Fortuna

About the project

Fortuna was a devised documentary theatre piece, created by Maxi Himpe in collaboration with Professor Louise Archer and young people in East London. The work is a testament to the complex experiences of East London youth, the state of our education system, and the many paths a life can take. The performance was presented at Hoxton Hall at the end of March. 

The Fortuna script was based on interviews conducted with a cohort of young people, beginning in 2010 when they were in primary school, and ending in 2022. The script was consulted on by two cohorts of Year 12 students in East London. Through facilitated workshops, participants shared what they sought from art, what they wanted to say about the education system, and their experience attending school in East London. Their voices, ideas, and political insights were included in the production.

Alongside the performance, there was a display of photographs from the planning and rehearsal process displayed for the duration of the Field Works exhibition.

Photo credit: Yolanda Hadjidemetriou

Cast: Simi Akintokun, Scarlett Stitt
Set Design: Miranda Cattermole
Dramaturg: Bri Leung

With thanks to:
Shantene Thomas; School 21; Eoin Barry; New City College; ASPIRES team members: Megna Chowdhuri, Esme Freedman, Qian Liu, Emily Macleod, Emma Watson; Becky Francis

About the artists

Maxi Himpe is a performance director, interviewer, and interdisciplinary artist. They direct genre-spanning work, including cabaret, new writing, adaptations, and verbatim work. Various works have previously been presented at the Thames Festival, the Barbican, Camden Fringe and Oakland Theater Project. Queer sensibility and the question of what art can do for society pervade everything they do. They are a Trustee at the Greenwich Docklands International Festival and work in the Social Practice department at the Association for Cultural Advancement through Visual Art (ACAVA).

Louise Archer is the Karl Mannheim Chair of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education at UCL. Louise is responsible for the ASPIRES project which is a 13-year, research council-funded longitudinal study of young people's STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) trajectories, age 10-22. It includes extensive survey responses from over 47,000 young people and over 740 interviews with young people and their parents/carers.