“No one has house parties anymore. A good house party has become a lost art. Where am I supposed to meet the love of my life if not in the tiny kitchen at a friend of a friend’s house?” asks Skip, a woman in her early twenties, in Chakira Alin’s new play, House Party.
Skip answers the question herself seconds later: “The reason no one has house parties anymore, of course, is because no one has houses anymore. It’s hard to have a house party in your tiny flat share in Homerton with the two weirdos you met on Spare Room who don’t do their share of the dishes. Even worse still if you live with your parents.”
Writer and actor Chakira Alin’s one-woman show, which is previewing at Seven Dials Playhouse this week before its run at the Edinburgh Festival in August, explores London’s housing crisis by way of commentary on the “lost art” of a house party.
“It uses the humble house party as a metaphor for the decline of a fair, inclusive society. It’s about gentrification in east London, and about how the housing crisis ripples into every aspect of our lives. What starts as a simple observation turns into a study into the state of Britain today, and how it feels quite bleak as a young person living in London,” explains Alin. “It’s a celebration of partying, of communion — and of what we call home.”
24-year-old Alin plays Skip, an out-of-work actor who lacks the financial safety net of her generationally wealthy friends. Skip has moved back in with her mum in Hackney, and the play opens with her signing on at her local Jobcentre — unlike her friends, whose parents have bought them houses and who can afford, as Alin puts it, to be “slackers”.
“They’re so similar in so many ways, [Skip] and her friends: they have the same dreams, they’re the same age, they met at the same uni. But their realities are so different. It’s about loving your friends on one hand, but resenting them on the other.
“She has no choice but to live at home if she wants to have a chance at pursuing this very unstable career in the arts, but then she’s also not happy at home; she wants a place for herself. What are we trading off to make our dreams come true?”
Skip is a semi-autobiographical character, and her observations are based on Alin’s own after graduating from Cambridge University. Like Skip, she too has had to move back in with her mother in neighbouring Newham. “At uni, everyone was kind of equal: we’re all living in the same student halls; we’re studying the same degrees. After graduating, that’s when you really start to see the divide.”
Later, though, even that foundation comes under threat, as Skip’s mother questions whether they can afford to stay in Hackney — or even London — after a rent rise. This too draws on Alin’s own experiences living in rented accommodation throughout her childhood, before she and her mother moved in with her grandmother.
“Growing up, my living situation was always pretty precarious. We moved a lot, usually not out of choice. We’d settle somewhere, we’d get evicted. We were living at the mercy of our landlords,” says Alin. “I feel like I never had that forever home that all of my friends seemed to have, growing up in the same house your entire life. The maximum we’d stay in one place was like a year. I think growing up renting means you’re always on unstable ground. There’s a real psychological impact that has on you — the feeling that the rug could be pulled out from you at any moment.
“I think I always felt ashamed of my childhood, and I kind of reclaimed it by creating this character, Skip, who is fiercely unapologetic and defiant. There’s this added dimension of being a native Londoner — specifically a native east Londoner — where you’re growing up knowing that you’ll never be able to afford a house where you grew up. That shouldn’t be an unreachable dream, to just want to live where you were born, to end where you began. In a lot of ways, I think it’s a play that I was born to write.”
House Party is Alin’s second play (her first, Heroes, won two awards). It is directed by her best friend, Rae Morris, who she says is “learning new things about me” during the process. “It’s very vulnerable, it’s scary. But it’s really cathartic. I feel like once I’ve started speaking, I don’t want to stop. It all just comes pouring out.”
For Alin, though, writing something of herself into the play has come with its own challenges. “The difficult thing about writing something that is based on your own experience is that when you’re writing narrative, there’s generally a beginning, middle and end. An end normally means a resolution. But when you’re writing something that you’re still living through, how do you resolve that? It’s not been resolved in real life, so how can I resolve it on the page? I don’t know how it’s going to end for me.”
The show has been developed with the support of Seven Dials Playhouse, Side eYe Productions, Hackney Empire and Soho Theatre. After its run at Seven Dials Playhouse this week, it will play between 30 July and 25 August at Pleasance Courtyard at Edinburgh Festival.
“I always say that I’d like [the audience] to leave feeling enraged, politically engaged and ready to party. I want them to reflect on their own relationship with London if they’re not from here — how they’re maybe contributing to some of the less desirable trends we’re seeing.
“I’d also like them to question: what can we do for each other as a community? How do we bring back those social bonds that house parties are so great at? And I want them to invite me to their house parties.”
