The Guardian
Monday 2 May 2022 9
A
group of women are singing
along to My Favourite Things,
the old favourite from The
Sound of Music, except the
original words have been
switched with lesbian-specifi c
lyrics. “Wild geese that fl y with the moon on
their wings” becomes instead “the soft brush
of pubic hair on my chin”. This is the raucous
rehearsal for The Ministry of Lesbian Aff airs,
Iman Qureshi ’s new play about a queer choir
and the struggle for harmony within it.
The drama came about after Qureshi
saw The Inheritance , Matthew Lopez’s epic
inspired by EM Forster’s Howard s End. “I
watched an auditorium full of gay men wipe
their damp eyes and hold hands in the dark,”
she says. “That theatre is a kind of communal
healing.” She saw the
same thing at Larry
Kramer’s The Normal
Heart and felt an ache,
realising she had never
seen anything that gave
a similar space to lesbian
stories on stage: “I don’t
think queer women have been given enough
opportunities to sit in a dark room together
holding hands, acknowledging those old
wounds, and hearing their stories told.
Hearing that they matter.”
Having grown up in the Middle East,
Qureshi moved to the UK in 2003 as s ection
28 was only just coming to an end. “At school,
the worst thing you could be called was a
lesbian,” she remembers. “It was a word
loaded with disgust, and used solely to
bully. It was used in lieu of ‘freak’,
‘creep’, ‘ugly’, and ‘pervert’, and
carried the venom of them all.”
Through writing, she wanted
to counter these narratives- to see a joyful and
complex story about lesbian
identity that addressed and
attempted to get rid of that
feeling of shame. “Change
has happened so fast, it’s still
working its way into my bones.”
Her breakout play, The Funeral
Director , won the 2018 Papatango new
writing prize. The catalyst for the story,
which dealt with the relationship between
Islam and homosexuality, was a couple
who ran a funeral parlour refusing to hold
a funeral for a young gay Muslim man.
“I remember a group of funeral directors
came to see the play,” Qureshi says, “and
I was like, ‘Oh my God, if I’ve got stuff wrong,
they’ll be so cross!’” But they loved it, and
took a picture with the cast afterwards.
Since then, she has felt pressure to write
Asian and Muslim stories. “It’s not the main
thrust of this play,” she says of Ministry, “but
I hope it’s baked into it, because it’s baked
into me.”
The play does ask questions about race,
specifi cally about British attitudes towards
immigration. “I think queerness runs
through everything I write,” Qureshi says,
“but so does brownness.” She has found
the theatre industry stifl ing at times, with
limited opportunities for writers of colour.
“I remember there being this period whe n
I was going up for interviews and I’d see
the same people waiting outside,” she says.
“We’d be pitted against each other. Why isn’t
there enough space for all of us?”
The Ministry of Lesbian Aff airs is part
of Qureshi’s eff orts to address these ideas
of exclusion. It’s a play full of song and
laughter. When a new woman joins the choir ,
friendships are formed and relationships are
threatened. “I was interested in exploring
community,” Qureshi says, “but also how to
hold that together when diff erences threaten
to overwhelm it. Infi ghting goes all the way
through the LGBT community, but it’s a
community we can’t aff ord to lose.”
One aspect of confl ict she examines is
transphobia within the lesbian community.
“I hope it’s done with depth and meaning,”
she says anxiously. “I hope that if people
come in with prejudice in their hearts, they
leave with a sense that we need each
other.” Using the vehicle of the
choir, Qureshi has created a
world – one small enough to
squeeze into a single rehearsal
room – where inclusion is
championed, and harmony is
the ultimate goal.
“I’m most excited about
turning Soho theatre into
a lesbian mecca,” she says
about opening night, “for
queer women to fl ock and claim
that space.” In an area where queer
female spaces have shut down with
speed over recent years, Qureshi hopes her
new play will attract an audience fi lled with
women holding hands, sharing joyful stories
in the dark, allowing them to strip away a
little of the shame that has worked its way
into their bones.
At Soho theatre, London , 5 May-11 JuneHitting the queer notes
Iman Qureshi has written a raucous new play
about a lesbian choir. She tells Kate Wyver that
she hopes there won’t be a dry eye in the house
saying, ‘Nice pot.’ Although I think
people do fi nd it easier to have an
opinion about ceramics in a way
that they won’t about a painting
because they’re such familiar
objects. We all have ceramics at
home. Everyone uses ceramics
on a daily basis.”
She cites two prominent artists- and brilliant communicators
- who have brought ceramics to
the fore: Edmund de Waal and
Grayson Perry. “De Waal is writing
books, Grayson’s on the telly,
so you’ve got these well- known
people talking about pottery and
making it popular.” As a result ,
she says, the traditional fi ne art
galleries have started showing
more ceramics, and collectors
who wouldn’t previously have
invested are buying. Ceramics
are increasingly being sold in fi ne
art auctions, too. Odundo, whose
work has made it into this year’s
Venice Biennale , continues to keep
smashing her own record price for
a single work by a living ceramic
artist: her Angled Mixed Coloured
vessel fetched £240,000 at auction
in November 2020.
But away from lofty galleries
and six-fi gure price bombs, there’s
a sense that pottery can give us all
something more, that its earthiness
reaches the parts that other arts,
crafts and even jobs cannot reach - even if the job in question is
starring in hit Hollywood fi lms or
winning the tennis grand slam.
“Honestly,” said Rogen of his
pottery habit, “I was surprised at
how much I got from it. It forces
you to be very present.”
In a predominantly digital
world its tactility has rising appeal.
“ The physicality and sense of
accomplishment is so rewarding,”
says Holland. “When I was a
designer, I was so far removed
from the actual making of garments.
I’d work with my team in the studio
on fi tting the samples, but then
you’re just waiting for factories to
manufacture them. Whereas now
I go into the studio and a lump
of mud is all I need for a fi nished
piece.”
Back at Kingsgate Workshops,
Maryam Pasha , a “story teller”
and director of TEDxLondon and
TEDxLondonWomen , is about to
glaze a vase she made in late Owen
blue. “I like that you have to be
patient and don’t always know
what is going to happen,” she says.
“I fi nd that as you get older, you
rarely do things you’re bad at, so
it’s teaching you a bit of patience.”
In her day job, Pasha
helps scientists and experts
communicate about the climate
crisis. “It’s pretty heavy,” she says.
“Here I have three hours where I
don’t have to look at my phone.
I cannot think about anything
else – because if you come into the
studio and you’re distracted, it’s
a disaster. You have to leave all
that outside. It’s a type of active
meditation. It lets you be in your
hands rather than in your head.”
Chris Bramble and Freya Bramble-
Carter are exhibiting now at the
Queens Park Art Centre pottery
festival, Aylesbury , with a
demonstration on 14 May
I want to turn
the theatre into
a lesbian mecca
Sisterhood ...
the cast of
The Ministry
of Lesbian Aff airs;
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