Jack Wakely will be performing a work-in-progress performance of GOBLIN as part of the Mayor of London’s flagship disability festival, Liberty 2025.
GOBLIN is described as an honest, silly, confronting, funny, cathartic mashup of Clowning, New Writing and Neo-Futurist theatre.
This is Jack’s first solo show, and, though it combines elements of Neo-Futurism and Clowning, Jack says: “I'm not doing it in necessarily and exclusively a Neo-Futurist way; I'm also not doing it exclusively as Clowning. It's kind of informed by those two forms and my own ways of approaching work.”
“There are a number of tenets in Neo-Futurism, which are:
We are who we are, so we don't pretend to be other people.
We are here, so wherever we are is where these things are happening and we don't pretend otherwise.
The time is now, so we are making this in this time on this day specifically and we're doing what we say we're doing.
So, if I tell you that I'm drinking a pint of milk in 30 seconds. I'm actually doing that.”
Jack was introduced to Clowning in their second year of university at Goldsmiths.
“Clowning is very much about your inner child. It's very much about being able to fail. It's very much about being able to approach things with a real liveness and a real sense of exploration.”
Jack was born in Derby and grew up in the West Country, but describes themselves as a South London person by nature. When they first moved to London aged 23, it was to Battersea in Wandsworth, and they’ve stayed south of the river ever since.
Their identity as a queer, trans, disabled person informs their work and is threaded into everything they make. Jack explained: “It also comes from my experience of being disabled, and it comes from my experience being neurodivergent, and it comes from all of those places of feeling like you just don't quite fit and you have to kind of play the part to fit in and God forbid anyone realises that you're an interloper, that you're not one of them.”
But Jack is keen to add that the label of being made by a disabled artist should not define the work in its entirety.
“I think that there is a sense in a lot of places that work made by disabled people is of less quality than work made by abled people, which is such nonsense.
“It's also really important that disabled artists are given the space and the time and the ability to make work that isn't entirely about being disabled.”
Jack admitted that when they first got into the theatre and performance spaces that they had self doubt with regards to being disabled. They worried that if two people, one disabled and one not, auditioned for a role and their performances were of equal quality that the non-disabled performer would be chosen as it would be less hassle for the production.
Now, looking back, Jack realises that by working in a way that accounts for their disability and those of the people they work, with the work they create is not of lesser quality or value than non-disabled peers.
Jack says: “The sort of work that disabled people can make doesn't have to be any one thing. It can be funny, it can be dark, it can be stupid, it can be silly, it can be messy, it can be beautiful, it can be all of these things that we allow for non disabled artists to be.”
GOBLIN will be performed at Battersea Arts Centre on Thursday 25 September as part of Welcome to Wandsworth and Liberty Festival.
Liberty Festival is the Mayor of London’s flagship disability arts festival, platforming some of the most exciting disabled creatives, showcasing bold, innovative work for free that excites, challenges and reframes disability for audiences across the capital and hosted in each London Borough of Culture.