Waiting for myself to appear

Michael McMillan (00:13):
So Esther now having seen the film installation of waiting for myself to appear, how does it compare when you did that 45 minute one woman performance piece in the arm’s house with audiences of only eight to 10 people as a theater to piece? I mean, how does that compare for you?

Esther Niles (00:34):
Gosh, it feels completely different. It’s lovely to be able to see the film because it gives it a completely different perspective in a way, especially with all the imagery and the undertones of the music and the sound. But in the context of doing it in front of an audience, it was a bit daunting doing a 45 minute show by yourself, like a one woman show. And it was also really interesting to try and get the balance between information, because I was a museum at Attendant, so I was sharing information and also making sure the story was coming across in a cohesive way. So we had that light and shade and that arc throughout as well.

Michael McMillan (01:12):
Talk some more about that light and shade for you.

Esther Niles (01:15):
I feel like the piece was, well, there’s moments that are not in the film, that were in the theatrical production, we could say that I feel that it is covered with light and shades. There’s poignant moments and they’re quite serious. And then you are brought back in with some warmth and some humor, and then you’ll hit again with another poignant moment. And then again, the warmth and humor comes back in. So it gives you a real journey, a real through line as a performer and also as an audience member watching the piece.

Michael McMillan (01:48):
I mean, were there any specific things from the performance that you remember that are not necessarily in the film now? We had to face the time limit, but anything, any specific stories from the performance that you remember?

Esther Niles (02:01):
Yes, there was a music section. There was a big music section that wasn’t in it where we spoke about clubs from the local area that were around in the late seventies, early eighties, and how poignant they were and how many people used to go there. Even celebrities used to frequent the joints we spoke about that we also spoke about in the theatrical production. We also had spoke about more about gentrification that didn’t come up as much in the film and how house prices have skyrocketed. And we also had, Alicia was also a DJ as well, which we don’t discover in the film, but she was a dj. She is a dj, which we spoke about that. And how for female representation in that area, those all few things that didn’t come up in the film that we’re in the theatrical production.

Michael McMillan (02:56):
So what did it feel like for you as an actor playing a woman wearing a suit, and she’s playing two characters, Alicia, who is a contemporary museum attendant and the suit that would be her uniform. But we now go back to Marianne, early 20th century, an Edwardian woman really, but she’s not wearing the classic Edwardian long skirt and corset and restrictive. That’s the kind of image of the Edwardian women. But you are now wearing a suit and Ebola hat and this really African printed waist skirt. What does that feel like doing that?

Esther Niles (03:36):
It was interesting. I feel like the waistcoat was a great through line. It tied everything together. Yes, Alicia was wearing the suit because she was professional. She was doing her job as a museum attendant, and then when we went back in time, we put on the waistcoat. So it felt like the jacket came off for some of it for some of the Maryanne section. But when the waistcoat went on and because of the African print on it, it was that tie to the past that helped me get into character, I would say in a way, which was really lovely. And it was nice to not have the limits of the coer. All of those things impact your voice and things like that. It was a different perspective.

Michael McMillan (04:15):
I mean, what does it say to you, because she used that suit to kind of go out on the town like a man, as it were. So it’s in the past. I mean, what does that connect with you now as a woman? Raving maybe or going out with being an independent black woman now in wearing masculine clothes, wearing Dr. Martins at the moment, and we wore Dr. Martins then, I mean, because Dr. Martins kind of say, don’t mess with me, don’t mess with me. I mean, what does it say to you now, reflecting on that as a black woman now in the 21st century?

Esther Niles (04:54):
It’s nice to be in a position where you can wear what you want. I think clothes give you an identity in a way you can reflect yourself, you can reflect the time, you can reflect your culture. You can reflect how you’re feeling on that day. If you feel like you need a pick me up, you might wear a bright color. If you feel like you want your clothes to make a statement, you might have something with a slogan on it. So I feel like we’re in more of a time where we can express ourselves clothing wise, which is really lovely.

Michael McMillan (05:22):
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned some of the themes, which are quite powerful. So the key things with Maryanne was that she was a wet nurse for the wife of the chaplain here. So this is historical fact. She was the black nurse, but she was not a mescal. She was a wet nurse. So she weaned Grace on her breast milk, and then she was forced to leave Jamaica and escort Grace here, leaving her own child behind. And that’s the story of immigration. And then Alicia then picks that up later when she says, when she remembers Maryanne, she remembers her grandmother who was a nurse in the NHS. And if I remember, some of your family were nurses and midwives in the NHS at the beginning of the NHS.

Esther Niles (06:15):
Yep, that is true. I’m going to go back to your first point first about Maryanne and how when she had to come up and leave her child behind, there’s a line in the play that says, mothers just get forgotten here. And it’s that whole pain sometimes of being a mom and having to leave your child and look after being a forced to be a wet nurse for someone else’s child, not having, it’s that painful thought, even when playing it, just the thought of it, it really grieves me that she had to leave her child or sometimes not have enough breast milk left to feed her child, yet bring someone else’s child up.

(06:53):
There’s this pain in that and how bodies were used just used for everyone else’s purpose. And you’re not getting to use it for how it’s intended to be used for yourself. You are dictated by everyone else’s terms as a black woman, especially in the past. In regards to the NHS, yes. My mom is a retired nurse now. My godmother’s a midwife. Loads of family, friends, nurses, midwives. Yes. So that for me really resonated, especially in the fact that my mom was recruited from the Caribbean to come up. So she didn’t choose automatically just to come to England. It was a time when the NHS were rebuilding and they needed nurses to come up and train. And yes, she worked in that field and then in the text it talks about the racism the Alicia’s grandmother encountered. And yes, my mom did experience some of those things. It wasn’t all bad though. There was lots of lovely moments and she’s got so many fantastic memories, but in the position of you are trying to help someone, yet all they’re seeing is skin color, there’s a pain in that no matter how much joy you found in the job and different, it really makes you think, and it sometimes makes me slightly sad, but mum loved it, loved it. And that was very rare. But those moments did happen.

Michael McMillan (08:09):
Yeah. I mean, what does that history say to you now generationally, because that’s part of, these are your ancestors. What does it say to you now on a generational level? Have things changed? Have they shifted? Are things, what has remained the same in a sense?

Esther Niles (08:30):
I think I hope a lot has changed. I think there’s a lot more change to happen. I feel that we’ve picking up a really good momentum on the back of everything that’s happened in the past year. I feel like a lot more eyes are opened and there’s a lot more awareness across the board from people of all ethnicities about what people’s struggles are in regards to whether it’s different people groups, not just black people, just in general. I feel like a lot of eyes have been opened up. I feel like we just really need to build on the momentum that’s been created and keep striving and fighting for the change that we want to see in society because it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a work in progress, and we just need to keep working, keep knocking on doors and just keep our voices being heard really.

Michael McMillan (09:19):
As a black actor doing this one woman show, what does it feel like? Because in the industry, it’s not something you get an opportunity to do every day, do a one woman show in a museum, which is a bit different.

Esther Niles (09:33):
Yes. No, as I said, it was a bit daunting at first doing a one-woman show in regards to just making sure you had all the texts. It’s just you on stage in regards to other productions that if you drop a line or you have a moment where like, oh, not sure what comes next, that doesn’t happen often, but just in those moments you have someone else, but you are by yourself. So it’s that you’ve got to really rely on the research you’ve done on the character work you’ve done and hope that everything just comes together. And it was privileged to perform in a museum. It was something very different, something I haven’t done before and and being a black woman in the arms house for a start, that wouldn’t have been what, that wouldn’t have been possible many years back to have someone like me in the room. And yet here I am doing one woman show here.

Michael McMillan (10:24):
I mean, and I’ve probably both gone to museums when we were kids. I mean, what does it say about that kind of black presence in the museum? And is that shifting in some ways?

Esther Niles (10:36):
Yeah, I would definitely say it’s shifting more so now. I feel like there’s a lot more representation in a lot of areas that were underrepresented. And I feel like there’s a cry for people across the board to know more about history and people that at the moment, especially in the current climate, as I keep saying, there’s a lot more, I would say, interest in black history. And I know the Jeffery Museum had the project, the West Indian front room, which you’re involved in and things like that. So when you go places and you see things that look like you and that are about you that you can relate to, it’s really lovely, especially as you grow up because it’s like, oh yeah, I can see where I belong and

(11:16):
see that other people that look like me and strive to do what they’ve done and do more because every generation has to do more.

Michael McMillan (11:24):
Yeah, I mean, I suppose museums and everything associated with museums, monuments and statues have become a big issue now in the past year, pulling down of the Slave Trader Edward Colston from Bristol in Bristol. But we’re proud that we talked about Sir Robert Jeffrey in 2019. This piece was done in 2019 before all

Esther Niles (11:45):
This. That’s true. Before all of this happened,

Michael McMillan (11:46):
And we talked about when reveal the history of Sir Robert Jeffrey, wealthy 17th century merchant, and his wealth was used to build the arms house and he made his wealth from sugar spice and slaves, the Royal Africa Company and the East India Company. And now there are calls to remove the statue. A lot of these monuments which kind of represent the empire, the British Empire. I mean, what are your kind of perspectives on that?

Esther Niles (12:16):
Gosh, it’s a difficult one and an easy one. At the same time, I feel like councils and government should listen to the voice of the people and take the consensus of how the people are feeling about it. I feel like it should be a collaborative effort. I feel like people should be informed on what the statues represent and the history behind them. I feel like that’s very important so that everyone can be involved in making an informed decision on what should be done one way or another.

Michael McMillan (12:45):
I mean, there was one poignant piece you did about the Mask. We Wear the Mask, but the poem by Poor Lawrence, dun by an early 20th century black writer from America. I mean, how do you feel doing that poem?

Esther Niles (12:58):
Actually, that poem is one of my favorite moments from the theater show. And also I like the convention of it in the film because it’s done as a voiceover, so you can hear my voice. So my voice is saying one thing, but my face is saying something else. And I feel like that’s really powerful in the context of sometimes in society, we feel like we can’t truly be ourselves and we have to wear, put up this facade and this mask just to get through every day or to adapt to being in different situations, different spaces. And I felt like when that poem was going on, my character was smiling being like, no, it’s all okay. But really the words are, we wear a mask. Why can’t I be me? Why can’t I lose this mask? But I feel that in the last 16 months or so that those masks are coming off. And I feel that that’s a really good thing to happen.

Michael McMillan (13:51):
Do you think that’s also happening for black women? Because there’s a lot of advertising, we see a lot of black women represented in advertising in the media, different types. It’s not inclusive of all types of black women. I mean, how do you feel yourself? Are you still waiting for yourself to appear?

Esther Niles (14:09):
To a certain extent. I’m still waiting for myself to appear, but I also feel that there is a lot more representation, which is lovely. There needs to be more all shapes and sizes, all skin tones, because there’s an array, a wealth of beauty within the black female community. And I feel like that needs to be represented even more. So it’s a start, but there’s a long way to go

Michael McMillan (14:33):
To give acknowledgement the beauty of where black women are.

Esther Niles (14:35):
Yes.

Michael McMillan (14:36):
Everybody jealous and want to copy. Were there any questions that you had for me?

Esther Niles (14:44):
Where did you get the inspiration for writing the piece?

Michael McMillan (14:49):
Well, the title Waiting For To Appear comes from a filmmaker, a black filmmaker, African American, in that we’re always waiting for ourself to appear. So I kind of appropriated that title. And then the idea, I read the Diary of Ernest Baker, and he was one of the sons of Grace Belmore, who came from Spanish down Jamaica. And she was the wife of the chaplain here at the Jeffrey Arms house late 19th century. And it mentions that she was escorted to England by a black nurse. And in the diary, that’s the only reference to a person of color, that black nurse. So those two words, I took that and reimagined her as I gave her a name. Because too often in the archive, in the museum, we don’t have names. We’re not subjects. We’re not humanised.

(15:44):
We are just there. We don’t know who these people are. And I wanted to give her a life, give her a name. She was the daughter of somebody. She was somebody’s mother and bring her into being, and that’s really important so that we can connect ourselves to history. That actually, yeah, there was a real person there that feels and thinks just like us in some ways on a human level. And then I wanted to write about Hackney because this museum ends has been, yeah, it’s in my ends. It’s been here for a long time. I’ve known it for some time. Of course, I did the exhibition, Western Indian front room, and now the front room is here back again as a permanent room. And I wanted to write about the transformation that Hackney’s, because there’s an interesting theme that when the arms house was actually closed in 1911, what was happening in Hoxton shortage and Haggerston in terms of urbanization and the social tensions is very similar to the gentrification that’s happened in the late 20th and 21st century. And I thought there, there’s almost a kind of connection there. And this ideas of social displacement, ethnic and social cleansing, what’s happened, my parents, basically, I’ve lived there most of my life.

(17:14):
My parents passed away. The house that they bought for a couple of thousand, we now sold it for a hundred thousand. And we sold it to people who looked just like people. They bought it in the first place. So immigrants arrived here to these areas. There was white flight, and now they’ve coming back. And now a lot of the people who’ve grown up here, we can’t afford to live here. That’s more than sad. I’m incensed about that, because we should have enough housing for people. We should have, this is a first world western society. We should have enough housing. I don’t understand why we can’t have enough housing for people. So those are some of the themes. And also the way that black women’s bodies have, there’s a historical continuity between the way that black women’s bodies have been exploited. And in ENHS, basically, I think there’s a same continuum there. And we see that in the pandemic where black women have just died, they’re contributed to the build, and they look after sick people, but they’re not given the appreciation. And that’s just people of color. And now we have women, people as health workers, and I’m sorry, I’m going on possibly, but I mean, I don’t care that there’s a paradox. You’re a health worker. Yeah,

(18:42):
But you’re facing deportation.

Esther Niles (18:45):
Yeah.

Michael McMillan (18:46):
You’re treated as illegal. You are needed by the society, by the health service, but you’re still treated as illegal. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand that. And it’s wonderful to have you, by the way.

Esther Niles (19:04):
It’s lovely to see.