Chiaroscuro

Jackie Kay

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786829740
• eBook ISBN: 9781786829733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Social Sciences

I want to find it all now
know our names know the others in history
so many women have been lost at sea
so many stories have been swept away

Chiaroscuro: (noun) the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.

Aisha, Yomi, Beth and Opal couldn't be more different, but when Aisha hosts a dinner party, the friends soon discover that they're all looking for an answer to the same question. Does it lie in Aisha's childhood? Or in Beth and Opal's new romance? Who will tell them who they really are?

What starts out as a friendly conversation between women, soon turns heated when Yomi reveals what she really thinks about Beth and Opal's relationship.

A searing, tender look at queer Black womanhood by award-winning writer and Scots Makar Jackie Kay.

Act One

The stage should have the appearance of a recording studio. There are instruments and microphones in the space, and a chest in the centre containing a photograph album, a cushion, an oval-shaped mirror and a black doll.

When the audience enters, AISHA opens the chest. YOMI and OPAL stand and chat to each other. BETH scrutinises the audience.

The four women listen to each other as if they have heard it all before.

AISHA looks at her watch and decides it’s time to begin. OPAL and YOMI continue chatting to each other as she talks.

AISHA: This is how we got to where we were.

OPAL signals to YOMI. They rush to AISHA and sweep her into the middle of the stage. The women begin sound-checking. It is soft and haunting.

ALL: (Sing.) Time changes light

light changes time

here we are with the dawn in the dark

the dark in the dawn

trying to find the words

trying to find the words.

The women take their objects from the chest.. AISHA sits by the cushion, BETH by the album, OPAL by the mirror and YOMI by the doll. AISHA puts the cushion between her legs.

AISHA: All this has happened before.

BETH: How often have you heard it told though?

AISHA: Last night and the night before that.

OPAL: Let’s get on with it.

AISHA: Okay. I was called after my grandmother on my mother’s side. It is a long, long story that can be told so short; people don’t realise the years that went, nor the pain, and trying to find a precise beginning is always tough. So much is hard to place. A little hearsay goes a long way. But I heard say that my grandmother was born in the Himalayas at dawn. Her mother shrieked as she pushed her out of herself … (she pushes the cushion out from between her legs) … and cried and cried. They called her Aisha.

BETH: I was called after my great-great-great-great- grandmother on my father’s side who was taken from Africa to slavery in America and raped often; who had children that were each taken from her. But, Beth was one strong woman; she was like Sojourner Truth or Harriet Tubman – a woman who made change, who was Change herself. She helped some other slaves escape to the free country that was North America.

YOMI laughs loudly.

BETH: The black people have been dispossessed, my daddy used to tell me. I only knew what possess meant; did dispossess mean not to own? My daddy told me he called me Beth because my grandmother’s African name was whipped out of her. This was the name the white people gave her with welts in her black skin. He said that history had to be remembered too.

AISHA, OPAL, YOMI: (Chanting.) For we have to remember it all, For we have to remember it all …

OPAL picks up the mirror and looks at it sideways.

OPAL: They had no one to name me after, so they called me after a stone. A gemstone, at least they thought me special! A stone that was both jewel and rock, that was a rainbow, changing with the light. Each time you looked at it you would see something different. They had no one to name me after so they called me Opal. At school the children teased me singing …

AISHA, YOMI, BETH: (Sing.) … Opal fruit made to make your mouth water.

OPAL: They all liked those sweet insults like …

AISHA, YOMI, BETH: (Sing.) … Nuts oh hazelnuts. Cadbury’s take them and they cover them in chocolate.

OPAL: These were the white kids’ songs. I don’t really know how I got my name. Somebody in the home said it was after a very old nurse who wore opal earrings all the time. It was her idea. Call her Opal. So they say, anyway, but for all I know that could be hearsay.

YOMI puts the doll on her stomach.

YOMI: My mother had a time of it with me. I just wouldn’t come out! Her womb must have been too cosy for me to want to leave! She just got bigger and bigger and it seemed, she said, she would never have me, like she would be carrying me around inside her for the rest of her life.

What a thought! Finally they cut her open and out I came, all six and a half pounds of me. (She pushes the doll up in the air.) At midnight. A midnight baby. She called me Abayomi.

Apparently I never cried when they spanked me. My name is Abayomi. My mother was afraid I would never arrive. But here I am. Here I am. I surprised the lot of them.

They all rise. They follow OPAL carrying their objects. They dance to the chest. A walking dance. As they go there, OPAL speaks.

OPAL: And so it was that names were also chance things like an old woman’s fancy or a mother’s dream names relating to nothing specific except desire names with no heavy weight like Aphrodite or Persephone Gauri-Sankar or Tara – names hinged casually onto some instant liking. Name the nameless ones. Name the nameless ones.

They stop at the chest and peer in as if it is a wishing well.

AISHA: My grandmother Aisha gave me this. She made it. Beautiful, isn’t it? I remember lots of the stories she told me whilst I sat on this cushion. It was a magic cushion. Her stories made me travel. Once she told me a true story and I stayed still.

YOMI: I remember. (YOMI changes to AISHA’s grandmother.) ‘Your great-grand...

Table of contents

• Front cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two