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Digital programme: HighRise Entertainment: Lil.Miss.Lady

A person in an animal print fur coat sings into a microphone.

Welcome to the Barbican 

We are thrilled you’re joining us in The Pit to welcome back HighRise Entertainment for their latest genre-smashing experience. 

The company are pioneers of fusing playful, immersive and thought-provoking theatre with Hip Hop and Grime music to represent unheard voices in inner-city Britain and connect and inspire young audiences. 

Lil.Miss.Lady radically ventures beyond the boundaries of theatre. Part rave, part drama, it features live mixing of original music and transforms The Pit into a dancefloor, bringing participants on a pulsating journey through the sounds and visuals of Black-British bass music culture. 

It’s a privilege to premiere Lil.Miss.Lady before it makes a nationwide tour, marking HighRise’s 10th anniversary. 

Our relationship with HighRise has roots in their sold-out run of The UK Drill Project being a joint winner of the 2022 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. The award supports the development of theatre-makers engaged in challenging and innovative performance. We’re so proud to continue being involved in this ground-breaking company’s journey. 

Thank you for joining us in this celebration, spotlighting one of Britain’s biggest sub-cultures and Grime’s trailblazing women. 

Toni Racklin, Barbican Head of Theatre & Dance 

 

As cuts in funding for the arts limit creative potential, HighRise’s ambition continues to disrupt, drive and grow. We are thrilled to return to the Barbican following our last visit in 2022, this time to present Lil.Miss.Lady.

With the forced closures of clubs and venues, the UK’s nightlife scene is shrinking, and the need for HighRise’s work is becoming more and more essential. To merge theatre with a Grime rave at this moment is like an act of defiance in the face of being told we can’t. Centring the voices of women in the scene is a chance to celebrate and, alongside this, we examine what it means to fight for the art and culture we all deserve.

This show is nostalgic, authentic and will make the senses tingle with its soundtrack, elite performances and a shared mission of joy. I can’t wait to share it with the world!

Dominic Garfield, Artistic Director and CEO of HighRise Entertainment 

The Company

Performers
Lil.Miss.Lady Lady Lykez 
DJ Harmony Kaylee Kay 
Blanka Fahad Shaft
Hypez Alexander Lobo Moreno
Twist Joshua Cameron
DJ Rat Aliaano El-Ali
Understudy (Lil.Miss.Lady) Lauryn Louise

 

Creative and production team 
Writer and Director Dominic Garfield
Lyrics Lady Lykez, Dominic Garfield and Company 
Lighting Designer KJ 
Set and Costume Designer Stella Backman 
Video Designer Mary Melodies 
Vocal Coach Toni ‘Reese’ Robinson 
Movement Coach Yami Löfvenberg 
Assistant Director Lauryn Louise 
Tracks and Beats Duncan Burton, Row.d Beats, JR Productions 
Sound Design Curators DJ Kaylee Kay and Dominic Garfield 
Production Manager Cai Taylor (for HighRise)
Company Stage Manager Daisy Francis Bryden
Deputy Stage Manager Tayla Hunter
Touring Production Manager (tour) Dan McGeady
Deputy Stage Manager, book (tour) Stacey Nurse
BSL Interpreter Sumayya Si-Tayeb 

Project Producer Charlotte March
Company Producer Elizabeth Peace
Company Marketing Manager Oliver Tunstall
Content Designers Oliver Hunter and Mary Melodies (for HighRise)
PR Fiona McGarva and Tom McGarva for Sundae Communications 
PR Support Caroline Head
Videographers (trailer) Jamal Crowe and Liam Togher 
Videographers (live capture) Aydan Tair and Marco for Wilder Direction 
Photographer Ali Wright 
Stage Management Assistant Jack Torres 

Research partners Lioness, Queenie, Stush, Baby Blue and Girls of Grime 
Additional material from Gerel Falconer, Fahad Shaft, Michael Mbozzo, Aayan Ibikunle Shoderu, Joseph Barnes Phillips and The Company  

Event information

Running time: 1 hour 45 mins. There is no interval

Age guidance: 14+ 

This production contains haze, loud music, smoke effects and strobe lighting. There is strong language and references to violence. 

Presented by the Barbican 

HighRise are supported by Arts Council England, Vogue World Foundation, Alpha Theta,  Something To Aim For, No License and Brixton House  

Images by Camilla Greenwell. 

Trailer by Mary Melodies, Oliver Tunstall and Oliver Hunter. 

 

Special thanks 
Libby Libard, Penguin Media 

BSL-interpreted and relaxed performance 
Fri 14 Feb 

 

Chill-out room
A chill-out room is available for anyone who requires a quiet space during the show. Please ask a member of staff for more information. 

Women on Grime

East London – particularly Newham and Tower Hamlets – is seen as the birthplace of grime. As a highly accessible contemporary Black-British musical genre, grime has enabled young people to create a sense of belonging, as well as connect to a global audience. In those early days, on council estates, on street corners, in youth clubs and in schools, young people gathered to hang out and make music that mattered to them. Music that allowed them to narrate the conditions of their being, and to articulate their struggles, their joys and their losses. 

By using English accents, and therefore their own voice, grime provided an opportunity to step away from the ‘elders’ in the UK garage scene who, at the time, were not paying too much attention. At the same time, the commercial juggernaut that was US hip-hop and rap was subsumed, in London at least, by a Black English aesthetic.

This is an extract from Grime Music: from the Corner to the Mainstream by Dr Joy White. 
Joy White is an author, lecturer, sociologist, ethnographer and researcher. Her books include Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture during Covid, Terraformed; Young Black Lives in the Inner City and Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People’s Enterprise.

 

During my early teenage years, I was really into grime. It wasn’t until I started going to live events a few years later that I started realising how male-dominated the scene really was, both on and off stage. In 2017, I set myself a mission to find the women of grime. Searching online and offline for female MCs, DJs, producers, radio presenters, journalists, videographers – I was looking for those who helped shape the genre over the last twenty years. I knew of MCs such as Lady Leshurr, Ms Dynamite, Shystie and Lioness, and journalists Chantelle Fiddy and Hattie Collins, but there had to be more than just a handful of women. The more I looked, the more I found. [...] Since starting the project, I’ve seen a huge shift in recognition and respect for women in the scene. Boxpark Wembley curated an event called Grime Ballet in 2019, which saw a panel of mainly women, and performances by Lioness and The Grime Violinist. Poet In Da Corner, a coming of age play inspired by Dizzee Rascal’s debut album written by Debris Stevenson, toured across the UK in 2020. Female DJs spinning grime are being booked for shows and festivals around and outside of the UK, and successful male MCs are actively making music with female MCs and producers. The women in the scene are also backing each other and working together on a variety of projects. Seeing this shift and unity over the past couple of years has been heartwarming, and shows that grime is learning and growing. Despite the popular saying, grime is not dead. It’s evolved past its infancy, and will continue to develop for the next generation.

This is an extract from a piece by Ellie Ramsden, author of the book Too Many Man: Women of Grime V2 

 

The grime scene has always been heavily dominated by men, with alpha male ideologies pushing women in the scene to make themselves appear more masculine, both in appearance and performance.  

Over time, women have been able to glamorise their image, and they now have more diverse representation, from more androgynous to hyper-feminine. 

Women are beginning to carve out a narrative for themselves, pushing back against objectification, colourism and misogyny often found in the scene. 

But the problem of male domination in grime persists. Lyrically, men tend not to address women in their challenges. They do not appear to be considered as equal competitors, with many male MCs using words associated with femininity and homosexuality to insult one another. 

[...] 

The male narrative found in Grime – seeing women as objects and appendages – is integral to wider discourses of sexism within the music industry, where women have less agency or autonomy comparatively.

This is an extract from Where are the Women in Grime by Dr Monique Charles for preciousonline.co.uk, based on PhD research between 2010-2016. The 2010s saw shifts around sexual orientation and gender identities and therefore this, as well as the increasing numbers of women in rap, has to some extent influenced Grime theories and narratives around the ‘alpha male’ ideology woven into the scene. 

Biographies

About HighRise Entertainment

HighRise is an award winning multi-arts collective that represents unheard communities and stories of contemporary Inner-City Britain. 

Champions of using rap music, theatre, subcultures, politics and heritage at the heartbeat of their work; HighRise is at the frontline of youth arts engagement across the UK where their productions, programmes, consultancy and mentoring schemes offer deep engagement in forgotten areas of Britain. Partners have included Nike, the National Theatre, the Barbican, Centre Point and The Metropolitan Police, and specialised art conservatoires including East 15 Acting School, Central School of Speech and Drama and Northampton University. The company has been seen and featured across media including BBC, BBC Radio, GQ, the Guardian, New York Times, Reuters, London Live and The Evening Standard. 

From the Barbican

Barbican Centre Board
Chair
Sir William Russell
Deputy Chair
Tijs Broeke
Deputy Chair
Tobi Ruth Adebekun

 

Board Members
Randall Anderson, Munsur Ali, Michael Asante MBE, Stephen Bediako OBE, Farmida Bi CBE, Zulum Elumogo, Jaspreet Hodgson, Nicholas Lyons, Mark Page, Anett Rideg, Jens Riegelsberger, Jane Roscoe, Despina Tsatsas, Irem Yerdelen

 

Clerk to the Board
John Cater and Kate Doidge
Barbican Centre Trust Chair
Farmida Bi CBE
Vice Chair
Robert Glick OBE

 

Trustees
Stephanie Camu, Tony Chambers, Cas Donald, David Kapur, Ann Kenrick, Kendall Langford, Sir William Russell, Sian Westerman

 

Directors
Chief Executive Officer (Interim)
David Farnsworth
Deputy CEO (Interim)
Ali Mirza
Director of Development
Natasha Harris
Head of Finance & Business Administration
Sarah Wall
Director for Buildings & Renewal
Dr Philippa Simpson
Director of Commercial
Jackie Boughton
Director for Audiences
Beau Vigushin
Director for Arts and Participation
Devyani Saltzman
Executive Assistant to CEO
Hannah Hoban

 

Theatre Department
Head of Theatre and Dance
Toni Racklin
Senior Production Manager
Simon Bourne
Producers
Liz Eddy, Jill Shelley, Fiona Stewart
Assistant Producers
Mrinmoyee Roy, Mali Siloko, Tom Titherington
Production Managers
Jamie Maisey, Lee Tasker
Technical Managers
Steve Daly, Jane Dickerson, Nik Kennedy, Martin Morgan, Stevie Porter
Stage Managers
Lucinda Hamlin, Charlotte Oliver 
Technical Supervisors
James Breedon, Charlie Mann, Josh Massey, Matt Nelson, Adam Parrott, Lawrence Sills, Chris Wilby
Technicians
Kendell Foster, David Kennard, Burcham Johnson, Bart Kuta, Christian Lyons, Kieran Poynter, Fred Riding, Fede Spada, Matt Turnbull
PA to Head of Theatre
David Green
Production Administrator
Caroline Hall
Production Assistant
Ashley Panton
Stage Door
Julian Fox, aLbi Gravener

Creative Collaboration
Head of Creative Collaboration
Karena Johnson 
Senior Producer for Learning and Participation
Oluwatoyin Odunsi
Senior Manager
Sarah Mangan
Producer
Josie Dick
Assistant Producer
Carmen Okome

 

Marketing Department
Head of Marketing
Jackie Ellis
Deputy Head of Marketing
Ben Jefferies
Senior Marketing Manager
Kyle Bradshaw
Marketing Manager
Rebecca Moore
Marketing Assistants
Antonia Georgieva, Ossama Nizami

 

Communications Department 
Head of Communications
James Tringham 
Senior Communications Manager
Ariane Oiticica  
Communications Manager 
HBL 
Communications Officer
Sumayyah Sheikh
Communications Assistant
Andrea Laing

 

Audience Experience
Senior Audience Experience Managers
Oliver Robinson, Liz Davies-Sadd, Ben Skinner
Ticket Sales Managers
Jane Thomas, Bradley Thompson, Lucy Allen
Ticket Sales Team Leaders
Molly Barber, Alex Steggles, Máire Vallely, Nicola Watkinson, Charlotte Day
Operations Managers
Tabitha Fourie, Aksel Nichols, Ben Raynor, Samantha Teatheredge, Hayley Zwolinska
Operations Manager (Health & Safety)
Mo Reideman 
Audience Event & Planning Manager
Freda Pouflis
Venue Managers
Catherine Campion, Scott Davies, Maria Pateli, Lotty Reeve, Shabana Zaman
Assistant Venue Managers
Sam Hind, Bronagh Leneghan, Melissa Olcese, Daniel Young
Young Crew Management
Dave Magwood, Rob Magwood, James Towell
Access and Licensing Manager    
Rebecca Oliver  

 

Security
Operations Manager
Naqash Sheikh
Audience Experience Coordinator
Ayelen Fananas