EMILIA! at the O-O-Olivier Awards 🏆🏆🏆
EMILIA! the play at the Vaudeville Theatre in London, which I had the massive honour of MDing, recently won three Olivier Awards. It was such a powerful movement of which to be a part, and it certainly empowered me to have more faith in my own voice, both as a musician and as a woman of colour in the world. I am so pleased that Morgan Lloyd-Malcolm and her play are getting the recognition they deserve.
Since March’s Lockdown, I have been exploring my own voice more and more both as a composer and an activist. Perhaps it has been a case of not having anyone present to ask for permission to make noise! As a composer, this started completely by accident when my micro-piece Hedgehog, which I wrote purely for some fun between colleagues, went viral on social media. It led to further commissions, almost immediately from the Musicians’ Union for its members…then a couple of online theme tunes…and then a one-person opera for Thompson Street Opera Company designed for performance online, for the London Sinfonietta and their #CommunityCommissions, and being approached for a Christmas Carol which is being published in the Multitude of Voyces latest anthology. I didn’t have a chance to stop and think about the fact that the reason I’d stopped composing in my late teens was because it felt like, “reading my diary out in public.”
It is not so dissimilar with my increasing involvement in publicly calling out injustice. I was interviewed by the Guardian and on BBC News about SEISS, and pressed organisations which should know better on improving their equality policies. The idea of just standing by and letting bad behaviour slide just didn’t occur to me until I’d already stood up. And, unexpectedly, against the sickness-in-my-gut feeling I always got straight afterwards that I am making myself increasingly unemployable by being outspoken - in a pandemic of all things! - things have turned out to be somehow the opposite. It seems that allowing myself to be visible by putting myself honestly on the line, I have actually made connections with more like-minded people who want to work with me on purpose. Aside from the commissions, I have been recording lots of new music, been a speaker at LSO/GSMD and a consultant at the ABRSM as a performer of colour, and presenting for the BBC Radio 3. I have recently been welcomed as a mentee at Manasamitra where I will be seeing just how far my multidimensional voice might stretch as a daughter of Sri-Lankan parents who grew into a passion for western contemporary music, and I am MD for a new improvised theatre work with Improbable, currently in design meetings discussing creating a playable set…
So congratulations to my #EmiliaFamilia, and thank you for everything, especially for all the seeds I haven’t yet realised you planted.
Do join us on Tuesday for the EMILIA! live stream watch party and be a part of Morgan’s beautiful fire. The stream will remain available until 2nd December. https://www.emilialive.com