As a young white woman who recently decided I needed to learn about the privilege that gives me and become a better, more educated individual, I admit I hadn’t spent much time thinking about race and racism in the industry I love so much. But hoo boy  did I get a lesson and a wake up call last night, thanks to Turn Up, a special venture from Club 11, under the creative direction of Nicole Raquel Dennis & Ryan Carter.

Streamed over three evenings, Turn Up has brought together a wealth of Black talent from across the West End & Broadway, as well as voices from the activism community and beyond for an evening of songs & spoken word, all recorded live with a live band at one of my favourite venues in London, Cadogan Hall. The event is raising money for four charities: The Bail Project, The Okra Project, The Black Curriculum and UK Black Pride, all in support of Black Lives Matter.

To talk about the music first: I was so happy to see some familiar faces I knew and loved: Sharon Rose, Trevor Dion Nicholas, Aaron Lee Lambert, Tanisha Spring, Rachel John, Adrian Hansel to name a few! What that meant was the majority of the talent were new faces for me, and for that I now consider my theatregoing life immensely richer because of it, because I now will commit to supporting them in their future ventures and see more of them. I was floored by the quality of talent throughout the whole evening, but if I had to select some highlights musically, they’d be:

• Obioma Ugoala singing Make Them Hear You from Ragtime – I saw the musical for the first time back in 2016 and just felt my heart break and soar in equal measure, and Obioma brought all those feelings flooding back tenfold; I had chills!
• Vula Malinga singing Someday We’ll All Be Free – I hadn’t heard this song before and it just… hit me right in the feels. Lyrically, Vula’s performance, everything… tears were shed!
• Without saying too much if folks have tickets for the finale tomorrow: Motormouth 😉 
• Broadway Star Brandi Chavonne Massey singing Shadowland. The Lion King is a show I’m missing so much right now, and she took me to church & did things with that song I’d never heard anyone else do!

It was an education for me musically as all wonderful concerts are, as I hear things I wouldn’t normally choose to listen to, or songs from artists I don’t know very well; and I must give some love to the band and the arrangements from Sean Green, they were stunning!

One of the biggest things I’ll take away was how I felt at seeing a massive cross section of my Twitter timeline so happy at seeing themselves being represented: it’s important and it always matters. Brittney Johnson & Alexia Khadime made history as the first Black women to play Glinda & Elphaba respectively, and this format allowed for them to come together & duet for For Good from Wicked. It was magical but also hit me: why are so many roles in musical theatre cast white when there’s no explicit reason for them to be so? It made me so sad and angry and I’m ashamed that it took me so long to come to that realisation. If they ever are brave enough to start breaking that cycle in Wicked (or indeed some other West End stalwarts I could mention), I’d be queueing round the block! I don’t ever want to see the old excuses: “we looked but couldn’t find” or anything like that ever again and it made me so happy seeing people feel empowered. I’ve only seen “myself” represented on stage by a disabled actress playing a disabled character  once, and it was one of the most profound and intense moments in all my theatregoing, so I could empathise to a degree with the emotion. I hope the team may consider mounting a similar event for disabled performers in future, I’d shout from the rooftops and do all I can to champion and support it.

Away from the music, the readings and poetry really caught me off guard at how emotional they made me, especially the one from Joe Aaron Reid. Elsewhere, the piece of my heart that belongs to Broadway was so full & excited hearing from two particular people.

I remember tweeting Club 11 after the event saying ‘we will be doing this in person with this line up once it’s safe, yes?’ and I stand by that will all my heart and soul – I’ll wait as long as it takes!

If you want to get tickets for the finale, you can do so here