The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs: ‘Theatre is for communal healing, but queer women haven’t had that’

The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is a complex work with eight characters and multiple storylines. While it is definitely Qureshi’s play, having Hauer-King working alongside her as it developed has been helpful, and also points to the dramaturgical advantages of longer-term writer-director partnerships. At one point, when Qureshi was struggling, Hauer-King suggested she write a first draft almost entirely as unallocated dialogue and see whether characters would start to emerge. They did.

“If you work with somebody over time, you develop a shorthand in the way you work together,” says Hauer-King. “I guess it’s the difference between going to have a coffee with a stranger and with a friend. With a friend, so much is already shared and known so you can keep moving the conversation on and can do it more quickly.”

‘I hope this play means women can sit in the dark, hear their stories told and be reassured that they matter’

If the scale and ambition of The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is a step up for Qureshi, is also a step up for Hauer-King and her new writing company Damsel. Most recently, the company put on Damsel Outside in August 2020, at the time of Covid restrictions on indoor performances. This comprised four new plays by Qureshi, Abi Zakarian, Benedict Lombe (whose debut play, Lava, has just won the Susan Blackburn Smith Prize) and Timberlake Wertenbaker, which were performed in outdoor locations across London.

Its biggest previous production was Tabitha Mortiboy’s underrated The Amber Trap at Theatre503 in 2019, a production The Stage followed through from inception to opening and that demonstrated the real financial outlay of producing on the London fringe.

Looking back, Hauer-King says The Amber Trap was a challenge and a growing-up experience for the company. But it was also one she recalls with fondness for the skill with which Mortiboy created her world, a great cast (including Fanta Barrie, who is also in The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs) and the way it made Damsel address “the financial, physical, emotional and spiritual reality of making work on the fringe and how we can look after ourselves better during that process”. Theatre503 has since changed its model and abolished all hire fees.

If Hauer-King and Qureshi’s collaboration on Ministry demonstrates the value of writer-director partnerships, then Hauer-King and Damsel’s eight-year relationship with Soho Theatre (she was resident assistant director there in 2014) shows how important company-venue relationships are. A production the size and run duration of this show – five weeks in the main house – would be seen as too great a risk if developed by an unknown company and director. It would simply never stand a chance of being co-commissioned in the way this show has been.

“As a freelancer, you always feel very destabilised, even without a pandemic,” says Hauer-King. “You never feel you have anything to hang on to and the pandemic has really exposed that in a way I don’t think people had noticed before.”

Having a building with a long association is “very grounding” she adds, after moving up the ranks at Soho, from helping the marketing team put up posters to directing in every space, except the main space, and now finally having the chance to do that.

“I feel like I know the building and they know me. That’s invaluable. I wish so many more freelancers had the chance to have relationships with a mentor-partner venue because without it, it’s so hard. Make no mistake, I can’t just go to Soho and say: ‘I want to do this show.’ That’s not how it works. They challenge and interrogate everything really rigorously. But, of course, having that long relationship helps. I feel very lucky.”

Qureshi has immersed herself in lesbian histories and queer politics during the writing of Ministry, considering what has been hard won and what has been lost along the way, and remains curious about the way gay women are perceived and treated.

“Gay men such as Tom Daley are seen as cool and trendy, but gay women are either hyper-sexualised to an unrealistic degree or completely desexualised to the point where they are seen as uninteresting or rendered invisible. When I was at school, ‘lesbian’ was absolutely the worst thing in the world you could be called. It was a word delivered with such disgust and received with such shame. It was a word that stood in for all sorts of other words like ‘freak’, ‘weirdo’ and ‘pervert’. The pain of that runs deep and I don’t think it has been acknowledged or addressed.”

Qureshi talks about going to see The Normal Heart at London’s National Theatre and being aware of sitting in a theatre full of gay men wiping their eyes and holding hands in the dark. “The theatre is such a place for communal healing, but I don’t think that queer and gay women have had that, and I think that is down to misogyny and patriarchy. So, if this play does one thing, I hope it means that those women can sit in the dark, hear their stories told and be reassured that they matter. That they are not invisible.”

The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs runs from May 5 to June 11. For more: sohotheatre.com/shows/the-ministry-of-lesbian-affairs