on the odd teaching unit for us as she had so much experience to impart to the kids. We spent approximately one month at Oval House’s Upstairs Theatre every year with our plays in repertory. We helped the students devise their final year shows and often co-wrote them. Kate’s guidance led to me putting on my own plays; the main one was Brooklyn, E5 from 1983/84 which explored identity and lesbian relationships. My then partner, Judy Waldman, cast it with me and we produced it, using our grants from the GLC, ILEA and others (and quite a lot of our own money!). During that time, I got to know and work with the extremely talented Eve Polycarpou (part of Donna and Kebab in the old days, then known as Martha and Eve). Eve shone in in Brooklyn, E5 which played to packed houses at the main stage of Oval House Theatre and then toured in London including the London Lesbian and Gay Centre (yes, it did exist!) and to pub theatres like the Duke of Wellington. These were heady days.
(A few words here about relationships: When Judy and I were together, like many other women at that time, we experimented with polygamy – polyamorous relationships they call it nowadays. Non-monogamy was exciting, exhilarating and absolute hell! The conversations and energy spent on it alone was massive in the women’s movement, as we tried to love differently, not ‘own’ each another, and give each other freedom. After all, ‘the personal is political’ was our catchphrase, and nothing is more personal than who and how we love! We endlessly discussed the permutations. Judy and I got back together and then, finally, apart, after yet another of these forays, mine, I’m sorry to admit. Thankfully, we remain close friends today.)
Later on, I worked with Eve at the BBC on a pilot lesbian and gay radio show with the excellent Maria Esposito at the helm. So What If I Am, was a series of comedy vignettes/sketches that played to the most packed house the BBC Radio Theatre had ever had to that date! Sadly, the show was axed by a sexist/homophobic manager.
Another play I wrote, ‘L’Chaim (To Life! – a toast) was about the Holocaust and was inspired by a Jewish student I worked closely with. We improvised a short version of it together, interviewing the amazing and eloquent Holocaust survivor, then in her 80s, Helen Aronson, who had worked in schools, telling pupils about her experiences in WWII. In this work I was supported by my dear friend, Rabbi Sheila Shulman who started Beit Klal Synagogue. (Sheila died in 2014, age 78.) By then, theatre was increasingly at the centre of my life.
Me with dear friend Rabbi Sheila Shulman, and to right author Maureen Brady
In the early to late 90s, I went on to work at two other colleges – City and Islington College in as Head of Theatre and later all of the Arts in Islington, and then the same role at the much smaller Working Men’s College for Men and Women in Camden. Those times were extremely busy as I had taken on mainly managerial roles – largely because I couldn’t get theatre/the arts to flourish amidst so many cuts without fighting our corner by taking the seat of control on college management committees. Nevertheless, the infighting in those committees, and the physical fighting at the college, forced me to retire in 2000.
At that point I wanted to think about my own writing, and music. Through Martha Lewis’ invaluable help, I recorded a protest song I wrote in her studio, assisted by Martha’s remarkable drumming and Fran Rogerson’s exceptional, sensitive fiddle. It was an emotionally driven song about gun control in America, because of an incident near my sister’s home; the song is called ‘Blacksburg, Virginia’. We made hundreds of CDs and it’s still available on Amazon Music. But my lack of success in getting the CD played in America was likely what propelled me back into writing – this time my first novel, set in New York.
I had heard of Faber, the publishers, and how they ran courses for aspiring fiction writers but never dreamed of being anywhere near good enough to get on one. Encouraged by my now long-term partner Lesley, I applied to their advanced course, ‘Edit Your Novel’. To my astonishment, I got in! I learned an enormous amount on the course, so much so that I launched into a second novel, which I considered even more relevant to me and who I am now. These developments have brought me up to the current date. My journey to women’s, lesbian, and gay liberation may have started off as far from Brooklyn as the moon, but the gap has been closed. My route had lots of kicks, both inspiring and hellraising. From where I am now, at work on my second novel, writing at home in Norfolk and occasionally in London, I feel utterly privileged to have travelled with the amazing women (and a few men) I’ve met and still see. The stars in my heavens includes those lovely, still-with-me women who have passed. Those met and loved on the journey are never forgotten.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who sustain me now: My always loving American family; my remarkable partner Lesley by my side in health and all struggles; my decades long feminist friends – Tierl, Ev, Judy, Claire, Cheryl, and my other darling friends from London, New York, Norfolk etc (who know who they are!). Lastly, the three godchildren I adore: my smart funny niece Danielle, amazingly creative writer and illustrator Ruby, kind, astute, emotionally-intelligent Josh, make me feel truly blessed. Lastly, my thanks to a higher being I know little about, but who graciously sustains me daily.
See Part I: Growing Up a Working-Class Young, Gay, Woman in Brooklyn