The 60th performance of Truth to Power Café took place on 3 November 2024 in Vancouver Canada, as part of The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts. It was presented live with a simultaneous live-stream broadcast across the world. Dorothy Max Prior tuned in from afar, and reports here for Total Theatre Magazine
A stage, with a minimal set: a screen, some rather lovely embroidered banners (made by the UK’s leading banner maker for the trade union movement, Ed Hall), a few stools and a mic stand, soft blue lighting. The audience settle down, and a hush descends as the lighting lowers.
A man walks onstage. He has photos and other mementoes pinned to his chic dark blue jacket. He looks out to us and speaks.
The text is not naturalistic – it has a poetic rhythm and metre, and a soft rhyming scheme:
“Don’t let go of what you know
All the bits and pieces that make up you…
And memory’s your only glue”
Then:
“To remember is to pray
Yesterday’s tomorrow is today
Reach inside your head
And resurrect the dead
Whatever made you think they’d gone away?”
Behind him, the video screen kicks in to life. We see images of Cable Street and the infamous 1936 street battle, as local East Enders fought Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. We see Harold Pinter, denouncing the warmongering United States of America. We see former Australian Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her famous misogyny speech pointing out to the sexist male conservative Leader of the Opposition that the modern woman has more pressing concerns than how best to do the ironing. And we see images from a demo, a young woman in close-up saying “I’ve waited too long for justice to be handed down”.
The man on the stage stands, strong and still, with his arm raised and fist clenched in the universal gesture of power and resistance.
The mood shifts, he lowers his arm, relaxes and smiles, and says to this west-coast Canadian audience (and those of us watching from further afield):
“Hello, how are you? I’m Jeremy, and I’ve come all the way from Australia.”
People in the audience shout “hello” back.
This is our introduction to the Truth to Power Café, Jeremy Goldstein’s long-term theatre project inspired by Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter and his inner Jewish circle – The Hackney Gang, who included Jeremy’s late father, Mick Goldstein, and poet/actor Henry Woolf.
And look: there they are on the screen! The Gang!
Jeremy co-created the show with Henry Woolf (who died just a couple of years back); with some of Henry’s poetry incorporated into the text. Mostly, that text is delivered live by Jeremy, but we have the occasional visitation from Henry onscreen. They make a great double act! The show is very ably directed by Jen Heyes, who has weaved together all the disparate elements with great skill. Part theatre, part activism, each iteration of the Truth to Power Café incorporates memoir, monologue, music, film, visual imagery, poetry and compassionate truth-telling from community participants of all ages, experiences and backgrounds. The participants are each invited to present a monologue in response to the question: Who has power over you and what would you like to say to them? So no two shows can ever be alike – the content is (in part, anyway) determined by who is participating.
Truth to Power Café is structured as a two-part piece. The first part is Jeremy’s own story: in essence, the story of his relationship with his now-dead father.
When Jeremy was researching the piece and combing through the archives of the British Library, he discovered the original typescript of Pinter’s one and only novel, The Dwarfs. The novel, which was written in the 1950s and eventually published in the 1990s, was described by Pinter’s biographer, the former Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington, as holding the key to all Pinter’s later plays. The protagonist, Len, is based on Jeremy’s father Mick Goldstein.
In one scene in the novel Len says, “I’ve never been able to look in the mirror and say, this is who I am”. This line becomes the lynchpin for Jeremy’s account of his relationship with a father who had always made him feel inadequate. With this archive discovery came a shift of perspective: here was the evidence he needed of his father’s insecurities and lack of fulfilment – which played out through the difficult relationship with his son. His father no longer held power over him: “There it was laid bare, the truth of his lived experience captured with pinpoint accuracy by his best friend, Harold Pinter.”
We learn in the show that the Gang were all born and raised within a 100 yard stretch of Clapton. We are taken to a post-war East London at a time when this self-styled Jewish avant-garde discovered artists like Samuel Beckett and Louis Buñuel; and physically fought with fascists as the Holocaust still loomed, whilst those bombs that had eviscerated Nagasaki and Hiroshima seemed as present as if it were yesterday. “Their world was infected” says Jeremy, as images play out on the screen and the words EMPIRE and POWER loom over the stage. “They had poems in their pockets, and the world up their arse.” We switch to Henry speaking: “Oh, oh, oh – there go the fascists and the cops… But we had a subterranean signal we knew we could trust. When we heard each other’s voices we were watered and fed.
At the time that the show was written, Henry was the sole survivor of The Hackney Gang. Given that he is now deceased, his presence onscreen, in dialogue with Jeremy’s live presence, adds another poignant layer to the narrative. As Jeremy says: “Our relationship with our loved ones continues after they die – the dead may be invisible but they are not absent”.
We move forward into Jeremy’s biography, as he lives through a diagnosis of HIV+ and an oppressive fear of AIDS. His father is the first person he tells, in 1999 – the response a raised eyebrow that seems to say “bound to happen sooner or later.” Jeremy is very ill, with kaposi sarcoma lesions (“the kiss of death from AIDS”); he is bankrupt; going through a divorce; unemployable for three years; on chemo, smoking meth to numb the pain. He is estranged from Mick, and “erased by my own father” contemplates suicide. In a rare moment of sobriety, he writes to his father to make peace. The letter (which he has, right here and now, in his pocket – he takes it out to show us) arrives on the day his dad dies…
But Jeremy survives it all and 25 years later, here he is! He now understands that Mick was a frustrated writer ‘dwarfed’ by his friends Henry and – especially – Harold. He couldn’t look in the mirror and say “This is who I am”. He couldn’t risk trying and failing in front of them, so he put his head down, forgot about writing, and worked clearing tables, or as a porter at Euston Station.
Now, Jeremy can finally make sense of the power his father had over him when he was alive. Now, love and empathy meet truth and reconciliation. Jeremy has made peace with his father, and he’s ready to sit down and hand the mic over to others wishing to explore their need to speak truth to power.
Normally, this second act of the show would be an exclusively live cohort of speakers, but for this special 60th edition of the show, played live and simultaneously live-streamed worldwide, we have six people here in the theatre, and two beaming in from afar.
Playing Truth to Power Café in a Jewish theatre festival at this moment in time could potentially have thrown up challenges, but these are met head-on. The two guests from afar both directly address the question of being Jewish right here and now.
Actor and theatre-maker Gina Shmukler from Johannesburg says: “Right now, I’m Jewish and it hurts.” She speaks of trying to talk about about Israel and Gaza to her young daughter. “War is not a means to peace,” she says repeatedly. She talks of the pain of seeing colleagues posting comments on social media that they seem to have no awareness might be hurtful or antisemitic. Of the fact that the pain and horror of October 7th, and the fate of the hostages, seems to have been wiped off the liberal-left agenda. That Israel has gone way beyond anything that could reasonably be described as defence; but also that Hamas has sacrificed its own people. She poses awkward questions, such as, “Why aren’t the women and children in the tunnels when there is a ground offensive taking place?”
She comes full circle, ending with: “Right now, I’m Jewish, and I’m sad and confused.”
The format of the show is that every person has the space to speak their truth to power; and there is no commentary or questioning from our host or from anyone else. Each speaker’s words are theirs to own and proclaim, unchallenged.
Also onscreen, this time from London, is acclaimed Jewish-British playwright Nick Cassenbaum, whose Revenge: After the Levoyah took the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 by storm, winning a Fringe First amongst other accolades (reviewed by Brian Lobel, here).
Nick takes us on a journey. He talks of the power of stories: a power that can hold you in its thrall. He tells us he’s from Essex; and that as a child the founding of and history of Israel didn’t feature too heavily in his life – although he does think that he knew about the Shoah (Holocaust) almost before he understood what death was. Things shifted when he went on a summer camp run by the Federation of Zionist Youth; and then the following year, a ‘rite of passage’ tour of Israel with visits to the Western Wall, and the awareness that “we are surrounded by people who don’t want us here”. Stories are central to the Jewish tradition, Nick repeats. Stories of exile and resistance. Stories that he is now ready to re-appraise. On a visit to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, he is – for the very first time – embarrassed and ashamed to be Jewish. “These stories and perceived realities had a power over me,” he says, “but now I see it all for what it is…”
Our live guests are a vibrant and diverse bunch. Emet Davis, like Jeremy, needs to address the power their father held over them. This is a tale of “love and loss”. Emet, is not the speaker’s birth name. It is a name chosen as it means truth in Hebrew. There is love and appreciation of the now-dead father, who brought “sight-unseen adoration” into Emet’s life. There was estrangement – it isn’t stated implicitly, but it would seem that Emet coming out (as trans or non-binary, we presume), and rejecting a birth identity of female, is key. After their father’s death, a necklace he gave to Emet – bearing the words ‘daughter’, a description not identified with – is handed on to their brother’s daughter.
Non-binary Kitra Jeanne grew up “not knowing that ‘I’ was possible”. They also have a father that has held power over them – “My father was petty; is petty” – and they speak of redefining and redesigning the self. “Queer Power is beautiful. Trans Power is beautiful”.
For Lisa Webster, it is her son who holds the power. An adult son. She’d like him “to grow the fuck up, move the fuck out, and get your own life”. But that is not going to happen. He has multiple needs as someone with intellectual disabilities, chronic health problems, and behavioural difficulties. And there is very little care out there in the community, with a lack of resources and support – she lives on a small island in off-shore Vancouver – so it all mostly comes down to her. “My life revolves around him,” she says. And her monologue ends with a declaration of acceptance – the power her son holds over her is the power of love.
Patricia L Morris addresses ageism in her talk. “Age magnifies the dirty secret of not mattering into a deformity”. She challenges the people who look through her, or push past her. The drunk girl in an alley who screams out, “you’re old, you’re going to dies soon, so what do you matter?” She riffs on the word ‘matter’. “I’m not matter; I want to fly” she remembers telling her brother when she was little. She wanted angel wings then, and she wants them now. Canada’s national poet Leonard Cohen said “it really doesn’t matter”. But he’s wrong, she says. “You do matter. No matter what.”
Sophie McNeilly is less concerned about being invisible than of “being afraid of being looked at”. And why? Because she wants “to be in charge of how you look at me.” By age three, she was aware that she was fat – a whole lot bigger than any of the other girls in the ballet class. She says “fascists hate fatties,” and that they look at the large body with disgust and fear. “The tiny fascist in my brain hates the shape of me,” she says. She talks of a process of “double-looking”, in which she “watches herself being watched”. But now she needs to move on: “I have to let go. I have to let you look at me.” And she stands, proudly, and we look…
Marsha Lederman takes us back to the theme of Jewish identity. “The people who have power over me are the ones who have left,” she says, telling us that she is “still defining myself as the child of Holocaust survivors”. She feels her parents’ presence constantly – sad that they didn’t live long enough to see her married and a mother; glad they didn’t witness her divorce and struggles as a single parent. “I’m worrying about dead people worrying about me,” she says, to a big laugh from the audience.
With all the stories told, truth to power addressed nine-fold, Jeremy stands and dons a crown. We can be heroes, just for one day! Henry joins him onscreen.
“You’ve got to slide between the living and the dead…
What’s that drumbeat? It’s my dad!”
Onscreen, Jeremy is sporting wings:
“My tattered wings made from the garbage of my heart.”
Now, everyone is standing. “Blow our trumpets, angels,” says the onstage Jeremy – and everyone raises their arms in unison. Amen.
Truth to Power Café has toured across the world to great acclaim, challenging outdated notions of what community-engaged theatre might look like. All aspects of the production have been created and delivered with the utmost care. By placing himself within the show, Jeremy Goldstein models one way that we can tell truth to power, addressing the person who holds the power over us, whilst simultaneously giving permission to all participants to do it their way.
A wonderful piece of contemporary activist-theatre – hard-hitting but tender. Long may the Truth to Power Café thrive and grow.
For more about London Artists Projects and the Truth to Power Café, see https://www.truthtopower.co.uk
All live show images: Chelsey Stuyt for The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts, Vancouver 2024.
Truth to Power Café was presented at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre in Vancouver, Sunday 3 November 2024, as part of the The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts. It was simultaneously live-streamed worldwide.
Created, written and performed by Jeremy Goldstein with Henry Woolf. Directed by Jen Heyes.
Read Speaking Truth to Power, Jeremy Goldstein’s account of researching and creating the show on Total Theatre Magazine, here.
Truth to Power Café Melbourne premiere 5, 6, 7 February 2025 at Theatre Works as part of Midsumma Festival.
For more about London Artists Projects and the Truth to Power Café, see https://www.truthtopower.co.uk
