Focus E15: performing nuisance as a feminist narrative of property

ABSTRACT

In 2014 the Focus E15 campaign resisted the evictions of young carers in Stratford, London and in doing so, drew attention to the precarity of the UK housing crisis (2010-). The campaign’s visible occupations against urban cleansing in the area of Newham won them the right to stay put locally. Thereupon, Focus E15 mounted a musical and verbatim theatre project staging the narrative of their protest entitled, The Land of the Three Towers (2016). The production, I argue, revealed how the political and feminist voices of the campaign emerged not only as the metaphorical ‘voices’ for the mothers' self-representation but also as the material means through which they laid claim to property. More broadly, I discuss how Focus E15 challenged UK property regimes by deploying voice as a feminist strategy of resistance, showing how property rights are tethered to the performance of vocal claims. Initially, the young carer’s vocal claims were received as a nuisance but in persevering, I argue, the carers usefully politicised this nuisance as a tactic to address their displacement. Finally, I read how a feminist narrative of property, one that is reliant on female vocal nuisance, unfolded across the political campaign and in its subsequent theatrical staging.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminism
• property
• voice
• nuisance
• housing
• verbatim theatre

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Katie Beswick, Emer Mary Morris, Jen Harvie and the dwellers at the Lock Keepers Cottage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Security of tenure refers to laws that enable or disable social landlords to evict social tenants for rent arrears. Security of tenure was introduced by the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynne McCarthy

Lynne McCarthy is a Senior lecturer at the University of East London. Her research is concerned with performance and people-property relations, emphasizing how cultural work responds to the current UK housing crisis (2010-). She investigates state-led evictions through the practice-based project, Soil Depositions, dispersing soil from the Dale Farm eviction in Essex 2011. Her research has appeared in Contemporary Theatre Review’s ‘Interventions’ and in Research in Drama Education. She is also a member of the feminist performance collective, Speaking of IMELDA, who have campaigned since 2013 for a national referendum on reproductive justice in Ireland.