Deirdre Osborne

‘No Straight Answers’: Writing in the Margins, Finding Lost Heroes

Mojisola Adebayo and Valerie Mason-John are two distinctive voices in contemporary writing and performance - representing Afro-Queer diasporic heritage through the specific experience of being black, British and lesbian. Creating continuities from contorted or erased histories (personal, social and cultural) their drama demonstrates both Afro-centric and European theatrical influences, which in Mason-John’s case, is further consolidated in her polemic, poetry and prose. Like Britain’s most innovative and prominent contemporary black woman dramatist, debbie tucker green, they reach beyond local or national identity politics, to represent universal themes and to centralise black women’s experiences. With subject-matter that includes royal families, the care system, racial cross-dressing and global ecology, Adebayo and Mason-John have individually forged a unique aesthetic and perspective in work which links environmental degradation with social disenfranchisement and travels to the heart of whiteness along black-affirming imaginative routes.

Modern and Contemporary Black British Drama

As a refashioning of British theatre history, this edited collection spans seven decades of distinctive playwriting from black-centred perspectives. Interweaving social and cultural context with close critical analysis of key dramatists’ plays from the 1950s to the present day, leading scholars explore how these dramatists have created an enduring, transformative and diverse cultural presence. The essays establish a clear critical and creative trajectory while also recognising the diverse aesthetic legacies and cultural continuities that characterise the work of black dramatists in Britain. Playwrights examined include Barry Reckord, debbie tucker green Kwame Kwei-Armah, and Oladipo Agboluaje.

Introduction: Longevity and Critical Legitimacy: The ‘So-called’ Literary Tradition Versus the ‘Actual’ Cultural Network

This essay highlights the intricate set of debates circulating around Black British writing, and especially writing by women. It negotiates the problematics of ‘self-terming’ (Heidi Safia Mirza) in relation to how writers might position themselves (and be positioned socio-culturally), and alludes to the national and international perception of their writing within contemporary British culture. The essay’s descriptor ‘Black British Women’s Writing’ is intended to suggest a scope, for ease of reference to a body of work in a context of literary history, rather than impose racially-gendered restrictions upon complex possible identities and self-terming. It draws attention to the impediments to visibility still faced in relation to canon formation, the legacy of feminisms, identity politics, and the status of difference, but above all operates from an assumption that the work celebrated is at the heart of contemporary British literature and drama, creating a distinctive contemporary aesthetics.HEN Marsha Hunt instituted the Saga Prize in 1995 for unpublished black writers born in the UK or Republic of Ireland, the Commission for Racial Equality expressed opposition to its bio-ancestral and geographical parameters, as did some authors who fell outside its criteria. Yet, the impetus behind Hunt’s initiative was to recognise the literature emerging from indigenous black Britons’ experiences*writers born and raised in the UK and Ireland*who had not lived directly through the migratory dimension of diasporic identity, but who represented the consequences of settlement and claimed an indigenous British one. Hunt’s criteria served to separate a generalising notion of shared skin colour and diasporic identity (black writer) to re-configure a specific diasporic heritage arising from an indigenous geographical location and, by extension, national identity. The prize revealed how the term Black British simultaneously pointed to the distinctiveness and primacy of black people’s perspectives in literature and that these were not yet a customary part of the national cultural landscape but an adjunct to the whole. Controversy surrounding the Saga Prize represents just one component of an intricate set of debates circulating around Black British writing, and especially Black British writing by women. Among other things, these debates concern canon formation, the legacy of feminisms, identity politics and the status of difference. Writing for Women: a cultural review in 2000, Susheila Nasta asserted, ‘there is in this country an utter lack of visible, home-grown black women’s writing’. She argued that while anthologies of short stories, poetry, early novels and individual essays appear alongside studies on African American women’s writings, there had been ‘little serious scholarly investigation of these works. As far as I am aware no full-length Deirdre Osborne wishes to thank the editors of Women: a cultural review for supporting this Special Issue and to extend acknowledgements and thanks to Maria Lima, Tracey L. Walters and Kadija Sesay.

Writing Black Back: An Overview of Black Theatre and Performance in Britain

Abstract Black people have lived in Britain longer than they have in the United States and yet, until the closing decade of the twentieth century, their contribution to British theatre has received limited and short-lived attention. In this essay I trace a trajectory of representation of black people in theatre from the early modern through to the pre-Windrush period to recognize that which has paved the way to the increasing visibility of contemporary black British playwrights of African descent in theatre of the new millennium.

Genre and its ‘Diss-contents’: Twenty-First-Century Black British Writing on Page and Stage

Writing on genre and its delineations, Daniel Chandler observes that in ‘literature the broadest division is between poetry, prose and drama’. Although a consensus is identifiable in the loose groupings of texts according to their generic characteristics, Chandler notes that ‘one theorist’s genre may be another’s sub-genre or even super-genre (and indeed what is technique, style, mode, formula or thematic grouping to one may be treated as a genre by another)’ (1997: 1). The designation of genre blending or crossing—as framed by the perception of how certain genres are ‘meant’ to operate for certain creative modes—can signal a writer’s position in relation to mainstream culture and its processes of critical reception, canon-making and ultimately, cultural longevity. While the protean capacities of language as sounded and heard, or written and read, offers two distinctive conduits for creative expression—that are not mutually exclusive but mutually implicated—certain frameworks of cultural reception and critique have accorded differential status to the spoken and the printed word. This is especially identifiable when accounting for the intermediality of dramatic-poetics and the poetics of performance in contemporary black British literature, where the possibilities of trans-generic and poly-generic writing disrupt the straightforward application of critical generic verities. Intermediality is understood here, as offering separate material conduits for a text (printed in a book, performed live in a theatre), its communication by more than one modality, and the relationship of the chosen medium to social and cultural institutions. As Nirmal Puwar (2004) argues, it should be remembered that projections of neutrality onto social and cultural spaces is highly questionable. These are as racialised and gendered by power relations as the bodies who enter into them—or who are perennially absent.

The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945-2010)

The first Cambridge Companion that foregrounds the realities of African, Asian diasporic and European cultural lineages inherited by British black and Asian writers. It addresses the issue of trans-nationality and the impact of a globalised world and introduces new areas such as LGBTQI literature, rurality, and adoption aesthetics. • Review: Kamila Shamsie, Times Literary Supplement, 3/03/2017, p.27. Available online at http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/insider-outsider/

Black British Comedy: Desmond’s and the Changing Face of Television

For most viewers in most countries and in most periods, watching television has involved looking at the faces of other people — people they have not usually met in person, (Frosh 90) When Desmond’s was launched by Channel 4 on 5 January 1989, it was the first situation comedy series in Britain to be created and scripted by a black writer of African Caribbean descent. It was a landmark series in a number of ways, notwithstanding the fact that it remains Channel 4’s longest-running situation comedy series, but also for the acting credentials of its cast. The celebrated actor Norman Beaton starred as Desmond Ambrose, a grumpy barbershop owner from Guyana, while Desmond’s long-suffering wife Shirley was played by another stalwart figure of British post-war theatre, Carmen Munroe (who, together with Mona Hammond, Yvonne Brewster and Inigo Espejel, had founded Talawa Theatre, Britain’s premier black-led company, only four years previously). Set in the south-east London area of Peckham in Desmond’s barbershop, the premises are used as a gathering place for his family of three children Michael (Geff Francis), Gloria (Kim Walker), Sean (Justin Pickett), his friend Porkpie (Ram John Holder) and Porkpie’s adversary, the African perpetual student Matthew (Gyearbuour Asante), and a variety of locals.

Framing Black British Drama: Past to Present

This is the first critical study dedicated to black British dramatists that offers historical and cultural contextualisations, to frame close readings of selected playwrights’ works, (chronologically grouped), in order to recognise the continuities of black writers’ contributions to British theatre historiography. The chapter traces significant social and cultural routes to how modern and contemporary black British drama and dramatists comprise a category in British theatre historiography.

Harvey Young. Theatre & Race. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, v + 80pp.,

The moniker on the back cover of Theatre & Race by Harvey Young (part of the series Theatre & which might be classed as chap books on theatre) indicates the scope – “small books on theatre and everything else.” Series editors, Jen Harvie and Dan Rebellato have attempted to connect theatre with every conceivable social institution or phenomenon (a sample indicated by: Theatre &... Feeling; Architecture; Time; Photography; Museums; Scotland; Ireland [which do not apparently fall under the category included as Nation] amongst a host of other titles to date). Theatre & joins other comparable series (although none so literally pocket-sized, simplified and diminutive in length) of ‘Beginners’ Guides,’ ‘Casebooks,’ and ‘Introductions to’ in seeking to map complex critical principles and cultural issues for the non-specialist reader. The editors’ preface asserts, “It is no longer enough to limit our attention to the canon of Western dramatic literature” (vii). However, it is clear that contributors write from within, and of, Western foundational frameworks and perspectives, even as they suggest they are problematic or might resist these critical legacies. African American scholar Harvey Young (in a minority as an international contributor) adds a perspective on race and theatre, claiming the book “opens the floodgates of this challenging conversation” (3). His account unfolds pertinently, with an anecdotal illustration of the racial perils in play casting (still persisting on both sides of the Atlantic), a traditional zone of marginality or exclusion for nonwhite actors, and it is a theme to which he returns in a later brief examination of societal and colour-led casting. Young describes his own experience of attending a production of The Voysey Inheritance (adapted by David Mamet from Harley Granville-Barker’s original play) with a disarming disclosure, “The intensity of my absorption in the stage picture was momentarily disrupted when a young African American woman, dressed in period costume, walked on stage, approached Mr Voysey [...] and addressed him as ‘father.’ I had assumed previously that she was the maid” (1). Here Young reveals the power of internalization, his complicity in a reiterative ritual of socially expected casting (for a play from 1905) when in reality and in theatre, an African American would customarily be a maid, and not the daughter of a wealthy magnate. Young describes the casting as an “error” (2) and “In short, I wondered, why was the daughter black?” (2). This example highlights

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Abstract In 1987, the face of British political life was forever changed when Diane Abbott became the first black woman elected to the House of Commons. Key to her work is her unwavering belief in making things better for others through determined advocacy combined with projects of social justice. Her longevity in the world of politics is in itself striking, and her loyalty to people and to her strong principles has consolidated a distinguished career as a parliamentarian, broadcaster and commentator. In this interview, Ms Abbott reflects upon the importance of calling herself a feminist and voices concerns about the sexualization of girlhood, an area she has particularly made her focus recently alongside her long-standing activism for young people and black childrens education.