The Talking Drum: Voices from the Andover Estate A powerful new verbatim play foregrounding the voices of a community fighting to be heard.   

A retired ballerina finds herself suddenly homeless. At university, a youth worker struggles against stereotypes. Resident ‘007’ can’t get the council to listen to them, and NJ dreams of being allowed to play the African Drums. 

Putting the voices from Islington’s Andover Estate centre stage, The Talking Drum is a captivating portrait of a vast and diverse neighbourhood.  

A blend of theatre, grassroots storytelling and digital media, the interwoven stories spanning more than 50 years offer an urgent and deeply personal counter-narrative to decades of negative media portrayal. The production explodes assumptions about class and identity to ask: what does community mean to residents now?