Lynette Goddard

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.

‘Death never used to be for the young’: Grieving Teenage Murder in debbie tucker green's random

debbie tucker green is the most high-profile Black British woman playwright of the first decade of the twenty-first century, with productions of her plays seen at mainstream London venues including Hampstead Theatre, Royal Court, Soho Theatre and Young Vic. Her innovative voice moves away from the explicit concerns with identity and diaspora of predecessors from the 1980s and 1990s, to address issues of global significance in the world today. These include poverty, child soldiers and the Aids crisis in Africa, female sex tourism, domestic violence, sexual abuse and incest. This article explores how random (Royal Court, 2008) stages a poignant response to the epidemic of teenage knife murders in London in 2007 and 2008. Using analysis of the text, the production and theatre critics’ reactions, I demonstrate how tucker greens focus on the grief of a family affected by the murder of a child provides a unique perspective distinct from representations of similar themes in plays by Black British male playwrights. random is narrated primarily through the perspectives of the black female characters, epitomising tucker greens tendency to place (black) women at the centre of plays that deal with urgent themes in the contemporary world. I argue that, whilst womens perspectives are paramount, the narratives also incorporate strategies that imply a broad collective social responsibility for eradicating violence and abuse, and show how her unique writing style foregrounds her successful presence in mainstream contemporary British theatre.

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.

Around the World

1. 20th International Nursing Research Conference 15-18 November, A Coruña, Spain tinyurl.com/internationalresearch.

From mainstream theatres to Synergy theatre project: black men's participation in ‘urban’ plays in prison

This paper compares how urban-themed black British playwriting can be understood within mainstream and applied theatre contexts. The paper first examines the focus of the mainstream theatres education packs for productions of Kwame Kwei-Armahs Elminas Kitchen and Roy Williamss Fallout before exploring how black mens participation in Synergy Theatre Projects productions of the same two plays at Her Majestys Prison, Brixton impacts on participants and audiences in line with some of the key principles of applied theatre practice in prisons.

Acting In/Action: Staging Human Rights in debbie tucker green’s Royal Court Plays

Since her emergence on to London’s new writing scene in 2003, debbie tucker green has become widely recognized as one of the most innovative (black) British (woman) playwrights of the early twenty-first century. Her first two plays were produced within weeks of each other at the Soho Theatre (dirty butterfly (2003)) and Hampstead Theatre (born bad (2003)), and subsequent productions have been shown in the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) New Works Festival in Stratford and at the Soho Theatre (trade (2005)), and at the Young Vic (generations (2007) and dirty butterfly revival (2008)). tucker green has also become established as a Royal Court writer (stoning mary (2005), random (2008) and truth and reconciliation (2011)), and she is the first black woman to have two plays premiere on the main stage downstairs. 1 International recognition, which is rare for black British playwrights, is further testament to her groundbreaking acclaim.2

Winsome Pinnock’s Migration Narratives

Winsome Pinnock is one of Britain’s most high-profile black female playwrights, who Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge acknowledge as ‘one of the very few black women playwrights in this country whose work has been recognised and celebrated by the mainstream’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 46). Her plays have been produced by well-established theatre companies at key venues, including the Royal Court and the Tricycle Theatre.1 Pinnock won the George Devine award for Leave Taking in 1991 and she was the first black British woman to have a play staged at the National Theatre when Leave Taking was revived at the Cottesloe in 1995. Her career has also included commissions for television2 and radio.3

Black Feminist Futures

So says a dawta to her mum in the opening speech of debbie tucker green’s Born Bad (2003a)1 and the rest of the play is spent unfolding why she resents her mother so much and confronting the rest of her family members in the process. It transpires that Mum had chosen Dawta to be ‘played […] like a wifey’ (32) to Dad, a decision that caused ructions in a ‘blood-related black family’ (2) where each member holds on to their individual memories of the past. Sister # 1 refuses to remember turning a blind eye to what was happening, and is angry that Dawta is ruining her memories of a happy childhood; Sister # 2 recalls a childhood where she felt that Dawta received preferential treatment; and Brother thought that he was the only one who was being sexually abused by Dad. Chairs are added to a bare stage as each character enters but never leaves, trapped in the intensity of tackling the issues that have created their family dynamics. Dad sits almost silently throughout, witnessing the entire proceedings, but refusing to qualify whether he has done what he is being accused of. The complexity of the story and the self-consciously eloquent language style have begun to establish debbie tucker green as the most significant black British woman playwright of recent years.

Jacqueline Rudet (Re)Writing Sexual Deviancy

Sexuality and sexual politics are central to notions of black women’s identity because ideas about beauty, sexual desire and sexual practices have historically been used to denigrate black women. Controlling images such as the jezebel, sapphire or welfare mother have been inferred to underscore ideas of black women’s sexuality as deviant, aggressively depraved and uncontrollable, in opposition to the gentility of white female sexual mores. As the deviant half of the binary equation, black womanhood is prone to being stigmatised (silenced, disempowered and pathologised) as abnormal (irrational, immoral and insane) to justify her devaluation, continued mistreatment and subordination. Black women writers have paid special attention to the domain of sexuality, responding to centuries of misrepresentation with their own versions of black female identity.

Jackie Kay and Valerie Mason-John’s Zamis, Lesbians and Queers

Jackie Kay and Valerie Mason-John (aka Queenie) are Britain’s two key writers of black lesbian plays. Writing almost a decade apart in the 1980s (Kay) and the late 1990s (Mason-John) their plays reflect each respective era’s attitudes about black and lesbian identity. Both Kay’s and Mason-John’s personal biographies indicate distinctive perspectives from which to critique biologically deterministic ideas about identity. Kay is of mixed parentage (Nigerian father and white Scottish mother) and was brought up by white Scottish adoptive parents and much of her work reflects on being a mixed-race lesbian with multiple parentages.1 Mason-John was transracially raised in Barnado’s homes by white foster parents, with sporadic contact with her black biological mother. Like Kay, much of her creative work is informed by her experiences of being a black lesbian in Britain.