Programme and Performers
Shirley J Thompson Women of the Windrush
Concert cast
Abigail Kelly soprano Relative/Windrush Woman
Melissa Morris piano Friend
Callie Nestleroth staging director
Shirley J Thompson artistic director
Film cast
Dollie Henry Windrush Woman (based on a portrayal of Hyacinth E Sinclair Thompson)
Women of the Windrush
Hyacinth E Sinclair Thompson Student Nurse
Connie Mark Cricketer’s Wife
Merlin Walker Young Bride
Maxine Franklin Concert Pianist
Synopsis
Women of the Windrush portrays inspirational narratives from the lives of a variety of women who travelled from the West Indies to settle in the UK after an invitation from the British government for them to assist in the rebuilding of a broken Britan, following the Second World War. The settlement of West Indian people from the late 1940s to the early 1970s was latterly dubbed the Windrush period, following the voyage of HMT Windrush in 1948 that brought over a number of passengers from the West Indies. Through powerful instrumental music, song and archive footage, video projection interweaves filmed stories from a cricketer’s wife, a student nurse, a concert pianist and a new bride who all relate their experiences of arriving and settling in England. British soprano Abigail Kelly embodies the essence of the Windrush experience in this operatic re-imagining of Shirley J Thompson’s film, Memories in Mind (1992).
Prologue
Two contemporary women look through the removal boxes and suitcases of a relative from the Windrush generation. In the suitcases are various items, including a diary and letters belonging to the Windrush relative which reveals incidents in her settlement during the so-called Windrush period.
Film interlude: Colonisation in Reverse
Scene 1: Introduction Two present-day women walk with trepidation into the living room of a 1950s/60s London. It’ s the home of a late relative from the Windrush era that has not been used for a while. The furniture is covered with dustcloths and there are several removal boxes in the room. The women reverentially rummage through the boxes, finding all kinds of memorabillia, including a diary and letters from which the Grandneice reads …
Windrush Woman sings: Psalm to Windrush: for the Brave and Ingenious
Scene 2: Transition
Film Interlude A Windrush-styled Woman wanders through a lovely park on a spring day.
Women of the Windrush recall memories of their arrival and early settlement in England.
Windrush Women sings: The Long Line
Scene 3: Mama
A Windrush Woman paces around her bedsit wondering about the family she left behind in the West Indies. She pines for her Mother.
Windrush Woman sings: Mama
Scene 4: ‘Sorry Love’
Film Interlude: A Windrush-styled Woman paces the streets with a list of addresses, looking for accommodation. When she approaches potential accommodation, she is frequently told, ‘Sorry love!’
Women of the Windrush recall their often challenging experiences of looking for accomodation …
Windrush Woman sings: I Have Crossed the Ocean
Scene 5: Settling
The Windrush Woman has evidently found accommodation and is in her new bedsit, arranging furniture and feeling more optimistic about her situation. She looks towards a better day in her new country.
Film Interlude: Ska music is playing and the Windrush-styled Woman listens to a nearby radio, absorbed in a glossy magazine
Women of the Windrush relay anecdotes about settling into their new homes.
Windrush Woman sings: Good Morning World
Scene 6: Acclimatising
Film Interlude: A Windrush-styled Woman is strolling along a London street, dressed in a spring coat.
Women of the Windrush relay anecdotes about challenging experiences during their early days of settling in the UK.
Windrush Woman sings: Hymn to the Morning
Scene 7: ‘That’s my trade!’
Film Interlude: A Windrush-styled Woman is out job-hunting and approaches a Labour Exchange building …
Women of the Windrush relay anecdotes about looking for a job and about their student days.
Windrush Woman sings: Think of Your Country’s Glory!
Scene 8: ‘That’s my night’
Film Interlude: A Windrush-styled Woman approaches a cinema building. She ascends the steps and is evidently waiting to meet a friend as she keeps looking at her watch …
Women of the Windrush relay anecdotes about how they entertained themselves in the early days of their settlement.
Windrush Woman sings: Hymn to the Evening
Scene 9: Stiletto heels and cobblestoned streets
Film Interlude: The Windrush-styled Woman is on her way to a friend and taking care to navigate the cobblestoned streets with her dainty stiletto-heeled shoes.
Women of the Windrush relay anecdotes about coming to terms with their new way of life in the UK.
Windrush Woman sings: Precious Skies
Programme note
Women of the Windrush
In 1992 Shirley J Thompson completed and released her film, Memories in Mind: Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories (British Film Institute, 1992), which was shot on 16 and 35mm film for circulation to the national and international independent film festivals of the time. Thompson was working for the BBC (as a documentaries TV researcher and later, a TV director) when she was struck by the phenomenon of the settlement of her parents’ generation, who had responded to an invitation from the British government to travel to the UK to assist in the rebuilding of a broken Britain after the Second World War. Several thousand West Indians heeded the call, arriving between the late 1940s and the early 1970s, and she felt that this should be documented and celebrated. It’s thought that her film was the first to commemorate what was later dubbed the Windrush Generation.
Memories in Mind: Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories weaves together talking-head interviews, archival film, poetry, dance and dramatic scenes. In the interviews, four women from the Caribbean relate their experiences of arriving and settling in the UK during the so-called Windrush period. The dramatised scenes feature a symbolic Windrush Woman, dressed in typical late 1950s attire (modelled on Thompson’s Mother), who contributes a thematic visual link throughout the film. The perspectives of these four women – a cricketer’s wife, a student nurse, a concert pianist and a new bride – are revealed in the film that carries the viewer through an array of emotions experienced by the women themselves.
As well her focus on filmmaking, Thompson concurrently developed her love for opera composition. In the 1990s she created significant operatic works, including A Child of the Jago (1997) and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1999), both two-act 90-minute operas based on fictional historical novels of the same name. For her doctoral thesis in opera composition in the early 2000s, she explored ways in which a solo operatic character might carry an epic, historical narrative. Her method of achieving this evolved through excavating narratives of historical heroic women which she then worked into an operatic synopsis and libretto. The additional challenge was to create a single voice in the theatrical context that enables the vocal line to direct and drive the drama as well as project narratological themes. This thesis evolved in 2006 into Thompson’s Heroines of Opera series, which featured strong, assertive, female protagonists – a conscious counter to most women’s roles in the traditional operatic canon – and a focus on African and Caribbean narratives, ones that are not conventionally the subject of opera.
While most women’s roles in the traditional operatic canon are femmes fatales or suffer tragic fates (or both), Thompson’s Heroines of Opera series counters this kind of female representation. Musically, the series features a solo female voice and character who is facing monumental challenges; while many characters are involved in the narrative, only one is visible on-stage. Thompson does this by using devices such as video projection, off-stage narration, on-stage dancers and by mixing elements more commonly found in contemporary popular music with those more traditionally associated with opera. This series features iconic women such as The Woman Who Refused to Dance (a young enslaved African woman captured on the ship of Captain Kimber in c1792 and reimagined by Thompson as a heroine), Dido Elizabeth Belle and Sacred Mountain: Incidents in the Life of Queen Nanny of the Maroons.
In 2017 Thompson was commissioned by the Windrush Commemoration Committee to compose a celebratory work for the first-ever Windrush Day, which fell on 22 June 2018. In response she composed Psalm to Windrush: for the Brave and Ingenious – a choral work for soprano, mezzo, tenor and baritone with organ accompaniment which formed part of the Westminster Abbey Service on 22 June 2018. It proved highly successful and prompted Thompson to build on the momentum of the Windrush celebration by creating an opera, Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories, for the Women of the World Festival at Kings Place in the September of that year.
Thompson’s film, Memories in Mind: Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories, became an integral part of the operatic work in which she integrated an operatic score that could be performed by a solo singer with either orchestra or piano. Like her other works from the Heroines of Opera series, Women of the Windrush is a multimedia piece, interweaving operatic vocal expression, spoken-word delivery, dramatised film scenes, dance and instrumental music. The demands on the performers are significant as they navigate the variety of musical styles, the staging, dramatised film scenes, dance and contemporary and 1950s settings; ultimately, the opera is more than music: it is also reflection and celebration too.
Artist biographies
With thanks from Shirley J. Thompson
Thanks to: Mrs Hyacinth E Sinclair Thompson, Mrs Connie Mark, Mrs Merlin Walker, Ms Maxine Franklin, Ms Dollie Henry, Mr Samuel Thompson, Mrs Christine St John, Mr Joyle St John, University of Westminster, Milton Court Hall – The Barbican, Karen Pitchford, English National Ballet, Ballymore, Nadine Benjamin, Caroline Jaya-Ratnam, Kirsty Harris, Hannah Cui, Joe Lawes, Harriet Smith, Kelly Loveday, Gemma Dixon, The Thompson Family.
