Always on
This project successfully funded on 2nd September 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
The Switchboard Project: new lesbian play
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim
A new 80 minute dramatic comedy that will be on at The Hope Theatre in Islington in September.
About the Play
It’s 1985. Above a bookshop in King’s Cross, four lesbians are determined to answer the call to connect their divided community. Just let them finish arguing first.
‘The Switchboard Project’ is a new 80 minute dramatic comedy, inspired from Switchboard’s extensive archives and interviews with ex and current volunteers. Following a sold out WIP run at Camden People’s Theatre in November 2024, the first full version of the play will premiere in September 2025 at The Hope Theatre in Islington.
For those who don’t know: Switchboard is a real organisation that has been doing crucial information-sharing, referral, and support work over the phone since 1974. It was essentially gay Google. They did everything from knowing nightclub opening hours and advertising gay flatshares to providing a friendly voice to come out to. Staffed entirely by gay men and a small group of lesbians, Switchboard connected the country’s queers.
Inspired by volunteers' brilliant dark wit and written in the year of Switchboard’s 50th anniversary, this play approaches real history in a way that is both tender and sharp. It celebrates the important role lesbians have played in gay liberation and building the queer community as we know it today.
Review of the previous Work in Progress run:
"The piece is alive, questioning and resonant [...] a highly polished one-hour production that goes by in an instant" (★ ★ ★ ★ ★, Theatre & Tonic)
Why is this project important?
Did you also wonder what lesbians were up to during the AIDS crisis? Did you also watch It’s a Sin and go: ‘what, no girls?’. Lesbian period dramas seem to believe that lesbians put on a corset and then went into hibernation until the early 2000s. And lesbian plays don’t believe anything at all, because they don’t really exist.
Our research into Switchboard, and our time with actors over a two week devising process, allowed us to explore the constant historical presence of lesbians in activism and the crucial community-building and caring work they were doing. By reading the daily log books kept by Switchboard volunteers, we got a glimpse of them: the fear of a looming plague they knew nothing about, their constant empathy, and their petty squabbles. They were also unbelievably funny.
This project will share that real history with an audience, with characters and a storyline inspired by our research. The ‘80s was a time when the face of the LGBT community changed massively, and the relationship between gay men and women was brought into stark focus. We want to celebrate this history for those who know it and were there, and share it with those who weren’t.
About the Company
Doubletake Theatre is a new collaborative theatre company created by Ella Pound and Molly Byrne for the development of new writing. The company prioritises work which takes a second glance at familiar narratives and structures, offering a ‘double-take’, and has a particular focus on archival theatre.
You can find out more about Doubletake on their website here: https://www.doubletaketheatre.org/.
Where would your money go?
All funds will go towards essential costs to get the show on a stage, including:
- Fair pay for cast and crew - to pay everyone what they deserve
- Rehearsal space - to get the show on its feet
- Lighting, sound, set and props - to have something to watch
- PR and marketing - to make sure people come
- Insurance - in case it all goes wrong
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made