oranges & elephants & afternoon tea: interview with lil warren
You don’t need me to tell you that it’s an interesting time to be a woman in the creative industries right now, but the Female Parts season at Hoxton Hall was the brainchild of Karena Johnson long before women were having their voices heard on the seedy underbelly of film, theatre and television.
With limited funding for the arts, it’s no surprise that I find writer of Female Parts season opener Oranges & Elephants, Lil Warren, at a fundraising event for the new musical directed by Susie McKenna.
Serving Afternoon Tea to the punters at a good ol’ fashion music hall cockney knees-up, Lil addresses the need for a female parts season, “I think Karena Johnson probably summed it up best [when she said] you wouldn’t notice if it was an all male season and I love the way she put that. So the fact that you have noticed that it’s all women, or that we feel we’ve had to call it a Female Parts season means we need a Female Parts season.”, though without pause, continues, “it’s also just an opportunity to work with female theatre makers who are at the top of their game and to showcase that.”
Doing a little showcasing of what’s to comes, the audience at this Victorian tea party were privy to a snippet of Oranges & Elephants from the cast themselves. A fitting opener for the season, considering where it all began.
“Oranges & Elephants came out of an idea from a project I did at Hoxton Hall about six or seven years ago.”, Lil recalls, “I found out about these gangs and the one that piqued my interest was the Forty Elephants because it was matriarchal… Oranges and Elephants tells the story of the [Forty] Elephants and the Oranges, which are a fictional gang. I’m looking at how poor women had so little choice in Victorian times and how, to have any opportunity women chose to step out of the norm and not be under the boot of a male.”
“the fact that you have noticed that it’s all women, or that we feel we’ve had to call it a Female Parts season means we need a Female Parts season.”
Though set in Victorian London, it’s not hard to come across the parallels in today’s society, which Lil poignantly discusses, “I’m saddened and very angry that we are looking full in the face Victorian levels of poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, the denigration of the poor and vulnerable. I’m enraged about it. It’s just like looking in a mirror.”
As the afternoon draws to a close, members of the audience are invited on stage to sing along to some classic music hall songs and I’ve just got one last question for Lil, what excites her about this Female Parts season at Hoxton Hall?, “It’s going to be all fabulous. I’m just so chuffed that Karena came up with this vision, she had this vision and that we’ve been invited to open it. We’re beyond chuffed.”