Gay Camberwell

by Layla

In our quest for quirky and delightful entertainment, Roz and I have recently been breaching the boundaries of SE5 and sampling the offerings of other locales like tourists in a strange land. And we have come to the conclusion that Camberwell is only missing two things. 

One is trapeze club nights. Roz and I recently went to a French Victorian cabaret club night in East London - as you do - which involved scantily-clad ladies and muscular gentlemen swinging and twirling from the rafters in a most entertaining fashion. It has made me think that no evening entertainment is really complete without a trapeze artist. And indeed, at Camberwell Gay Book Group, one of the members recently announced that she was a trapeze artist, limited only in providing Camberwell-based trapeze entertainment by lack of a sufficiently high ceiling with a good strong hook. Forget cinemas - clearly this is the real gap in the market!

The other is storytelling. For a while we've been venturing to the far north of Little Venice to attend the extremely popular, sell-out storytelling events run by Spark. Our interest was born on our New York honeymoon where storytelling is the current cool phenomenon and queues for storytelling nights snake round the block, crammed with cool young things and cool older things alike. Trying to recreate the experience in London, we found that there is a storytelling scene here, but how horrible to have to venture north and west! A few weeks ago, Spark held a brilliant storytelling-and-dinner event in the lovely Soho venue Bar Chocolate. People told 7-minute true stories about their lives between courses of an excellent meal. Funny, sad, interesting, illuminating... and one by a woman from Blackheath who fled her Polish village to escape the concentration camps in WW2 at the age of 7 that left me sobbing. Storytelling is still a bit of an underground entertainment in London. Roz and I were lamenting the lack of storytelling in Camberwell when, randomly, Spark announced they are doing a 5-day storytelling festival at our very own Blue Elephant Theatre! From Monday 7th til Friday 11th June, go along at 8pm to hear true stories on a different theme every night. Take proof you live in Southwark and get in for £5. See one show, get the rest half price. And if you're lucky, you might get to hear the story of my first ever lesbian first date...

So that just leaves the challenge of finding a venue for a trapeze club night...