1944: Home Fires

Cancelled by Prison

Home Fires opened on Sunday 3 September 2023 at 8.30 p.m. as part of Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival 2023. It’s also playing at the Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington on Wednesday 6 September. Originally, we were intending to tour for a full week, but the Arts Council has turned down our funding application. As a result we are having to put on as much as we can with the money we’ve got in reserves, from our fundraising through Crowdfunder, and other charitable foundations.

A performance was also to take place on Tuesday 5 September for prisoners, staff and families at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, where the opera is set, but it was cancelled by the prison. This is the latest in a long line of in-situ projects from Homo Promos, which began with Teatrolley, or A Midsummer Night's Scream on Hampstead Heath on Midsummer Night in 1982.

This piece is particularly suited to an audience of prisoners because there are several elements to identify with. Novello is convinced that his life is in ruins, and he’ll never be able to work or write again. It takes the prisoners singing one of his songs, Keep the Home Fires Burning, to convince him to carry on and face whatever the public may throw at him.

Frankie, for all his bravado, is terrified because he is about to be removed to Banstead Asylum. He has been diagnosed as ‘incurable’ (i.e. incurably psychotic) and is lined up for the new Electric Shock Treatment (ECT).

Novello, with his huge network of Queer friends, would have known all too well what that treatment involved, and the vegetative state it could reduce people too. It is he who gives Frankie the courage to resist such treatment, which is described in graphic detail.

ECT is still in use in the UK, and conversion therapy is not banned here, a matter of anger and anguish to all LGBT+ people. In the opera there is also much detail about the grinding poverty and hardship of the East End before the War, and how it forced young men into crime almost in spite of themselves. This too will strike chords, we think.

There is a thriving LGBT+ community in the prison, fostered by the Neurodiversity Service Manager, Jake Booth, who is also head of Pride in Prison, and is sponsoring this visit. There will be many people in the audience who will see the connections between ‘criminality’ and homosexuality at a time when all sex between men was illegal.

We believe the performance can also serve a therapeutic function and promote desistance in the portrayal of ways in which prisoners can turn adversity in imprisonment to advantage. The lessons of self-respect and self-belief are very important to an LGBT audience. A sense of one’s own history is vital to a sense of self-worth, to confidence and security.

Part of our remit is to create a safe space for vulnerable LGBT+ people and sharing a dramatic experience of LGBT+ life is a way of asserting safe space.

We regard this as both an opportunity and a political statement. There are parts of the Home Office which seem to be a million miles away from those dealing with migrants and refugees, and which need to be supported and encouraged.

See The Cast for the September 2023 production.

This video is our production of 1936: Fishing which was organised by Tete a Tete Opera in 2022.

Thanks to all those who supported us financially.