UNITED NOTIONS

I was starting to put this together in my head when I heard a song by The Fours Tops on the radio – Live it down There's a lot of us been pushed around Red, yellow, black, white and brown With a tear of their own Can't you see While you're pickin' on society That the leaves on your family tree Are callin' you to come home.

But what is home? For me home is where the heart is and I’ve certainly come across lots of heart over the past few weeks. I’m currently involved in the putting together of a show to be performed at the Citizen’s Theatre in November. “Here We Stay” aims to tell the myriad stories of people living in Glasgow today through spoken word, acting, music and song. I feel privileged to be taking part in this particular venture. In association with The Scottish Refugee Council, a wonderful group of people who have made this city their home have come together to share their stories. For me as a performer, it has been a life-changing experience and we aren’t even halfway done. Having been born and raised in the West of Scotland in the late 1960s then the 70s and 80s, it’s pretty fair to say that there wasn’t much opportunity to encounter anyone who wasn’t white and British, even not Scottish. I’m being too kind when I say that my parents and maternal grandmother were bigoted – I’m being truthful when I say they were downright racist and intolerant. My father told highly offensive jokes and once stated to me that if I ever came home with a black boyfriend he would throw me out of the house – I replied passionately that if I fell in love with someone who wasn’t white like me, I would always choose love over him and his hatefulness. My granny, who was a nippy old bat at the best of times, would sit knitting angrily and sucking on Embassy Tips while bemoaning that there were no white people on Top Of The Pops. And my mother would state that someone “looked like a Catholic” – making me wonder if she had been “seeker of priests” in Elizabethan England. Fortunately, I managed to rise above this cesspool of bile. In my teens and early 20s I was involved in the Anti-Apartheid movement and took part in anti-fascist actions. However, living in Glasgow, beyond the occasional ska night or benefit gig, most of the people I knew were too much like me – Pictish, freckled and pasty-faced. Thankfully, over the past few years there has been an amazing change. In the East End which has been my home for the past decade, a fantastic community of cultures and people has emerged. On the rare days of the summer past, the local park was home to young Eastern European people with their wee portable barbeques and as we approach autumn, I look forward to searching out brambles with fellow foragers from Poland. Our next-door neighbours are a wee family from Sierra Leone whose kids all love patting our dog and chat away to me while bouncing on their trampoline. The last two shows I have taken part in were certainly diverse – I was in a play about how gaps in age and experiences divide us and had a fantastic few months working with performers from 9 to 50 and during the summer I took part in a week of physical theatre workshops with women from Greece and Russia. And Edinburgh. For me, performance is all about making connections, meeting new people and learning new things so when I saw the chance to work with a group of different people, I jumped at the chance. And what a chance it has been – if you had told me a couple of months ago that I’d be singing with beautiful women from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Liberia and a wonderful soulful man from Kurdistan, competing in games and laughing myself stupid with a rapping biomedical student from Iran (who is also a kick boxer – think Jean Claude Hot Damn!), listening to tales of castration and bigamy from Uganda told with humour and going to comedy clubs with a cool Egyptian blogger, I’d never have believed it. What’s been most striking for me, although it should come as no surprise, is how much we are all alike – we all have our stories, we all come from somewhere to have ended up in Glasgow. It doesn’t matter whether it was Somalia or Saltcoats, we are all human beings. And that is what makes us amazing. “Here We Stay” is on at the Citizens Theatre from Thursday 17th to Saturday 19th November. Both shows on Friday the 18th have already sold out but free tickets are still available though going fast.