Pressure Drop: Billy Bragg and Mick Gordon Discuss The Nature Of Identity

Pressure Drop: Billy Bragg and Mick Gordon Discuss The Nature Of Identity

13 April, 2010
by: Naima Khan

Singer, song writer Billy Bragg and playwright Mick Gordon talk identity crisis and communities under pressure with Naima Khan

Billy Bragg is from Barking and he wants you to know it. He's been penning songs for his first theatrical production with writer Mick Gordon at Wellcome Collection, Pressure Drop. I met up with them at the plush gallery to discuss their collaboration.

Billy: “I always end my gig wherever I am in the world with ‘my name’s Billy Bragg, I'm from Barking, Essex. Thank you very much, good night’. That’s who I am underneath all this bollocks, the big life and the loud guitar, all this tosh. It’s an identity I’ve always been comfortable with.”

Mick: The themes of Pressure Drop are what is our idea of home? What does it mean to belong? With whom do we identify? Who do we allow to speak for us? How do we cope when there’s so much change in an environment or that home is under pressure?

At the core of this promenade production, close to the hearts of it's writer and composer, is an exploration of identity under pressure. Currently inescapable, the issue has been driven to the forefront of theatre and politics by the visible rise of the far right and the contested place of conservative thinking in precarious social spheres. The impetus for Gordon's play is the need for empathy and perspective on the subject as well as the quelling of emotional reactions in favour of intelligent responses.

After the election of 12 BNP councillors in his home town, Bragg wrote 'The Progressive Patriot', a call for the rehabilitation of loving England through a blend of personal reflection and social analysis.

Billy: Coming as I do from Barking, the current situation is full of potential for writing songs on a number of different levels. I've been trying to approach the subject of identity politics from the Left, which is not easy: there are a lot of traps and a lot of cultural fences that have been put up by the Left to avoid discussing these issues for fear of bordering on racism.

The script for Pressure Drop has been a close collaboration between the two, with drafts going back and forth where Bragg has had the opportunity to contribute with his songs which underscore Gordon's narrative.

Mick: The music adds another specific element to this. Music is an emotional force that bypasses any rational thought and goes right to your heart. So Billy has a huge tool and responsibility at the same time. To create a very dominant mood and atmosphere, to provoke that in an audience and the responsibility is to find a way to segue that into the play.

Working closely with The Wellcome Collection, Bragg and Gordon have also considered the place of science in identity.

Billy: For our friends at Wellcome, it’s where does the science stop and the emotion take over?

Mick: For us, it's all about the emotion.

Billy: Science doesn’t really handle ambiguity, science likes things to be explained, and fair enough. But they can only do that at a molecular level with regard to identity. They can’t do it at an emotional level. Our job is to get them out of the lab, take off their white coats and get them to think about what this actually means to people who are trying to live a life in a community in which they feel they no longer belong – which will be the experience of white working class people in Barking and Dagenham.

Taking on a grandiose, often elusive subject, Gordon's challenge has been to create a clear narrative that addresses the most difficult aspects of what lies behind the knee-jerk reaction to a changing society.

Mick: In this piece as you’ll see there’s a prodigal son figure. A son who’s gone away and made something of himself and come back for a family event. In many ways he’s a representative of a certain component of our audience and he gets a pretty hard time of it from his family. We make sure that everybody is treated with the same sophistication as every other person. There’s pros and cons to every position so that people can empathise. It must offer a different perspective.

Adding to his challenge, Gordon has cleverly incorporated elements of art as well as music.

Mick: When we conceived the show we wanted to give it a sort of identity crisis to reflect the one that this community is undergoing. That’s why it’s part-gig, part-play, part-art installation. We’re installing a living room, a pub and a church from Barking.

Billy: Not just any pub, the pub at the end of my mum’s road which is now being turned into guess what, an Islamic centre. 

Pressure Drop runs at Wellcome Collection from 19th April until 12th May

Photo Credit: Adrian Brooks and Rama Knight

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Naima Khan