I am excited about Jeremy O. Harris’s play Daddy, which is directed by Danya Taymor and was set to have its UK premiere at the Almeida this week. Harris made a mark in New York with Slave Play, which examined sex and racial trauma, while Taymor has been gathering acclaim with productions such as Pass Over and queens. The fantastical Bel-Air-set melodrama Daddy centres on a young black artist, an ageing white collector and an actual on-set swimming pool. For the Paris Review, Harris interviews the prolific writer and great personal influence Samuel Delany, touching on queerness, sci-fi and high-level kink.

 

Today I’m recommending another of my favourite books, Lemn Sissay’s memoir about growing up in the British fostering and social care system. Each chapter begins with one of Sissay’s short poems and the narrative is interspersed with social workers’ reports outlining their version of events. It’s a difficult, but incredibly moving read.

Nadine Artois from Pxssy Palace’s DJ set for Boiler Room’s series ‘Streaming from Isolation’ was a welcome intrusion to my daily listening. I missed the live stream but caught up with the recording here. The series is fundraising for The Global FoodBanking Network.

Steven Cairns

Feminist scholar Anna L. Tsing is a Professor of Anthropology at University of California Santa Cruz and the author of several books including The Mushroom at the End of the World – on the possibilities of life in capitalist ruins. It is interesting to observe that it is a certain type of man that wants us to go back to ‘normal’, and it is in this context that I recalled Anna L. Tsing’s lecture at Barnard in which she makes the case for a ‘social movement of liveability.’

In 2005, Tilda Swindon gave a speech titled ‘The State of Cinema’ at the San Francisco Film Festival. The speech, in the form of a letter to her 8½-year-old son, was an inspirational manifesto about film, dreams and so much more. After reading it, Mark Cousins was inspired to respond with a letter of his own, written to his 8½-year-old self. From this exchange, a beautiful idea was conceived about sharing great films for and with children.

The artist Eve Stainton has contributed to ID Online by sharing texts, collages, movement explorations and soundscapes both to be with and to move with. Register for free to access the material, available until 3 May with more links added throughout the week. Stainton will present their new solo-work Dykegeist at the ICA at a future date – a work that unravels and complicates archetypal and essentialist narratives of lesbian identity.

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