London Rave and the Human Experience
Stef at the Sweet Harmony exhibition at the London Saatchi Gallery. Captured by Rahael Ross
Meet my homegirl Stef O’ Driscoll: pioneer of rave theatre and director of UK Garage Musical, WITH A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK. This week we chatted about the role London rave culture plays in our lives. Especially in art and politics, relationships and spaces. And as two intensely passionate, dedicated ravers, it’s safe to say things got pretty deep!
Hey Stef! How powerful can London rave culture be to the human experience?
POWERFUL with exclamation marks!! I can’t imagine who I would be without it. It’s taught me so much. The London rave scene has shaped the human I am for sure, so much so I make theatre about it.
“I’ve experienced everything on a dance floor. from love and loss to hope, destruction, redemption and joy”.
I saw something really beautiful at the Sweet Harmony Rave exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. This woman had documented her whole raving experience since her teens in diary entries, photos and flyers. How London rave culture got her through daily life. She would even talk about someone passing away, and how she had to go to Fantasia to rave it off. Rave was central to her journey.
It’s so deep that raving can act as a way of dealing with grief.
Completely. I remember when my Nan was dying, Calibre was playing a six hour set in Room 3 at Fabric. That music held me in a way no person could. My way of dealing with it was standing in a rave and experiencing it there. Calibre healed me, held me. And that was the only way I could work through that grief at the time. That is why it's such an important thing.
Raving is a coping mechanism for a lot of people, an escape from reality.
Yeah, from reality and norms! In the week you have structure, you do your 9-5...and then you do it all over again.
“Raving until 6am is our kind like of fuck you to the systems that to be honest, I struggle to be a part of”.
For me, the raving community is a home. It's where I found family and friends. A place where I belong, where I learnt how to love. I didn’t have another community where I was able to do that in. Apart from finding my theatre family, but that came later on. But I think it's that important for so many people.
Stef on a panel at Latitude Festival talking about working class representation in the arts.
Do you think that’s why London art institutions like Saatchi Gallery, Tate Modern, theatre productions etc. have started to document it?
It's really important for humans to know they’ve been seen and heard. So we know it wasn't all for nothing. That we are not alone. A lot of human experiences have not been seen: they've been oppressed. History is often told by the people in power and their version of it.
“in the last 5 years there’s been a real shift, where people are starting to realise rave culture just as important as, like, the Tudors or Shakespeare. Ahha”.
Now we're in a really exciting time where more people from all walks of life are able to tell their stories. Whether it be online, through theatre, art exhibitions, in the making of audiobooks like All Crews by Brian Belle Fortune. Our experiences aren’t just documented by those in power anymore. Thank fuck.
Goldie’s Metalheadz documentary was recently screened at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, with a live Q&A hosted by Giles Peterson
Right?! Thank fuck. And isn’t this exactly what you’re doing with rave theatre?
Yeah, I made WITH A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK with Sabrina Mahfouz as an antidote to that. So ravers could feel comfortable in theatres. Without having to pay bare money and then not even be allowed to have a beer or go to the toilet during the performance because you wouldn’t be let back in.
“Theatre etiquette is bollocks and alienates a lot of people so we created an experience that was more like a gig and rave atmosphere”.
It was important to us that the people me and Sabrina raved with could experience a story and relate to it. That they could see a version of themselves on the stage. People could identify with the main character, who LOVED raving. People connected to what it meant to love and then lose that love on a dance floor. They connected with the characters’ hopes and dreams and the hustle to achieve those ambitions. And what threaded it all together was a banging nostalgic UKG soundtrack.
Stef in action, captured by Craig Sugden
How do you think ravers feel in other high art institutions outside these spaces you’ve crafted?
It’s incredible to see your raving crew go to see an orchestra playing Goldie’s album Timeless at Southbank, and getting proper dressed up and wearing shirts! It's a different experience, and it feels special to see your community being represented and documented in that way.
But I also struggle with the purpose of it. If it helps people understand why our culture exists, it’s beauty and it’s importance and it’s contextualised then I'm all for it. But if it becomes like “poverty porn”, serving up caricatures for voyeuristic audiences then I'm not sure if I want to share it with those people. So I struggle.
It’s also a funny contradiction when you look outside the art world and think about the government's attitude towards London nightclubs.
“The London club scene is being sanitised and losing that appeal for disenfranchised humans that need an alternative community and space”.
Couple of years ago Fabric got shut down. Luckily it reopened, but it now has an extra 32 laws it has to abide by, and there’s this airport security. That makes the club really hard to function. But imagine if we were to celebrate it in the way that Berlin celebrates it. It's seen as high art there, to the point where the nightclubs pay lower taxes to the government.
Derelict Homerton, captured by Rahael Ross
Which is right, because if you look at what makes up a dance floor, ravers say yes to the free movement of people.
“Ravers say yes to people around the world, coming together in one space to share music. Ravers say yes to the community and unity”.
Ravers say yes to forward thinking and some to recreational drug taking, and that is a part of it. But in the UK, that is everything that our government doesn't want to be a part of.
Where do you think the London raving community will go next, then, if the system pushes our communities out of nightclubs?
I was chatting with Bailey about this. Maybe next we’re gonna have more clubs on the M25. Having rave experiences that aren't in the heart of London, where people in really expensive flats aren’t complaining about the noise. Clubs will go where there’s no sound limitations. Where there’s more freedom: more old school rebel anarchy vibe to it. Where we can play in a way that we want to.
Ahaha so we can play!!! That's exactly it.
So we can play! So we can fuckin have a good time. That’s all we want. Just have a good time to process all the fuckery that is going on.
Stef and myself at the mighty Rupture London