Finborough Forum - Jennifer Farmer
Recorded on 21 February 2022
Recorded on 21 February 2022
The Virtual Finborough Forum on February 21, 2022, featured guest speaker Jennifer Farmer, a queer African-American writer and theatre-maker focused on underrepresented narratives and collaboration with marginalized communities.
About The Event
About The Play
Virtual Finborough Forum, hosted on 21 February 2022 with guest speaker Jennifer Farmer.
To view February’s Finborough Forum, click here.
A queer African-American woman resident in the UK since 1998, Jennifer Farmer is a writer for performance, participatory theatre-maker and facilitator who centres underrepresented narratives and collaborates extensively with marginalised communities such as young people at risk of social exclusion (The Fall of Lucifer, 2008; Truth or Dare, 2012 and 2017, both for Belgrade Theatre), women in prison (Compact Failure, Clean Break/Arcola Theatre/national tour, 2004), refugees (Hear My Voice, Theatre Royal Stratford East), older people (Urban Dreams, London Bubble, 2008), young people with dyslexia (Turtle Key Arts), users of the mental healthcare system (V&A Museum) and intergenerational community groups (City Final, site-specific, 2018, Belgrade Theatre). Other work includes Looking At the Sun (BAC Opera Season, 2001), Clean (BBC Radio 3, 2003), 270° (Paines Plough, Young Vic, 2004), A Million Different People (BBC Radio 4, 2005), Words, Words, Words (Tricycle Theatre, 2006), Bulletproof Soul (Birmingham Rep, 2007), Stutter (Hotbed Festival, 2008), These Four Streets (Birmingham Rep, 2009), Eating Our Words (Camden People’s Theatre, 2012), Waltzing Tomatoes (Ithaca Gallery, USA, 2013 and international festivals), Between Constellations (Pittsburgh Festival Opera, USA; Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre, 2018) and another garden (will be our city) (Toynbee Studios, 2021).
Currently an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths and Central School of Speech and Drama, Jennifer has lectured at Kingston University, the University of Greenwich, and London South Bank University, and has facilitated workshops for many of the UK’s theatre and arts organisations such as the National Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Soho Theatre, Frantic Assembly, and the Royal Court. At Central, Jennifer teaches on the ethics of working with vulnerable communities, centring underrepresented narratives, and the dangers of art-washing and white saviourism.
Follow @FinboroughForum on Twitter for more information about future online meetings. Previous Finborough Forum meetings, including our January session with London-based director, dramaturg and producer Adam Lenson, are available on our YouTube channel.
The Finborough Forum is an invitation-only group of playwrights, directors, designers and other theatre creatives. Members of the Finborough Forum are invited by the theatre to attend monthly meetings, where they take part in a Q&A with a wide range of industry guest speakers, followed by a chance to socialise with fellow theatre practitioners.
The group originally started life in October 2017 as the Finborough Theatre Writers’ Group. After a successful two years, the group relaunched as the Finborough Forum in September 2019, expanding its remit to include theatre directors, designers and other creatives associated with the Finborough Theatre, in order to broaden the discussion and expand the camaraderie that has emerged between the playwrights in the group to other theatre practitioners.
The Finborough Forum is generously supported by The George Goetchius.