There are moments in the show – such as the ending – which feel like an elegy to, or warning about, the continual closure of queer spaces in London and around the UK. that’s an enduring experience that (LGBTQ+) people have found in the past, the present, or will still be looking for in the future” – Martin Moriarty “Coming together to find liberation in a community on a dancefloor. We’ve tried really hard to be unsentimental about LGBTQ+ clubs, though, because you can also find rejection, exclusion, intolerance, humiliation – all sorts of things. At the same time, we’ve been developing this project in this era of continuing erasure of queer faith. All sorts of different genres of music, at different times in different places, have helped us find that moment of liberated relief. That’s an enduring experience that people have found in the past, the present, or will still be looking for in the future.
One of our starting points for the show was that kind of experience, particularly for LGBTQ+ people, of everyone coming together to find liberation in a community on a dancefloor. Martin Moriarty: Yeah, we’re really interested in this. Is there anywhere else with the potential to be so freeing – yet at the same time alienating – as a club? Especially a gay club?
Writers and producers Daniel Fulvio and Martin Moriarty spoke to us about the iconic music of that time, the UK’s forgotten clubs, and the lessons that can be learnt from the past. The play resonates particularly strongly today, an era where queer spaces are disappearing and disappearing fast. Dedicated to “all the DJs who have helped our community find liberation on the dancefloor” theatre group Inky Cloak’s We Raise Our Hands In The Sanctuaryis a powerful show, soundtracked by the era’s classic bangers, that explores what happens when two black gay friends decide to start their own clubnight in London’s East End. It’s inspired by London’s black gay underground, and the clubs – along with the DJs – that conversely are at risk of being forgotten. Sweaty, funky, and fierce, its fame has seen it carved into the stone slabs of dance music history.īut now, a new play at Depford’s Albany Theatre is telling a parallel story from the same period. And for everyone on the dancefloor, real life could be forgotten for a moment and replaced by the soundsystem, a cloud of poppers, and waves of naked flesh. Since its closure in 1987, the Garage has come to be regarded as the mother of modern clubbing: it was where house music icon Frankie Knuckles cut his teeth, where resident DJ Larry Levan would wow the crowd with his legendary sets, and where cult artists and musicians from Keith Haring to Arthur Russell would sometimes slip in and dance until the early hours. During the ten years it was open, the Paradise Garage was a magnet for New York City’s black gay community.