“A wonderful piece of contemporary activist-theatre – hard-hitting but tender.”
TOTAL THEATRE UK
“A stunning work of theatrical activism that has the potential to move and motivate.”
THE QUEER REVIEW NEW YORK
“A highly original mix of personal memoir, pungent testimony and political resistance.
It is heartfelt, passionate and lovably odd.”
MICHAEL BILLINGTON
Truth to Power Café IS A profound THEATRICAL reflection on loss, hope and resistance.
THIS internationally acclaimed LIVE performance and digital theatre event
IS told through memoir, image, film, MUSIC, poetry, and PASSIONATE
STORIES FROM community participants SPEAKING UP in response to the question:
‘who has power over you and what do you want to say to them?’
Created, written and performed by JEREMY GOLDSTEIN with HENRY WOOLF for LONDON ARTISTS PROJECTS
Directed by JEN HEYES Banners by ED HALL Lighting by NIGEL EDWARDS Video by CONOR MACMAHON
Soundtrack by LEWIS GIBSON Associate Director ANNE-LOUISE RENTELL
Original photo portraits created by SARAH HICKSON
Since 2018, over 800 participants OF ALL AGES, EXPERIENCES AND BACKGROUNDS
have taken part in 60 live shows and digital theatre events in UK, Australia,
CANADA, The Netherlands, Croatia, Singapore and USA.
3 min: Jen Heyes and Ed Hall in conversation with participants at Barnsley Civic, UK in 2019
'Truth to Power Cafe' is inspired by the political and philosophical beliefs of Harold Pinter and his Hackney Gang. For sixty years The Hackney Gang maintained their belief in speaking truth to power and in an independent media. They remained firmly on the side of the occupied and the disempowered and their allies.
2 min 54 secs: Audiences and participants respond to a performance at Cast Doncaster, UK in 2020
It is these people we invite to appear in the live show and digital platform. The Hackney Gang included Jeremy Goldstein’s late father Mick Goldstein, and poet polymath Henry Woolf (1930-2021) with whom the show was co-created.
“It was as moving as any play and because everyone spoke unedited and retained control over what they said it felt entirely authentic.
The revolutionary potential of theatre at its simplest and most direct.”
GUARDIAN UK
“Part-theatrical performance, part-memoir, part-impassioned activism….
A truly global show that knows no borders.”
TIME OUT AUSTRALIA
“A priceless repository of living social history, wit, wisdom and defiance.”
ATTITUDE UK
“A triumphant rebellion…brave, empowering and inspirational event
which truly has the power to restore your faith in humanity.”
TO DO LIST UK
“The piece is a carefully crafted and loving triple-aspected memoir…uniting past and
present political concerns, and the ongoing history of turmoil and resistance…
collaborative art-making at its best.”
TOTAL THEATRE UK
“The audience is very much taken on a journey which uncovers the climate in which
Harold Pinter created his plays; it’s a masterclass in the influences of post-Second World War theatre.
Compelling and cathartic...dignified and passionate...the essence of live performance.”
THE QUEER REVIEW SYDNEY
“Jeremy Goldstein’s genre-busting roadshow presents a line-up of
extraordinary individuals with the power to inspire.”
JEWISH RENAISSANCE UK
“The socially engaged theatre work gives poignant political expression to lived experiences.
It is a fierce test of Noam Chomsky’s critique that there is no point speaking truth to power
because power already knows the truth and is busy concealing it;
it’s the oppressed, not the oppressors, who need to hear it.”
THE SATURDAY PAPER AUSTRALIA
“Jeremy Goldstein performs with pride, attitude, and more. He has created a celebration of a lost world from Henry Woolf’s verse,
Pinter’s letters, and a memory lost. He is as fearless as those before him, his body full of spirit and movement.
Then others stand to speak, to their own truths…in the spotlight and gain their own power.
It is community writ large.”
LOU REVIEWS UK
“Re-establishing a sense of community in an era of isolation (is) something that was true of Jeremy Goldstein’s
‘Truth to Power Cafe’, even as it interrogated social inequities the pandemic has often amplified.”
THE MELBOURNE AGE AUSTRALIA
“Wolf calls the Gang ‘solipsistic survivors’, who thought they could change the world by the power of words, by speaking ‘truth to power’.
In his mellifluous actor’s voice, Mr Goldstein talks of the persistence of memory and the inescapable past that makes – or breaks – all of us.
The past that has power over us – or is in us.”
STAGE WHISPERS AUSTRALIA
Truth to Power Café is a London Artists Projects production developed with theatre director Jen Heyes and the Harold Pinter Archive
at the British Library, London; Soho Theatre, London; Theatre in the Mill, Bradford; Cast, Doncaster; Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games;
and Leeuwarden-Friesland European Capital of Culture in The Netherlands.
Supported by Arts Council England and British Council Artists’ International Development Fund.
Thanks to Run-Riot