Gelt well spent: Young Enigma’s Polari Palace

The warm purple and pink lights of the stage lit up the Polari Palace and after a pulsating soundtrack wound to a halt, our guide for the evening stepped onstage. Masked and dressed in black, we were introduced to our ‘teacher’ for the evening and thus the performances began.

With many in the audience having little or no knowledge about Polari, Afshan Lodhi (Assistant Producer for Young Enigma) and Adam Lowe (Producer/Artist Director for Young Enigma and author of the poetry collection ‘Precocious’) gave a whistle-stop tour of the covert gay language. The language of Polari, a form of used in the 19th Century when homosexuality was against the law, incorporates language from Latin, Italian, French, Cockney rhyming slang and sailor’s dialects to form its own unique blend of words that can be inserted into everyday language. The code stood as a way of communicating gay subculture in a time when persecution was rife and being gay could put you at risk of death, and whilst this is a problem no longer as present in modern British society, the language is experiencing a revival.

The writers’ group Young Enigma took on a project to investigate Polari as part of a collaboration with the Manchester Literature Festival and Contact theatre. The aim of the group is to support emerging writers aged 16-30 who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or queer. By presenting pieces in a language very much developed and kept alive by their culture a great amount of creative potential is unlocked to work with an especially personal dimension. The works in progress that were presented throughout the evening provided us with a commentary on contemporary response to homosexuality through a variety of forms. I was particularly struck by a monologue in the style of a news report, inspired by Tom Leonard’s use of Scottish dialect in his poem ‘The Six O’Clock News’, that told of a brutal beating of a young man as a result of his sexuality. The replacement of much of the dialogue with Polari words was hard hitting as the language is formed very much on a visual basis, so opportunities for emotive similes such as ‘his blood unfurling like ribbon’ were plentiful. In particular, Polari terms for body parts such as the primeval ‘eek’ (face) and ‘onk’ (nose) struck me as effective vessels for conveying the targeting of homosexuals that, although greatly reduced, still exists in the modern world.

Experiences of the writers in Young Enigma were taken as inspiration for pieces such as one sketch named ‘Grandma and Johnny’, which captivated the experience of ‘coming out’ to close family members. The brilliantly camp presentation of Grandma and Johnny (whose sexes were reversed so that Lowe played a female and vice versa) highlighted the importance of understanding and acceptance in situations such as this, and that in actual fact, talks of any sexual nature with parental figures are always going to be awkward! This sketch was markedly different to that of ‘Mr and Mrs Gay’ in the second half of the evening, where a very stereotypical fictional retired couple that ran a ‘respectable’ sauna were interviewed. Hilarity ensued as innuendos came forth from the oblivious owners of the ‘Gay’s Solarium’ and the writers cleverly played upon the ignorance of such conservative generations of the trends of the time. Through the interview it became apparent through a mixture of code words and suggestions that the solarium had become (unknown to its owners) a hub of local homosexual activity and drug use, much to the delight of the audience!

Finishing the evening with a question and answer session the writers-come- performers took the opportunity to discuss influences on their use of Polari. In the case of some, Polari had been a language they had come across in magazines and in radio broadcasts and that some friends had come to use in normal conversation. It was interesting to listen to Lowe’s thoughts on why Polari was experiencing a revival when a comment was brought up on the origins of the language: he accounted it to a change in times in that the function of the language had changed from a means of survival to a question of identity. Whilst some LGBT members ‘look down’ upon Polari as coming from a time ‘they would rather forget’, Lowe stood by the journey that the community have come through together and said that the use of Polari now allowed the gay community to stand out and embrace its heritage. Another interesting point was raised considering equivalent vehicles of communication to Polari in foreign countries such as Pakistan and Ethiopia where it is still illegal to be gay. Whilst there was no answer to this, it poses the question about gaining worldwide acceptance of gay rights: will there ever be a time when so called ‘abnormal’ groups will not be persecuted for going against the norm?

Having learnt a vast amount from the Polari Palace, I was delighted to hear that there is an exhibition open in the John Ryland’s Library until February 2nd 2014 entitled ‘Polari Mission: Bona Eek’ that features pieces on the language and propaganda from the past that targeted the homosexual community. So, after gaining access to an almost secret part of British culture from advocates of the LGBT cause, we were wished a bona nochy and sent on our way!

By Alex Swift