Lessons On Revolution tells a story about change, how it happens and how we talk about it. In 1968 at London School of Economics, three thousand students occupy a lecture hall, demanding the university cut ties with apartheid-era Rhodesia. Tensions escalate as the students fight for radical change while the administration pushes back. The world watches, waiting to see who will blink first. We sat down with writer Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi to discuss their upcoming play.
What was it about the events at London School of Economics nearly sixty years ago that inspired you to create this work?
SAM: In 1968, 3000 activists occupied LSE in the biggest act of protest in a generation. We wanted to write about this because LSE was a stone’s throw from our flat, and localism is such a huge part of the piece-how are we bound to others through space and time? On top of this, the protests link LSE to a global struggle, implicating both apartheid South Africa and the Vietnam War. It was a fascinating example of how to consider history in the micro and the macro.
The play intertwines two different time periods – 1968 and 2024. What inspired you to connect these two eras?
SAM: As said, we felt a personal connection through our own sense of place to what happened at LSE. We then use this to think about how we might apply their example of radical action in our own lives. As so many of these struggles persist today, around injustice and inequality, we wanted to look at a time when people had an aspiration for a better future, and ask: how can these voices from the past give us hope?
What motivated you to write these two specific characters? How do they represent different facets of the modern fight for social justice?
GABRIELE: Sam and I play ourselves on stage. We don’t portray ourselves as great activists, but we do talk about a tough time in our lives when we looked at radical ideas of the past because our present seemed too challenging. The play is about the moment we felt an urgent need to roll our sleeves up and think about how we could engage in a broader fight about social justice. I hope this can empower our audiences to become activists themselves!
Jermyn Street Theatre holds personal value to you as a previous young producer. How does it feel knowing your work will be performed in this theatre? How does it feel to bring the production to London, where the story all began?
GABRIELE: It’s so exciting to come back to Jermyn Street Theatre as an artist. This theatre is such a special place – it’s run by a small, ambitious team who really care about their artists and I can’t wait to be supported by my former colleagues in my creative journey!
Lessons on Revolution is a story about London and it feels important to bring it back to the centre of town, just a stone’s throw away from LSE. The show is about who’s got the right to take up space – whether that’s through an occupation of a university, or by telling a story on stage. I feel so privileged to be able to perform in the centre of a city where it can sometimes feel impossible to carve out space.
What do you feel is the most important lesson about revolution that you’d like the audience to take away?
GABRIELE: What Sam and I discovered through the play is that all social change begins with an act of imagination. In order to change the world you need to be able to imagine a reality that’s better than our current one, and I think this is exactly the role of theatre: enabling audiences to have the courage to think that a different world is possible. This is what I’d like our audiences to take away from the show – through a collective act of imagination in a theatre, we can think about how to work towards a better future.
Lessons On Revolution by Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi runs at Jermyn Street Theatre from 28 April to 3 May. For more information and to book tickets – http://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/