In a recent interview with the Royal Opera House as part of Sir Antonio Pappano’s last season, I was asked what it was like to work with singers of the international calibre of Jonas Kaufmann and Sondra Radvanovsky for a revival of McVicar’s Andrea Chenier. 

For contrast, and as if to test my answer, the day after the show opened, I was back working with The Lewisham Creative Chorus, a group I set up in my neighbourhood, on their most ambitious project to date – a new opera created with jazz composer Gwyneth Herbert called Our Street.

This group is not your usual choral society or local choir. Its members work with professionals to write their own material, design their own shows, and create their own programmes. It’s made up of a range of people – from retired BT engineer Mike, to Coco, who’s still at school. There is a host of others of all ages and backgrounds in between, including two babies. With no audition or expectations beyond turning up once a week, it provides a space where members of our South Lewisham community can come together every Saturday morning, away from the challenges of everyday life, to move together, sing, create, find their voice, mingle with young or established professionals. As Michael says, 'When you’re doing something so repetitive and mechanical like my job at Transport for London, it’s great to be involved in something so creative.'

It turns out that the answer to the question the interviewer asked me is simple. Talking to Jonas Kaufmann about the motivations for a poet during the French Revolution, or Sondra Radvanovsky about whether it’s worth fighting to live or fighting to die, is really no different to talking to those in the Chorus. Speaking to Mike about playing the part of the property developer Lord Raven and why his character wants to make the community homeless for the benefits of urban gentrification; or to Sally about playing an immigrant girl and what it feels like to cope with alienation. 

Stories, and the telling of them, do not rely on celebrities, or a grand setting like Covent Garden, or even on subject matter. They don’t necessarily rely on experience either. They mostly rely on having something worth saying and having the opportunity to say it. It helps to work with professionals – there is real craft at work here – but the essence of storytelling is about more than training. It’s about identity, belonging, locality, voice.  

As humans, we’ve been designed to make noise in order to get our needs met. A baby cries for food and comfort, but most of all to say "stop what you’re doing, I need to be listened to". We often lose the ability of having our needs heard. Life has a habit of taking things away. But if we ever have the opportunity to re-discover our needs and find the courage to express them, then we can transform ourselves and those around us. This is what the Lewisham Creative chorus is about.  

And that’s what the best storytelling experiences do. An audience knows when a piece they’re seeing is alive or dead. Good stories make us lean forward, they help us identify ourselves, give a sense of belonging, or escape, and transform us. The more analogue, the more intimate, the more honest, the better. We’re talking about quality here.

Earlier this year, the writer and actor Rhik Samadder came to see his mum Apu in an earlier version of Our Street and wrote about his reactions in the Observer: 

'At 80, [my mother] started singing in an urban opera. For her, art is a reflex […] There’s something about performers who do it for connection and community that breaks me open with joy. They put real life on the stage, more viscerally than professionals can. But art is not a competition, any more than it is a distraction, or a luxury for a privileged few. It’s our humanity, and it’s how we keep going.'

Chorus member Sharon, who has battled with health challenges aplenty, not least a brain tumour, says, 'we have all got a chance to shine. It’s a joy to wake up on Saturday morning. Together we are stronger.'

Our Street, an urban opera by Gwyneth Herbert, comes to Broadway Theatre, Catford, on Saturday 20 July at 7.30pm. broadwaytheatre.org.uk