OBSERVER: Truth of Power Café
Pictured: Truth To Power Cafe
Photo: Kate Holmes
Jeremy Goldstein and Theatre Works present Truth to Power Café from February 5 – 6 at Theatre Works, 14 Acland St , St Kilda.
Created, written and performed by Jeremy Goldstein with Henry Woolf, directed by Jen Heyes, and described as ‘a profound theatrical reflection on loss, hope, and resistance’, Truth to Power Café will celebrate its Midsumma Festival premiere with revolutionary expressions of Queer Power in response to the question at the heart of the show ‘who has power over you and what do you want to say to them?’
Participants will voice radical stories of eroticism, criminal justice, addiction, identity, grief, religion, disability, patriarchy, the body, unrequited love, survival, bullying and coming out in a unique and timely theatrical celebration of time, place and community.
Wednesday, February 5
• Mama Alto – jazz singer, cabaret artiste, and gender transcendent diva
• Jax Brown – disability and LGBTQIA+ rights activist, writer, and educator
• Tara Burnett – public school teacher, unionist, renter and Green candidate for the Victorian seat of Cooper at this year’s federal election. If Tara wins, she will become the first trans-MP in any Parliament in Australia.
• Brenton Geyer – LGBTIQ+ community leader, HIV+ advocate, and former Chair and life member of the Midsumma Festival.
• Andy Porter – writer, filmmaker and student
• Leisa Prowd – dancer, performance artist, and life model
• Tiger Salmon – founder of Wicked Woman, Australia’s first erotic zine for lesbians and trans folk
Thursday, February 6
• Maria Bololia – pioneering Greek Australian lesbian activist
• Maude Davey – Melbourne Fringe Living Legend Award Winner 2022
• Chelle Destefano – award-winning multi-disciplinary Deaf woman artist
• Jack Gow – journalist ABCQueer
• Michael Olsen – award-winning playwright
• Sasja Sÿdek- co-founder of Trans Sister United and Queer Muslim Naarm
Speaking truth to power is described as ‘a non-violent means of conflict resolution, the origins of which lie in the anti-war movement. In our era of post-truth and fake news, speaking truth to power is widely accepted to mean saying something to those in a position of trust or authority who don’t want to hear it.’
Truth to Power Café, already performed 60 times in eight countries with 800 participants, has travelled the world, playing leading theatres and festivals in England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Croatia and Australia before live and online audiences of over half a million people.
In the past twelve months the show had its US premiere at Lincoln Center New York, Canadian premiere at the world-famous Chutzpah! Festival Vancouver, and won an Adelaide Fringe Award for Best Theatre for performances in Kimba, a remote rural farming community in the Eyre Peninsula.
Truth to Power Café creator Jeremy Goldstein says: “The show is a love letter to humanity and to the memory of my father Mick Goldstein and his friends of 60 years, Henry Woolf and Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter and his innercircle – The Hackney Gang. For 60 years the Gang held firm in their political and philosophical beliefs of an independent media and speaking truth to power.”
Midsumma Festival. February 5- 6. Theatre Works, 14 Acland Street St. Kilda
Bookings: theatreworks.org.au/ or midsumma.org.au
Cheryl Threadgold