Hidden Gems Volume II: Contemporary Black British Plays

Volume 2

Deirdre Osborne, Deirdre Osborne

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781849436984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre africain

Includes the plays A Bitter Herb, Absolution, Identity, The Far Side, Mary Seacole, and Urban Afro-Saxons This second and sister volume to Hidden Gems showcases a further range of plays by Black British writers whose work reaches beyond themes too-often perceived by mainstream theatre commissioning as defining Black people's experiences. The plays, monodrama and libretto represent subject-matter from woman-centred history, revolutionary politics, trans-racial adoption and African-diasporic familial heritage, as contoured by the writers' boundary crossing profiles as poets, playwrights, performers and directors. The accompanying critical introductions are provided by people committed to recognising the aesthetic and political significance of the work, and its necessary inclusion in British theatre and literary history.

THE FAR SIDE

Laying Ghosts to Rest

The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, and the following high profile police investigation, the subsequent court trials, and the Macpherson Inquiry (1999) into the failings of these confirmed that the Metropolitan Police were beset by institutional racism. These events, a grim watershed in British history, have continued to haunt black playwrights in Britain; so much so, that the crime has become a grand narrative, one in which, the issues of race and identity are (re)played both overtly, and implicitly as a backdrop to the plays.¹ It is a grand narrative that resonates with Aristotle's original model for tragedy – the police investigation replete with heroes and heroines, villains, fatal flaws, and reversals of fortune. With the murder conviction of two of the five suspects in 2012, a conclusion of sorts was effected (rather than closure), while the chance for a complete resolution still remains as an open-ended drama.

This case has influenced the direction, aesthetics and development of contemporary black drama, giving rise to a new genre of black plays in which the main focus is on a black (invariably male), youth or youths, often a generic hoodie (who serves as a shorthand or visual cue for youth disaffection or anti-social threat), in whom the roles of victim and perpetrator are conflated.² The male youth is usually placed in a position of danger, the dramatic tension being derived from the desire of other characters to either save him from a life of crime such as Ashley in Elmina's Kitchen (2003) by Kwame Kwei-Armah, or, to bring about justice in order to atone for his death such as Emile in Fallout (2003) by Roy Williams. Taking a different angle, debbie tucker green's random (2008) follows the arc of a Greek tragedy. The audience is provided with clues to deepen the sense of foreboding regarding the fate that awaits Brother who will be killed in an act of random violence. However, it has to experience the excruciating tension of waiting as the account of a day unfolds, filtered through the joy of an ordinary family's mundane activities.

There is another key trope in plays of this genre, the appearance of the ghost of the black youth who returns from the dead in order to persuade the living to avenge him by bringing those responsible for the killing to justice. My own play for young people, Can you Keep a Secret (1999a) dramatizes a young boy (who has been murdered by a racist), returning as a ghost. The ghost of the boy tries to persuade the murderer's girlfriend who witnessed the event to speak against her boyfriend in court. Similarly, in Blacklands (2011) by Levi-David Addai (winner of the Alfred Fagon Award of the same year), a youth killed after a fight over a trivial matter re-visits the world he has left behind, in order to make the youths who killed him atone for their crime.³ The implicit message is that justice cannot be gained in a judicial system without an almost supernatural intervention to provide the momentum.

The genre sets up very clear oppositions of good versus evil. It has heralded a shift from plays that examined the various oppressions of the black community and reactive anger, to plays that explore the way in which anger has been turned inward on the community itself resulting in ‘black on black’ violence. This mirrors the shift in media coverage that has occurred in the years since Stephen Lawrence's death where racist murder is given relatively minor media attention (not withstanding those few highly reported cases such as the murder of Damilola Taylor), compared to the major profile stabbings and shootings of young black men by young black men.⁴

At first glance Courttia Newland's play The Far Side adheres to the genre outlined above. It begins two years after the racist murder of Black Youth Danny who was killed by White Youth, Luke. Newland's chessboard-like oppositional naming endows the two characters with a distinctively adversarial quality and also evokes a personalization of the pair as they have first names rather than simply a sociological category of ‘youth’. Set in a warehouse in present day central London, the play opens with a monologue by Danny's ghost narrator who functions as Chorus, witnessing and commenting on the play's events. As these ‘youth as knife crime victim’ plays are more often than not realistic, one of the significant aspects of Newland's play is its resistance to realism. Indeed with its dream-like or nightmarish quality, the play seems to owe its style more to expressionism or the ghost story. Any expectations for the plot to develop along certain familiar media lines or for character to be revealed as part of plot are thwarted. The setting itself is both nowhere and everywhere, the characters allegorical. It becomes apparent that there is no real evidence that Chamberlayne is an existing borough of London (although Chamberlayne Road is a well- known North-West London street). It could well be that for gang members in the world of this play boroughs are broken down into smaller territorial units, so that a single road can be under the ownership of a particular gang – which would explain the naming of Chamberlayne as a specific area. Influences are detectable from a number of dramatic heritages. There is a nod to Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit (Huis Clos) in the group of characters, citizens, who arrive at the warehouse having been summoned by unseen Bosses who have put the Chairman in charge of them. They will act as jury in a Kangaroo Court where Luke, who was acquitted of Danny's murder, is to be put on trial. The play also alludes to another courtroom drama, Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men where members of a jury deliberate over the guilt or otherwise of a young man charged with murder. Much of the pleasure of courtroom-based drama based upon two sides presenting a case for judgment lies in the absorbing adversarial struggle to arrive at the truth, so it is notable that in Newland's play we are not made privy to the deliberations of this jury. This is another way in which the play resists the ‘dead young black male’ genre. The reason that we do not witness this event is because the play is not only examining the morals of the youths. It is the jury members themselves who are really being scrutinized, not to mention the two mothers of the youths. The generic names given to the adult characters suggest the way in which the older generation is dependent on the younger for their livelihoods, that they have some responsibility (as Danny later suggests) for producing their failings. Naming Dole Worker, Youth Worker, Nurse and Nightcl...