Quiet Rebels

Written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie and Julie McNamara

A Dervish Productions and Vital Xposure Co-Production

Autumn 2022 Tour

Powerful storytelling about white working-class women who crossed the colour line to marry men of the Windrush generation.

Autumn 2022 Tour

Booking & venues

Forgotten stories of white working-class women who crossed the colour line to marry men of the Windrush generation. They defied race and class prejudice and social stigma directed against them and their families. A quietly rebellious generation of women who are part of the foundations of today’s multi-cultural communities.

Set in a dystopian England, Detective Shade investigates Aileen Burnett’s murder – a white woman who married a Black man. As a convicted race-traitor with four children, she had served time for ‘miscegenation’.

To solve the crime Shade travels the Multi-resistance’s Underground network to the Northern Free Zone where in facing her past, everything she thought she knew about herself and her world is challenged.

Two people in serious conversation. On the left, a mature white woman with piercing, blue watchful eyes and a shaved head, wearing a green sleeveless coat over a black and white patterned top and black shiny trousers. She is conversing with a young bearded Black man, wearing a black and white patterned hat and jacket. In the background, projected onto a grey wall, a light skinned brown woman with a shaved head interprets their conversation into British Sign Language.

Film, movement, soundscapes with integrated creative access provide a powerful dramatisation of stories brought to life by Julie McNamara (The Knitting Circle) and Hassan Mahamdallie (The Crows Plucked Your Sinews) and a team of creative talent.

Quiet Rebels was included in the 2023 Digital Culture Awards Longlist by Arts Council England in the Digital Inclusion category for the innovative integration of creative access in the dramaturgy and presentation of the show.

A woman, dressed all in black, stands to attention, her right arm crossed over her chest, with her thumb, index and middle finger resting on her shoulder in a salute. Projected in the background on two large screens, a man with dark framed glasses, white shirt and dark tie, and a woman with a shaved head, dressed in black, both give the same salute.

Powerfully innovative and fiercely political, Quiet Rebels unsettles and challenges the audience to ask important questions about the world we live in.

Theatre Review on SocialistWorker.

Quiet Rebels provokes a much-needed conversation about the political systems that impact on us and determine the values our society aligns itself with. Indeed, the real ‘quiet rebels’ of the play’s title were women, whose love changed society throughout the chaotic political landscape of the 1960s. This demands the question: who are the rebels for today’s world?

Colin Hambrook, Editor at Disability Arts Online

Access

Creative integration of access elements on stage, within the dystopian world play: the Quiet Rebels creative team is experimenting with a new approach to integrating access into the design of the production, using a vibrant, percussive soundscape and rich visual narrative that incorporates captions, British Sign Language and audio description to sew access into the fabric of the show.