3 Excellent Plays from the Housemates Festival

This summer, Brixton House Theatre’s Housemates Festival returns from July 4 to 23, 2023. Artists will take over Brixton Theatre in London for three weeks. The festival aims to showcase new voices and champion untold stories. Eleven artists from the Brixton community theatre group will experiment, play, and develop work across various art forms.

Expect stories shaped by 1990s culture and the turn of the millennium. Themes include youth crime and rehabilitation, the Black joy of growing up in South London, radical activism, family love, and modern survival.

Em Thane, Megs Kumari, and Toni Roberts explore family dynamics in “Same, Same, But Different.” This piece invites audiences to consider queerness, identity, and stereotypes in family relationships. It examines how family conflicts affect a couple’s survival.

Marisol Spensieri’s “USELESS” uses movement and poetry to critique society’s obsession with productivity. This non-traditional theatre experience will amuse, intrigue, surprise, and sometimes irritate. Ultimately, it will beguile the audience, who become part of the performance. It reflects on work in advanced capitalism, the power of social media, and how people respond to conformity pressure.

Three plays explore the world of South London’s gal-dem (group of girls) and man-dem (group of boys). Tobi King Bakare’s “Before I Go” dives into the inner voice of a man-dem member traveling from the living world to limbo, with live music, verse, and prose. DK Fashola’s “Is Dat U Yh?” follows the gal-dem on a nostalgic journey celebrating love, culture, and friendship. Toby Clarke’s “REP” examines the experiences of nine young offenders from different London boroughs.

For more information on Brixton House Theatre, including Brixton Theatre opening hours, visit their official website.