Humane is a new play from emerging writer Polly Creed that is based on interviews with people from Brightlingsea. In 1995 the small port town in Essex was suddenly taken over by protests against live animal exports. What makes the events so remarkable is that it was ordinary people reacting to the lorries carrying the animals through their town, and the stark politicisation of the small population has remained to this day. Polly tells the story through the lens of two mothers, Alice and Linda, following the joys and conflicts of friendship and motherhood amongst activism. As the protests become serious and police brutality rises its ugly head, issues of race come to the fore between the women. 

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The play is currently being released episodically as an audio drama on pretty much every platform for free, or you can buy yourself a copy to read. I am lucky enough to call Polly my friend so I was able to ask her some questions to explore in more depth the difficult juggling of more-than-human justice. The interview has some mild thematic spoilers but nothing specific, though of course I recommend listening or reading Humane first if you can. 

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With many, many thanks to Polly for answering my questions with such honesty and eloquence.

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There's a big theme of visibility Humane, particularly how the single road in Brightlingsea meant the live animal exports were impossible to ignore. Also in the launch event, you and the guests discussed the varying success of animal rights activism with shock tactic videos and stories. How do you think the lack of direct visibility of animal suffering (and other environmental issues) affects not just the cause of domestic animal welfare, but how we value animals and nature more generally? Is this related to why the animals themselves are very much in the background context, rather than main narrative, of the play?

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I am incredibly interested in the relationship between visibility and justice. I definitely think it’s true that society actively creates mechanisms to make injustice nameless, invisible, out-of-sight. If we can’t name it, see it, hear it, feel it, then it doesn’t exist, right? It’s why we build high walls around prisons, it’s why victim-survivors are manipulated to sign NDAs, and why animals are killed cruelly in windowless abattoirs in remote places. 

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Our company name ‘True Name’ actually is all about this idea of visibility and finding a name for things. We were inspired by the words of two incredible female activists:

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 'The first revolutionary act is to call something by its true name.' - Rosa Luxemburg

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 'In the deep past, people knew names had power. Some still do. Calling things by their true names cuts through the lies that excuse, buffer, muddle, disguise, avoid, or encourage inaction, indifference, obliviousness. It’s not all there is to changing the world, but it’s a key step.' - Rebecca Solnit

 

I think, as you say, this is something I try to explore in the play. The way that suddenly when something is visible, when it’s out in the open, when it is named, it becomes impossible to ignore. Visibility itself is a call-to-arms. I think if we don’t see animal suffering, it doesn’t exist. It was amazing interviewing people about what happened in Brightlingsea, because even 25 years on, many people (and often elderly people there) are still vegetarian or vegan. Once people had seen the suffering with their own eyes, it was impossible to dismiss any more.

 

I think the way the animals suffered in Brightlingsea is something I’d like to work with Imy Wyatt Corner, the director, to tease out more in the staging of the play, especially in our use of old news footage of the live export lorries and the crowds swelling around them. I think this is where an interdisciplinary, multimedia approach really comes into play. The suffering of animals, like climate breakdown, is something that is really tricky to write, especially without being preachy or crass; it’s too big, too terrible, it’s ineffable, it’s inexpressible in words. 

 

So I think you have to tackle it through the lens of human stories. This is obviously flawed in a way, because it’s still centering the human perspective over a more ecological perspective, but I think it’s necessary in theatre as a medium. I’ve therefore tried to capture the collective trauma of the town, making the suffering of the animals visible in the reactions and emotions felt by Linda and Alice. 

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In your introduction to the published manuscript you say "Brightlingsea became a lens through which to explore a white feminism and brand of hypocrisy, of which I, myself, and many activist movements are guilty. We fight against the lorry in our own street, but fail to apply the same principles to our neighbour's street or the rest of the town." I think that's the most interesting thing about the play, that it shows how fights for justice aren't always complementary even though they could be strengthened if they were. Could you reflect on why you decided to put such an emphasis on racial issues (re: the final conversations between Alice and Linda and the revelation about Derek) in a play that initially presents itself as primarily about animal rights activism? What could we learn from this aspect of the Brightlingsea protests for our activism now?

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Writing this play was a real education and a privilege for me. In many ways my experience researching and writing, and my awakening to my own white feminism, is mirrored in the play itself. Particularly in the character of Linda, although I hope I’m slightly further along on my journey than her! 

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Initially, I was drawn to the story as almost a ‘Calendar Girls’ style story about a group of older women, speaking truth to power and embarking on an unlikely mission of activism. To my shame, I didn’t even think about race. Due to my white privilege, I didn’t think about the whiteness of Brightlingsea or my own childhood growing up in that area. That wasn’t the story I was telling. I saw it all through the lens of environmental and feminist activism. I was not intersectional in my thinking about these issues. 

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However, as I began to research the play, race kept coming up. I found it niggling and uncomfortable at first. I tried to push it out of my mind. I just couldn’t go there. There was the odd remark here and there. I interviewed someone who was a major part of the protests who is mixed race and she told me some slightly unsettling things.This culminated in my discovery that a man who died during the protests, who in many ways I had started to turn into a martyr-like figure in my initial drafts and planning, had been part of the National Front in the 70s. I was shocked to find his name plastered over right wing, racist forums and in a Youtube video of a Johnny Rotten documentary about the National Front in the East End. 

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I really grappled with how to deal with this. I’m a white woman and I didn’t feel that I was the right person to be writing a play about racism. I was terrified of being tokenistic or misrepresenting the experiences of those involved. However, I realised that this *was* the story. If I wrote this play and  didn’t talk about race, if I didn’t depict what had happened, I would be white-washing the events that took place. I would be pretending that racism wasn’t a problem.

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I realised that in my whole research and writing process I was guilty of the same white feminism and hypocrisy that was in the play itself. I don’t know if I’ve got it right. I doubt I have completely. However, what I’ve tried to do is hold a mirror up to my own hypocrisy and blindspots. I’ve tried to embrace the knottiness and troubling nature of parts of this story - as well as celebrating the courage and brilliance of most of the people involved - and the way that activist movements often miss intersectional and anti-racist thinking. I think in doing this, I’m still probably guilty of centering a white perspective. However, I hope audiences might also notice this and the conversation can develop further. 

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Humane raises all sorts of difficult political and ethical issues - from balancing motherhood in activist spaces to police brutality (which is very timely with the resurgence of BLM and the new policing bill) to vegetarianism and veganism. Did writing the play change any of your views and/or what was the most important thing you took away from researching, writing, and developing it?

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I think, as I say above, the biggest thing for me was realising how much in my activism I stay in my comfort zone; I see the world from such a white, middle class, able-bodied, cis feminist perspective. It made me reflect on my own childhood in rural, very white North Essex and the issue of racism in rural England. 

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Like many white women with similar privilege, I am simply not doing enough. I realised more and more that I couldn’t be a feminist without also actively fighting racism, without fighting climate breakdown, without fighting classism and every other form of injustice. This feels overwhelming and also, if I’m completely honest, almost made me feel quite cynical about activism and the factionist, myopic perspectives it can create. However, it also feels exciting. I feel we are at this moment where in the mainstream people are looking at things with a more complex, structural approach. I want to learn more about this and really educate myself further. It also made me reflect a lot more about who has the right to tell stories and which stories I can tell. I’m still thinking and exploring this a lot more. 

 

Finally, is there anyone you know of who is creating around these themes whose work you would like to highlight?

• Josina Calliste is doing incredible work with Land in Our Names, which aims to disrupt oppressive land dynamics relating to BPOC communities in Britain. 

• Farmerama is a very cool podcast sharing the voices behind regenerative farming. Each month, the show features farmers and growers rebuilding our food and ecosystems from the ground up.

• Anita Okunde is a young climate activist who I met through the book launch and is doing the most amazing work talking about how the environmental movement can be more anti-racist

• Staging Change is a grassroots artist-led organisation, which supports theatre makers responding to the climate crisis.

• Theatre Green Book is an initiative by the whole of theatre – working with sustainability expert Buro Happold – to work more sustainably. In three volumes it sets standards for making productions sustainably, for making theatre buildings sustainable, and for improving operations like catering and front of house. 

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Find more of her work:

True Name Theatre: www.truename.co.uk

Polly: www.pollycreed.com