‘Anger burns every part of him’: Angry Guerrilla Art’s response to the Epstein files | platform

CSocial media brings revolution? Probably not, but it was vital to the teamwork behind this theatrical event, which was conceived on a WhatsApp group for playwrights shortly after the Epstein files were published. Members of the group were angry that the world was not talking enough about the impact of Jeffrey Epstein’s actions on the girls and women he abused. They were also concerned that America’s war with Iran was a distraction from the violence escalating in these cases against the child sex financier. So when British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz sent a quick message, dozens of writers responded.

That was four months ago. This week, more than 80 of these writers mobilized a creative response under the principal direction of Lucy Morrison alongside Hannah Hauer-King, Madeleine Klodgy and Tessa Walker. It is displayed across 15 spaces and closets as well as open-plan areas, on the top floor of a London office, currently occupied by Theater Deli, a company managing the empty sites.

You see the graffiti when you enter. They are decorated on the walls and floors. Almost every vignette is covered in writing: poems, essays, and theatrical scenes. Anger burns them all. You could call this project a guerrilla art response to files, as the material ranges from live performances of short plays (often with double actors), to installations. Co-producer Anushka Warden describes it as “art gallery meets theater meets activism” and it sounds exactly like that combination as you walk around.

There is no formal way in or out, and the interaction of the work being done simultaneously is sometimes overwhelming at first. Maybe that’s the point. There’s a lot this production wants to say, and its material packs a concentrated force, room by room, dripping not just anger but shock and disbelief through story after story of Epstein but also, more broadly, knee-jerk male abuse. There are two main performances in the central space, the longest being a composite play called All the Rage, made up of lines written by all the writers involved in the show.

Despite only having four days on site and at rehearsals, this female/non-binary group brought exceptional attention to detail. One of the most notable works of art is a row of clothes embroidered with phrases (“She felt her mind separated from her body” written on a pink thobe). The clothes, created by Jennifer Toksvig, contain some pages from Epstein’s files hidden in the pockets, as well as other accounts of his abuse, and are truly horrifying.

Prince Andrew’s name is checked over and over again, and each reference to him is more bitter: Penelope Skinner describes an image of him on all fours on top of a woman. In a duet by Elaine Bannerman, Sadie Pearson, Laurie Ogden, and Bex Bucher, there’s a recollection of a woman who becomes trapped in Epstein’s mansion and talks about discharging her body while she was being abused (“I was told it was just dancing, just a massage”).

The Witch Files by Naomi Westerman and Bobby Corbett is, as the title suggests, a room containing pages of files containing the word “witch” – often in the context of a “witch hunt” in a legal case, as a form of defense.

“I thought it would be interesting to see how many times the word ‘witch’ was mentioned, and it was hundreds of times,” Westerman says. The Chamber restores the power of the word through spells and potions (which the audience can create using materials provided).

There are more immersive elements here, like the teens’ bedroom perfectly reconstructed by Julie Tsang and Kerry Fitzgerald, along with Georgia Fitch and Joy Lynch. It captures the cusp of childhood and adulthood for a girl/woman and is as complex as any Punchdrunk setting (perhaps Viola’s Room?), creating a composite version of a girl in Epstein’s orbit, with drawers containing letters, diaries and a pregnancy test.

It seems, in its cumulative power, as if we are back in the #MeToo era, when it emerges, in fact. Skinner’s article talks about a well-known director who becomes obsessed with actresses, and another who asks actresses for hugs, and becomes angry if they refuse. There are accounts of rape and sexual assault – normalized or denied. One playwright explicitly draws a comparison between this moment and the year in which Harvey Weinstein’s arrest blew down the door on institutional complicity with abuse and misogyny. AJ Baker’s soundtrack, Avalanche, voiced by Lily Driscoll, is about an older family friend who keeps his hand on a 15-year-old girl’s lap for too long. We hear, “This is not new. It is centuries old.”

It makes you think, “So what’s changed?” There is something very disappointing in her implicit answer that transformation has not occurred since that watershed.

But there is hope in the raised voices, the courage in the testimonies of lived trauma, and the collective speaking up. “Make your stories” is a refrain in group play and can serve as a call to arms.

At the Daily Theatre, London, until 13 June