Greg Homann

This powerful verbatim-based theatre production connects the lives of gay men from two diverse cities across the hemisphere – Birmingham, UK and Johannesburg, South Africa. The work draws on 50 hours of interviews with 28 participants to create a compelling and often playful new work that captures the energy, resilience, and complexity of what it is like as a gay man living in and around an urban centre today. The production integrates the verbatim text with video and original music by Birmingham-based composer, Oliver Farrow. A cast of six actor-musicians tell the wide-ranging stories shared across the two cities.

MAC (Midlands Arts Centre)

Presented as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival.

Director & Project Creator – Greg Homann
Assistant Director – Frazer Meakin
Composer – Oliver Farrow
Designer – María Sánchez
Accent Coach (Johannesburg) – Louise Saint-Claire
Videographer – Steven Gill
Sound Recording (Johannesburg) – Morena Medi (courtesy of CMProductions)

CAST

Neville Cann
Clint Lesch
James Blake-Butler
Taoana Tsiki
Sam Butters
Benjamin Armstrong

In Our Skin was developed under commission from Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), with some additional R&D support from SHOUT, The Market Theatre Lab and GALA Queer Archive in Johannesburg. Special thanks to players of People’s Postcode Lottery for their generous financial support. 

EXPLORATORY R&D WITH MAC (Midlands Arts Centre) in 2021

The work went into a final phase of research and development (R&D) with MAC in Oct-Nov 2021. The aim was to experiment with the integration of text, music, design, & video to create a performance that captured the energy, diversity, resilience, complexity, & vibrancy of the stories shared by participants from across the two cities. The workshop explored staging ideas, allowed an opportunity for bits of interviews to be integrated into music, and helped refine a visual language for the text. This open-to-the-public exploratory R&D culminated in a public sharing at MAC, and a conversation as part of SHOUT Festival 2021.

R&D CREATIVE TEAM

Director – Greg Homann

Assistant Director – Frazer Meakin

Composer – Oliver Farrow

Designer – María Sánchez

Videographer – Rachel Bunce

R&D CAST

Thom Petty

Tomas Wolstenholme

Clint Lesch

Jason Adam

IN OUR SKIN AS PART OF SHOUT in 2020

This 35 minute work in progress version of the project was presented as part of Birmingham’s SHOUT Festival 2020. The presentation is collaged from extracts from four participant interviews, two from each city, creating four monologues performed by actors.