The Company
The Company
Performers
Lil.Miss.Lady Lady Lykez
DJ Harmony Kaylee Kay
Blanka Fahad Shaft
Hypez Alexander Lobo Moreno
Twist Joshua Cameron
DJ Rat Aliaano El-Ali
Understudy (Lil.Miss.Lady) Lauryn Louise
Creative and production team
Writer and Director Dominic Garfield
Lyrics Lady Lykez, Dominic Garfield and Company
Lighting Designer KJ
Set and Costume Designer Stella Backman
Video Designer Mary Melodies
Vocal Coach Toni ‘Reese’ Robinson
Movement Coach Yami Löfvenberg
Assistant Director Lauryn Louise
Tracks and Beats Duncan Burton, Row.d Beats, JR Productions
Sound Design Curators DJ Kaylee Kay and Dominic Garfield
Production Manager Cai Taylor (for HighRise)
Company Stage Manager Daisy Francis Bryden
Deputy Stage Manager Tayla Hunter
Touring Production Manager (tour) Dan McGeady
Deputy Stage Manager, book (tour) Stacey Nurse
BSL Interpreter Sumayya Si-Tayeb
Project Producer Charlotte March
Company Producer Elizabeth Peace
Company Marketing Manager Oliver Tunstall
Content Designers Oliver Hunter and Mary Melodies (for HighRise)
PR Fiona McGarva and Tom McGarva for Sundae Communications
PR Support Caroline Head
Videographers (trailer) Jamal Crowe and Liam Togher
Videographers (live capture) Aydan Tair and Marco for Wilder Direction
Photographer Ali Wright
Stage Management Assistant Jack Torres
Research partners Lioness, Queenie, Stush, Baby Blue and Girls of Grime
Additional material from Gerel Falconer, Fahad Shaft, Michael Mbozzo, Aayan Ibikunle Shoderu, Joseph Barnes Phillips and The Company
Event information
Event information
Running time: 1 hour 45 mins. There is no interval
Age guidance: 14+
This production contains haze, loud music, smoke effects and strobe lighting. There is strong language and references to violence.
Presented by the Barbican
HighRise are supported by Arts Council England, Vogue World Foundation, Alpha Theta, Something To Aim For, No License and Brixton House
Images by Camilla Greenwell.
Trailer by Mary Melodies, Oliver Tunstall and Oliver Hunter.
Special thanks
Libby Libard, Penguin Media
BSL-interpreted and relaxed performance
Fri 14 Feb
Chill-out room
A chill-out room is available for anyone who requires a quiet space during the show. Please ask a member of staff for more information.
Women on Grime
Women on Grime
East London – particularly Newham and Tower Hamlets – is seen as the birthplace of grime. As a highly accessible contemporary Black-British musical genre, grime has enabled young people to create a sense of belonging, as well as connect to a global audience. In those early days, on council estates, on street corners, in youth clubs and in schools, young people gathered to hang out and make music that mattered to them. Music that allowed them to narrate the conditions of their being, and to articulate their struggles, their joys and their losses.
By using English accents, and therefore their own voice, grime provided an opportunity to step away from the ‘elders’ in the UK garage scene who, at the time, were not paying too much attention. At the same time, the commercial juggernaut that was US hip-hop and rap was subsumed, in London at least, by a Black English aesthetic.
This is an extract from Grime Music: from the Corner to the Mainstream by Dr Joy White.
Joy White is an author, lecturer, sociologist, ethnographer and researcher. Her books include Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture during Covid, Terraformed; Young Black Lives in the Inner City and Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People’s Enterprise.
During my early teenage years, I was really into grime. It wasn’t until I started going to live events a few years later that I started realising how male-dominated the scene really was, both on and off stage. In 2017, I set myself a mission to find the women of grime. Searching online and offline for female MCs, DJs, producers, radio presenters, journalists, videographers – I was looking for those who helped shape the genre over the last twenty years. I knew of MCs such as Lady Leshurr, Ms Dynamite, Shystie and Lioness, and journalists Chantelle Fiddy and Hattie Collins, but there had to be more than just a handful of women. The more I looked, the more I found. [...] Since starting the project, I’ve seen a huge shift in recognition and respect for women in the scene. Boxpark Wembley curated an event called Grime Ballet in 2019, which saw a panel of mainly women, and performances by Lioness and The Grime Violinist. Poet In Da Corner, a coming of age play inspired by Dizzee Rascal’s debut album written by Debris Stevenson, toured across the UK in 2020. Female DJs spinning grime are being booked for shows and festivals around and outside of the UK, and successful male MCs are actively making music with female MCs and producers. The women in the scene are also backing each other and working together on a variety of projects. Seeing this shift and unity over the past couple of years has been heartwarming, and shows that grime is learning and growing. Despite the popular saying, grime is not dead. It’s evolved past its infancy, and will continue to develop for the next generation.
This is an extract from a piece by Ellie Ramsden, author of the book Too Many Man: Women of Grime V2
The grime scene has always been heavily dominated by men, with alpha male ideologies pushing women in the scene to make themselves appear more masculine, both in appearance and performance.
Over time, women have been able to glamorise their image, and they now have more diverse representation, from more androgynous to hyper-feminine.
Women are beginning to carve out a narrative for themselves, pushing back against objectification, colourism and misogyny often found in the scene.
But the problem of male domination in grime persists. Lyrically, men tend not to address women in their challenges. They do not appear to be considered as equal competitors, with many male MCs using words associated with femininity and homosexuality to insult one another.
[...]
The male narrative found in Grime – seeing women as objects and appendages – is integral to wider discourses of sexism within the music industry, where women have less agency or autonomy comparatively.
This is an extract from Where are the Women in Grime by Dr Monique Charles for preciousonline.co.uk, based on PhD research between 2010-2016. The 2010s saw shifts around sexual orientation and gender identities and therefore this, as well as the increasing numbers of women in rap, has to some extent influenced Grime theories and narratives around the ‘alpha male’ ideology woven into the scene.
Biographies
Lil.Miss.Lady
Lady Lykez is a UK-born MC raised in North London. As a seasoned veteran, her distinctive style, clever use of words and innate ability to command the stage makes her a dynamic force to be reckoned with.
Armed with witty bars and versatility as shown in her multiple BBC Radio 1 freestyle, Fire in the Booths, Lykez has also taken the stage at Glastonbury, Wireless, Reading and Leeds festivals, and many more. She has toured her music internationally and supported artists such as Method Man, Red Man and Eve to name a few. She was also the first female to battle a male MC in Jammer’s legendary basement on Lord of the Mics, subsequently becoming a household name in the UK music scene.
Lady Lykez also has a history in performing arts, theatre and as a stage coach. As a musician and actress, theatre productions include Booty for The Big House; and Kiss Marry Kill for Dante or Die, in which she toured the UK. She also wrote and produced the music for Kiss Marry Kill, resulting in her winning the ‘Best Book and Lyrics’ award at the Black British Theatre Awards at the end of 2024.
As well as script writing for Channel 4’s 3 Minute Wonders Lykez’s collaboration with Dominic Garfield in the creation of Lil.Miss.Lady has seen her perform the lead role in the show at Latitude Festival, The Roundhouse and HighTide Festival and, following its Barbican run, a UK tour.
Writer and Director
Dominic Garfield is an award winning writer, director, rapper, actor and troublemaker from North London. Writing and directing includes: The UK Drill Project at the Barbican; Lil.Miss.Lady at the Roundhouse; The Concrete Jungle Book at artsdepot and the Pleasance; My Generation at the Orange Tree; Penny Lane at The Yard; Tri-Border at Hoxton Hall Merryville at Camden People’s Theatre and Latitude; Saturnalia at Contact; and Big Smother at Brixton House. His work as a facilitator and young people’s director has seen him build programmes and deliver work with the National Theatre, the V&A, the Royal Exchange, Manchester, Complicite, Shoreditch Town Hall, The Place, Cambridge Junction, Cardboard Citizens and Coney. He is also an alumni of the BBC Writersroom and a recipient of The Genesis Kickstarter award 2021. His work has seen him travel across the world and uses a unique practice of blending playful, immersive and thought-provoking theatre with Hip Hop and Grime music to connect and inspire young audiences and participants.
As the Artistic Director and CEO of HighRise, he led the company into becoming one of only three new Arts Council England’s NPOs for 2023.
Movement Director
Yami ‘Rowdy’ Löfvenberg is a multidisciplinary movement artist, working at the intersection of dance, theatre and cross-arts. Between making her own work, Yami mentors, educates and delivers workshops. She is a lecturer in Hip-Hop and Vernacular Dances at Trinity Laban Dance Conservatoire, and a British Council and Arts Council England recipient, Howard Davies Emerging Directors Grant recipient, One Dance UK DAD Trailblazer Fellow, Marion North recipient, and a Talawa Make Artist. She was on the choreographic team for the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony (NHS Section) and is a member of the internationally acclaimed performance collective Hot Brown Honey.
As Movement Director: Is God Is for LAMDA; Talawa on tour; Queens of Sheba at Soho Theatre; Imposter 22, Rare Earth Mettle and Living Newspaper at the Royal Court; Bird & Bees and Human Nurture at Theatre Centre/Sheffield Theatre; The UK Drill Project at the Barbican; Roundabout 22 for Paines Plough; The Concrete Jungle Book at the Pleasance; Kabul Goes Pop at Brixton House; Athena at The Yard Theatre; Notes on Grief at Manchester International Festival; Fuck You Pay Me at Bunker; Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells; Talawa TYPT at Hackney Showrooms; and Boat at BAC.
As a director: Fierce Flow at Birmingham Hippodrome; Kind of Woman at Camden People’s Theatre; and Afroabelhas for the Roundhouse, British Council and Tempo Festival, Brazil.
As Assistant Director/Choreographer: Hive City Legacy for Roundhouse, Home, and Millennium; and, Hive City Legacy: Dublin at the Dublin Fringe.
About HighRise Entertainment
About HighRise Entertainment
HighRise is an award winning multi-arts collective that represents unheard communities and stories of contemporary Inner-City Britain.
Champions of using rap music, theatre, subcultures, politics and heritage at the heartbeat of their work; HighRise is at the frontline of youth arts engagement across the UK where their productions, programmes, consultancy and mentoring schemes offer deep engagement in forgotten areas of Britain. Partners have included Nike, the National Theatre, the Barbican, Centre Point and The Metropolitan Police, and specialised art conservatoires including East 15 Acting School, Central School of Speech and Drama and Northampton University. The company has been seen and featured across media including BBC, BBC Radio, GQ, the Guardian, New York Times, Reuters, London Live and The Evening Standard.
From the Barbican
From the Barbican
Barbican Centre Board
Chair
Sir William Russell
Deputy Chair
Tijs Broeke
Deputy Chair
Tobi Ruth Adebekun
Board Members
Randall Anderson, Munsur Ali, Michael Asante MBE, Stephen Bediako OBE, Farmida Bi CBE, Zulum Elumogo, Jaspreet Hodgson, Nicholas Lyons, Mark Page, Anett Rideg, Jens Riegelsberger, Jane Roscoe, Despina Tsatsas, Irem Yerdelen
Clerk to the Board
John Cater and Kate Doidge
Barbican Centre Trust Chair
Farmida Bi CBE
Vice Chair
Robert Glick OBE
Trustees
Stephanie Camu, Tony Chambers, Cas Donald, David Kapur, Ann Kenrick, Kendall Langford, Sir William Russell, Sian Westerman
Directors
Chief Executive Officer (Interim)
David Farnsworth
Deputy CEO (Interim)
Ali Mirza
Director of Development
Natasha Harris
Head of Finance & Business Administration
Sarah Wall
Director for Buildings & Renewal
Dr Philippa Simpson
Director of Commercial
Jackie Boughton
Director for Audiences
Beau Vigushin
Director for Arts and Participation
Devyani Saltzman
Executive Assistant to CEO
Hannah Hoban
Theatre Department
Head of Theatre and Dance
Toni Racklin
Senior Production Manager
Simon Bourne
Producers
Liz Eddy, Jill Shelley, Fiona Stewart
Assistant Producers
Mrinmoyee Roy, Mali Siloko, Tom Titherington
Production Managers
Jamie Maisey, Lee Tasker
Technical Managers
Steve Daly, Jane Dickerson, Nik Kennedy, Martin Morgan, Stevie Porter
Stage Managers
Lucinda Hamlin, Charlotte Oliver
Technical Supervisors
James Breedon, Charlie Mann, Josh Massey, Matt Nelson, Adam Parrott, Lawrence Sills, Chris Wilby
Technicians
Kendell Foster, David Kennard, Burcham Johnson, Bart Kuta, Christian Lyons, Kieran Poynter, Fred Riding, Fede Spada, Matt Turnbull
PA to Head of Theatre
David Green
Production Administrator
Caroline Hall
Production Assistant
Ashley Panton
Stage Door
Julian Fox, aLbi Gravener
Creative Collaboration
Head of Creative Collaboration
Karena Johnson
Senior Producer for Learning and Participation
Oluwatoyin Odunsi
Senior Manager
Sarah Mangan
Producer
Josie Dick
Assistant Producer
Carmen Okome
Marketing Department
Head of Marketing
Jackie Ellis
Deputy Head of Marketing
Ben Jefferies
Senior Marketing Manager
Kyle Bradshaw
Marketing Manager
Rebecca Moore
Marketing Assistants
Antonia Georgieva, Ossama Nizami
Communications Department
Head of Communications
James Tringham
Senior Communications Manager
Ariane Oiticica
Communications Manager
HBL
Communications Officer
Sumayyah Sheikh
Communications Assistant
Andrea Laing
Audience Experience
Senior Audience Experience Managers
Oliver Robinson, Liz Davies-Sadd, Ben Skinner
Ticket Sales Managers
Jane Thomas, Bradley Thompson, Lucy Allen
Ticket Sales Team Leaders
Molly Barber, Alex Steggles, Máire Vallely, Nicola Watkinson, Charlotte Day
Operations Managers
Tabitha Fourie, Aksel Nichols, Ben Raynor, Samantha Teatheredge, Hayley Zwolinska
Operations Manager (Health & Safety)
Mo Reideman
Audience Event & Planning Manager
Freda Pouflis
Venue Managers
Catherine Campion, Scott Davies, Maria Pateli, Lotty Reeve, Shabana Zaman
Assistant Venue Managers
Sam Hind, Bronagh Leneghan, Melissa Olcese, Daniel Young
Young Crew Management
Dave Magwood, Rob Magwood, James Towell
Access and Licensing Manager
Rebecca Oliver
Security
Operations Manager
Naqash Sheikh
Audience Experience Coordinator
Ayelen Fananas
