Joelle Taylor: Maryville

Following-on from her TS Eliot Prize-winning collection C+nto & Othered Poems, Joelle Taylor’s Maryville charts the lives of four butch lesbians through five decades of underground queer history; tracing the culture, clubs and resistance that shaped their world.

With a vividly sketched cast of characters, the Maryville butch bar becomes a lens through which to consider the underground histories of queer London. The violence and pain of oppression and the beauty and intimacy of community are rendered in awe-inspiring high definition.

This event is the premiere performance of a staged reading by Joelle Taylor, directed by acclaimed writer and director Neil Bartlett, with visuals from artist and filmmaker Sweatmother. It is hosted by writer, performer and theatre maker Travis Alabanza, who joins Taylor for an on-stage Q&A.

Maryville explores the scars, hopes and potentialities of dyke identity and the queer underground.

Travis Alabanza is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker. Their writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and their work surrounding gender, trans identity and race has been published in The Guardian, Vice, Gal-Dem and Metro.

Neil Bartlett’s recent stage work includes Orlando in the West End with Emma Corrin and a live version of Derek Jarman’s film Blue at the Tate Gallery, with Russell Tovey, Travis Alabanza and Joelle Taylor. His most recent novel was the Polari Prize-nominated Address Book.

Sweatmother is an artist and filmmaker based in London, whose moving image work blends performance, self-recorded documentation, internet and archival materials to explore and make visible queer lived experiences.

Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays, a novel and four collections of poetry. Her most recent, C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 TS Eliot Prize and the 2022 Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ authors, and is currently being adapted for the theatre.