Truth to the Power Cafe – 2022

Finding voice is of particular importance to ‘Truth to Power Cafe’ creator Jeremy Goldstein, whose personal experience start every performance. Goldstein’s struggle with the power of his father, HIV and drug use is his own answer, sharing memoir, poetry, image music and performance to tell the story of his complicated past and the resolve in the years following his father’s death. His passion in the belief that people need a space to speak their own truths to those who have power over them inspired him to not only create ‘Truth to Power Cafe’ but a whole new genre of theatre. Jeremy Goldstein said: “The show is inspired by the political and philosophical beliefs of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter and his Hackney Gang. The Gang included my late father Mick Goldstein and sole surviving member Henry Woolf, who at 91 has written poetry for the play. I co-created the show, directed by leading British working-class theatre director Jen Heyes. For 60 years the Gang held firm in their belief of an independent media and in speaking truth to power. They remained firmly on the side of the occupied, and the disempowered, and their allies. It is these people we normally invite to appear in the show, and respond to the question: ‘Who has power over you and what do you want to say to them?; Ultimately, the show has become a love letter to the memory of my father Mick, and his friends of 60 years, Henry Woolf and Harold Pinter.”