Get off my Back - Poster (Tour)
A panoramic survey of Docklands from the fourteenth century to the 1970s stressing the need for collective action against the rape of the area by property speculators.
Michael Billington in the London Evening Standard wrote: “With minimal publicity and very little trumpet-blowing, the Half Moon…has become London’s best and brightest political theatre…. Political theatre in Britain is usually regarded as a substitute for political action: the virtue of this show…is that it is intended as a starting point for action and a call to East Enders to act now to preserve their history.”
The production toured to York Hall.
Poster designs by Martin J Walker and printing by Walker and Brittain, Red Dragon Print collective.
You can access the script of this play via the British Library’s MPS Modern Playscripts Collection.
Guy Sprung, co-founder and first Artistic Director of Half Moon Theatre, talks about their production Get Off My Back. Interviewed by Ollie Nesbitt.
Journalist and local activist, Mike Jempson, talks about the production Get Off My Back, which was staged at Half Moon Theatre in Alie Street in the late 1970s. He talks about the end of one of the performances, when local people came into the theatre to tell everyone that Warehouse C on the Wapping waterfront was on fire. He reflects upon the fact that rapid changes in the area of Tower Hamlets were being mirrored on stage at Half Moon Theatre. Interviewed by Chris Elwell.
Johnnie Quarrell was a former docker and bank messenger who wrote several plays for Half Moon Theatre. He talks about how Guy Sprung asked him to write Get Off My Back, because as an ex-local docker he would bring an authentic voice to the play. Interviewed by Rosie Vincent.
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