Angie Le Mar: “A wake-up call to all of us”
Lewisham’s very own Angie Le Mar exudes a charismatic quality with a positive humbleness and understanding of life. An established comedienne, radio presenter, writer and director but also a wife and a mother. Angie Le Mar is well known for her presence on Choice FM and for selling out the Hackney Empire on more than one occasion with her plays Forty and the fastest selling show at the Hackney Empire, The Brothers. She brings her real talk play Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is?’ south of the river to the Albany theatre in Deptford.
Catch a Vibe caught up with this inspirational woman to discuss the play and the issues young women face today.
Catch a Vibe: Tell us more about the play, Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is?
Angie Le Mar: Well the play is about a relationship between a mother and a daughter and the pressures and peer pressures on young girls growing up without a father, with a mother that is trying to guide her along the way.
CAV: What do you feel the audience will take from this play?
Angie Le Mar: When our children are trying to pull away from us we need to go” I don’t care, you might want to scream or make noise but I’m trying to keep you alive.” Your investment that you put in your child shows up, you can’t get rid of that, it’s permanent. We’re not protecting our girls and that’s why when I wrote the play I just wanted to say, “look hello parents, just in case you think it’s alright these guys out there who are doing crime and living a certain lifestyle, have girlfriends that help them”. So for me that’s really a wake up call for all of us.
CAV: Did you draw on your own experiences to write this play?
Angie Le Mar: Because of how my mum raised me, the strictness, the love, the guidance… I would love everybody to have that because it was so nice to say “Mum guess what happened today”. Even now I phone her to tell her and you can’t buy that feeling it brings, that makes you feel complete.
CAV: The play is targeted at women but do you think it will raise awareness in young males?
Angie Le Mar: Absolutely. The play will speak to men too. We once were talking to a group of young boys and they were telling us about the types of girls they go for and the easy catches. So we spun it on its head and said “What if someone said they saw your sister like that?” One of the boys’ face just changed, like he couldn’t connect his sister in this argument, so I said to him: “Somebody else’s sister is who you’re talking about. If not somebody’s sister, then it’s somebody’s daughter, someone’s child”. And it was like a wake-up call for him. I think it’s important that men come to see this show. I think it’s important that they bring their sons and that mothers bring their sons. It’s a theatre piece that is almost an educational piece that will make you think about something.
CAV: Lewisham Council has launched a campaign in order to engage young girls and their parents in a debate over the issues tackled in the play. How did that come about?
Angie Le Mar: Lewisham Borough came to me because they heard about the play in Hackney and somebody asked in one of their meetings where they were discussing teenage pregnancy and domestic violence, if they had seen Angie Le Mar’s play, and that I was from Lewisham. So they called me in and said “you’re from Lewisham and we’d like to build a programme.” So we went away and put together the Girls House in Lewisham High Street that runs for two months. In the Girls House we will run workshops, then go into the schools and also show the play at the Albany theatre and the after-show discussion. For us it was really about saying, I’m from Lewisham and Lewisham is in serious trouble, serious trouble and it’s not somebody else’s business it’s our business.
CAV: Will the play be shown in other boroughs?
Angie Le Mar: I have planned to tour next year and go to various other boroughs, but I wasn’t really thinking about how to move it forward, I just knew that I had something that I had to get out there.
CAV: Being an inspirational Black British female, what advice would you give to the young aspiring actors, writers and comedians of today?
Angie Le Mar: I would say do what you love then you’ll love what you do. Don’t limit yourself so when you then do everything, you throw enough at it, something will stick and you’ll say that’s what I want to do! Whoopi Goldberg once said to me “you’d better live your life like this is it, like you’ve peaked because this might be it, we don’t know about tomorrow.”
Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is? is at the Albany Theatre on 2, 3, 4 and 7 Nov. Info here
