‘Anger burns everything’: the furious response of criminals to the Epstein files | Section

CIs social media bringing change? Maybe not, but it was important to get the whole team involved in the event, which was created in a WhatsApp group of playwrights shortly after the Epstein files were released. Members of the group are angry that the world is not talking enough about what Jeffrey Epstein did to the girls and women he abused. He was also worried that America’s war with Iran would interfere with the violence that had begun to occur in these files on the paedophile-financier. So when British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz posted an urgent message, many writers responded.

That was four months ago. This week, more than 80 of the authors encouraged a response led by Lucy Morrison along with Hannah Hauer-King, Madeleine Kludje and Tessa Walker. It takes place in 15 spaces, cupboards and open spaces, above an office in London, which currently houses Theater Deli, a company that occupies an empty space.

You see the artwork when you sign in. It is written on the walls and the floor. Almost every patch is written: poems, stories, plays. Anger burns them all. You can call this project a response to the gangsters in the files, with things ranging from short plays (which actors like to double), to installations. Producer and writer Anoushka Warden describes it as “art exhibition meets theater meets inspiration” and it feels like a combination of that on the move.

There is no formal way of entry or exit and the interaction of concurrent tasks is extensive. Maybe that’s the point. There is so much this production wants to say and its material gathers steady energy, room by room, and removes anger and disbelief through the story about Epstein and, by extension, the abuse of countless men. There are two main plays at the center, the longest play called All the Rage, made from lines written by all the writers involved in the show.

Despite only having four days on site and in practice, the female/non-binary group has generated a lot of attention. Among the most interesting works of art is a line of clothes, decorated with words (“he felt that his mind was different from his body” written on a pink leotard). Designed by Jenifer Toksvig, the costume contains pages from Epstein’s files that were bagged, as well as other brutal stories, and it’s very scary.

Prince Andrew is analyzed again and again, each mention is bigger: Penelope Skinner’s double agent describes his image on all fours of the woman. In the two words of Ellen Bannerman, Sadie Pearson, Laurie Ogden and Bex Bowsher, there is a story remembered by a woman who was imprisoned in Epstein’s mansion and talks about leaving her body while being abused (“I was told it was just a dance, a massage”).

The Witch Files by Naomi Westerman and Poppy Corbett is, as the title suggests, a room with pages of files that contain the word “witch” – mostly in reference to “witch hunts” in criminal cases, as a form of self-defense.

“I thought it would be interesting to see how many times the word ‘witch’ was mentioned and it was hundreds of times,” says Westerman. The room restores the power of the voice through magic and potions (which the audience can create with the materials provided).

There’s a lot of depth here, like a teenage bedroom beautifully recreated by Julie Tsang and Kerry Fitzgerald, along with Georgia Fitch and Joy Lynch. It takes childhood and adulthood for a girl/woman and is very complex in the way that Punchdrunk is made (maybe Viola’s Room?), creating a kind of girls in the Epstein way, with drawers that contain letters, a diary and a mid-term exam.

It seems, in its most powerful form, as if we are back in the #MeToo era, in its wake, really. Skinner’s piece is about a famous director who is obsessed with female actors and someone who asks women to hug him, gets angry if they say “No”. There are stories of rape, rape – its persistence or resistance. One playwright makes a clear comparison between this time and the year when the arrest of Harvey Weinstein opened the door to the elimination of institutionalized violence and brutality. AJ Baker’s audio piece, Avalanche, narrated by Lilly Driscoll, is about an older male friend who keeps his hand on a 15-year-old girl’s chest for too long. “This is not new, it has been for centuries,” we hear.

It makes you think, “So what changed?” and there is something very disappointing in his vague answer that there has been so little change since the water.

But there is hope in the voices raised, courage in the testimonies of life’s pain, and the community speaking out. “Make your own stories,” is a refrain in group drama and this can be a call to arms.

Pa Theater Deli, Londonuntil 13 June