Giving Voice, St Pancras Church Performance

Giving Voice is part of the Bloomsbury Festival that runs from Friday 15 to Sunday 24 October in a variety of venues

Giving Voice is a unique promenade performance that combines dance, acting and the spoken voice to tell the stories of some of the London women whose voices are not normally heard.

During lockdown Pascal Theatre Company interviewed some 30 London women with the aim of recording the lives and experiences of the marginalised. Their stories were then edited, recorded by professional actors and posted online.

Among them are the Chinese domestic violence victim who dare not leave her husband, because she would lose her child; the Roma woman who is abused in the street simply because of her ethnic origin; and the African asylum seeker who can hardly bear to describe to torture she was subjected to in her own country. And so many more...

When lockdown was lifted and live performance once again became possible, Pascal Theatre Company joined forces with London Contemporary Dance School (LDCS) at The Place (just next door to St Pancras Church, the host venue for Giving Voice) to create a series of bite-sized dances that would carry and interpret these women's hidden stories.

Actor and singer Amanda Maud will act as an MC, leading the student-dancers and audiences in their promenade around the various areas of the church to see a series of dance vignettes. All the music is live and sung by Amanda Maud and the performers.

As Julia Pascal, founder and director of the Pascal Theatre Company, told Culture Whisper, by taking part in this community project LCDS students are learning extra skills which are not part of their school curriculum, such as voice projection. Herself a trained actor, Pascal worked with the students to help them find their voices. As they were themselves devising the choreography for this performance, she was keen to enlarge the scope of their choreographic language. As she told us: 'We are helping dance students to learn dance-theatre techniques which include vaudeville, music hall and folk as well as choral speaking and singing.'

So, we end up with a show that is, in Julia Pascal's own words, 'a mixture of comedy, grotesquerie, earthiness, satire and fun.'

Giving Voice is performed in 20-minute chunks between 3pm and 5pm and makes for an ideal family outing. Attendance is free but you must book. For details and to book click here.