Vital Xposure

Vital Xposure is a disabled-led touring theatre company that promotes hidden voices with extraordinary stories to tell.

The company was founded by disabled artist and activist Julie McNamara, who led the company’s creative work and artistic vision for its first decade. From January 2021, the torch has been passed on to actor, playwright and activist, Simon Startin.

The company’s vision is for a fairer world for marginalised artists to become creative leaders, with their work celebrated in the heart of our culture.

Vital Xposure‘s inclusive disabled-led work lifts the lid on vital social issues, raising awareness and uncovering and profiling new voices in the arts.

Through the company’s productions and projects, Vital Xposure:

• creates new, innovative performances and projects relevant to and representative of our communities;
• engages audiences with previously hidden stories to broaden understanding of our society and ourselves;
• removes barriers for d/Deaf, disabled and Neurodivergent artists, to increase their skills, confidence, and visibility both nationally and internationally; and
• brings positive change, through sector leadership, creative collaborations, and intersectional practice.

Quiet Rebels

Duration: 90 minutes

Description: Powerful storytelling about white working-class women who crossed the colour line to marry men of the Windrush generation.

Extra information: Written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie and Julie McNamara.

A Dervish Productions and Vital Xposure co-production.

Forgotten stories of white working-class women who crossed the colour line to marry men of the Windrush generation. They defied race and class prejudice and social stigma directed against them and their families. A quietly rebellious generation of women who are part of the foundations of today’s multi-cultural communities.

Set in a dystopian England, Detective Shade investigates Aileen Burnett’s murder – a white woman who married a Black man. As a convicted race-traitor with four children, she had served time for ‘miscegenation’.

To solve the crime Shade travels the Multi-resistance’s Underground network to the Northern Free Zone where in facing her past, everything she thought she knew about herself and her world is challenged.

Film, movement, soundscapes with integrated creative access provide a powerful dramatisation of stories brought to life by Julie McNamara (The Knitting Circle) and Hassan Mahamdallie (The Crows Plucked Your Sinews) and a team of creative talent.

CREATIVE ACCESS:
Creative integration of access elements on stage, within the dystopian world play: the Quiet Rebels creative team is experimenting with a new approach to integrating access into the design of the production, using a vibrant, percussive soundscape and rich visual narrative that incorporates captions, British Sign Language and audio description to sew access into the fabric of the show.

CREDITS
Writers / Directors:
Hassan Mahamdallie and Julie McNamara

Cast:
Lottie Bell (Aileen Burnett / Doctor Emmett)
Joe Conteh (Michael A / Jamal)
Deni Francis (Detective Shade)
Fiona Whitelaw (Mary Khan / Tracey / Betty Grogan)
Wayne ‘Pickles’ Norman (Johnstone)
Hassan Mahamdallie (Jed Barking)
Luca Francis-Claxton (Young Shahada)

Creative team:
Simon Kenny, Designer
Gabriel Finn, Lighting Designer
Stephen Rudder, Filmmaker / Visuals
Mohammed Ali, Digital Artist
Jeanefer Jean – Charles, Movement Director
Awate Abdalla, Composer / Sound Designer
Troi Lee, Deaf Rave
Paul Burgess, Creative Captions Designer

Technical Team:
Crin Claxton, Production Manager
Matthew Green, Relighting / Technical Stage Manager
Farideh Didehvar, Stage Manager (until September 2022)
Bethany Fulcher, Stage Management Placement (from October 2022). Thanks to Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Associates:
Isobel Hawson, Consultant Producer
Pam Kehoe, PR / Marketing Consultant
Bid Mosaku, Audience Development Consultant
Ali Clarke, Audio Flyer / Show Audio Introduction Track
Daryl Jackson, BSL Consultant
Clare Edwards, BSL Interpreter
Rehan Jamil, Filmmaker / Photographer
Teresa Garratty, Filmmaker / Editor
Becky Bailey, Photographer

Partners:
A Vital Xposure and Dervish Productions co-production.

Developed and delivered with partners Soul City Arts, the Albany, Hackney Empire, Deaf Rave and Jane Morgan Associates, supported by Belgrade Theatre.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
https://vitalxposure.co.uk/productions/quiet-rebels-autumn-2022-tour/

People on road: 6

Freight: necessary

Medicine's Monstrous Daughters

Duration: 90 mins

Description: Two powerful plays, inspired by real life events, are woven together across time to expose unpalatable truths about the treatment of people deemed ‘different’ or ‘damaged’ and asks how much of our humanity do we lose in search of the cure?

Extra information: Julie McNamara’s Monstrous Daughter is a funny and haunting story, told from the perspective of Mad Mary, on the run from ‘the specimen collectors’. Hidden amongst the human specimens in an old museum, Mad Mary searches for her lost baby, and encounters Walter Riddle, sluice boy and guardian of the surgeons’ special collections in the bowels of the medical museum. They bring the grisly reality of body snatching to light and invite audiences to question our attitudes towards difference.

“…it is a brilliant provocative, political work. Recommend everyone see it.”

Deborah Coles (Inquest)

Medicine, the extraordinary debut play by Omikemi, looks at contemporary experiences of the mental health system by women of African heritage and unravels a hidden tale of unethical medical experimentation and exploitation.

The story moves between the lives of Elaine and Kem, struggling against a system that seems only to want to make them compliant and invisible and Elsie Lacks, institutionalised at the age of 10 and experimented on without her family’s consent. Elsie’s mother, Henrietta Lacks, was the source of the eternal HeLa cell line, one of the most important cell lines ever used in medical research. Those cells were taken without her permission.

Together, these plays tell some of the untold stories behind medicine’s ‘magical’ gains.

Written by Julie McNamara and Omikemi.

Directed by Penelope Freeman.

CREDITS
Cast:
Lisette Auton (Mad Mary)
Eden West (Walter Riddle)
Fatima Niemogha (Kem)
Shereener Browne (Elaine / Elsie)

Creative Team:
Penelope Freeman, Director
Julie McNamara, Writer / Assistant Director
Omikemi, Writer

Emma Tompkins, Designer
Crin Claxton, Production Manager
Theo Holloway, Sound Designer
David Abra, Lighting Designer
Teresa Garratty, Film and Photography

Technical Team:
Becky Brown, Stage Manager
Phil Glenny, Relights / Technical Stage Manager

Supported by ARC, Stockton Arts Centre and City Bridge Trust.

The show's tour in Spring 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19

FURTHER INFORMATION:
https://vitalxposure.co.uk/productions/medicines-monstrous-daughters/

People on road: 6

Freight: necessary

Vital Xposure promotes the full participation into the arts of disabled, d/Deaf and Neurodivergent individuals and people excluded from or under-represented in society and the arts.

The company produces innovative theatre performances with creative access at the heart of the work. Theatre tours are complemented with touch tours, post-show discussions, community and artists workshops.

Since 2021 Vital Xposure has been running 'Wellspring' a bespoke professional development programme for London-based disabled, d/Deaf and Neurodivergent playwrights, aiming to support and profile new, disabled-led writing in theatre.

On Quiet Rebels, co-produced with Dervish Productions:

Powerfully innovative and fiercely political, Quiet Rebels unsettles and challenges the audience to ask important questions about the world we live in. It is a stark warning and a chilling reminder of a not too distant past.

Christine Lewis, Socialist Worker.Read the full review.

Quiet Rebels provokes a much-needed conversation about the political systems that impact on us and determine the values our society aligns itself with. Indeed, the real ‘quiet rebels’ of the play’s title were women, whose love changed society throughout the chaotic political landscape of the 1960s. This demands the question: who are the rebels for today’s world?’

Colin Hambrook, Editor at Disability Arts Online. Read the full review.

This play is truly a masterpiece, how the story is written and directed was amazing. Very accessible, I was included in everything, I didn’t miss out at all via the Sign interpretation on the screen that translated what been said via the actor and then the caption on the wall it was all crystal clear. From the start to the end this was amazing and I understood everything. This is a 10/10 production and the director is at his A Game.

MC Geezer, Deaf Rave

‘An excellent piece of theatre and more than that, it’s a very tangible vehicle for social change.’

Jude Kelly CBE (former Director – Southbank) on The Butch Monologues (2014-19)

‘This is the sort of play that reminds one that often the real theatrical gems are to be found outside the remit of the West End.’ – London Economic Review **** on Disappearance of Dorothy Lawrence (2015)

‘Magnificently sung, presented with integrity and honesty. It grabs us by the heart.’

Lexie Matheson, theatre review, New Zealand on Let Me Stay (2014)

An excellent show. Beautiful, clever writing with subtle landing of the stories….harrowing at times. I am still thinking about it.’

Charlotte Jones, Independent Theatre Council, on The Knitting Circle (2011 – 2013)