The London Gay Men’s Chorus
The London Gay Men’s Chorus, psychotherapist Susie Orbach, artist Jordan McKenzie and the Freud Museum are collaborating on Shame Chorus, a performance project that aims to use feelings of shame to creat “catharsis, community and liberation”.
Interviews conducted by Orbach with members of the choir about their experiences of shame will form the basis of new songs by a range of composers, which the 190-strong choir will then perform. Following their live performance, the songs will form part of the choir’s school outreach programme dealing with homophobia, bullying and the need for LGBT role models.
McKenzie, who devised Shame Chorus, says he was partly inspired by the work of psychotherapist and shame researcher Brené Brown. “She states that shame needs isolation and secrecy to survive. Music is a collective activity that is about sharing and communication… Music is used at nearly every social occasion and it is its ability to communicate a message but also touch people in deep ways that makes it such an effective medium.”
“Dealing with issues of shame and finding a way to make it not so private – to speak to people’s shared experience – is very important,” asserts Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and self-declared “post-heterosexual“. “This releases something very crucial about private agony and allows one to connect with people and find oneself in a different context.”
But shame remains a tricky subject in a time of supposed LGBT acceptance. “In an age where ‘being proud’ seem to be the only option that’s acceptable to any gay man, I wonder what people do with any parts of themselves they feel less ‘proud’ about,” says one member of the choir participating in the project. (In accordance with ethical guidelines for psychotherapeutic practice, interview material remains anonymous.) “The ‘unacceptable’ aspects must go somewhere, and often that might come out as aggression, lack of sensitivity and sensibility toward others, depression and a sense of not being whole.”
Having been brought up as a Roman Catholic and notes that “shame seems to be integral to the belief system”. “My sense of shame as a child was mainly connected to mental illness within the family, not sexuality, although I did later experience that too. And to me, talking about that childhood and growing up in an environment of confusion, where things needed to be concealed and shut off, seems really important – for my own sense of growth and self, but also to acknowledge the harm that can be caused by growing up with the sense from society that there is something undesirable and not right about you and your family of birth.”
“Many of the stories that I have read are moving and at times quite tragic,” says Shane Cullinan, a composer working on the project. “My first responsibly is to represent the stories and testimonies in a way that does the courage of these men justice but also to make them not sound like victims but rather people who have dealt with deep emotional crisis in a positive way.”
Shame Chorus is seeking funding from the Arts Council and via crowdfunding in anticipation of the project’s official launch at the Freud Museum in October 2015.
