She Was There

Tasnim Siddiqa Amin brings She Was There to the Derby Theatre on Thursday 12 November, a one-woman performance that looks at the women who resisted racism in 1970s and 80s London. It's part of the Being Human Festival, presented by the University of Derby in collaboration with Surtal Arts, and it runs for 50 minutes.

The show plays with the hidden histories of those women, framing them against two well-known pieces of political rhetoric: Keir Starmer's Island of Strangers and Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood. It's built on in-depth research by Dr Julia Giese, so the stories it draws on are rooted in real lives rather than generalisations. The performance deals with race and racism, and it's a one-woman show, so it's Amin on stage throughout.

Amin is a working-class Bangladeshi-British theatremaker and activist who studied Politics, Philosophy and History at St Andrews and Birkbeck. She founded Queen of Arts Theatre Company in East London in 2016, a company that tells radical stories across time and place with a focus on artist wellbeing, interdisciplinary storytelling and intersectional feminism. Her more recent productions include The Pigs are Coming (2025), The Final Trumpet (2024) and Knotted (2023).

After the performance, there's an Adda — an informal space for conversation and reflection with food and hot drinks, so you can stick around and talk about what you've seen. The show is in the Studio at Derby Theatre on Thursday 12 November at 7.30pm. It's free, but booking is essential.