Come On Lavinia Co-Op’s Queer London Tour with Us
Lavinia Co-Op continues to make an indelible mark on underground performance scenes across the globe. From performing with the notorious Street Theatre group The Bloolips in the 70s, to becoming a Susanne Bartsch favourite in 90s New York and continuing to work with contemporary East London collectives today, Lavinia’s career is unstoppably radical.
In collaboration with Vogue Fabrics London, the Hackney-born icon goes back to her roots. A new film, produced by Lyall Hakaria and edited by Alex Matarxia, follows Lavinia erratically guiding a gaggle of trendy queers round her home streets of East London. Recollections of messy nights and cruising are speckled through her detailed descriptions of local family businesses and Vaudeville theatres long lost to decades of gentrification. Call me a cynic, but there is a wry irony to Lavinia telling these stories to a group of neon-fur clad, septum-pierced, tote-bagged East London queers — the type, myself included, who have benefitted from investment that has displaced its working-class history.
Nonetheless, the film offers an example of meaningful exchange between queer generations, as Lavinia passes on lived knowledge about an area now so important to London’s queer population. In our era of corporate platitudes and performative allyship, such earnest connections feel vital.
I meet Lavinia Co-Op outside Dalston Junction Overground on a chilly Friday morning. She promptly whisks me off to her favourite East End greasy spoon for a cup of tea and full veggie breakfast. After offering detailed advice of how to tend to my blistered fingers, we started talking about her experiences of queer London, between mouthfuls of brown sauce, beans and bubble-and-squeak.
How do you feel about how East London’s changed?
What’s great is seeing how it has evolved. The houses now are the same houses that the council used to call ‘slums’. All it took was a bit of money to improve them. The problem is that now they’re all commercial property and the market’s become so inflated. Back when I was a kid, Hackney and Islington were both complete dumps — very working class, with buildings black from all the smog and smoke. All of a sudden Islington really went up market and it eventually crept up to Hackney. Even Tottenham’s started to change, and that used to be the back of beyond.
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In the film you tell us stories of all sorts of shops and places that used to be the centre of the community. Was it at all emotional revisiting places that had disappeared?
I’m still living here so it doesn’t bother me. I’m not going to go on about the past, I know it changes. Some of the most interesting history was already gone when I was a kid, like all the theatres and cinemas in the area. Whilst the West End was always bustling, here in the East End during the 20s and 30s there was a thriving Vaudeville and Music Hall scene. By the time I was growing up in the 50s, they were cinemas — we’d go every weekend for the Saturday Morning Pictures — but even by then they were dying. I suppose today places like The Glory, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club and all the alternative performances spaces are a continuation of that alternative performance history.
“Drag is social, it’s about having fun, it’s about bringing people together, it’s party time. That too can still be radical.”
By the time you got a little older in the 60s and 70s, were there any queer spaces and communities in East London?
No, it was very hidden, a between-you-and-me kind of thing. I didn’t really come out until Gay Lib in the early 70s and that all developed out of West London. So when I started coming out more I went to go live in a squat in West Palm Grove in Notting Hill. I wasn’t getting into drag at that point, but we were still all very hippie and feminine. In the early days, you’d go cruising in some toilets or walkways late at night and that was it. That was the scene. So when I started going to the Gay Liberation Front meetings — oh my God — it was such a buzz. That’s when you first started meeting other gay people your age. The meetings in the church hall would be packed — two hundred people, more — and they’d all be arguing, mostly about the male-dominated shit that was going on in the group. I suppose that was the beginning of PC culture. In the 60s and 70s, we had a lot of opening up and it was quite liberating, but we were also quite harsh and radical when you look back on it now.
What about nightlife, did you have anything to go to?
Gay Lib used to put parties on in a town hall. The organisers went along looking all smart and official, doing whatever con they did to book the place, but then went straight in, put in a bar and turned up the music. It was all acid, smoking dope, drinking our own booze, we’d get so fucked up. Then there was Bang on a Monday night on Tottenham Court Road, which was the first time someone had thought to fill a club with queers. But we didn’t have a nightclub properly until Heaven, but that felt a little different. Just look at the management and how they carry on now…
Is that when you started getting into the club scene and started performing in drag?
Around then I’d got into The Place to study contemporary dance — they always needed boys, you see. There I met Betty Bourne and one night we went to see the Hot Peaches at a show in The Oval. We couldn’t believe what we saw: a group of guys and a lesbian with her daughter, in our hippie kind of drag, making statements about being gay onstage. Betty said we had to get our own act together, and that’s how The Bloolips came together. In about ’77 we started doing shows back and forth from America, Germany and Holland. But it wasn’t until the 90s when I moved to New York when I started doing the clubs. I was hired by Susan Barsche to do the Coco Cabana, and that was very different to London. It was expensive, polished, classy. It had a range of such different people — you had club kids and drag queens next to all these rich folk. That’s where I learnt how to do the clubs.
And what does one need to know about how to do clubs exactly?
During my dance training a teacher came up to me, stood me up and pounded my chest. “It’s okay to have an ego,” she said. She’d really caught me — my shoulders were always tucked away. She told me it was okay to be there. That’s what gave me that sense of presence. That’s important for the club. As Lady Bunny once said to me, you’re just eye candy. You’re getting paid to dress up, go out and do what you do. People will look at anything, so don’t worry. You learn not to care. I’ve done so many parties, I just let it all go, I couldn’t give a shit — it’s always just the same old thing anyway. You do sometimes get fed up with it, but when you’re on the playground, in full drag, it’s party time. And what’s wrong with enjoying yourself? Just get too drunk!
Do you still like drag?
Oh yes, of course. You look at RuPaul, he’s not bothered at all. I like radical drag.
Do you think drag today is still radical?
Ah well, it is and it isn’t. It’s all about perspective. When younger people come up on the scene they’re what, 20? When they’re 25, they’re different. By the time they’re 30 the scene has moved on and then another lot come along. I saw that happen in New York. People would always moan: “It’s died! It’s died! The kids coming out now are college kids. They’re not interested in drag, they’re not any way radical, they’re wearing nice sweaters and shirts!” So I could say the same here, but we’ve still got people like David Hoyle and Johnny Woo. Really there’s loads of people who are still doing radical drag. I do sometimes think about how drag has become the pink dollar. Am I selling gayness? I’m just making money off just being me. But this is part of the work of the world that live in. Drag is social, it’s about having fun, it’s about bringing people together, it’s party time. That too can still be radical.
Words: Donna Marcus
Lavinia’s Walking Tour will be shown at VFD on Wednesday 15th March.
