Last Thursday saw our event with Cringe at Hoxton Hall take place – with the theatre being transformed into an 80s teenage bedroom which had Djs including Mat Horne and Brett Anderson playing their favourite teenage tracks from a giant wardrobe resplendent with pin-up posters and teen kitsch, and readers coming forward to read their diaries whilst perched on a bed strewn with issues of J17, Smash Hits and Jackie whilst the cast of the Breakfast Club looked on from the retro tv flickering in the background.
Through the course of the night over 10 readers came forward and let us into their teenage secrets – from Henry Holland reading from the shocking diaries of Candi Darling to one girl’s chance encounter with an older goth man on a bus (in her words “yum yum”) to the moving account of one teenager’s experiences in Kenya which importantly brought the event back to the reality of the contrast of our own struggles and that which young people in Africa face on a daily basis. The event saw the audience in turn laugh, scream, holler and cry. All in all a teenage dream of a night.
In the pictures above are:
Mat Horne
Brett Anderson
Henry Holland reading an extract from Candi Darling’s diaries
Singing from karry-on-up-the-oke
Eleanor Gecks reading an extract from sylvia plath’s diary
