Artemis Theatre Company based in London founded in 2002 by Dr Clare Summerskill has finished performing ‘At The Rainbows End’ at the Broomhill Centre and is now continuing its tour around England.
Clare Summerskill, 64, the artistic director of Artemis Theatre Company, living in London said: “I never had a group of contributors who were so keen to tell their stories, because they knew that it’s in telling other people, raising awareness, and creating discussion.”
Dr Summerskill felt a connection with Sylvia’s and Maggie’s experience. Being in a woman loving woman relationship and sharing the abuse they faced within their homes by their neighbours presented the intense marginalisation faced within everyday life.
She added: “They reached out and they couldn’t get anyone to help them and it’s pretty hard to keep on fighting, especially when you are gay and maybe you’ve been gay for a large part of your life. There’s going to be a point where I feel like I haven’t got the strength to keep fighting the system.”
She said, many elderly LGBTQ+ members are fearful of growing old, what awaits them within the care system, she adds: “They know they won’t be out anymore.
“They’re worried that if they get dementia, that they won’t know what things slip out or how they’ll be treated, they won’t be able to monitor themselves about what they tell other people.”
She said that elders would rather die than go into the care system.
Although the play represents the care system, Dr Summerskill encourages those in positions of power to take notice.
She said: “These are the people that can affect the change in the systems, not the lowly carer. I say that being a carer myself, I know that a carer doesn’t have any power to change a system, and this system needs changing.”
What she wishes people took away from her play is for people to recognise elders as having a past.
She said: “It’s very easy for all of us to meet anybody in a care home or otherwise and think you are just an old person.
“But you’re not. You’re all those things that have happened in the decades before you.”
