Staging Black Feminisms Identity, Politics, Performance
Lynette Goddard
Staging Black Feminisms
Performance Interventions Series Editors: Elaine Aston, University of Lancaster, and Bryan Reynolds, University of California, Irvine Performance Interventions is a series of monographs and essay collections on theatre, performance, and visual culture that share an underlying commitment to the radical and political potential of the arts in our contemporary moment, or give consideration to performance and to visual culture from the past deemed crucial to a social and political present. Performance Interventions moves transversally across artistic and ideological boundaries to publish work that promotes dialogue between practitioners and academics, and interactions between performance communities, educational institutions, and academic disciplines. Titles include: Alan Ackerman and Martin Puchner (editors) AGAINST THEATRE Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris (editors) FEMINIST FUTURES? Theatre, Performance, Theory Lynette Goddard STAGING BLACK FEMINISMS Identity, Politics, Performance Leslie Hill and Helen Paris (editors) PERFORMANCE AND PLACE Melissa Sihra (editor) WOMEN IN IRISH DRAMA Forthcoming titles: Amelia M. Kritzer POLITICAL THEATRE IN POST-THATCHER BRITAIN
Performance Interventions Series Standing Order ISBN 1–4039–4443–1 Hardback 1–4039–4444–X Paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Staging Black Feminisms Identity, Politics, Performance Lynette Goddard
© Lynette Goddard 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 9781403986405 hardback ISBN-10: 1403986401 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goddard, Lynette, 1966 Staging black feminisms:identity, politics, performance/Lynette Goddard. p. cm. “ (Performance interventions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 9781403986405 ISBN-10: 1403986401 1. Black theater“Great Britain“History“20th century. 2. Feminist theater“Great Britain“History“20th century. 3. Lesbian theater“Great Britain“History“20th century. 4. Women in the theater“Great Britain“History“20th century. 5. English drama“20th century“History and criticism. 6. English drama“Women authors“History and criticism. 7. English drama“Black authors“History and criticism. I. Title. PN2595.13.B34G63 2007 792.089 96041“dc22 2006052028 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
For my mum Verona, who taught me that ‘Nothing ain’t pass you til it reach you.’
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Contents
viii
Acknowledgements Introduction
Part I
1
History and Aesthetics
1 Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
17
2 Black Feminist Performance Aesthetics
39
Part II
Plays
3 Winsome Pinnock’s Migration Narratives
57
4 Jacqueline Rudet (Re)Writing Sexual Deviancy
82
5 Jackie Kay and Valerie Mason-John’s Zamis, Lesbians and Queers
Part III
105
Performances
6 Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop
133
7 Solo Voices: Performance Art, Dance and Poetry
154
Part IV
Conclusions
8 Black Feminist Futures?
181
Notes
198
Bibliography
211
Index
221
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many people who have helped and supported me during the writing of this book. First to Jacky Bratton, who inspired, encouraged and helped me to develop and first articulate my ideas. I am also hugely indebted to the input of Mary Brewer, Gilli Bush-Bailey, Helen Nicholson and Lib Taylor, who read parts of this manuscript in its many guises and provided ever-thoughtful comments for its improvement. Thanks to the series editors Elaine Aston and Bryan Reynolds for agreeing to include my work in the Performance Interventions series, and especially to Elaine for her careful and considerate comments on the proposal and drafts of the manuscript. Helen Craine and Paula Kennedy at Palgrave Macmillan were extremely helpful in getting this book commissioned and Christabel Scaife and Vidya Vijayan provided invaluable aftercare to see it through production. I have had many conversations with black theatre practitioners, friends and academics, whose thoughts have helped me to shape this project. I would especially like to thank all of my colleagues in the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, who have continued to support me and my research. I am also extremely grateful to all of the students on my black women’s theatre courses who let me test my ideas on them, and stretched and challenged my outlook with their contributions. Subassa Imani Lewis met with me to talk about her work, and SuAndi generously met with me to discuss her work, and gave me permission to quote from her poetry and to reprint ‘Playing for Life’ in full. Denise Wong read and commented on Chapter 6 and allowed me to use one of Black Mime Theatre’s publicity shots for the cover photograph. Thanks also to Patience Agbabi for permission to quote from poetry published in RAW. (1995) and Transformatrix (2000), and to Dorothea Smartt and Peepal Tree Press for allowing me to quote from poetry published in Connecting Medium (2001). Born Bad copyright © 2003 debbie tucker green Dirty Butterfly copyright © 2003 debbie tucker green Stoning Mary copyright © 2005 debbie tucker green Reprinted by permission of the publisher: www.nickhernbooks.co.uk Amateur performing rights:
[email protected] viii
Acknowledgements ix
Parts of Chapter 1 are published in ‘Side Doors and Service Elevators: Racial Constraints for Actresses of Colour’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Actress, Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes (eds) Cambridge University Press, 2007. Parts of Chapter 3 were published as ‘West Indies vs England in Winsome Pinnock’s Migration Narratives’, Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 14. No. 4, 2004. Parts of Chapter 8 were published as ‘debbie tucker green’, Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 15. No. 3, 2005. Thanks to all of the staff at the following archives and resources without whose help this project could never have been started, let alone finished: The V&A Theatre Museum, Royal Holloway Library Archives, The Arts Council Library, The British Library and The British Library Newspaper Collection, Royal National Theatre Archives, Live Art Development Agency and Nitro Theatre Company. Finally, my biggest thanks are to my mum Verona Slowley, whose unstinting love and effervescent good nature have been a constant source of support and inspiration, to the rest of my immediate family, Orlando Goddard, Andrea Goddard and Alex Slowley, and to Lisa Blackman for love, support and reminders of the importance of social time.
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Introduction
Staging black feminisms Performance seems an ideal space for explorations of cultural identity, holding within it the possibility of reconfiguring the ways that we think about each other and view the world. Yet it is more often used to propagate conventional ideas about black women. As a viewer and stage manager of black theatre and performance in Britain since the 1980s, I have found it particularly problematic that the majority of images of black women presented on stage reiterate heterosexist ideals.1 Looking more generally at black and lesbian and gay theatre during this period, it becomes apparent to me that black lesbians are largely missing, tending to fall through the gap between black theatre’s primary focus on race vis à vis heterosexuality and lesbian theatre’s emphasis on white women. As far as most stage representation is concerned, if you are a lesbian you are most likely to be white and if you are black you are probably heterosexual. These exclusions reproduce a dominant perspective of what it means to be black and female in late-twentiethand twenty-first-century Britain from which black lesbians are virtually non-existent. In the first chapter of The Feminist Spectator as Critic (1988) Jill Dolan describes the feminist spectator as one who is spurred into action through her unhappiness at the representation of women. According to Dolan, the resistant feminist critic recognises that the dominant theatre is organised to satisfy the (white) (hetero)patriarchal male gaze and is therefore problematic for building progressive representations of women. Feeling compromised by the positions offered to her by the (white) patriarchal text, the feminist spectator develops 1
2
Staging Black Feminisms
critiques that might inspire new directions for a critical feminist theatre practice: Ruminating over these unsavory positions, the feminist spectator might find that her gender – and/or her race, class, or sexual preference – as well as her ideology and politics make the representation alien and even offensive. It seems that as a spectator she is far from ideal. Determined to draw larger conclusions from this experience, she leaves the theatre while the audience applauds at the curtain call and goes off to develop a theory of feminist performance criticism. (Dolan, 1988, pp. 2–3) This book is concerned with the activity of black feminist performance criticism, emerging from my continued dissatisfaction with the representation of black women on the contemporary British stage. Drawing on African-American and British models of text and performance analysis, it maps how discourses of representation in British black women’s theatre and performance practice have reflected notions of black female subjectivity since the late twentieth century. This book evaluates the trends and patterns of black women’s theatre and performance since the 1980s and offers suggestions for a progressive black feminist performance practice for the twenty-first century. The theoretical framework(s) for the play and performance analyses is derived from discussions of black and feminist performance aesthetics, identity politics, essentialism and constructionism as they pertain to narratives of black female subjectivity.2 Since the early 1990s women’s theatre scholarship (trying not to perpetuate the institutionally racist bias of much theatre criticism) has begun documenting and analysing black British women’s performance work.3 Most of these analyses include chapters on black women within bigger projects on white feminist theatres. Lizbeth Goodman’s Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own (1993) and Elaine Aston’s An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre (1995) examine black women working in black and feminist companies in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Aston’s Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights 1990–2000 (2003) includes a chapter on ‘feminist connections to a multicultural scene’ (Aston, 2003, p. 125), which looks at a range of plays and performances by black and Asian women. Mary F. Brewer’s Race, Sex and Gender in Contemporary Women’s Theatre: The Construction of ‘Woman’ (1999) examines the politics of race, gender and sexuality in plays by black women playwrights in Britain and America. Gabriele Griffin’s
Introduction
3
Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain (2003) is ‘the first monograph to document and analyse the plays written by Black and Asian women in Britain’ (Griffin, 2003, book jacket), exploring the plays in relation to diaspora themes and impulses. Evaluations of specific playwrights, plays or themes have also appeared in a range of articles and book chapters.4 This study adds to this growing body of work through a close evaluation of the feminist potential in a range of plays and performances by black women of African-Caribbean descent since the 1980s. Most analyses of British black women’s performance frame it in terms of its oppositional potential, where it is positioned as a feminist response to subjugating images of race and gender. Goodman frames her study as an ‘exploration of the relationship between contemporary feminisms(s) and black women’s theatres’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 149), and Aston argues that black women’s companies ‘devised, wrote and performed work that gave expression to socially and culturally neglected experiences of black women’ (Aston, 2003, p. 125). Aston and Goodman locate black women’s work as feminist because it is created in institutionally racist and sexist conditions, where black women practitioners have to overcome double marginalisation to get their plays produced on stage. Therefore, black women’s very presence in the British theatre industry is seen to constitute some sort of feminist intervention and their work is automatically perceived as presenting alternatives to archetypal images of black women. Largely due to a reticence towards defining black feminist plays on white feminist principles, these studies tend to assume a feminist sensibility in black women’s performance without fully interrogating the feminist principles within the work itself and its effect on audiences. On a materialist level, it is easy to agree that overcoming double marginalisation and getting their plays produced represents a black feminist intervention into the predominantly white male-determined British theatre industry. Curiously, however, such assumptions of automatic feminist intentions and effect do not correlate with the practitioners’ own sense of their work. Many black British women directors, playwrights and performers are reluctant to subscribe to feminist agendas and deny feminist sensibilities in their work. In an interview with Goodman in the early 1990s, Yvonne Brewster OBE (then Artistic Director of Talawa Theatre Company) rejected the feminist label on the grounds that it was a European concept that was different for Caribbean women who came from matriarchal societies where ‘women rule the roost’ (Goodman, 1991, p. 361). Similarly, Denise Wong (then Artistic
4
Staging Black Feminisms
Director of Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop) states ‘[t]he feminist label is not something I necessarily attach to me or my work, though I don’t deny it either. It’s almost as if being black makes the word a little bit irrelevant’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 172). Given these hesitancies, this book argues that it is not enough to locate all black women’s work as feminist by virtue of its very existence and that closer attention needs to be paid to an evaluation of the content and effect of black women’s performance practices in relation to notions of the constitution of black feminist aesthetics. There is more scope for exploring precisely how plays and performances by black women represent a feminist discourse in their content and form of representation. Thus, this book evaluates the trends and patterns of black British women’s theatre and performance since the 1980s to determine the extent of their feminist intervention. It looks at a range of plays and performances to consider the extent to which their articulations of black women’s identities can be said to constitute a black feminist intervention, focusing on a consideration of the difference between plays by black women that are not necessarily speaking to feminist agendas and those that actively present a feminist perspective by questioning archetypal notions of black womanhood. Most of the theorising of feminist theatre has evolved through white women’s theatre scholarship and these debates, alongside debates about black (male) aesthetics, form a significant element of the analyses in this book. However, tendencies to locate black women’s performance within feminist agendas through comparisons with texts by white feminist dramatists and practitioners are refigured by a focus on AfricanCaribbean British women’s performance within traditions and tropes primarily of African, African-American and Caribbean literature, and performance practices that are informed by black feminist theories of culture and identity.
Identity and performance politics Notions of cultural identity are prominent concerns of black feminist theory and black women’s performance, such that Y. S. Sharadha maintains that ‘[t]he term “black theatre” means theatrical production by blacks that serves as a tool for research into ethnic identity’ (Sharadha, 1998, p. 9). Black British women playwrights Winsome Pinnock, Jackie Kay, Valerie Mason-John, Jacqueline Rudet and Zindika have all at some point placed questions of black women’s cultural identity at the centre of their plays.
Introduction
5
Stuart Hall argues that identities are produced within representation, which validates certain ideas about humanity as plausible and become positions from which identities are (re)made in culture. Rather than thinking about representation as something that reflects a pre-existing reality, Hall surmises that our notions about what is real are constituted through representational discourses, which includes science, law and media, as well as fictional discourses such as novels and theatre.5 Hall suggests that representational discourses are key arenas in which essential ideas about humanity are reinforced through their repeated portrayal, and are therefore crucially important to the structuring of human identities, where they can be used to reaffirm or contest certain ideas about humanity. bell hooks makes a similar suggestion that the mass media plays a crucial role in shaping our views about race and gender, upholding white supremacy through the repeated portrayal of racist and sexist stereotypes. hooks suggests that the representation of identities can precede their construction in society, which she substantiates with the claim that the stereotypical image of the large fat black mammy woman ‘existed first in the white imagination and then the reality followed’ (hooks, 2001, p. 50). The key to changing views about black humanity therefore lies within the power afforded representation as ideas have to first be present in our imaginations before they can be present in our lives, which is particularly crucial for representations of the ‘other’ that need to work towards decolonising institutionalised ideas about race, gender and sexuality and imagine new ways of seeing. Accepting these claims that identity is produced within representation, rather than being ‘an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent’ (Hall, 1993, p. 392), means that questions surrounding essentialism are imperative to an understanding of how black women’s identities are created through performance. As a divisive tool, the impact of essentialism is felt in the way that certain attributes are associated with people within particular categories that are used to distinguish them from others and perpetuate the continuation of racial and (hetero)patriarchal domination. Biological essentialism has been used to infer black woman’s inferior difference from a white (male) norm, placing her as ‘other’ to his ‘self’. In particular, biological suppositions about black women’s genitalia underscore ideas of an uncontrollable, depraved, sexuality, which is placed in opposition to ideas of white women’s chastity.6 Glenda Dickerson demonstrates that ‘the cult of true womanhood [ ] domesticity, submissiveness, piety, and purity’ (Dickerson, 1990, p. 110), was construed in terms of beauty, femininity
6
Staging Black Feminisms
and morality that were only achievable for white upper-class women who ‘had the luxury of leisure’ (110); black women, ‘triply locked out: by class, by race, and by history’ (110), were positioned as ugly, masculine, sexually denigrated and immoral in comparison. As black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins argues, such stereotyping ‘has been essential to the political economy of domination fostering Black women’s oppression’ (Collins, 1991, p. 67). Essentialising and stereotyping have not only been used by groups seeking the subordination of ‘others’, however, but also within resistance movements (such as feminism, black, lesbian and gay) that are founded on the basis of shared experiences of oppression. As a tool in wresting the power of definition from the dominant groups, strategic essentialism has been a necessary step towards liberation. Black women’s theory and theatre addresses black women as distinct from white women and black men, emphasising that racist and sexist double marginalisation results in a unique shared standpoint that derives from ‘the common experience of being Black women in a society that denigrates women of African descent’ (22). Drawing on shared histories and literary traditions has been fundamental to the presentation of positive role models for black women, but this has meant that the differences between black women are often overlooked and, as Madhu Dubey argues, ‘the term black woman tends to congeal into a stable and given category’ (Dubey, 1994, p. 3). A core set of images of black womanhood appear over and over again in their plays and performances. The common ideas come to represent what it means to be a ‘black woman’ as their repetition validates them as authentic experiences whilst neglecting others. Specifically, many plays and performances by black women confront racism but leave heterosexist assumptions intact. Excluding lesbians from black women’s representation becomes an oppressive tool in the reification of heterosexuality as the dominant and authentic mode of black womanhood. Julia Sudbury notes that ‘[h]ostility towards lesbian women can be seen within a context of narratives of authenticity which place heterosexuality at the centre of black womanhood’ (Sudbury, 1998, p. 102). Black lesbian feminist critics Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde have warned against ignoring lesbian sexualities in representations of black womanhood.7 Smith explains such myopic tendencies in black women’s work and positions black lesbian work as capable of radical feminist intervention. Heterosexual privilege is usually the only privilege that black women have. None of us have racial or sexual privilege, almost none of
Introduction
7
us have class privilege, maintaining “straightness” is our last resort. Being out, particularly out in print, is the final renunciation of any claim to the crumbs of “tolerance” that nonthreatening “ladylike” black women are sometimes fed. (Smith, 1982, p. 171) This book suggests that the epitome of the challenge to create innovative and progressive black feminist performances involves a more substantial objection to the fundamental, deepest inset and most pervasive of institutional values – heterosexuality – which will lead to the production of a wider range of black female subjectivities as viable positions. As theoretical debates have forced recognition of multiple and complex heterogeneous identities, the theatrical challenge is to find ways of representing multiple black female experiences that move beyond the features found in stereotypical and simplistic representations. Alternatives are found in performances that represent mixed race and/or lesbian and queer identities to disrupt and contest long-held archetypes of black womanhood and bring some recognition of the diversity in conceptions of black womanhood that are acknowledged in contemporary black feminist theory to the stage. Adrienne Rich has shown how white male dominance is underwritten by the ethos of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1980, p. 632), whereby notions of essential male and female oppositional differences are thought to draw the two together for intimate relationships. The establishment of heterosexuality as the dominant mode of sexual being is underscored by essentialist discourses that relegate ‘alternative’ sexualities to a position of pathological otherness. French feminist Monique Wittig argues that lesbians challenge essential concepts of ‘woman’ as defined in relation to (heterosexual) man. Wittig suggests that the lesbian is in fact indefinable within a heterosexual matrix that defines woman in opposition to man. She contends that ‘[t]he refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman’ (Wittig, 1992, p. 13) because the lesbian has no binary opposite against which she is defined; the lesbian is ‘a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society’ (13). Wittig suggests that the ‘lesbian mind’ distinguishes lesbians from heterosexual women because the lesbian refuses both ‘the role “woman” [ and] the economic, ideological, and political power of a man’ (13). Stereotypical characteristics are, however, as much associated with lesbians (and homosexual men) as with any other identity category.
8
Staging Black Feminisms
Quite apart from biologically determinist concepts such as the ‘gay gene’, which presuppose that sexuality is predetermined by genetic make-up, are the characteristics based on behaviour and supposed identification, which prevail in images of lesbians as stereotypically manhating, ‘butch’, women. Nicholas de Jongh’s study of homosexuality on stage highlights the ‘prevailing mythic constructions of homosexuality as the epitome of evil, danger and corruption’ (de Jongh, 1992, p. xi). Although de Jongh is discussing gay men, and not lesbians, similar constructs of deviancy have been placed upon lesbians in mainstream representations.8 This is clearly a problem with the nature of stereotypes based on essentialist views, which could be contested by a wider range of representations that work to destabilise prevailing images. Barbara Christian suggests that black lesbian feminist artists and theorists, already placed on the absolute margins of cultural discourse, are in an ideal position from which to challenge homophobic definitions of women.9 Indeed, several lesbian theatre practitioners, independent filmmakers and novelists, have begun to challenge limited portrayals and have sought ways to reflect a broader range of lesbian experiences. Black lesbian, bisexual and queer practitioners, such as Patience Agbabi, Jackie Kay, Valerie Mason-John (aka Queenie) and Dorothea Smartt, resist the tendencies to compulsory heterosexuality that are found in a lot of black women’s performance, marking possible ways forward for a progressive black feminist performance practice that unravels essentialist assumptions about black women’s identity to explore identity as a performative construction rather than as a natural effect of the sexed body. These practitioners explore Judith Butler’s notion that ‘gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo’ (Butler, 1990, p. 271) to offer convincing challenges to the regulation of gender identity within heterosexist discourse and concomitant assumptions about black women’s subjectivity. Their representations of black lesbians and invocation of queer performance strategies engage with the multiple sites through which identity is conceived, transcending the conventional limitations of identity and connotations of masculinity and femininity that are tied to the (hetero)sexed body. Such performances exemplify models of black feminist practice that incorporate lesbian and multi-racial identities to make performance live up to its potential to articulate new ways of seeing. Agbabi, Kay, Susan Lewis, Mason-John and SuAndi interrogate ideas about racial identity from viewpoints that avowedly testify to the experience of mixed-raced or transracially raised black women. Their experiments with performance form through the use of audience address,
Introduction
9
movement, multimedia performance art and poetry adds a further dimension to an overall feminist effect that departs from realist conventions as part of a critical practice that questions commonly held beliefs about black womanhood and emphasises racial and sexual plurality. British-born black people negotiate identities in relation to diverse lived and migrant (grand) parent cultures, which in itself disrupt fixed notions of racial identity. Hall argues that black British identity is continually in process, challenging essentialist ideas of race that locate it within fixed terms of history and culture. Hall critiques notions of a singular authentic black identity and argues for an identity politics that ‘recognises that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute “what we really are”; or rather – since history has intervened – “what we have become” ’ (Hall, 1993, p. 394). Hall foregrounds black British identity as hybrid, contradictory and fluid, allowing for discontinuities, constant transformation, re-definition and re-production as a continual interaction between histories and individual lived experience. The playwrights and performers discussed in this study consider black Diasporas linked to Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean. Mason-John, Kay, Lewis, Smartt and SuAndi go a step further to invoke bi-cultural identities as part of a politicised practice that defies essentialist views and opens up possibilities for finally dismantling long-standing ideas.
Plays and performance practice Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance explores the identity and performance politics of black women’s plays and performances on the contemporary British stage. The plays and performance pieces included in this study deal with specific elements of black women’s identity, such as migration, mixed-raced identity and, specifically, different aspects of sexuality. The case studies are necessarily selective and the playwrights and practitioners chosen are those who explicitly tackle issues of identity, stereotype and sexuality. Practitioners who have had multiple pieces produced on the stage have been chosen to evaluate comparisons across their body of work. The case study chapters are organised in relation to playwrights, performance artists or companies and a specific theme to further heighten the comparison between works by one practitioner or in a particular genre. In order to think about why black women appear to have churned out the same images of our experiences over and over again, it is also imperative to question the role that the white-led theatre industry plays
10 Staging Black Feminisms
in shaping the identities, politics and pictures of black women in Britain that make it onto the professional stage. Black women are not in significant management roles in British theatre institutions, thus the images that are shown are those that the (predominantly white male) theatre managements are prepared to showcase in their theatre spaces. Not surprisingly, most of the images of black identity that reach British stages are not far different from those found in popular media and television. Such images continue to fit the predominant expectations and beliefs about what black people are and should be which have serious implications for the possibility of black feminist performance in a British theatrical context. An understanding of the material conditions of the emergence and development of black women’s performance in Britain since the late 1980s gives us a way to understand how these images might reflect (white) producer and audience expectations that are bound in part to previous representations on stage and screen. Institutionalised expectations permeate all levels of the performance industry, from funding policies to venue programmers, which consequently influences the representations that are offered for public viewing. If the representations had been too far outside the remit perceived by these bodies, or too challenging of Eurocentric concepts, then the plays may well never have surfaced as public performances. The book is divided into four parts. Part I identifies and evaluates some core concerns in the theory and practice of black women’s performance in Britain. These discussions are followed by a series of case studies of text-based plays in Part II and what is loosely termed ‘performance’ in Part III. Part IV concludes with a reflection on how black women’s theatre in the twenty-first century fits with feminist aesthetics of performance. Chapters 1 and 2 identify the material, political and aesthetic concerns of black women’s performance in Britain. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the historical conditions for black women practitioners since the 1950s, evaluating how British theatrical contexts have informed black women’s playwriting and performance. The chapter looks most closely at the 1980s period when black women’s performance was at its height. An interrogation of the effect of Thatcherite discourses on the politics of identity and arts funding policies will underscore an analysis of how black women’s performance is situated in British black and feminist performance contexts and how it reflects socio-political concerns. Chapter 2 explores the theoretical questions of black feminist performance aesthetics, looking in detail at the emergent debates about black and feminist performance aesthetics to reflect upon the specific
Introduction
11
constitution of black women’s performance in Britain. This chapter interrogates assumptions of an automatic feminist disposition in black women’s performance work, applying the debate about the distinction between women’s and feminist work to a range of examples from black women’s performance. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 evaluate the idea of feminist performance through case studies of a range of plays by black women. Chapter 3 considers Winsome Pinnock’s realist plays in relation to generalised concepts of black female identity such as migration and mothering. A close textual and production analysis of Pinnock’s A Hero’s Welcome (1989), Leave Taking (1987), Talking in Tongues (1991) and Mules (1996) begins to tackle the question of how content and theatrical form work together to open up ways of understanding a play as feminist. This chapter suggests that Pinnock’s use of realist form limits the possibility of feminist intervention in her plays and opens up a discussion of the place for modified realism within feminist performance practice. Chapter 4 continues a discussion of narrative plays, shifting the emphasis towards a consideration of black female sexuality. Looking at two plays by Jacqueline Rudet that centre on black women’s sexuality – Money to Live (1986), which considers black women working in the sex industry, and Basin (1987), which deals with the black feminist concept of the Zami – this chapter suggests that Rudet begins to rewrite perceptions of deviancy that are associated with black female sexuality, but an inherent feminist potential is limited by the use of realist form. Chapter 5 looks at three plays by black lesbian writers which experiment with theatrical form while also offering representations of black lesbian identities that disrupt perceptions of black femininity. Jackie Kay’s Chiaroscuro (1987) and Twice Over (1989) and Valerie Mason-John’s Sin Dykes (1998) produce innovative portrayals of black female identity that begin to develop the discourse of representation beyond heterosexist limits. I will argue that these plays hold promising potential for a progressive contemporary black feminist theatre practice in content and form. Chapters 6 and 7 shift the focus to look more broadly at black women’s performance work; the emphasis here is on non-text-based narrative theatre, which includes dance, devised physical theatre, live art and performance poetry. Chapter 6 explores the extent of feminist intervention in relation to questions of content and form in four devised physical theatre performances by Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop. Mothers (1990) examines mother–daughter relationships, Drowning (1991) looks at women and alcoholism, Total Rethink (1991) spoofs the male gaze
12 Staging Black Feminisms
in Hollywood action-hero blockbuster films and Mourning Song (1997) looks at death, suicide, bereavement and mourning. Chapter 7, the last case study, explores a range of work by black women that can roughly be said to belong to live art and performance poetry models, exploring how they enable complex critiques of black women’s identity that speak to twenty-first-century concerns. Live art’s disruption of realist techniques and integration of diverse styles has rendered it a form able to portray complex ideas about identity. Catherine Ugwu (then Deputy Director of Live Art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)) maintains that ‘[l]ive art is a way of examining cultural and ethnic identity and its effectiveness as a means of constructing and deconstructing identities and representations of ourselves’ (cited in Evaristo, 1994, p. 15). Several of the practitioners that embraced live art are lesbians and/or mixed race/transracially raised and although lesbian sexuality is not explicitly addressed in much of the work, hetero-patriarchal discourses are not uncritically maintained either. Mason-John’s Brown Girl in the Ring tackles queerness across intersections of race and class, while SuAndi’s The Story of M plays back her white mother through her own black-mixed-race body and Susan Lewis’s Walking Tall and Ladies Falling interrogate neo-colonial constructs of black/mixed race femininity through dance and orality. Performance poetry enables a didactic address and cultural critique of political issues of race and sexuality. Aston alludes to the oppositional possibilities of orality with the suggestion that performance poetry, ‘rooted in the oral traditions of the African, Afro-Caribbean storytelling [ ] represents a way of challenging the Eurocentric “grand narratives” of the stage, and, for the Black female spectator offers an affirmation of her “sense of self”, by making visible the “colonial landscape” of a culture and history she carries with her’ (Aston, 1995, p. 91). Openly bisexual performance poet Patience Agbabi explores sexuality in her work, which also examines identities informed by being a black British woman who spent some of her childhood living with white foster parents. Agbabi’s work is informed by a late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s political and cultural context, responding to Thatcherite doctrines such as the poll tax and incorporating influences from formal poetry genres as well as hip hop music and punk rock. Dorothea Smartt’s Medusa poems interrogate the cultural myth of Medusa as located within black women’s sexual discourse, connoting impacts on beauty, hair and overall identity. Agbabi and Smartt’s collaboration with singer/songwriter Adeola Agbebiyi saw their poems presented as choral performance interlaced
Introduction
13
with songs in Fo(u)r Women (1996), a celebration of the diversity of women loving black women. Chapter 8 concludes this book with a reflection on the constitution of a progressive black feminist practice through a consideration of representations of black womanhood in early-twenty-first-century plays. debbie tucker green’s Born Bad (2003), Dirty Butterfly (2003), Stoning Mary (2005a) Generations and Trade (2005b) invoke ‘in-yer-face theatre’ (Sierz, 2001, p. 4) forms that counter nostalgic ideas of shared sisterhood between (black) women. Reading tucker green’s plays through British playwriting conventions, it is easy to see how they resonate with the white feminist styles of Caryl Churchill and Sarah Daniels, who counter realism through language and staging, or Sarah Kane’s provocative in-yer-face theatre. But recognising influences from AfricanAmerican playwrights Ntozake Shange and Suzan Lori-Parks offers a way to place her work firmly within black women’s performance traditions. Doña Daley’s Blest Be the Tie (2004) uses realist form to return to questions of the impact of migration on cultural identity and ideas of intra-racial and cross-racial sisterhoods. The conclusion will also profile Winsome Pinnock’s Water (2000) and One Under (2005), and Tracey Daley, Jo Martin and Josephine Melville’s Shoot to Win (2002). The primary aim of this project is to work towards identifying a politics of progressive black feminist performance for the early twentyfirst century. My overall contention is that a provocative black feminist practice is exemplified by performances that disrupt the conventions of mainstream form to interrogate heteronormative constructions of black women’s identity. The plays and performances discussed throughout this study are shown to be inextricably bound up in the historical context from which they emerge as it follows an ultimate concern to answer the question ‘What does/might/can/should a progressive black feminist critical performance practice look like?’
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Part I History and Aesthetics
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1 Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
Pioneering a movement: 1950s–1970s A survey of British theatre in the second half of the twentieth century highlights the marginalisation of black women as topics of drama, beginning with the post-war theatre productions which practically excluded the black experience altogether. Several critics have pointed out that even though black theatre in Britain is usually classified as alternative theatre it did not develop alongside the 1960s fringe theatre movement whose focus on political issues such as the Vietnam War did not include tackling racial issues.1 D. Keith Peacock observes that ‘the new British theatre was, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, primarily concerned with white parochial social issues and challenging British institutions’ (Peacock, 1999, p. 173). Class was emphasised as the primary site of difference and ‘racial issues were of no concern to the New British Theatre’ (173). Despite the large-scale immigration of black people to England in the post-war years, plays by white playwrights and directors did not explore the impact of migration or the lives of the new arrivals. Jatinder Verma highlights the irony that ‘[t]he so-called “Angry Decade” of British theatre is marked by its absence of the immigrant phenomenon’ (Verma, 1996b, p. 55), identifying that this ‘peculiar absence was one of the contributory factors in the emergence, in the seventies, of “Black Theatre” ’ (55). A spattering of black plays was produced at The Royal Court between 1956 and 1980, which gave black women opportunities to work as actresses.2 Only a very small percentage of the plays produced were by black (or other non-white) playwrights, however, which, as Peacock demonstrates, ‘hardly represent a recognition, by a theatre claiming to reflect the state of a contemporary Britain, of the social implication 17
18 History and Aesthetics
of more than a decade’s immigration from the West Indies and Asia’ (Peacock, 1999, p. 173).3 Black plays of the period were almost all written by male dramatists, such as Michael Abbensetts, Mustapha Matura, Caryl Phillips, Barry Reckord, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott and Edgar White, and the few plays by black women tended to be by African-American playwrights.4 Theatre initially seemed to be an out-of-bounds arena for the black female migrants to Britain, at least as far as playwriting was concerned. Black women’s main visibility in British theatre in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was as actresses in plays written by white or black men, such as Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1923), Jean Genet’s The Blacks (Roundhouse, 1970) and Peter Nichols’ The National Health or Nurse Norton’s Affair (National Theatre, 1969). The experiences of some of these pioneering women are well documented in Jim Pines’ Black and White in Colour: Black People in British Television since 1936 (1992) and Stephen Bourne’s Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television (2001). Interviews and discussions with black women – including Nina Baden-Semper, Nadia Cattouse, Pearl Connor, Mona Hammond, Pauline Henriques, Joan Hooley, Carmen Munroe, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Cleo Sylvestre and Elisabeth Welch – tell recurring stories of the difficulties of trying to establish careers as black actresses in theatre. As these actresses had not trained in Britain they were not given recognition by British theatre institutions, a situation exacerbated by the theatre establishment’s relatively closed shop where entrance was achieved either through a friend already in the business or through contacts made from a shared university education, neither of which would have been very likely for the newly arrived black female immigrant.5 Established theatres rarely employed black artists and despite the growing number of black people in Britain few dramatists wrote black British parts. American images dominated the stage and screen and touring shows brought over African-American star performers to play the key roles with black British performers as understudies or in supporting parts.6 The Royal Court’s 1958 production of Errol John’s Observer prize-winning play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1956) cast three of the lead roles with American performers.7 The Royal Court production of Barry Reckord’s Skyvers (1963) is renowned for justifying the use of white actors in black roles with the claim that they could not find any suitable black actors. Peter Nichols’ The National Health or Nurse Norton’s Affair (National Theatre, 1969) cast Cleo Sylvestre as a central character – Nurse – but black actresses were more likely to be cast as
Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
19
background maids and servants. Pauline Henriques explains ‘[i]t was hard breaking into the theatre and I found myself playing a variety of American coloured maids’ (Pines, 1992, p. 26), while the tendency to cast black actresses as exotic background characters, nameless and silent in someone else’s scene, is captured in Carmen Munroe’s account of her early career. I might have been asked to play a role where the character was just described as “exotic”. She wouldn’t have a character name or a title, and she wouldn’t have much to do – she would just be exotic. You know, “enter exotic nurse”. (61) The 1950s and 1960s were certainly bleak times for black women trying to maintain successful stage careers in Britain. The few available roles tended to reinforce stereotypes and the actresses’ dilemma was to either play a stereotypical role, or forego her career; when Pauline Henriques got fed up with predictable parts she retrained as a social worker: ‘After playing Emilia and speaking Shakespeare’s wonderful language, I just couldn’t go back to playing American coloured maids anymore’ (30). By the 1970s, when it was clear that British performers of colour were still not getting opportunities comparable with their white counterparts and as the critical mass of black practitioners increased, a few specialist black theatre companies were formed, including The Dark and Light Theatre Company, later called The Black Theatre of Brixton (founded 1974; folded 1977), Black Theatre Co-operative (now Nitro; founded 1979) and Temba (founded 1972; folded 1992).8 Michael McMillan and SuAndi claim that The Dark and Light Theatre Company and Temba ‘produced more black plays in two years than the whole of English theatre had in the previous twenty-five’ (McMillan and SuAndi, 2002, p. 118). Meenakshi Ponnuswami explains that ‘[a]lthough black women playwrights remained invisible until the 1970s, a number of women played crucial infrastructural roles in shaping black British performance arts during the earlier years’ (Ponnuswami, 2000, p. 218). In 1947, Pauline Henriques was instrumental in setting up the Anna Lucasta understudy company of British black performers to mount their own productions. Ponnuswami also points out the largely ignored fact that 1956 was an equally pivotal year for black theatre in Britain, as it was the year in which Errol John penned the award-winning Moon on a Rainbow Shawl ‘and, critically, that Pearl and Edric Connor established the Edric Connor
20 History and Aesthetics
Agency to represent black artists in theatre, radio and television’ (217).9 The Edric Connor Agency was run single-handedly by Pearl Connor from 1958 to 1974 because Edric Connor was busy building his own international stage and film-making career. Pearl Connor’s activism was instrumental in securing Equity union rights for British black performers.10 She helped to establish the Negro Theatre Workshop in 1963, which created work opportunities for black actresses and directors.11 The year 1979 marked another sea-change that has had a lasting effect on black theatre production in Britain. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party to a General Election victory where they remained for four terms until 1997. The Conservative government initiated shifts in thinking about cultural identity that impacted on the funding of minority theatres. Government initiatives carried out through the Arts Council have left a lasting impression on arts funding that has particular implications for the development of black women’s theatrical voice.
Black theatre funding: 1980s The 1980s is looked back upon as a boom era for black theatre in Britain, underscored by the formation of a number of black theatre companies, including Black Mime Theatre (founded 1984; folded 1998), Double Edge (founded 1984) and Talawa (founded 1986). These companies were dedicated to creating opportunities for black playwrights, performers, directors and technicians, representing black experiences on stage and developing an autonomous black British theatre aesthetic. The success of the post-1970s black theatre movement can be attributed to the coming of age of the second-generation black British who added to the critical mass. Verma explains that ‘[t]he rise of a second-generation of “foreigners” – children born of immigrant parents – along with an economic recession that affected immigrant workers more acutely than others, provided a powerful motive to achieve presence’ (Verma, 1996b, p. 55). Government initiatives for equal opportunities and moves against the continued disadvantage experienced by black people in Britain resulted in arts funding being targeted towards previously ignored areas. Peacock highlights that ‘in the aftermath of the riots of 1981 and as part of their urban regeneration program, the government felt it pertinent to offer some support to immigrant communities’ (Peacock, 1999, p. 174). The beginnings of the 1980s boom of professional black theatre production in Britain and discussions about the constitution of British black performance aesthetics can be traced back to Naseem Khan’s
Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
21
influential report for the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), The Arts Britain Ignores: The Arts of Ethnic Minorities in Britain (1976). Khan assessed a diverse range of minority arts in Britain (including Chinese, Polish, Cypriot, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, East and Central European, West Indian and African) and emphasised the need for the recognition of their discrete practices and the granting of reasonable funding to develop it. Khan looked at minority arts practices of carnival and ritual performance and drew attention to the severe lack of a minority presence in professional British theatre. She focused on the community aspects of arts, but her report raised awareness that initiated the process of developing strategies to support a professional black arts sector in Britain.12 The Arts Britain Ignores placed debates about ‘ethnic arts’ and cultural diversity onto the agenda that have remained of concern to the arts funding bodies and in the minds of theatre programmers. Kwesi Owusu observes that ‘[a]dvisory panels woke up to the new “ethnic” reality, toyed with the recommendations of the report, and in many cases went for an immediate prioritisation of folkloric and traditionalist art forms’ (Owusu, 1986, p. 53). The formation of the independent black theatre companies and arts bodies dedicated to improving black theatre in Britain can be directly linked to institutional initiatives developed as a result of the implementation of the recommendations in Khan’s report. Walter V. Baker’s follow up CRE report, The Arts of Ethnic Minorities: Status and Funding: A Research Report (1985), highlights the development of The Minorities Arts Advisory Service (MAAS) as a particular achievement that helped to support black theatre in Britain. Baker explains that MAAS was ‘set up directly from a recommendation put forward in The Arts Britain Ignores [to] give support and help to groups in all aspects of their work [ ] provide information on fund-raising, organising and making applications, publicity, organising tours, setting up exhibitions and provides help with all aspects of arts administration in the ethnic communities’ (Baker, 1985, p. 9). Kenneth Cork’s Arts Council report on theatre funding, Theatre Is For All: Report of the Enquiry into Professional Theatre in England (1986), recognised black theatre as a growth area in the mid-1980s. Cork claimed that ‘[c]entral theatre funding for black theatre in 1985–86 stood at 2% of the total’ (Cork, 1986, p. 29) and argued that it was imperative that the specific needs of black communities be considered. Cork believed in the importance of a performing arts space dedicated to the development of black performance, and the recommendations in his report included support for the conversion of the Roundhouse into a black-managed
22 History and Aesthetics
arts building that would help to foster the development of autonomous black theatre initiatives.
Venues for black theatre A contentious issue related to funding has been the question of whether there needs to be a designated building base for black performance. Some black theatre practitioners in Britain argue that the development of a base for black theatre practitioners to produce work that is not determined by white theatrical standards is imperative, but others feel that such a venture would mean the ghettoisation of black theatre. In the 1970s venues such as The West Indian Student’s Centre and Keskidee served as focal points for black theatre. Since the 1980s venues such as The Tricycle Theatre and Theatre Royal Stratford East in London and various producing venues or touring arts centres throughout the country have contributed to the rising visibility of black theatre. Black women’s plays have been produced in three main sectors of British theatre – independent black companies, women’s companies and Off-West End venues. The independent black companies toured nationally to repertory, fringe, arts and community theatres, as well as African-Caribbean and youth centres. Off-West End venues (including The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, or the Lyric Theatre Studio in Hammersmith) hosted plays by black or women’s companies and mounted in-house productions of black plays. The Albany Empire, The Arts Theatre, The Cockpit Theatre, The Croydon Warehouse Theatre, The Drill Hall, The Oval House, Riverside Studios and The Soho Poly (now The Soho Theatre) have all housed black women’s plays. Significant regional theatres include The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, Liverpool Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse and The Leicester Haymarket.13 The Tricycle Theatre is undoubtedly one of the key venues to produce black theatre in Britain, but their plays by black women have nearly all been by African-American playwrights.14 The Royal Court Theatre has by far been the most consistent in staging black British women’s theatre, hosting productions by several of the key black theatre companies in the theatre upstairs and commissioning and producing Winsome Pinnock’s plays.15 In terms of developing a black feminist aesthetic, however, it is important to remember that these venues are managed and run predominantly by white (male) administrators and artistic directors. Therefore, white (male) managements decide on the black women’s plays that are produced, the stories of black womanhood that reach the public eye, and they may settle for the safe images that support the status quo.
Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
23
Since the 1970s, there have been several attempts to secure a blackmanaged theatre building, but these have mostly failed to come to fruition. In 1982, Camden Council and the Greater London Council (GLC) began discussions and subsequently put in an offer to acquire and renovate the Roundhouse, an old train terminus in Chalk Farm, as a dedicated black arts centre. Shewta Otiv explains that the Roundhouse project was intended to ‘provide a focal point for the individual groups dispersed around the country’ (Otiv, 1986, p. 26). The Roundhouse was conceived as a space for the development of sophisticated black theatre, where it ‘was envisaged as a prestigious regional, national and international arts centre, on par with the Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells in London and other institutions of similar repute. It was to be the first of its kind in Europe and a symbol of black achievement’ (77). However local residents opposed the bid with the claim that ‘a black arts centre would upset the balance of the local community by causing problems here which black areas are experiencing’ (The Voice, 1983, p. 2) and the project never materialised. One of the most significant ventures of the 1970s was the establishment of the Keskidee Centre in Islington, ‘a rambling dilapidated mission school’ (Khan, 1980, p. 71), which was renovated to become a base for black theatre productions. Black theatre practitioners remember The Keskidee Centre fondly as a space that ‘presented regular seasons of its own plays – a range of African, Caribbean and black American work’ (71).16 Other efforts to establish black-managed arts buildings include Black Theatre Co-operative’s short acquisition of The Factory, a disused building in Paddington that was renovated for their use, and Double Edge Theatre’s squatting of a church in Camden – the Camden United Theatre (CUT) – from which they were eventually evicted. More successfull were Umoja Theatre’s establishment and tenure of The Base, a small studio theatre in Camberwell with rehearsal facilities, and the various community arts centres, such as the Yaa Asantewa centre in Westbourne Grove, which had a theatre space built into a youth and community centre, The Cave in Birmingham and the Nia Centre in Manchester. The most successful venture was Talawa’s three-year leasing of the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre in Holborn in the early 1990s when funds from the failed Roundhouse attempt were made available to black organisations.17 Talawa mounted three in-house productions each year and also hosted productions by black theatre companies such as Black Mime Theatre,18 but the lease was not renewed after the initial three-year tenure and they have since continued the quest to obtain a dedicated
24 History and Aesthetics
black arts building base. Talawa’s most recent venture was an attempt to develop a black-led theatre building in the heart of London’s West End. Talawa has been awarded a £3.6 million Lottery grant by the Arts Council and the Millennium Commission to build a state-of-the-art facility in Victoria, on the site of the old Westminster Theatre located on Palace Street, near Victoria Station in London. It will provide for a 270-seat, fully flexible auditorium, a café, rooms for rehearsal and education, an archive and, most importantly, a place for Black talent to develop and flourish. Talawa’s new theatre will become the first major Black-led arts institution in central London, bringing Black culture into the mainstream of British society – a landmark achievement. (www.britishtheatreguide.info/news/talawa.htm) Talawa’s Capital Project fundraising appeal had raised £7,375,000 by 2004 and was appealing for contributions towards the final £1,500,000 needed to complete the theatre by 2006. However, Talawa has had several changes of artistic director since Yvonne Brewster’s resignation and the Arts Council seemed to lose their faith in the company’s ability to deliver and withdrew their promised funds for the project in the summer of 2005. The same disagreements about the ghettoisation of black theatre that shrouded the failed Roundhouse bid reappeared in discussions about the Westminster Theatre conversion with some practitioners seeing this recent failure as a sign that black theatre is now more fully integrated into the fabric of British theatre production and therefore no longer requires a separatist space.
Black women in British theatre The reports and initiatives outlined above were instrumental in promoting the growth of black theatre in Britain during the 1980s, but the black theatre sector continues to be under-funded and the effect of institutional racism is a primary concern for black theatre practitioners. The situation is even more acute for black women who fall between the gaps in funding categories aimed at black or women’s initiatives, which means that black women practitioners are faced with the choice of either joining black theatre companies that typically focus on race or (white) women’s companies that prioritise gender. One of the clearest effects of the power of racist and sexist discourses is the lack of a sustained independent black women’s theatre movement as black
Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
25
women are subsumed within the larger black (male) or (white) feminist theatre initiatives. Despite the efforts of women’s theatre companies and theatre venues, there are still limited spaces for black women’s theatre, which is produced at the whim of institutions that might have a particular (financial, aesthetic or political) investment in certain images that could impede the production of black feminist work. The recent history of British theatre shows evidence of the continued marginalisation of black women, even during the 1980s flourish when most of the black plays produced were by male dramatists and race was pinpointed as the main site for a struggle against white dominance within the industry. Black Theatre Cooperative (BTC) produced six plays by Mustapha Matura, three by Farrukh Dhondy and four by Edgar White, as well as several plays by other black men, and in response to the question of whether they were feminist stated, ‘[w]e have had no “feminist” theatre involvement and are specifically a black company, not a women’s company’ (cited in Goodman, 1993, p. 152). Since 1979, they have only produced six plays by women, one of which was an adaptation of white American Ruth Dunlap’s The Cocoa Party and another a production of African-American Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Black women headed three of the prominent black theatre companies, but even so they tended to prioritise race.19 Talawa was founded by four women in 1986, but their first play by a black woman (Ntozake Shange’s The Love Space Demands) was only produced in 1992 – six years after their inception – and their first black British woman’s play was Yazmine Judd’s Unfinished Business in 1998. Temba staged Jacqueline Rudet’s Basin in 1985 and Trish Cooke’s Backstreet Mammy in 1989, but most of their productions were black versions of canonical plays. Most of Carib’s plays were also by men, except for Dawn Penso and Judy Hepburn’s Sitting in Limbo in 1998. Most of the plays in the GLC-funded annual Black Theatre Seasons (1983–1990) were by established male playwrights such as Mustapha Matura, Trevor Rhone, Derek Walcott and Edgar White, with Paulette Randall’s Fishing in 1983 being the only female contribution over the entire seasons.20 Just over fifty plays by black women have been produced professionally throughout Britain since 1982, amounting to roughly three plays per year, and only five of these plays have included black lesbian characters.21 This is a vast improvement on the number seen between 1956 and 1981, but remains a poor percentage of the overall number of plays presented. There is a general consensus of opinion among black theatre practitioners that institutional racism continues to affect the development of black theatre in Britain, but black (lesbian) women also experience
26 History and Aesthetics
the effects of (hetero)sexism. Government interventions to develop minority theatres in the late 1970s and the 1980s focused separately on black people, women, or lesbians and gay people. When ethnic minority arts became an area for consideration money was awarded to black companies with no special attention given to black women’s work. Reports like Khan’s, Baker’s and Cork’s discussed earlier reflect on the marginalisation of black people and women separately, but not specifically on black women. Similarly, Caroline Gardiner’s important report What Share of the Cake? The Employment of Women in the English Theatre (1987) gives a detailed analysis of the roles of women in subsidised professional theatre, but does not look at black women in detail.22 Black theatre in Britain has become hugely reliant on arts funding bodies, particularly the subsidy of the central funds of the Arts Council and Regional Arts Boards (RABs) such as Greater London Arts (GLA) or the London Arts Board (LAB). But the development of black women’s theatre as distinct from black (men’s) or (white) women’s has never really been of concern to funding bodies. Elizabeth B. Clarke’s draft report on black theatre companies in Britain shows that of the several that received public subsidy from the Arts Council or RABs, only two were specifically designated black women’s companies – The Theatre of Black Women (founded 1982; folded 1988) and the Lewisham-based community theatre project, The Bemmarro Sisters.23 The Theatre of Black Women, founded by Rose Bruford graduates Bernadine Evaristo, Patricia Hilaire and Paulette Randall in 1982, was the only professional black women’s theatre company to receive public subsidy and is a crucially important company in the history of the development of black women’s performance in Britain. They uniquely identified their feminist alliance and created shows and workshops aimed at young black women, but their existence was cut short after losing a large portion of their annual funding grant in 1988. The relative absence of specifically black women’s groups meant that black women were more likely to be found working within the black companies already mentioned or women’s companies such as Clean Break, Monstrous Regiment and The Sphinx (formerly Women’s Theatre Group). Women’s theatre companies broadened their scope by incorporating multi-racial policies in casting and administration and explicitly linked women’s concerns with racial ones.24 For example, Clean Break’s productions of Paulette Randall’s 24% (1990) and Winsome Pinnock’s Mules (1996) explored the particular experiences of black women, crime and the criminal justice system.25 Pinnock’s Leave Taking and Talking in Tongues were directed by Hettie Macdonald for the
Black British Women and Theatre: An Overview
27
Women’s Playhouse Trust. Gay Sweatshop’s production of Sue Frumin’s Raising the Wreck incorporated a multi-racial cast that included a black and a Chinese woman and their only full production of a black woman’s play was Jackie Kay’s Twice Over in 1988. Black lesbians remained on the margins of the margins in lesbian theatre companies, however, which failed to produce any plays by black women. Integrated and ‘colour blind’ casting initiatives in mainstream companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Royal National Theatre provided some further outlets for black women actresses in the 1980s. Claire Benedict, Josette Bushell-Mingo and Josette Simon were all cast in significant roles at the RSC and The National Theatre. Josette Simon is well known for playing lead roles such as Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost (RSC, 1984), Isabella in Measure for Measure (RSC, 1988), Vittoria Corombona in John Webster’s The White Devil (RSC, 1991), Maggie in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall (National Theatre, 1990), Ellida Wangel in Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (Lyric Hammersmith and West Yorkshire Playhouse, 1994) and Madame in Genet’s The Maids (Donmar Warehouse, 1997). These plays were not dealing with black British experiences, however, and where the 1980s were momentous for the development of black women’s theatre in Britain was in the contributions of black women in roles other than actresses, particularly in positions where they had a measure of artistic control over the work. The first-generation artists had pioneered in proving black actresses’ capabilities of playing serious and demanding roles during the 1960s and 1970s. However, the 1980s saw a defiance towards accepting limiting parts as the second generation took on the onus for creating their own images and developing their performance styles. Most of the successful black British women playwrights (such as Trish Cooke, Yazmine Judd, Jackie Kay, Jenny McLeod, Maria Oshodi, Winsome Pinnock, Jacqueline Rudet, debbie tucker green, and Zindika) are from the generation born and/or educated in Britain. The second generation differ from the early movers in more openly rejecting colonial values. The first-generation actresses overlooked the limitations of white/male playwrights’ representations, whereas the second generation were more concerned with creating their own versions of the black experience. Khan identifies the difference between the 1970s and the 1980s as a shift from a focus on plays ‘designed to show the paces of actors’ (Khan, 1980, p. 72) to a greater concern with depicting the realities of modern black life. The new black British theatre’s use of dialect and localised cultural images broke away from earlier attempts to emulate
28 History and Aesthetics
white theatre and initiated questions of aesthetics that drew on their own lives and theatrical heritages. The second generation were also clearly different from their predecessors in being driven to carve out individual careers for themselves. Whereas the first generation had remained working together in close-knit communities, the second generation were dispersed throughout the industry, sometimes collaborating on projects, but more often working with black men or white women, a work pattern that reflects Margaret Thatcher’s neo-liberal individualistic policies.26
Thatcherism and cultural diversity The boom of black theatre production in Britain and the start of its demise coincide directly with the beginning and the end of Margaret Thatcher’s time as Conservative Party Prime Minister. Thatcher began her first term as prime minister in 1979 and resigned as leader of the Conservative Party in November 1990, midway through her third term in power. The 1980s were the decade of a sustained black theatre movement in Britain, while the 1990s witnessed its gradual decline. Under Thatcher’s Conservative government the 1980s saw a recession of the British economy, high rises in inflation and taxes, cuts in welfare benefits, high unemployment, privatisation of the national industries and cuts in government subsidy for the arts. Peacock argues that ‘[e]ven in the first year of the Conservative parliament, the cuts imposed unexpectedly by the Arts Council made it manifestly apparent that Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies would inevitably have a detrimental effect on the subsidized theatre’ (Peacock, 1999, p. 1). John Bull’s analysis of West End and commercial theatres also insists that ‘[t]he roots of the theatrical crisis and the direct cause of its continuing malaise must be seen as a direct result of wider government monetarist policy’ (Bull, 1994, p. 14). By the end of the Conservative Government’s 18-year term in office there were few black theatre companies left, as many fell to the funding henchman and ceased to operate.27 Elaine Aston attributes the silencing of black women’s voices in the 1990s to ‘[t]he financial squeeze on companies [which] has increasingly reduced the avenues and outlets available for Black women’s work’ (Aston, 1995, p. 90). The ‘financial squeeze’, levied right across the arts, is reminiscent of the principal concerns and impact of Thatcherite discourse on Britain. Lasting Thatcherite motifs and legacies include the complementary ideas of freedom and choice, independence and individual worth, which inspire us to strive for higher achievement in competition against each other. Thatcher’s political rhetoric engaged a
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shift away from ideas of discrete collective identities towards concepts of the self that came from a collapsing of ideas of differences between class, race and gender. Anna Marie Smith argues that Thatcherism built upon fears, anxieties and desires of inclusion and exclusion that were already prevalent. Smith illustrates how Thatcher’s ‘New Right Discourse’ (Smith, 1994, p. 5) was successful because it reproduced ideas of Englishness and individual gain that were part of Enoch Powell’s discourse on identity and belonging in the late 1960s. The new right discourse, particularly the rhetoric of individual achievement, affected both the need for a dedicated black theatre movement and the depiction of cultural identity in black women’s plays. While seemingly foregrounding economics, the Thatcher years have had far-reaching implications that ricocheted throughout British culture and changed it in radical ways. Crucial to the effect on black women’s theatre was the intertwining of economics with ideas of individualism and personal success, which were used as justification for Thatcher’s economic legislation. Smith illustrates, for example, how the privatisation of national industries and encouragement of personal share ownership was used to incite an individual investment in the companies and therefore a personal vested interest in maintaining productivity. Thatcher’s rhetoric of individuality, individual worth, personal responsibility and private ownership directly opposed the Labour Party’s 1970s socialist ideals of the collective sharing of responsibility and resources. Black theatre had begun to flourish at the end of a term of Labour power, during which ideas of unifying on the basis of collective political values and common ground had been encouraged. The Labour government promoted equal opportunities that countered institutional racism, sexism and homophobia, and their allocation of extra resources to disadvantaged groups created the conditions for black theatre to develop in Britain. Thatcherite discourse promoted a completely different ethos, premised on every individual’s potential to work hard enough to achieve high goals and personal success. Where the Labour government recognised inequality and the advantages that some groups had over others, the Conservative Party claim was premised on the belief that everyone was an individual; thus all were equally capable of success. Such ideals lessen the need for specialist interest groups; under Thatcherite principles there is no need for a separate black women’s theatre as black women are simply individuals along with everyone else. This could appear to be quite a progressive move that instils the belief in equal capability, but it fails to account for the insidious ways that racism, sexism and homophobia might affect
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one’s capacity to achieve. Thatcherite discourses were detrimental to the development of an independent black woman’s theatre movement as they failed to register the systems of oppression that contribute to the marginalisation of black women’s work. The impact of Tory power on the arts worked at the levels of economics and representation. Cuts to subsidy and an encouragement of the seeking of private sponsorship tied in with Thatcher’s aims to get rid of the ‘dependency culture’ and promote competitiveness and individual responsibility. The commercial viability of a product becomes more important for companies seeking private sponsors, which potentially works against black (British) theatre production in an institutionally racist society. Black theatre had emerged during a period when the drive for equal access was paramount and companies were afforded the luxury of a concern with critical success and fair representation, rather than commercially oriented matters. Thatcher’s doctrine meant that black companies had to become more concerned with issues of quality control and the potential box-office return that would help to secure private sponsors for their work. Bull argues that commercial drives resulted in a ‘proliferation of plays by American dramatists in the subsidized London theatres in the 80s’ (Bull, 1994, p. 17). This observation resembles patterns in the black theatre sector where American, Caribbean or African black productions and musicals seem to be more commercially viable than British black plays. As Philip Hedley notes, most black plays to make successful West End transfers are black musicals.28 Black British women’s writing was thought to be too local in focus, with little resonance for the wider theatre-going public, so black companies produced plays by well-known African-American women playwrights, which seems to have greater appeal and be more commercially viable.29 Economics and identity were joined together in government initiatives, which affected Arts Council policies that eventually resulted in the virtual disintegration of an independent black theatre sector. At the beginning of the 1980s, black theatre was recognised as a special interest group and funding was awarded to support its development. Debates about integrated casting in the theatre were paramount, as were discussions about the development of an independent black theatre aesthetic. The abolition of the GLC in 1986 meant that black theatre lost an ally in its quest for the maintenance of a separate forum, and by the early 1990s, policies were being instigated to integrate black voices into the mainstream through initiatives that tied in with the Thatcherite rhetoric on race exemplified in the Conservative Party’s 1983 general election
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poster campaign showing a photo of a black man in a suit, with the caption ‘Labour says he’s black, Tories say he’s British.’30 Such ideals are engendered by the Arts Council’s introduction of the ‘cultural diversity’ rubric, which cut back special funding for black theatre companies and reallocated the money to encourage established institutions and venues to implement more culturally diverse casting and programming. Funding theatres to become more culturally diverse by increasing black theatre programming, rather than funding the black theatre companies themselves, is a problematic initiative. The black companies need adequate funding to produce work of the quality of standard for production at a high profile venue, so the cultural diversity rubric could effectively lead to the disappearance of black theatre because the companies lack the resources to mount productions of the appropriate quality. Cultural diversity initiatives also fail to address ways to overcome the possibility that programmers could promote castings that keep black women in derogatory parts or the fact that the dispersal of black performers throughout the industry results in the sharp decline of black theatre companies and the loss of black women’s voices beyond the quota of a given theatre management. Notions of cultural diversity, rather than black theatre, reflect Conservative and New Labour rhetoric of opportunity. In the 1980s the term ‘ethnic minority arts’ sited black theatre as separate from the mainstream and deserving of funding on its own merits. By the twenty-first century, the term ‘cultural diversity’ underscores moves to make the mainstream more inclusive, suggesting that the need for separatist theatre groups and the articulation of discrete minority identities have become outdated. The term ‘cultural diversity’ recognises some semblance of difference, while at the same time it elides difference through the promotion of an integrated theatre. The shift from ‘black theatre’ to ‘cultural diversity’ epitomises the new right discourses on British identity that effectively endorses the decline of a sustained black theatre movement and the dispersal of practitioners as individuals throughout the industry. Since the mid-1990s, it has become more likely to find black women working independently and building their individual careers. These black women practitioners have subscribed to Thatcherism’s individualist ideals, which imply a tacit agreement that there is no need for a separate black women’s theatre sector. Playwrights Jenny McLeod and Winsome Pinnock, for example, felt that focusing on their plays as black and/or female was racist and sexist. They wanted their plays to be recognised for their universal worth rather than as black women’s plays, implying that they were individuals rather than representative
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of a community. These perspectives directly contrast with the position of early-1980s companies Imani-Faith and the Theatre of Black Women, who believed in the necessity of an identifiable politicised black women’s theatre. It is timely that the Conservative Government’s individualist rhetoric undermined the need for separatist theatres at a historical moment when minority voices (black, female, gay and lesbian) were starting to come to the fore. In Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women (1992), Susan Faludi identifies the 1980s as a period of anti-feminist ‘backlash’, which was supported with particular reference to the achievement of Margaret Thatcher as the first female prime minister in Britain. Faludi describes how backlash politics in the media and popular culture rendered feminism dated, obsolete, out of fashion and not particularly relevant to the lives of modern ‘new women’. Thatcher’s ‘New Britain’ was a meritocracy, where one’s individual gain was not thought to be adversely affected by gender, race, class or sexuality. Such rhetoric underscored the backlash against feminist and other ‘minority’ voices, which consequently hampered the development of black women’s theatre. Thatcher’s legacy persists in ideas of ‘new feminism’ (Walter, 1998, p. 1) that fits with the political climate of an individualistic, successoriented, millennial Britain, but is entirely at odds with the ideas of shared community values upon which minority theatres were initially built. One of the significant effects of Thatcherite discourse was a quelling of explicitly oppositional voices and the creation of plays that only subtly challenged racist views. The demonisation of ‘loony left’ principles and the naturalisation of Conservative ideologies mean that black women playwrights’ success might necessitate pandering to a ‘commonsense’ view of the world.31 Many black women playwrights fit Elaine Aston’s concept of ‘bourgeois feminism’ (Aston, 1995, p. 65), whose ‘aim is to be accepted into the mainstream on mainstream (i.e. male) terms’ (65). According to Aston, the oppositional potential of bourgeois feminist plays is limited because ‘form and ideological content can be assimilated into dominant artistic and political values’ (65). Similarly, Mary Remnant’s suggestion that ‘[p]lays by women which reinforce or seem to reinforce male values are acceptable’ (Remnant, 1987, p. 9) could begin to explain why the black women’s plays that have reached the British stage only very subtly challenge dominant ideals. Black women performance practitioners are primarily dependent on white-male-led institutions for funding and space, which means
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that they may feel that they cannot be too explicitly challenging of neo-colonial, hetero-patriarchal value systems. This is clearly a problematic suggestion that implies that white (hetero)patriarchy is always exercising some level of control (imagined or actual) over black women’s voices, but a brief look at some key incidences confirms this possibility. The Theatre of Black Women suffered severe funding cuts, which ultimately resulted in their closure, after pointing out the underrepresentation of black people on the Greater London Arts grants panel. Black women’s reticence towards producing overtly feminist work can certainly be read on some level as a response to perceived censorship. Theatre reviews, for example, commend black plays that have left angry politics behind and criticise those that are too didactic or explicitly political, acting as a guide for what constitutes an acceptable representation. Black women emerged as playwrights in the early 1980s, after at least a decade of black male playwriting and during the second wave of feminist theatre.32 As a subsection of these larger movements, black women’s plays would invariably be affected by any shifts in the principles of these prior discourses. By the 1980s, black (male) and (white) women’s writing had started to move away from the angry polemic of 1970s agit-prop and community plays, which set the yardstick by which black women’s plays were created and measured. The changes were reminiscent of late-twentieth-century shifts from the blatant exclusionary racism experienced in the post-war years to more subtle and insidious forms. The effect on black theatre writing can be seen in shifts in the representation of racial identity and in the narrative styles of the plays, epitomised by a move away from the presentation of unitary characters and essentialist portrayals that had dominated realist theatre of earlier decades towards the articulation of diverse and contradictory ideas. Black British plays of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s presented black communities and characters unified by shared experiences. However, these assumptions have been challenged in plays since the 1980s, which present the difficulties of reconciling Thatcherite ideas of the individual with notions of a collective identity in contemporary multicultural Britain.
The rise of the individual: 1990s Black women’s theatre in the 1990s reflects both the power and the effect of Thatcherite drives to change the face of Britain and attempts to retain at least some visibility in relation to the hegemonic standpoint.
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During the 1990s black women pushed forward in other arenas of performance, particularly live art, performance poetry and stand-up comedy, where they generally wrote and performed their own work. The rise of the individual performer and disappearance of black theatre groups is commensurate with Conservative discourses on individual success. Black live art practice and performance poetry inferred critical black feminist sensibilities of pieces by, for and about black women. These performances did not require the same level of funding as black theatre companies and the comedians and comedy shows were so successful with black audiences that they easily attracted support and sponsorship from black companies. Bernadine Evaristo argues that the success of black comedy reflects a growing concern with lucrative commercial viability that delimits any radical potential and ‘means producing theatre which has the lowest common denominator – music, humour with a little dance thrown in’ (Evaristo, 1993, p. 15). Commercially viable representations are more often than not significantly at odds with ideas of black feminist aesthetics and rely predominantly on images that sustain a hetero-patriarchal status quo. In particular, comedy shows and popular black theatre imported from Jamaica uncritically depicts crude images of black (hetero)sexuality. These plays undermine the possibilities for a radically oppositional black theatre practice by subscribing to stereotypes of black people as overtly sexually licentious and likely to raucous cussing. Black performance is maintained here as vulgar and low-brow, and does not provide much of a challenge to the whitemiddle-class bias of much British theatre.33 The political possibilities of black theatre are troubled by ethics of cultural diversity, multiculturalism and the need to be commercially viable. Black Theatre Co-operative changed their name to Nitro in 1999 as an indication that they had moved beyond the explicit politicised stance that had led to the formation of the company in 1979 and to mark the fact that the company was run by a management team and was no longer a co-operative. Under the Artistic direction of musician and composer Felix Cross, Nitro’s ‘explosive entertainment’ (Nitro Business Card, c.2000) now focuses on musical performance that downplays an overt political stance, such as ‘A Nitro at the Opera’ at the Royal Opera House (2003 and 2005), notwithstanding the oppositional stance engendered by the very presence of black operatic performers. The year 1999 saw the publication of Sir William Macpherson’s report The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999) as a result of an inquiry
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into the way that the Metropolitan Police had handled the investigations into the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, South East London, in 1993.34 Macpherson’s report declared the ‘unwitting prejudice’ (Macpherson, 1999, p. 321) of the police officers involved and ‘pernicious and persistent institutional racism’ (30) within the Metropolitan Police. The Macpherson report forced a review of institutional racism within other industries, including the theatre. “Institutional Racism” consists of the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. (p. 321)
A new millennium: 2000s In April 2002 the Arts Council of England published Eclipse: Developing Strategies to Combat Racism in the Theatre (2002), a report following a conference held at the Nottingham Playhouse in June 2001 to discuss ways of overcoming institutional racism in British theatre. The conference was ‘[a]imed at senior managers (chief executives, general managers, artistic directors and board members) of middle to large scale presenting and producing theatres in the English theatre sector’ (Arts Council, 2002, p. 4), but ‘[o]f the 125 theatres invited, less than a quarter attended, with the vast majority not responding to the invitation’ (5). The Eclipse report highlighted that institutional racism affects all levels of theatre production (from casting to programming) in British regional theatres and aimed to develop strategies to bring the theatre closer to reflecting multi-racial British culture, both through the types of plays that are presented and in terms of ‘colour blind’ casting and employment. The recommendations suggested strategies designed to overturn assumptions of certain types of work as high risk, encourage new audiences to the theatre and monitor the demographic organisation of black and Asian theatre workers. With reference to the 2000 Race Relations Act, the recommendations suggest that regional arts venues should review their equal opportunities policies and set targets for employing Afro-Asian practitioners.
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Recommendation 20: By March 2003, every publicly funded theatre organisation in England will have reviewed its Equal Opportunities policy, ascertained whether its set targets are being achieved and, if not, drawn up a comprehensive Positive Action plan which actively develops opportunities for African Caribbean and Asian practitioners. (p. 4) The Eclipse Theatre Company was established in January 2002 as a direct result of the recommendations of the Eclipse report. The Eclipse Theatre Company have mounted middle-scale touring productions of a revival of Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (Nottingham Playhouse in collaboration with The New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and The Bristol Old Vic, 2002), Oladipo Agboluaje’s West African adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (Nottingham Playhouse with The New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 2003), Roy Williams’s Little Sweet Thing (New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich in association with Nottingham Playhouse and Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 2004) set in a contemporary multi-racial urban community, and a revival of Mustapha Matura’s Trinidadian adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Birmingham Repertory in association with Nottingham Playhouse and The New Wolsey Theatre, 2006). The insistence that theatres have to programme something culturally diverse may well have underscored the re-emergence of black playwrights since the publication of the Eclipse report in 2002. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen Hampstead Theatre, The Royal National Theatre, The Royal Court, The Tricycle and The Soho Theatre stage plays by Kwame Kwei-Armah, Mark Norfolk, Winsome Pinnock, Roy Williams and debbie tucker green. Soon after March 2003 (the Eclipse report deadline for a review of the effectiveness of Equal Opportunities targets) tucker green’s Born Bad (Soho Theatre, 2003) and Dirty Butterfly (Hampstead Theatre, 2003) were staged within two months of each other. The year 2003 also saw productions of Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen (Royal National Theatre, 2003) and an extended run of Williams’ Fallout (Royal Court, 2003). The Royal National Theatre mounted two successful productions of Williams’ Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads in 2003 and 2004, and Kwei-Armah’s Fix Up in 2004. Talawa presented Doña Daley’s Blest Be the Tie at the Royal Court Upstairs in 2004. The year 2005 saw Pinnock’s One Under put on at the Tricycle Theatre, tucker green’s Stoning Mary produced at the Royal Court Downstairs, and Trade staged at the RSC Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, before transferring to Soho Theatre in 2006.35
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These achievements seem to be promising a renaissance of black theatre in Britain at the start of the new millennium; but black women are still far outnumbered by men, and some theatres fill their culturally diverse quotas by staging commercially viable African-American plays, such as The Young Vic’s versions of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (2001 and 2004) and Langston Hughes’ Simply Heavenly (2002 and 2004), which transferred to the West End, Talawa Theatre Company’s production of James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie at The Tricycle Theatre in 2004, and the Tricycle’s three-month AfricanAmerican Season from late 2005 to early 2006. The West End transfers of Paul Sirett’s The Big Life (Apollo Theatre, 2004) and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen (Garrick Theatre, 2003) (the first non-musical black British play to make such a move) are undoubtedly significant effects of cultural diversity initiatives and appear to signal progress in terms of offering prominent parts for black actresses. However, Kwei-Armah’s play deals with male ‘black on black’ gun violence and The Big Life is a Windrush-inspired Ska musical based on Love’s Labour’s Lost that once again sees black actresses in popular performance where singing and dancing are central. Black theatre production in Britain has been both enabled and disabled by institutional racism and (hetero)sexism, but the impact of institutionalised attitudes goes beyond the level of accommodating black theatre and affects the more fundamental level of black writing. Spaces have been created for black theatre to be produced during the 1980s boom and within the current policies that award funds on the basis of culturally diverse programming. However, the institutions can continue to select the plays and productions that support hegemonic ideas about black people, and plays that defy expectations might not be produced. Thus we rarely see representations of black lesbians, who seem to fall outside notions of ‘authentic’ black womanhood. The twenty-first century is located as a period of greater tolerance for difference, where the articulation and celebration of complex heterogeneity are enabled. However, as drives for commercial sponsorship require plays to achieve certain profit margins, lesbian theatre is even less likely to be produced now than it was in the 1980s and black lesbians still appear not to be commercially viable products of representation. Valerie Mason-John had huge difficulties trying to attract the funds to stage Sin Dykes (1999d), a play about inter-racial lesbian sadomasochistic relationships, which, in a discourse premised on profit margins, seems to hold little corporate appeal.
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It is clear that political discourses influence trends in black women’s writing, which are substantiated by their repetition across different media. For example, the strong black woman relates to ‘the myth of the superwoman’ (Wallace, 1979, p. 87) and the colonial mammy archetype, which is reinforced by Thatcher’s discourse of dominant and strong women as requisite for success. Black British women are under-represented as playwrights and even less visible in other areas of theatre production. Venue managers, artistic directors, producers, administrators, designers and technicians are predominantly white and male, making decisions about the plays that are produced and how they are staged. The repeated stories of professional productions are those that companies have chosen and venues prepared to show. Professional productions are also more likely to receive reviews in mainstream presses and become part of future academic discussions. Playwrights like Valerie Mason-John might strive for a broader picture, but they are still hugely reliant on the ‘goodwill’ of white venue managers for spaces in which to perform. The theatre establishment may yet be ready for these stories, and the lull in trend for black British women’s writing may partly explain why so many of the practitioners discussed in this chapter have disappeared from the theatre-scene.36 Black women’s theatre in Britain is fraught with the tensions of institutional racism and (hetero)sexism, and encumbered by a lack of resources and practical and academic exclusions. Given these conditions, it is understandable why some critics take a materialist approach to deem all black women’s work feminist for overcoming these difficulties. However, feminist theatre theory has expended a lot of energy in determining feminist qualities within actual plays and performances and black women’s theatre needs to be understood in relation to these debates, which are taken up in the next chapter.
2 Black Feminist Performance Aesthetics
Defining black feminist theatre Defining black feminist theatre is a complex task, not least because black women’s relations to feminism vary in different cultures and differences between black women, such as age, class or sexual preference undoubtedly influence their feminist sensibilities and performance practices. Black women practitioners in Britain have presented plays and performance in various theatrical genres, including social realism, agitprop, live art and performance poetry. Some practitioners have experimented with structures and forms that challenged dominant theatrical models, while others focused on placing black women at the centre of the drama in more conventional plays. The diversity of styles and the multiple Euro-American, African, Caribbean and Asian influences mean that it is difficult task to pin a singular label on black women’s performance because their practices vary depending on the ethos of the particular playwright, director, or company producing the play. Lizbeth Goodman highlights two related issues that are imperative to understanding feminism within contemporary black women’s performance. An acknowledgement of the material conditions recognises that double marginalisation affects black women’s access within theatre industries, which prompts an evaluation of ‘the ways in which black women’s theatres review myths and stereotypical images of black women, thereby creating positive alternative images and cultural representations of black women, created by black women’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 148). Goodman deduces that black women directors and companies whose work foregrounds the lives of black women are feminist, because the women defy double marginalisation to write, direct, act and produce plays. From a materialist feminist perspective, it is difficult to disagree with this idea. 39
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Given the British theatre industry’s propensity to marginalise women of colour, the very fact that some black women are visible in theatre production can be said to constitute a feminist act.1 However, the issue is immediately complicated by the fact that some representations might not aim to be feminist and many do not have a feminist effect, which begs the question of whether it is enough to conceive all performance by black women as feminist, or whether the political agenda of a work needs to be considered to draw these conclusions. Goodman’s suggestion that Talawa was a feminist company because ‘it actively seeks to dispel negative stereotypes and images by replacing them with powerful black female images’ (158), for example, does not offer enough detail on Talawa’s actual productions to conclusively illustrate this point. Notoriously, Talawa did not produce a play by a black woman until six years after they were founded and their then Artistic Director Yvonne Brewster was hesitant about calling the work ‘feminist’ and preferred to describe Talawa as a black company that happened to be run by women rather than as a feminist company. Black theatre is usually envisioned in relation to race relations as an alternative and oppositional practice that is used as a political and ideological tool to promote visions of black humanity and emancipation and envision a better world. Goodman’s analysis describes black women’s theatre within these terms, but I would suggest that black feminist work must actively engage in a consciousness-raising critique of the interlocking systems of class, gender, race and sexual oppression, which allows for a distinction to be made between black women’s and black feminist plays.
Black women’s theatre versus black feminist theatre The difference between women’s theatre and feminist theatre has remained a contentious issue in debates that seek to resist attempts to homogenise works by female playwrights as automatically feminist. Yet, these distinctions are not applied to black women’s performance, which amounts to a refusal to acknowledge the differences between black women and the political motivations that might drive some practitioners and not others. Goodman summarises the debate in terms of ‘ “women’s theatre” as a general term and “feminist theatre” as a political one’ (31), emphasising the necessity for distinguishing between experience and politics and recognising that ‘ “women’s common experience” is not necessarily sufficient grounds for assumption of political unification or action’ (31).
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In ‘Are Women’s Novels Feminist Novels?’ (1980) Rosalind Coward describes feminist novels as those that have clear associations with the aims and objectives of a political woman’s movement. Susan E. Bassnett-McGuire refines Coward’s ideas with a specific focus on theatre in ‘Towards a Theory of Women’s Theatre’ (1984), identifying feminist theatre as located within the concerns of the Women’s Movement, focusing on issues such as equal pay and education for women and working to end discrimination based on gender and sexuality. In ‘Re/cognition, Re/presentation, Re/creation in Woman-Conscious Drama: The Seer, The Seen, The Scene, The Obscene’ (1985), Rosemary Curb’s distinction between feminine, female and feminist aesthetics emphasises that feminist performance (created especially to highlight the ways that women are limited and subordinated in patriarchal cultures) ‘envisions alternative, non-oppressive ways of living’ (Curb, 1985, p. 303). Jill Dolan’s definition of feminism provides a useful basis from which to investigate models of black feminist performance: Feminism begins with a keen awareness of exclusion from male cultural, social, sexual, political, and intellectual discourse. It is a critique of prevailing social conditions that formulate women’s position as outside of dominant male discourse. [ ] Attendant forms of feminist criticism theorize ways of exposing and changing women’s subservient position as it is revealed in representation. (Dolan, 1988, p. 3) Dolan’s emphasis on feminism as a critical practice marks a clear distinction from women’s performance. Black women add a racial dimension to explore the myriad ways that black women are excluded from ‘[white] male cultural, social, sexual, political, and intellectual discourse’ (3). Black women’s and black feminist theatre can therefore be distinguished from each other by seeing feminist work as endeavouring to explore the limits of oppression and the ways that black women are positioned by racist, (hetero)sexist discourses. The 1970s Combahee River Collective describes their black feminist politics as ‘actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression’ (The Combahee River Collective, 1982, p. 13). Their active engagement with a critical feminist politics that is aware of the broader social implications of race, class and (hetero)sexual discrimination suggests a move beyond the idea that all self-defined standpoints of black women are feminist. All black women’s theatre should not be expected to focus on political concerns, but black feminist theatre is distinctly political. Plays and
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performances that attempt a feminist (re)vision, to raise consciousness and effect political change, usefully help to distinguish between black women’s theatre and black feminist plays. Research on black women’s theatre in Britain and the USA tends to regard black women as having a discrete outlook on the world that is evident in their theatre practice. Sue-Ellen Case’s analysis of theatre by American women of colour asserts that ‘[t]he movement for black independence in the 1960s had already provided them with an ethnic consciousness, a familiarity with political organisation and a language of protest that could be combined with a feminist critique’ (Case, 1988, p. 100). Aston argues that black British women’s theatre reflects particular experiences that are ‘bound up in the colonizing histories of the Black diaspora’ (Aston, 1995, p. 80) and Goodman suggests that ‘women of colour and black women have made theatres which reflect their own images’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 148). These approaches illustrate how black women’s theatre is interpreted as a response to their marginalisation and consequently as always an oppositional voice to some extent. Black British women practitioners have diverse responses to the question of feminism in their work. Some of them reject the term ‘feminist’ because they see the feminist movement as premised on white women’s principles and issues. Performance poet SuAndi refuses to use the term ‘feminism’ on these grounds, preferring the alternative ‘womanist’ terminology suggested by Alice Walker.2 First-generation Caribbean migrant Yvonne Brewster maintains that feminism is a European concept that is more appropriate for the younger generations of black women raised in a British patriarchal culture and less relevant to herself as a black woman from the Caribbean. I came from a very strong West Indian background, and in the West Indies the word “feminism” has a really hollow ring, simply because it’s a matriarchal society. [ ] So, entering a European or British situation, one finds the feminist concept a bit difficult. It’s hard to understand what all the fuss is about. (Goodman, 1991, p. 361) Second-generation writer and director Bernadine Evaristo identifies black feminism as a necessary strategy in developing black women’s theatrical voice in Britain and the Theatre of Black Women were decidedly feminist.
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The company came within the category of “Black Feminist”, a term introduced from America, which embraced both black and female concerns. We were very much part of the burgeoning black women’s cultural movement of the eighties and often engaged in debates about the historical exclusion of Black women from the women’s movement. “Black Feminist” as a term seemed most appropriate at that time. (Goodman, 1993, p. 132) The complex task of defining black feminist theatre is further compounded by issues such as the role of the production team (director, designer, lighting designer, technical crew) in defining a work’s outlook. Can a production be said to be black feminist when the director and/or production team are not black women? Not all black women’s plays are directed by black women and even in black theatre companies the production team are often white. Brewster sees the director’s role as the most important in shaping a play’s vision, concluding that if a black woman directs a work it will represent a black feminist view on some level. The director is in a powerful position to control the overall look of a production and can therefore work to sustain or sabotage feminist ideas. Indeed, the same play can be directed with a different emphasis depending on the team that produces it and the era in which it plays. The way that a play positions the audience, and their reception of it, is also important to understanding how black feminist aesthetics work in production because the audience make-up could work to negate or enhance the black feminist potential of a dramatic text. The self-defined black feminist standpoint infers an ideal black feminist position as requiring an entirely black female audience who share the information and knowledge that create and sustain black women’s community values. In Britain, however, black women’s plays are usually performed before racially mixed or sometimes even predominantly white audiences and are rarely produced in black-women-only spaces. Thus, black women’s theatre in Britain has to respond to the demands of multicultural settings and solve the issue of how to address diverse groups of spectators.
Black ‘Binglish’ aesthetics Ideas of a distinctly black aesthetic emerged in the USA, initially during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s and vehemently during the Civil Rights eras in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. From
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the outset, black aestheticians conceived an oppositional practice that would foreground black experiences and the struggles for racial equality and was distinctly different from white American theatre in form and content.3 Samuel A. Hay identifies that black aestheticians, such as William E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, ‘wanted to use theatre to reveal the Negro to the white world as “a human feeling thing” ’ (Hay, 1994, p. 2) and urged black theatre practitioners to seek innovative ways of representing black people that broke away from established white dramatic conventions. The Civil Rights and Black Power eras in the 1960s and 1970s saw revolutionary activists, including Amiri Baraka (Le Roi Jones) and Ed Bullins, arguing for a black aesthetic that rejected white American norms of form and content. Their manifestos for black aesthetics of literature (which included drama, poetry, fiction and theory) sought the installation of an oppositional black-identified art that could be measured on its own terms and was not always compared with white practices.4 The black aesthetic was conceived as a space that enabled positions for black people within art that were denied to them within white-produced performance. Its politicised basis figured art as a tool in the black struggle for racial emancipation and its quest was to work towards black freedom to articulate their sense of self on their own terms, without fear of white censorship or the comparison of their literary standards with white values. Kimberly W. Benston reflects on manifestos of key exponents of black aesthetics, including Baraka, Bullins, K. Williams Kgostile and Ron Milner, to locate black aesthetics within traditions of ritual that would forego linear narratives and the central hero and replace the individual drama with ‘an idiom of the communal self’ (Benston, 1987, p. 64). Benston argues that radical black aestheticians rejected EuroAmerican theatrical conventions by relinquishing the tradition of the proscenium arch, which maintains the audience as an observer of the stage, and invoking ‘traditional’ black practices of African ritual where the spectator becomes a part of the action. The dissolving of the division between the performance and the spectator meant that ‘the black beholder is theoretically transformed from a detached individual whose private consciousness the playwright sought to reform, to a participatory member of tribal or, in this case, national ceremony which affirms a shared vision’ (63). The revolutionary black aesthetic encouraged separatism where black protest plays and didactic arts works were created about, by and for black people, performing a dual function of consciousness raising and black empowerment. Such performances were
Black Feminist Performance Aesthetics 45
fundamentally conceived as radical congregational events that encouraged a dialogue between stage and audience that performed social as well as aesthetic functions. Questions surrounding a form for black British theatre have particularly been discussed since the 1980s with one of the most concerted efforts found in Asian theatre director Jatinder Verma’s proposition of ‘Binglish Theatre’ (Verma, 1996a, p. 194).5 Verma’s Binglish theatre is premised on the idea that ‘Asian and black lives in modern Britain is self-evidently “not-quite English”; and equally, is characterised by a striving “to be English” ’ (194). Binglish theatre uses its marginal outsider position as one from which to critique dominant theatrical standards and ideas, either through the use of black and Asian casts in ‘mainstream’ texts, or in productions of black or Asian plays that provocatively ‘stimulate other ways of “seeing” ’ (196).6 Verma separates Binglish theatre from multicultural performances that use integrated casts but sustain a familiar world-view and cross-cultural performances that ignore English and European staging conventions altogether. Binglish is a term I propose to denote a distinct contemporary theatre praxis: featuring Asian or black casts, produced by independent Asian or black theatre companies. The attempt here, I would argue, is directly to challenge or provoke the dominant conventions of the English stage. (194) Central to Verma’s aesthetic is the notion of ‘tradaptation [ ] translation and quotation’ (Verma, 1998, p. 129), where black and Asian stories and performance traditions are translated for English audiences. Binglish tradaptations of canonical texts integrate languages, physical and ritualistic performance traditions from Africa, the Caribbean or Asia to create new meanings that ‘challenge the dominant European imagery of theatre’ (Verma, 1996a, p. 198). New black and Asian writing introduces its audience to experiences that are typically excluded from the mainstream British stage, invoking black and Asian contexts and languages to present ‘themes which are new to Britain [ and] out-ofthe-norm for the average British theatre-goer’ (196). Verma’s Binglish theatre shares a radical edge with American black aesthetic ideals, articulating a theatre praxis that merges European and black or Asian cultural forms and theatrical languages. Binglishness differs from black aesthetics because it is clearly conceived as a practice that acknowledges multicultural audiences and invokes an inherent
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politics of hybridity within second-generation British black and Asian lives and performance. The emphasis on provocation and creating new ways of seeing usefully distinguishes between black theatre (and theatre using racially mixed casts) that upholds a familiar world-view and Binglish performance that challenges the status quo.
Black women’s performance practice: Plays, themes, content Ideas of a discrete black aesthetic are troubled by the second-generation practitioners’ distance from ‘authentic’ African and Caribbean traditions and their greater familiarity with ‘white’ British theatrical discourses. Winsome Pinnock and Jacqueline Rudet write predominantly realist plays that are styled in line with British theatre writing trends of the 1980s and 1990s. Pinnock draws influences from the white male playwrights that she read as a young woman in the British education system, and her social realist plays have been compared to Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker. Doña Daley’s Blest Be the Tie uses the well-made play format where the arrival of a ‘stranger’ is a catalyst for conflict and change, and reviewers liken debbie tucker green’s plays to a host of white European playwrights including Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter and Sarah Kane. If these plays are to be understood as black feminist, the extent to which they provoke new ways of seeing or reaffirm the status quo must be considered. Janet Brown argues that a feminist play contains some sort of ‘feminist impulse [ ] expressed dramatically in woman’s struggle for autonomy against an oppressive, sexist society’ (Brown, 1979, p. 1). The feminist impulse is the driving force of the play, determining the treatment of the characters and their ability to transcend their circumstances and strive towards a better future. The expression of socially constructed lives takes the emphasis away from the individual and places her firmly within her social context through a feminist rhetoric that confrontationally questions the racial-socio-sexual hierarchy. Brown allows for the production of feminist drama within realist forms through content that focuses on the narrative trajectory of a character’s quest for autonomy. She suggests that ‘[t]he very existence of feminist rhetoric attacks the most fundamental values of the culture [ ] although feminist rhetoric may be moderate in form, it is invariably radical in substance’ (11). Within black women’s literary theory, the autonomous woman has been identified as an ‘emergent’ or ‘evolving’ black woman, whose journey for self-discovery and self-empowerment drives the narrative trajectory. Patricia Hill Collins identifies black women’s resistance
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to controlling images as ‘typified by the emergent woman in Black women’s literature’ (Collins, 1991, p. 85) and Elizabeth Brown-Guillory sites the ‘evolving black woman’ (Brown-Guillory, 1990, p. 120) as an icon of black womanhood within black women’s literary traditions. Guillory argues that the evolving black woman’s resiliency serves as a role model for black women; the character ‘embodies the multiplicity of emotions of ordinary black women for whom the act of living is sheer heroism. [ ] Self-respecting, self-sufficient, and assertive, these women force others around them to respect them’ (120).7 Trish Cooke’s Back Street Mammy (1989), Grace Dayley’s Rose’s Story (1984), Jackie Kay’s Chiaroscuro (1985), Valerie Mason-John’s Sin Dykes (1998), Winsome Pinnock’s A Hero’s Welcome (1989), Leave Taking (1987), Talking in Tongues (1991), Mules (1996) and Water (2000), Sesan Ogunledun’s Bonded (1999), Jacqueline Rudet’s Basin (1985), God’s Second in Command (1985) and Money to Live (1984), and Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance (1993) and Paper and Stone (1990) all depict journeys towards personal autonomy for evolving black women characters. The placement of black women at the centre of these narratives locates all of these plays within black woman–centred literary and dramatic conventions, so their feminist value might be measured in terms of the extent to which the evolving black women characters offer a radical social critique. Black women’s plays deal with a range of social and political issues that affect their lives in Britain, such as the way identities are constructed in relation to Africa and/or the Caribbean, adolescent traumas, teenage pregnancies, sickle cell anaemia, black women’s experiences of the British judiciary system, notions of beauty, sexuality, sexual abuse, struggles for economic and sexual autonomy and the development of independent voices. Issues of sisterhood and solidarity between black women, inter-generational conflicts, the socio-cultural, familial and political circumstances of hybrid diasporic identities and (re)making of identity in contemporary British society are key themes. Many of the plays deal with how the search for identity rests in a reconciliation of African or West Indian heritages with lives in contemporary Britain.8 The re-telling of similar stories at different historical moments makes them very powerful in substantiating certain narratives of black female identity. Such a strategic essentialism among black women writers is invoked to maintain a sense of solidarity in a diversifying Britain. Most of the plays are set in England or the West Indies and use staging conventions that follow models of British domestic realism or evoke Caribbean styles. Pinnock’s A Hero’s Welcome uses the traditional
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Caribbean realist yard play format, described by Judy Stone as ‘a naturalistic drama with the single set of a barrack yard, where several households struggle in forced intimacy for their day-to-day existence’ (Stone, 1994, p. 32). Veranda and indoor stage space are configured simultaneously and the characters feel the impact of interior and exterior spaces on their struggles for autonomy. The yard play differs from conventional British naturalism by showing the relationships between different families as negotiated in the shared outdoor space, compared to the kitchen sink arrangement that focuses on people who share a private domestic space. Stone sees the yard play form as ‘unmistakeably West Indian in every respect’ (33) and argues that ‘the arrival of the yard plays [in the 1950s] was an exhilarating regional antidote to the artifice of the still popular English drawing-room comedy’ (33). The yard play’s thematic focus on self-improvement is comparable with Brown’s feminist impulse of self-development and therefore makes it an ideal form for exploring evolving black women. The difficulty of maintaining a shared culture and sisterhood in a British society that privileges individual attainment and personal gain is a key theme that evokes a black feminist impulse to locate black women’s lives firmly within their social contexts. Killian M. Gideon’s England is De Place for Me (1988), Kay’s Chiaroscuro, and Pinnock’s Talking in Tongues and Leave Taking portray black women exploring how their identities relate to whiteness, class and notions of black Britishness. Charlene in Rudet’s Money to Live takes a job as a stripper to subsist in a profit-driven 1980s Britain. Leonora in Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance is an isolated agoraphobic who finds that her race is an impediment to her ambition to become a ballet dancer in England, and SuAndi’s The Story of M (1995) recounts how black children were turned away from ballet school in the 1960s. Passing on history, knowledge and traditions is significant to black feminist theory and is depicted with equal fervour in black women’s plays and performances that illustrate the importance of places other than England on black women’s cultural identity. The characters in Rudet’s Basin refer to West Indian notions of zamis as a way of understanding a developing lesbian relationship. The two black British teenagers (Viv and Del) in Pinnock’s Leave Taking want knowledge of their West Indian heritage, while the older first-generation characters (Enid, Mai and Broderick) reflect on how their past lives in the West Indies compare with their present experiences in Britain. In Pinnock’s Talking in Tongues, Leela goes to Jamaica to recuperate from a personal crisis, believing it to be a place of belonging where she can discover parts of
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herself that seem to elude her in Britain. Yazmine Judd’s Unfinished Business shows three sisters returning to an abandoned church to reconcile their past conflicts; two of the sisters are alive, the third is dead. Judd’s story replays a trend in black women’s writing to tackle issues of spirituality as experienced in Britain and the West Indies and can be compared with Pinnock’s A Hero’s Welcome, Leave Taking and Talking in Tongues, Trish Cooke’s Running Dream and Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance, all of which feature some form of spiritual encounter or reference to obeah practices. Black feminists have highlighted how black motherhood has been condemned through images such as the domineering, emasculating, matriarch or the young single welfare mother. Black women’s theatrical responses emphasise the social conditions that lead to these stereotypes, thus indicating that seemingly overbearing or stoic mothering styles are for the benefit of the children. Black mothers are depicted as central to the nurturing of black communities and their sacrifices engender the passing down of appropriate knowledge and empowerment to future generations. Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop’s first production, Mothers (1990), presents short vignettes of the mother/daughter relationship, and their production Drowning (1991) shows how women’s alcoholism affects their young children. Cooke’s Running Dream explores generations of mothering in the Caribbean, and although Pinnock claims that Leave Taking is not about mothering it focuses on the struggles of three generations of black women as mothers and daughters in the West Indies and Britain. Cooke’s Back Street Mammy and Dayley’s Rose’s Story examine issues facing black teenage mothers deciding whether to terminate their pregnancies or keep their babies. SuAndi’s The Story of M is a daughter’s tribute to her white mother who taught her to embrace and be proud of both her black and white heritages. tucker green’s Born Bad (2003) presents an altogether different view that shows the conflict between a mother and her daughters as the father sits silently on stage. Black women’s sexuality has also been denigrated through images such as the sexually licentious, deviant, hoochie, Jezebel or Sapphire. Revisiting these controlling images and identifying them in black women’s terms is apparent in a number of plays. Pinnock’s Talking in Tongues considers how black and white women’s sexuality has been figured in oppositional terms in racist discourses. Rudet’s Money to Live looks at women working as strippers in the sex industry and debbie tucker green’s Trade (RSC, 2005) presents ‘[a] dynamic collage of voices tackling the subject of female sex tourism’ (Soho Theatre, Winter-Spring Brochure, 2006, n. p.). Rudet’s Basin reconsiders notions
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of black women’s sexual deviancy and lesbianism, and Kay’s Chiaroscuro and Valerie Mason-John’s Sin Dykes explore contemporary black lesbian identities. Dorothea Smartt’s Medusa poems consider the effect of the archetype of the black woman with snakes on her head on notions of black women’s sexuality, and Patience Agbabi’s performance poetry has overt sexual connotations through the evocation of images of lesbianism, bi-sexuality, sadomasochism and Pre-Menstrual Tension (PMT). Drawing attention to how language is oppressive for migrant and diasporic subjects is a crucial part of the feminist impulse of black women’s plays. Language is shown to be political, underscoring the multiplicity of black British women who speak in many different tongues. In Pinnock’s Talking in Tongues, Leela is a successful Buppie who feels estranged from her ‘black’ roots; her quest for identity lies in the recovery of a language with which to communicate.9 Kay’s Chiaroscuro explores naming and identity as a central theme, as the characters contemplate how black women have been named by others and explore how they might (re)name themselves. The use of West Indian patois and black British speech styles represents a Binglish challenge to the dominant conventions of the British stage. Pinnock’s A Hero’s Welcome, Cooke’s Running Dream, Daley’s Blest Be the Tie, tucker green’s Born Bad and Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance all depict West Indians speaking in their own languages and accents. tucker green captures the rhythm and sound of urban dialect by writing phonetic dialogue that spells words like ‘dawta’ (tucker green, 2003a, p. 2) as they sound. The dual identity of black British women with African and Caribbean heritages is explored in performance pieces by Patience Agbabi and Dorothea Smartt. Agbabi combines the sound and rhythm of rap with cockney slang and Received Pronunciation. Dorothea Smartt performs several of her poems with a Barbadian accent, which are juxtaposed with pieces in the tones of a south London girl.
Beyond realism: Form in black feminist theatre As well as considering the feminist impulse within the content of black women’s plays and performances, questions of form are pertinent to discussions of black and feminist performance. Black and feminist theatre theorists and practitioners noted that a majority of plays written by white men represented non-white people and women in marginal or unsavoury ways and that form played a part in supporting these ideas. Thus conscious experimentation with form might be vital to
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creating counter-aesthetics that present alternative messages that challenge dominant ideological representations. Realism has received the most disapproval for being endemic in oppressive representations that render non-whites, gays and women marginal and pathological ‘other’ to the white male norm. Feminist theatre theory, in particular, has castigated the dominance of realism as a form that by its very nature is oppressive to women. Jeanie Forte argues that ‘[i]f we take as a given the ideological project, the selfperpetuation of the dominant system, then we can see the place of literature (narrative) in subtly reinforcing the discourse of ideology, and the way in which the apparent unity, coherence and seamlessness of the classic realist text covertly subjects (and positions, in terms of subjectivity) the reader within that ideology’ (Forte, 1996, p. 21). Classic realism positions the spectator to identify with the central (white) male of the text, rendering the black woman spectator as colluder with her own subjugation as sexual object and pathological ‘other’. Case suggests that the reification of ‘the male as sexual subject and the female as the sexual “Other”, [ ] makes realism a “prisonhouse of art” for women, both in their representation on stage and in the female actor’s preparation and production of such roles’ (Case, 1988, p. 124). Feminist practitioners have therefore examined the viability of negotiating favourable positions for women within a form that functions on the annihilation of the feminine, resulting in challenges to realism through the subversion of the male/female dichotomy and experiments with more fluid forms of performance. Conventional realism is criticised as subjugating to women’s experiences and a modified feminist alternative is proposed. Feminist subversions of realism demand that ‘strategies must be found within the realm of discourse, particularly vis à vis narrative, which can operate to deconstruct the imbedded ideology: in other words, which might construct the reading subject differently’ (Forte, 1996, p. 21). This has meant presenting narratives that disrupt the conventional structures of realism, such as the formal resolution and closure associated with the form, or by articulating alternative ‘truths’ through repositioning the subject (hence spectator) within the text, such as when feminist playwrights place women as the central subject of a play. Forte explains that ‘[a] subversive text would not provide the detached viewpoint, the illusion of seamlessness, the narrative closure, but instead would open up the negotiation of meaning to contradictions, circularity, multiple viewpoints [ ] and the insistence on an alternative articulation of female subjectivity’ (21).
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Black feminist realist plays challenge the conventions by placing black women at the centre. Such interventions clearly also fit with ideas for a black aesthetic that uses European forms as a basis but subverts them from within, thus undermining a simple, coherent or complete understanding of the text. Pinnock’s Talking in Tongues subverts realist form by settings in England and Jamaica, the inclusion of a hermaphrodite character and a disrupted narrative sequence that starts with a prologue depicting events from later in the play. Pinnock’s Mules disrupts time and space sequences with various day and night scenes in a range of indoor and outdoor locations in London, England and Kingston, Jamaica. tucker green modifies realism in Born Bad, Dirty Butterfly, Generations, Stoning Mary and Trade by having most of the characters on stage throughout and refusing the props and staging that sustains realistic interpretations. Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance integrates naturalistic and non-naturalistic scenes to blur realism, which she describes as a way to ‘take you into a world that is both magical and real’ (Zindika, 1993, p. 76). The work of playwright Jackie Kay offers one of the firmest examples of a distinct black feminist theatre practice. Kay’s commitment to feminism is evident in the subject matter of her plays, which explore issues of race, gender and sexuality, and through her use of forms such as choreopoem and comedy that disrupt the conventions of realism. Kay is one of the few black women playwrights to boldly portray black lesbians. Chiaroscuro deals with black lesbians exploring homophobia and identity politics in Britain, and Twice Over explores the plights of older lesbians. Both plays make a crucial departure from conventional narrative forms, disrupting linear time sequences, relinquishing the accoutrements of a realistic stage setting and resisting the closure that is usually associated with linear realist models. Kay’s plays challenge a whole range of archetypes and reposition black women through a multiracial feminist identified gaze. The use of choreopoem and comedic form to unsettle the boundaries between stage and audience, reality and fiction, past and present, life and death, old and young and black, white and mixed race, is imperative to understanding their feminist effect. Valerie Mason John’s Sin Dykes provides another example of a play that challenges the mainstay of representations of black women. The representation of a group of black and white lesbians debating the politics of race and sadomasochistic sex resists relying on safe images of black women and pushes at the existing boundaries to offer little seen explorations. The radical content is endorsed by the metonymic use of stage space, where a bed is folded up and down to double as a bar, and audience
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interaction that breaks down the fourth wall by subjecting them to a frisk body search as they enter the auditorium. Plays presented with an awareness of content and form seem to hold the greatest possibilities for conceiving black women differently, and Kay and Mason-John’s plays can be set apart from the majority of black women’s plays because of the way that both content and dramatic devices are deployed in innovative ways to present images of black women that are not familiar to the average theatre spectator. Their plays show that the aesthetic elements of a production need not be sacrificed in the creation of political black feminist theatre. Similarly, the possibilities for feminist intervention are paramount in the live art and performance poetry of Agbabi, Lewis, Smartt and SuAndi, which disrupt the conventions of realist form through audience address and an interdisciplinary mixture of performance forms. Nick Kaye’s introduction to a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on ‘British Live Art’ asserts that ‘[b]efore anything else, the term “Live Art” marks out a space for experimentation’ (Kaye, 1994, p. 1). Live artists work at the intersection of performance disciplines and their work challenges the boundaries between forms by drawing on diverse traditions of art, dance, film, installation, literature, music, sculpture and theatre, which becomes the basis for an interrogative politicised practice. Live art’s interdisciplinary and non-naturalistic nature is ideal for interrogating complex notions of black women’s identity and exploring diverse and contradictory ideas of race, gender and sexuality. As Forte suggests, ‘[w]omen’s performance art has particular disruptive potential because it poses an actual woman as a speaking subject, throwing that position into process, into doubt, opposing the traditional conceptions of the single, unified (male) subject’ (Forte, 1990, p. 254). Performance poetry also provides spaces for black women to politically interrogate their autobiographical experiences of race and identity. Beth-Sarah Wright argues that performance poetry ‘provides an ideal conduit to engage with Black performativity owing to its orality, its capacity to equivocate between the aesthetic and social functions of performance and its popularity within Black communities’ (Wright, 2000, p. 272). Performance poetry is generally framed within the vernacular of black Britain and disrupts the fourth wall through direct address, which encourages the audience’s active engagement and response that ‘transforms the performance into ritual’ (272) in line with black aesthetic traditions. Tracing the evolution of second-generation black British women’s performance aesthetics since the 1980s shows that it has not been a
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static thing, but has changed with influences from British theatre and black and feminist performance practices. The constitution of black feminist theatre practice has evolved through innovations in relation to debates about form and content that have clear parallels to black and feminist aesthetics that consciously exist to articulate oppositional views and recover silenced voices. Both black and feminist theatres promote the importance of form as well as content in the articulation of an alternative practice. Experiments with form aid in the deconstruction of prevailing ideas about gender, race and sexuality, offering alternatives to the so-called ‘norms’. The debates outlined in this chapter demonstrate that black feminist performance practice must ultimately be provocative in challenging the racist and (hetero)sexist assumptions of, white, hetero-patriarchal, discourses, and that innovations with form, whether through modified realism or more experimental practices, aid substantially in the production of new meanings.
Part II Plays
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3 Winsome Pinnock’s Migration Narratives
Universal politics 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 Pinnock’s Leave Taking (performed 1987; published 1989),4 A Hero’s Welcome (performed 1989; published 1993),5 Talking in Tongues (performed 1991; published 1995)6 and Mules (1996)7 map the impact of migration on black women’s lives in Britain and the West Indies. Put together they offer a commentary on black British women’s identity that begins in the West Indies in the late 1940s, moves through to late 1980s multi-racial Britain and ends with an assault on the pressures of living in global contexts in the mid-1990s. Pinnock explores issues such as displacement, hybridity and the (re)negotiating of identity through the reconciliation of (neo)colonial ideas about beauty, language and (hetero)sexuality. Critics have commended the ‘universal’ outlook in Pinnock’s plays, which reflects tendencies to applaud black women playwrights for not being too angry. Mick Martin describes her as ‘one of a growing number of black dramatists who have moved away from the strident, angry 57
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tones of the socio-political plays of the seventies and early eighties’ (Martin, 1990, p. 33) and Paul Arnott praises her for being ‘one of a welcome crop of black writers who have seen that polemical, antiracist plays about the ‘suss’ laws have had their day’ (Arnott, 1989, p. 28). Plays that appear too explicitly angry or political are subject to heavy condemnation. Pinnock’s Talking in Tongues received negative criticism for being vitriolic, with Milton Shulman harshly deriding it as a ‘narrow, angry play’ (Shulman, 1991, p. 36) and concluding that Pinnock ‘has such a heavy chip on her shoulder, her vision of life is somewhat unbalanced’ (36). Pinnock writes primarily realist plays that fit comfortably within British new theatre writing trends, which further begs the question of how her plays relate to black feminist models. She is adamant that although she is inspired by modern white male playwrights, such as Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller, she modifies the Eurocentrism of realist conventions by placing black characters centre stage. And the whole act of writing the play is about me saying, ‘Well, yes. This is the playwright I am. These are the terms on which I write, within a tradition of European playwriting, but about subjects that take in my own heritage, my own past.’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 49)
Migration narratives On the 22 June 1948 SS Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury, bringing in a group of (mostly male) Caribbean migrants. The arrival of Windrush marks the beginning of mass-scale voluntary black immigration from the West Indies to England in the 1950s and early 1960s and is therefore regarded as a defining moment in contemporary British race relations. Black British fiction and historical documentation retell stories of the dreams, hopes and experiences that link the various migrant communities in Britain.8 Migration narratives of the Windrush generation and their British-born successors focus on their arrival, their first impressions measured against their preconceptions of the ‘Mother Country’, their experiences in the early years as they encountered racism and hostility, and the quest for identity of the later generations negotiating their birthplace with their (grand) parent cultures. Migration stories are not new in black British theatre either, as many first-generation playwrights have depicted the effects of moving to England on black people’s lives.9 Plays by first-generation playwrights
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tend to focus on the earlier migration experiences, whereas plays by second and third generations are more concerned with notions of a dual heritage, the clash of cultures or identity issues of British-born diasporic subjects. Most of these plays depict male experiences, and although Shulman criticises Pinnock’s A Hero’s Welcome for having ‘little that is novel to say’ (Shulman, 1989, p. 39), her exploration of the issues from a female point of view is commendable. As Claire Armitstead’s review identifies, the 1950s migration narrative ‘is a terrain well raked over by the current crop of male West Indian dramatists, but Pinnock comes to it afresh, reclaiming the female experience of the post-war exodus’ (Armitstead, 1989, p. 29).10 Gabriele Griffin’s comprehensive list of key themes in British black and Asian women playwrights’ depictions of migration, including ‘the contemplation of migration [ ] reverse migration [ ] making a life in Britain [ ] and breaking with one’s community’ (Griffin, 2003, pp. 16–17), are all evident in Pinnock’s plays. Pinnock explores generic themes as outlined in Farah Jasmine Griffin’s analysis of AfricanAmerican migration stories, focusing on the reasons for leaving, the initial arrival and encounter with the new place, the negotiation for identity in the new landscape and an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of the new place and the one left behind. Farah Jasmine Griffin’s suggestion that African-American migration stories explore the movement of black people from ‘a provincial (not necessarily rural) Southern or Midwestern site (home of the ancestor) to a more cosmopolitan, metropolitan area’ (Griffin, 1995, p. 3) has direct parallels with black British migration narratives that focus on the movement from the (provincial) Caribbean to London, England (metropolis). A Hero’s Welcome is set ‘somewhere in the West Indies [in] 1947’ (Pinnock, 1993, p. 21) and has the most apparent exploration of reasons for leaving and the first migrant encounters with England. Through three women characters (Minda, Ishbel and Sis) and the eponymous hero (Len) A Hero’s Welcome explores West Indians contemplating migrating to England and their preconceptions and initial experiences in the ‘Mother Country’. The use of a conventional Caribbean realist yard play setting, with an emphasis on ‘self betterment and escape from the yard, of self-respect and survival’ (Stone, 1994, p. 32), is quite apt for an exploration of the migration impulse. Leave Taking picks up the tale in 1980s England to look at the effects of migration (such as displacement and hybridity) and the consequent renegotiation of identity for first- and second-generation black women. Theatre director Joan-Ann Maynard notes that ‘one recurring theme
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[in black British plays] is the conflict between the older Caribbean born generation and the new British born generation and their conflicting strategies for survival in an often hostile environment’ (Maynard, 1996, p. 55). These conflicts are explored in Leave Taking through the story of a first-generation mother (Enid) and her second-generation teenage daughters (Del and Viv). Enid has migrated from Jamaica and has brought her daughters up alone in England. Despite believing that ‘this is white man country, a black woman less than nuttin’ ’ (Pinnock, 1989, p. 148), Enid has tried to ensure that her British-born daughters do well. The eldest daughter, Del, antagonistically rebels against her mother, getting pregnant, arguing with Enid throughout the first act and moving out to live with an obeah woman (Mai) in the second act. The younger daughter, Viv, is hard-working, studious and polite, and initially seems to have gained all the advantages of being British born. Viv is studying for her ‘A’ levels and planning to go to university, but her yearning for an understanding of her Caribbean heritage leads to her eventually resisting Eurocentric definitions of success, walking out of her exams and vowing to visit Jamaica. Talking in Tongues is set in the early 1990s and offers a critical evaluation of the effects of Eurocentric ideals on black women’s sexual identity and the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships. Pinnock explores black women’s perspectives of inter-racial relationships, transforming the anxiety of miscegenation in plays such as Othello (c.1604), where white men were depicted as being perturbed by white women’s relationships with black men, to the fears and anxieties of black women who feel that black men prefer white women. Pinnock explains her rationale in an Afterword to the published version. I was interested in exploring whether relationships can, in fact, be politicised [ ] in the effect that racism has on all our lives – brutalising and reductive – and in the notion of revenge. Do the brutalities of the past demand that we fight fire with fire, which leads to a vicious circle of violence, or should we be seeking other ways to heal the wounds that we have inherited as a result of historical trauma? (Pinnock, 1995, p. 226) The first half of Talking in Tongues is set at a New Year’s Eve party in London where Leela witnesses her partner (Bentley) illicitly having sex with a white woman (Fran) and discussing the politics of inter-racial sex. Bentley construes his desire for Fran in terms of her difference from Leela, perceiving her as a confident and exciting vibrant white woman
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when compared with Leela who is self-consciously nervous and passive. Leela is a black woman who has tried hard to assimilate into British society and struggles with her identity in the process. The trauma of her silent witnessing leads her to visit Jamaica with her friend Claudette to recuperate from the relationship break-up. Leela and Claudette’s trip to Jamaica in the second half of the play raises further issues about the politics of inter-racial relationships when they discover that a white woman (Kate) has emigrated there and is having an affair with a black Jamaican (Mikie). Mules is set in late 1990s England and Jamaica and compares a range of migrant experiences (from Africa and Jamaica to England and within the UK) of black and white women involved in drug trafficking. The motif of migration is used as a framing device for exploring issues of homelessness, exile and displacement, assessing local and global networks of women, the limits imposed on women and the impact of travel on their lives. Clean Break Theatre Company’s active multi-racial casting policy means that their plays often have mixed casts no matter what the race of the writer, but Mules was cast using three black actresses who played twelve characters between them.11 Pinnock is adamant, however, that ‘the play isn’t about race [ ] there are other areas being explored apart from race’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 52). The language style and back stories of four of the characters (Bridie, Lyla, Lou and Olu) identify them as black women, whilst the other eight characters (Allie, Bad Girls 1 and 2, Pepper, Piglet, Rog, Sammie and Rose) are identified primarily by their age or function in the play. Sisters Lyla and Lou live in poverty in the Jamaican ghettos and dream of running their own market stall, so they become drug mules to make the money to buy stock. Lou gets caught and sent to prison while Lyla gets through and returns to Jamaica to end up working in a ganja plantation field. Olu is a Nigerian illegal immigrant to Britain who has made several runs to pay for her transit costs; she eventually dies from an overdose caused by a cocaine-filled condom bursting inside her. Bridie is a black drugs entrepreneur who adopts Americanisms to entice and recruit drug runners from the Caribbean, Africa and Britain. She impresses the recruits with tales of her rise from the ghettos of Jamaica to a life wearing Nicole Farhi suits and moving between posh hotel rooms: ‘I travel so much I don’t have a proper home’ (Pinnock, 1996, p. 27). By the end of the play, however, it is those who had once looked up to and admired Bridie who pick her up from the streets and tend the wounds she received from a severe beating up ordered by the male boss Cliveden. Rog says ‘[s]he’s nothing but a mule’ (67), invoking Zora Neale
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Hurston’s famous statement that ‘[d]e nigger woman is de mule uh de world’ (Hurston, 1986, p. 16), at the bottom of the hierarchy and always subject to oppression.
(Other)Mothering Concepts of matriarchal black families have been hugely influential in constructing and maintaining popular opinions and stereotypes of black women through archetypes such as the mammy, the matriarch and the welfare mother. Mary F. Brewer argues that black women playwrights replace the negative and distorted images of black mothering that dominate white media discourses with ‘images of womanhood and motherhood that are informed by specifically black cultural concepts and practices of mothering’ (Brewer, 1999, p. 36). One identifiably black feminist element of mothering that runs through all of Pinnock’s plays is that of the ‘othermother’ (Collins, 1991, p. 129). Othermothering is a system of shared parenting within small black communities, where extended families, close friends and community members share the responsibility for childcare and nurturing. Patricia Hill Collins describes othermothering as a specifically black mothering style that ‘traditionally allowed African-American women to treat biologically unrelated children as if they were members of their own families’ (129). Collins maintains that othermothering goes against modern ideas of individual gain and upholds African-centred traditions of community that connect black women. Representing the othermother is a way of propagating a black feminist discourse where mothering is claimed as crucial to the sustenance of black communities through the passing down of knowledge between generations of women. In A Hero’s Welcome the young boy Charlie is ‘othermothered’ by Nana and the other women who look after him. In Mules Lyla looks after her neighbour’s children because ‘[t]hem mother disappear’ (Pinnock, 1996, p. 58) and in the final scene Lou agrees to look after Lyla’s baby to relieve her of having to work in the ganja field with a baby strapped onto her back. Although Pinnock did not see Leave Taking as a mothering play, its reference to four generations of mothers and daughters (Enid’s mother, Enid, Del and Viv and Del’s unborn child) means that such interpretations are inevitable. Leave Taking portrays the most obvious depiction of othermothering where Del literally leaves her blood mother and moves in with Mai who teaches her obeah practice. Del’s relationship with Enid is emblematic of Enid’s own tested relationship with the mother that she has left behind in Jamaica and refuses to send money for.
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Enid’s migration to England has caused her relationship with her blood mother to flounder and she seeks nurturing and advice from Mai, which corresponds with a further level of othermothering that is implicit in the women’s relationships with each other and the way that they encourage the forging of community ethics and shared values. Enid’s aching for (other) mothering is poignantly captured in the final scene as she asks Del ‘[a]nd don’t I need to curl up in somebody lap and to be told stories to make the sun shine? Don’t I need somebody to touch my cheek as though I was a prize not a curse and to stroke my hair like Mooma never did? What about me?’ (Pinnock, 1989, p. 189). At the same time, Del’s impending motherhood leads her to eventually start to understand her mother’s vulnerability and as the lights fade a closing hug between the two women signals a hopeful end to their intergenerational squabbles.
The West Indies versus England Questions of cultural identity are a central concern in Pinnock’s plays, with three of the four pieces having at least one character in search of a self-identity that is underscored by the motif of migration. Carole Boyce Davies contends that [t]he re-negotiating of identities is fundamental to migration as it is fundamental to Black women’s writing in cross-cultural contexts’ (Boyce Davies, 1994, p. 3). Pinnock’s plays emphasise the multiple subjectivities produced by the diasporic condition, reflecting Boyce Davies’s suggestion that ‘[i]t is the convergence of multiple places and cultures that re-negotiates the terms of Black women’s experience that in turn negotiates and re-negotiates their identities’ (3). The discussions of cultural identity are firmly grounded in explorations of the competing discourses of the Caribbean and England, looking particularly at the impact of a West Indian heritage on diasporic lives in multicultural England. The characters demonstrate that although migration is often couched in terms of its economic motivations it has a lasting effect on the subjectivities of both the migrant communities and the residents in the host countries. The West Indies and England are compared as binary constructs to look at how England is perceived negatively as a place of limitations and disappointment, where characters’ hopes for migrating to the ‘Mother Country’ are thwarted by their experiences in a hostile and unwelcoming place. In contrast, the West Indies offers the possibility of recuperation and recovery. A split between private and public realms further endorses England and the West Indies as oppositional discourses. Contrasting settings place scenes in the Caribbean in free outdoor public spaces in
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a culture conceived as matriarchal – the beach, the gully, the veranda – whereas scenes in England see the women confined to interior private and domestic spaces – bedsits, the coatroom at a party, living rooms and prison cells – in a patriarchal culture. The characters in A Hero’s Welcome initially conceive the Caribbean as limiting and stifling and they dream about the possibilities of better lives elsewhere. Minda, Ishbel and Sis see migration as a way to achieve material and educational fulfilment that is difficult for women in the West Indies, and movement to England appears to offer the possibility of such satisfaction. Stanley tells Minda ‘[y]ou’ll like England Min. They got cars as long as rivers, houses that touch the sky. And the people are so rich that gold and silver falls out of their pockets as they walk along the streets an’ they don’t even bother to run back an’ pick it up’ (Pinnock, 1993, p. 45). However, Len’s stories of his trip to England to work in service during the Second World War describe a country where he was subject to racist intolerance, and his dreams for a better future were frustrated.12 Len received ‘a hero’s welcome’ for his war efforts upon his return to the Caribbean, but he eventually discloses that he had gained his injury working in an ammunitions factory and had not fought in the war: ‘They wouldn’t work beside us, they didn’t want to pay us what we were worth, they even went on strike to get rid of us. We forgot where the real war was because we were fighting one right there’ (54). Len’s revelation offers a stern warning against over-investing in the fantasy of England as a welcoming place, and although the women have all secured routes off the island by the end of the play we are left doubting that they will actually find the liberation that they so desperately seek. In Leave Taking the diasporic condition produces an unsettled attitude to home, which is a source of anxiety for the first-generation migrants. Mai reminisces ‘[h]ome is like a figment a’ my imagination. You know, sometime I think our people condemn’ to wander the earth. Is a sorta’ punishment’ (Pinnock, 1989, pp. 178–79). She practices obeah as a way of retaining familiar traditions from back home and refusing complete assimilation with English value systems. Enid remembers Jamaica as a place of hardship, poverty and lack of opportunities for black women, which catalysed her move to England. Her sentiment that ‘England been good to me. To all of us. I love England an’ I bring up the girls to love England because they English’ (152) is vehemently challenged by her friend Broderick who sees the West Indies as home and tells Enid that her British-born daughters ‘got Caribbean souls’ (153). Broderick’s tales of Gullyman, a friend from back home
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whose demise was caused by trying too hard to assimilate English values, serve as a warning against Enid’s tendency to try to fit in. Enid, Broderick and Mai feel an acute sense of displacement as West Indians in Britain and despite Enid’s assertion that England is better, her closing line at the end of the first act is ‘I want I want to go home’ (166), implying a desire to return to the familiarity of the Caribbean and get away from the conflicting feelings of angst that she experiences in Britain. Talking in Tongues has two clearly distinguished acts that move from a monochrome coatroom at a party in England to a beach in Jamaica set in vibrant colour. The initial encounter with the new landscape is captured in a reverse migration that sees the characters leave England and go back to the West Indies. Claudette and Leela feel silenced and marginal to white women and black men in England and see the West Indies as a retreat where they can express themselves more coherently. Leela states, ‘[t]he people they seem so at ease with themselves. They have that confidence that comes from belonging’ (Pinnock, 1995, p. 206). The idea that they will find a place where they no longer feel ‘other’ is countered by a trip fraught with conflicts, contradictions and complexities that demonstrate how diasporic movements rupture ideas of a simplistically unified identity. Leela and Claudette discover that they are as much considered tourists as white people visiting Jamaica, and their discovery that Kate has settled there and feels more at home there than they do troubles their preconceptions of the Caribbean as home. Mules draws parallels between the West Indies and England as sites for global capitalism and what Gabriele Griffin terms the ‘sexploitation’ (Griffin, 2003, p. 195) of women. Alternating between multiple settings in Jamaica and England accentuates themes of migration, and the motif of movement is underscored by transient or temporarily confined settings – alleys, London bridges, busy streets, bars, hotel rooms, markets, offices, bedsits and prison cells – that heighten the characters’ sense of rootlessness, displacement and alienation. London is conceived as a dangerous city where the women endure negative experiences and are subject to violence and mistreatment. Although the characters initially see London as a solution to their problems, it is depicted as a place of danger and disappointment. Teenage runaway Allie is mugged and robbed and is later seen homeless and begging for money to survive. She has moved to London to escape abuse, but is shown to be incapable of making another home in the hostile and dangerous city. Bridie is beaten up and left for dead on a London street, and Lyla and Lou’s trip to London ends in disaster when Lou is arrested
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and incarcerated for smuggling drugs. Locked up in a London prison, a shocked Lou barely moves and freedom is only hinted at in her and Allie’s physical visualisation that a bird has come to fly them away. The confinement and claustrophobia of the characters’ experiences in London are juxtaposed with scenes in Jamaica, where Lyla and Lou are first seen in a Kingston market traversing the stage freely as they ‘higgle’ (Pinnock, 1996, p. 11) their wares and play jokingly with each other. Three years after Lou’s imprisonment, the final scene sees them reunited on a ganja field in Jamaica. They are still exploitatively involved in an illegal activity, but Lou’s release from prison and return home marks a new beginning, if not the escape from the ghetto that they had initially hoped for.
Speaking in tongues: Language and identity Postcolonial and feminist critics have argued that women and nonwhite people may find that the official language of Western cultural discourse is one that suppresses and marginalises their identities as it is premised on the binary subjection of ‘self’ over ‘other’ and replete with racist and sexist assumptions that ensure white male supremacy. Postcolonial literary critics Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin argue that ‘[l]anguage becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated, and the medium through which conceptions of ‘truth’, ‘order’ and ‘reality’ become established’ (Ashcroft et al., 1989, p. 7). Similarly, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory suggests that acquisition of language marks a child’s entry into the symbolic (phallic) adult world and adoption of the patriarchal values embedded within a masculine language system, particularly the phallocentric constructions of gender identity that splits male and female as binary opposites of ‘self’ (subject) and ‘other’ (object). For example, in the English language the connotation of dark/black with danger or evil and light/white with goodness is symptomatic of a binary system that also places ‘woman’ as the negative term and ‘man’ as the positive. Thus, for the marginalised to speak English could somehow be seen to be sanctioning their subordination in Western culture. Feminist and postcolonial theorists have sought to counter the dominance of an oppressive binary principled language structure by encouraging writers to challenge the authority of particular truths that support a patriarchal, (neo)colonial regime’s domination project. One route in this challenge is figured in terms of the rejection of the authority of ‘standard’ English and attempts to subvert the dominant
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‘truths’ through the instigation of alternative voices and thus realities. Hélène Cixous’s manifesto ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976) calls for women to reject the dominant phallocentric language system and develop feminine models of writing and communication. Cixous urges women to reject the history of linear reason and logic that have sustained phallocentrism and its concomitant subjection of the feminine, embracing instead a subversive female return to the body, a celebration of circularity, multiplicity and fragmented illogic. Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine (feminine writing) identifies the possibility of a return to the pre-symbolic imaginary as inherently female, a way in which women can resist the meanings accorded to (man made) language by the male symbolic. Pinnock alludes to the subjugation felt by black women speaking the English language in Leave Taking when Viv walks out of an exam that she could easily have passed as a refusal to conform to the terms of white patriarchal society. Viv’s action brings into question the idea that education is the only route to success for black women. She couches her resistance to the dominant ideal in relation to the ways that language signifies as a marker of identity, testifying to an underlying crisis of identity that she experiences as a black woman in a white-dominated society.
VIV: I knew all the answers. I’m like a machine – pat me on the head and they all come tumbling out. Rely on me to say exactly what the examiners want to hear. It doesn’t change anything. (Slight pause.) I sometimes feel like I need another language to express myself. (Smiles.) Swahili perhaps. (Pinnock, 1989, p. 172)
The theme of the significance of language to black British women’s identity is developed in Talking in Tongues; where part of Leela’s identity crisis lays in the fact that she has lost track of what language to use to express herself. Leela’s spoken English is the same as the white characters (she does not use patois as her friend Claudette does), indicating that she has internalised the dominant value system embedded within the language system. Leela’s difficulties are compounded by feelings of anxiety and self-consciousness when speaking English, where she struggles with pronunciation, choice of words, or words sticking in her mouth.
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LEELA: It’s because this isn’t my first language you see. Not that I do have any real first language, but sometimes I imagine there must have been, at some time. [ ] If you don’t feel you belong to a language then you’re only half alive aren’t you, because you haven’t the words to bring yourself into existence. You might as well be invisible. (Pinnock, 1995, p. 195) Leela rejects the rules of the (white patriarchal) symbolic language that she finds oppressive by ‘talking in tongues’ in the second half of the play as her mounting anger at being broken invisible people who disappear because they have no language spills into incoherent mutterings. LEELA’s speech becomes a garble as she struggles to get the words out, her body trembling out of control. She’s breathing very quickly. She starts to mutter under her breath [ ] muttering becomes louder and she starts to talk in tongues [and] releases all the rage and anger that she has repressed for so long. (p. 223) Leela’s outburst is pre-empted by the prologue, which describes how Dum-Dum discovers her voice in the gully, a pre-symbolic space where the rules for normal communication are suspended. The gully is described as a separatist space where black women convene with each other and in the prologue Sugar explains that men who tried to follow the women into the gully would meet a sad fate. The gully is conceived as a space for black women’s liberation and it is the only place where the mute Dum-Dum is able to speak. Dum-Dum remains silent in patriarchal society but she finds her voice in the gully when she is among only other black women. She was shouting – a woman I never hear say a word in my life – was shouting to the sky loud loud and saying words very fast in a language you never hear before. A woman who couldn’t even talk, filling the sky with words in a language must be not spoken in a million years, a language that go back before race. (p. 174) Dum-Dum’s story prefaces Leela’s speaking in tongues and recovery of her voice later in the play. They are of different generations and personal circumstances, but share the fate of being oppressed and excluded by white patriarchy, to which Leela’s angry outburst is an answer. Pinnock
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explains, ‘[w]hen Leela talks in tongues it is a scream of rage against the non-communication between the different cultures and the continued repression of the voice of one culture by another’ (226). In black theatre practice, issues of language are evident in discussions of black aesthetics and the stage languages used by theatre practitioners to articulate black experiences. First-generation playwright Mustapha Matura describes his ‘conscious political act’ (Rees, 1992, p. 107) to recuperate black voices in performance and foreground black interests by writing West Indian characters speaking in their own accents and dialects. Similarly, Pinnock recalls feeling liberated by writing West Indian characters speaking patois, which she saw as ‘an act of defiance – to use it on stage within a play that could easily fit the confines of a traditional proscenium theatre’ (Pinnock, 1999, p. 31). The use of West Indian languages in realist plays adds a political dimension (over and above the topics being addressed) that resonates with Verma’s concept of a Binglish theatrical aesthetic where black and Asian casts tell stories of their own experiences in their own languages. The presentation of such plays to predominantly white audiences at prominent venues emphasises their potential to highlight how racism is underscored by language systems.
Performing obeah rituals The characters in all four plays represent different types of black women whose identity accords with their relationship to the Caribbean and Britain. The portrayal of generational attitudes is grounded in the observation that there are clear differences in outlook between older and younger black people. Pinnock’s research for A Hero’s Welcome uncovered a general pattern that distinguishes first- and secondgeneration black people in Britain. She reports that the older generation ‘seemed very uncle-Tomist, about treading quietly and behaving themselves and their loyalty to the British Empire, but underneath all that I felt there was a dignity and a real anger as well, that was differently expressed to the younger generation’s whose anger was very raw and explicitly stated’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 48). The Britishborn second generation are considered to be more outwardly resistant to racist treatment in British society. These differences are demonstrated by drawing clear distinctions between the attitudes of the older and younger generations in all of Pinnock’s plays. In Leave Taking Enid encapsulates the archetypal dignified anger of the first generation, while the second generation are presented through Del and Viv as outwardly
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angry and recalcitrant. Similarly, Claudette and Leela’s explicit and raw angry display in Talking in Tongues is deemed indicative of secondgeneration behaviour. Generational differences are made explicit in the characters’ attitudes to religion and spirituality, specifically illustrated by the contrast between older and younger characters’ responses to the practice of obeah. In A Hero’s Welcome Len is cynical about the practice, as are Del and Viv in Leave Taking, while Nana and Enid see it as an important alternative to Western religious and healing traditions. Len has returned to the Caribbean after spending time in England and rejects obeah as one of the ‘backward’ aspects of Caribbean life, indicating some internalisation of beliefs that obeah is a pagan practice that contrasts with Western religious beliefs of Christianity and conventional Western medicine. However, Nana refuses to succumb to Len’s scepticism and states her intention to continue practicing her inherited tradition. LEN: You not starting up that witchcraft nonsense again Nana? [ ] I thought you did give this up when you started going church again. NANA: I can’t give it up boy. Where’s the harm in it? Is been in me family for years. Me great gran’ mother did teach me and I’ll teach your daughter. LEN: I ain’t no expert on these things, Nana, but it seem to me like you got to choose one or the other. The bible or this. (Pinnock, 1993, p. 22) Minda, Ishbel and Sis visit Nana to find out how they can use obeah to find themselves husbands. They take her advice seriously and in scene two set about doing the spell she has given them, deliberately executing each moment and moving into a trance-like state as they burn their tokens and wait for the magical effects to occur. The younger women are yet to leave the island and, like Nana, invest in obeah practice as it is passed down to them. MINDA: Ssh! Remember what Nana said. Now, hold hands. Close your eyes. (The girls close their eyes. MINDA looses her hands and takes packet that NANA gave her out from her breast. She dips into packet and sprinkles it over fire. MINDA inhales deeply over the fire. She begins to breathe heavily and shivers. Her shivers and muttering become more rapid. The others are still, eyes closed. Soon her shivers subside and she lowers her head. Silence. They open their eyes.)
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ISHBEL: You sure this thing going work? MINDA: Course it’s going to work, Nana said din she? [ ] SIS: I felt a tingling. [ ] MINDA: That’s the magic working. (Pinnock, 1993, pp. 27–28) Pinnock saw Leave Taking as being ‘about celebrating those things that people were ashamed of’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 49) and consequently it has the most sustained exploration of obeah. The opening and closing scenes are set in an obeah woman’s bedsit and the play considers the complex responses of first-and second-generation black women to its practice. Enid is a devout Christian who also consults Mai for advice, representing the diasporic condition of a hybrid identity with one foot in the old (black/West Indian) traditions and one foot in the new (white/English) ones. Enid’s belief in obeah and Christianity locates her as a character torn between two cultures, as Benedict Nightingale’s review of the 1995 production summarises, ‘Enid tries to be patriotic and grateful to the host country, but clings onto the old ways, the old values in a London that confuses and troubles her’ (Nightingale, 1995, p. 31). Moreover, migration to England has affected the practice of obeah, which has to be translated and modified for performance in a London bedsit. Thus Mai prescribes pills and a ritual bath to satisfy Enid’s hybridised investment in both British and West Indian healing methods. Del and Viv are sceptical about obeah practice, Del even calling it ‘Mumbo-Jumbo’ (Pinnock, 1989, p. 142) in the first scene. The portrayal of scepticism towards practices such as obeah makes an inevitable comment on the contradictions inherent in practising West Indian customs in contemporary Britain. Ironically, however, Del becomes more stable after she moves in with Mai and learns how to perform readings from her. Mai teaches Del to concentrate on the client’s eyes rather than the tarot cards, which could imply that it really is mumbojumbo – a charade that can just as easily be played out by an ‘English’ girl – or be evidence of how black women’s knowledge is orally passed down from one generation to the next.13 The potential to see Leave Taking as a serious feminist statement about black women’s lives in Britain is somewhat undermined by making Mai a comic character that is open to ridicule. Our first sight of her in the opening moment of the play immediately sets up the prospect for the
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development of caricatures and the possibility of seeing her as a bit of a fraud. Mai hastily pulling on an afro wig as she prepares to do a reading for Enid emphasises the comedy in her character that could leave the audience comfortably unchallenged in interpreting her as tricking her clients. MAI’s bedsit. Very messy. The table centrestage is covered in papers, playing cards scattered all over, a glass of water and the remains of a half-burnt white candle. [ ] In the middle of the table a large Afro wig. MAI sits in the armchair; she’s very tatty, wears a tatty cardigan over an old dress. She’s slumped in the armchair drinking from a bottle of stout. She sucks from the bottle then burps softly and rubs her stomach. (p. 141) The presentation of ambiguous images of obeah means that the performance of these scenes has significant consequences for determining their feminist value. Reviews of Hettie Macdonald’s 1990 production for the Women’s Playhouse Trust and Paulette Randall’s 1995 production at the National Theatre indicate key differences that alter the way that the characters function for the audience. Reviews of Macdonald’s production indicate quite a sensitive depiction of Mai. Jeremy Kingston describes her as ‘likeably sardonic’ (Kingston, 1990, p. 22) and Helen Rose felt that she was performed with ‘reluctant compassion and gruff kindness’ (Rose, 1990, p. 48). Rose acknowledges that ‘Mai’s gift is common sense; the tarot cards, incense and potions are merely placebos to reassure her clients’ (48) and shows how Macdonald’s production contains the ambiguity in the writing by presenting Mai as ‘a medium through which Enid [ ] and her daughters reach a shaky understanding of each other’s needs’ (48). When Paulette Randall directed Leave Taking at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1995, this was the first time that a black woman team (playwright and director) had worked together at the National Theatre and the first time that a black woman had directed any of Pinnock’s plays. Randall’s production emphasised the comedy in Mai’s character, making the inherent ambivalence surrounding her ‘gift’ explicit. Consequently, several reviewers interpret Mai as insincere and cast aspersions on her role as an obeah woman. James Christopher remembers her as ‘crusty and arthritic [ ] beer swigging [ and] wig wearing’ (Christopher, 1995, p. 107), and Maureen Paton interprets her as ‘palm-reading charlatan with a shrewd understanding of human nature’ (Paton, 1995, p. 44). Benedict Nightingale sees her as someone that ‘practises obeah
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or witchdoctoring in a desultory way’ (Nightingale, 1995, p. 31) and Nick Curtis records her as ‘a cantankerous Jamaican wise woman now practising a debased form of obeah magic’ (Curtis, 1995, p. 44). Paul Taylor acknowledges Mai as ‘a 60-year old obeah woman who reads palms and engages in various forms of witchy healing and ritual in the incongruous setting of her damp London bedsit’ (Taylor, 1995, p. 25) before concluding on the tenuousness of her credentials. With her glossy wigs that fool no one, her weakness for stout, the chicken she keeps as ‘props’ and her special bank holiday rates, she’s a likeably scapegrace mix of the phony and the genuine. She may not be able to read people’s palms but she’s gone through enough to read their eyes. (p. 25) Judging by these reviews, a comic portrayal of Mai clearly weakens any feminist potential by allowing a dismissal of black ritual practices that endorses dominant ideas about obeah as pagan. Mai teaching Del to concentrate on the client’s eyes rather than the tarot cards only serves to enhance suspicions such as these. A more sensitive portrayal could educate audiences about ways of life that might be alien to them, thus holding the potential to perform an important black feminist function, and it is therefore disappointing that a black woman directs the production that most undermines such possibilities.
Black and white women’s oppression Pinnock’s plays evaluate how black and white identities are perceived in late-twentieth-century Britain. In Leave Taking black and white people are viewed as having distinctly different characteristics and black people (like Gullyman) who try to behave ‘white’ are shown to fail in British society. Whiteness is conceived in terms of the archetypal English stiff upper lip and the black pastor and his wife are described as assimilating whiteness because they ‘drink in little sips [ and] discuss the Bible over tea in China cup’ (Pinnock, 1989, pp. 158–59). In contrast, black Caribbean people are perceived as ‘throwing youself right on the edge of life [ ] jumping and shouting and feeling the damn’ thing, feeling the spirit flame up inside you’ (159). These oppositions are complicated by showing the difficulty of accommodating the secondgeneration black British characters completely in one category or the
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other. Viv’s tongue-in-cheek response to Enid’s question of where she is from captures her duality. BRODERICK: You going mix these children up. ENID: Mix up what? They know who they are. She know who she is. Tell him who you are. VIV: (stands, recites). A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware A body of England’s breathing English air, washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home. (p. 153) There is a certain double irony in Viv’s choice of an English war poem here, which sarcastically shows how English history has been prioritised in her life over the African-Caribbean history of her ancestral culture. Her knowledge is derived through British education systems and her recitation reflects the idea that many British-born black children would be more likely to be able to recite a line from an English play from memory than from African or Caribbean literature. Such contradictions are taken further in Talking in Tongues, which troubles ideas of distinctive black (or white) identities. Leela presents herself as a non-typical black woman. She hates parties and challenges presuppositions of an inherent natural rhythm by claiming to be unable to dance. FRAN: [ ] I’ll bet you’re a great dancer, isn’t she, Bentley? [ ] LEELA: Honestly I’m not very good. I bump into people. It takes all my effort to keep myself upright. FRAN: I don’t believe you [ ] I love dancing. I love letting go and forgetting myself, don’t you? LEELA: I never forget my body. That’s the trouble. (Pinnock, 1995, pp. 182–83) There is a double entendre latent in Leela’s statement, which adamantly resists Fran’s attempts to stereotype her identity. As a black woman Leela can never forget her body because despite her attempts to integrate and conform she is seen as black and female, and associated expectations of behaviour are projected towards her. Leela evokes Frantz Fanon’s argument that bodies have a ‘racial epidermal schema’ (Fanon, 1986, p. 112), whereby black skin is ‘overdetermined from without’ (116) as a visible signifier of identity upon which cultural meanings are attached.
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Claudette and Leela are angry towards racist (heterosexist) discourses that uphold the idea that long blonde-haired white women are more beautiful than black women. After discovering that Kate is having an affair with Mikie, who is Claudette’s holiday romance, they cut off her long blond plait while she sleeps, thus removing what they see as the source of her beauty in a racist hetero-patriarchal culture. This scene offers a direct parallel to the scene in act one where Leela silently watches her partner have sex with Fran, and it momentarily appears to empower the black women to answer back to a history of oppression and their continued devaluation. Kate becomes the target for Leela and Claudette’s rage towards white women in a discourse that places black and white as binary opposites and uses it as the basis for power dynamics. CLAUDETTE: [ ] I hate, Leel. I can’t stop hating. I hate her. I hate her because she’s never been my friend, because she thinks there are two different kinds of woman and that I’m the inferior kind, because she takes comfort in the fact that at least she’s not bottom of the pile and delights in my oppression. Because she’s constantly betrayed me. (Pinnock, 1995, p. 217) Pinnock explains that Claudette is ‘a fanatic when it comes to expounding her particular brand of racial politics, which are based on a form of separatism, the belief that inter-racial relationships are a betrayal of the community and, more seriously, a betrayal of the black woman which is connected to her historical degradation’ (226). Claudette’s extreme politics of racial difference, epitomised by hatred towards white women and an ‘us’ and ‘them’ perspective that rejects inter-racial relationships, is eventually unleashed in her initiation of the violent act of revenge towards Kate. But, Claudette’s views and their act of revenge are shown to be no more helpful to ending racism than the attitudes that they are responding to. Moreover, their vicious act produces a stage picture that highlights that racist and sexist discourses also affect white women’s perceptions of themselves. When her long blond plait is removed Leela and Claudette declare that Kate’s ‘dark roots’ (218) reveal her as ‘a fake’ (218), creating a simple stage image that highlights the pressures upon white women to conform to certain ideals of beauty and femininity. The moment of revenge shows clearly that the issue is more complex than Leela and Claudette allow, indicating that white women are also prone to oppression and that there should therefore be more unity amongst women – black and white.
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Theatre critic Milton Shulman criticises Talking in Tongues with the suggestion that ‘blaming the whites for the sexual tastes of black men is too glib a dramatisation of the issue’ (Shulman, 1991, p. 36), but Pinnock’s Afterword mounts a defence to accusations that the play is vitriolic by showing how it opens up pertinent discussions of issues that need to be aired as a route to ending racism. Some critics thought the play pessimistic; I don’t. Racism is a fact of life, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t (or don’t) reach out to each other from across the cultural divide. However, we can’t do that if we deny the reality of our feelings, whether they be anger or guilt. We can’t do it if we deny our own individual capacity to wound. When Leela becomes the perpetrator of a ‘violent’ act herself, she has learnt a lesson, the pain and absurdity of which cannot be expressed in words. (Pinnock, 1995, p. 226) Although the revenge is uncomfortable to watch, it is one of the most thought-provoking moments, which causes Leela to rethink her act of aggression and pre-empts the inter-racial communication that was important to Pinnock. A hopeful final scene sees Leela and Kate reaching a tentative understanding as they talk to each other and discover that they actually have more in common than they may have thought. Mules examines the similarities between women needing escape from their subjugated positions in materialistic patriarchal societies, drawing parallels on a global scale between oppressed women in Jamaica and women in the UK. The feminist potential is paramount in the presentation of issues affecting women drug couriers in a play organised to promote social awareness. There are no men featured on stage, yet the powerful force and effects of patriarchy are clearly stated, exemplified by Allie running away from home because her stepfather was abusing her, Cliveden being the male boss at the driving force behind the drugs running trade and the ganja plantation owner being a man. In contrast, being exploited as a drug mule is shown to be a particularly female condition, because only a woman can ‘insert packets of coke into [her] vagina’ (Pinnock, 1996, p. 9) and face the ultimate risk of an agonisingly painful death if they burst. Pinnock suggests that ‘crime can be a kind of rebellion, a way of empowering oneself [ ] getting one over on the system [ and] escaping being victims’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 52), but the women’s transgressions are punished through imprisonment, beatings
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or ultimately death. The imagery of mules, moving slowly because they are laden down with goods, underscores a migratory temperament that is poignantly reflected by the women’s failure to transcend their positions in a society that views them (black and white) as animals. As Jeremy Kingston observes, ‘[t]he play has an oddly old-fashioned crimedoes-not-pay feel to it’ (Kingston, 1996, p. 33) with the women living and dying like mules.
Black feminist realism Pinnock’s writing seems to be firmly embedded within conventional realist traditions, but both the texts and the productions of her plays exemplify feminist disruptions of realist form. Crucially, the central single white male hero is replaced with many black women. Leave Taking is as much about Del, Viv and Mai as it is about Enid, and A Hero’s Welcome centres on Minda, Ishbel and Sis rather than the pseudo-hero Len. Claudette and Leela share the central narrative in Talking in Tongues, and Mules contains a range of female characters with almost equal significance. A Hero’s Welcome is the most conventionally realistic in narrative structure and progression, which is broken down slightly by the Women’s Playhouse Trust production setting of a traverse stage, with a washing line marking out the performance area. The audience face each other across the action, blurring the boundary between the onstage and the auditorium realities. Clare Armitstead describes the stage design as ‘an oddly discomfiting arrangement which breaks down the naturalism of the dialogue by the simple physical fact of seldom allowing two characters into a single field of vision’ (Armitstead, 1989, p. 29). Irving Wardle found Leave Taking ‘formally dependent on domestic naturalism’ (Wardle, 1995, p. 25) and Alan Hulme felt that it was ‘very noticeably, rigidly conventional, with scenes climaxing in ringing final lines and contrived exits and entrances from some drawing room comedy’ (Hulme, 1995, p. 12). The formal realism is unsettled by an ambiguous ending, where Del and Enid’s hug as the lights fade marks a new beginning for their relationship. Paul Taylor saw the ending as ‘ragged rather than reverberantly conclusive’ (Taylor, 1995, p. 25) and although he suggests that the lack of a formal resolution weakens the play, such ambiguity also implies a challenge to conventional realist formulas. The Women’s Playhouse Trust production of Talking in Tongues uses role doubling to draw parallels between the characters’ experiences in Britain and Jamaica. Kate is played by the same actress who played Fran in the first act so that Leela and Claudette’s act of revenge on Kate for
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the anger that they feel towards white women is given a double impact by the infidelity witnessed in the first act. Archetypal Jamaican ‘wide boy’, Mikie, who works in the exploitative tourist trade and (although Sugar’s boyfriend) has sexual affairs with Claudette and Kate, is played by the same actor who played Bentley, a successful Buppie and supporter of Thatcherite meritocracy in the first act who has an affair with Fran. Fran’s partner and Bentley’s white university chum, Jeff, doubles as Kate’s brother, David, a tourist who is sceptical of his sister’s desire to live as a minority expatriate in the West Indies. Curly, Leela’s black friend who is disillusioned by black men’s desire for white women in England, becomes Sugar in the second act, the Jamaican woman who is betrayed by Mikie’s affairs and wrongly blamed for assaulting Kate and sacked from her job. The role-doubling underscores a breakdown of realism because the audience have to engage with each performer as two different characters. The disrupted narrative sequence where a prologue shows action that conceivably occurs in the Caribbean in the second act engenders a further challenge to realist conventions. Mules caps off an innovative feminine aesthetic that further testifies to Pinnock’s experimentation with the formalities of conventional realism. The action shifts between multiple locations and time zones, and is alternately London and Jamaica, interior and exterior, day and night. Four large grey suitcases are opened up on an otherwise bare stage to show different brightly coloured views of London or Jamaica, juxtaposing the tourist pictures against the women’s reality as staged. Place, time and action are suggested through dialogue and stage directions rather than through realistic stage setting. Allie’s ‘sightseeing’ tour in scene four evokes Waterloo Bridge and a busy London street at night through the characters’ description of where they are, what the time is and what they are doing.
PEPPER: Don’t the city look beautiful at midnight. PIGLET: Now she’s gone all romantic. PEPPER: I could stand on this bridge and watch the sun come up, couldn’t you? [ ] ALLIE: Thanks for the lunch and taking me around sightseeing. PEPPER: Didn’t see many sights, did we? Alternative London we’ve shown you. The London you should see. All the little back streets and alleys. Low life, high life. (Pinnock, 1996, pp. 16–17)
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Several reviewers referred to the kaleidoscopic feel of Clean Break’s production, where the short scenes were punctuated with loud music and physical theatre. The scene of a woman dying from an overdose is narrated to the audience by Bridie, but physically enacted by Olu, which breaks down the realism as contained within the stage action. Notions of danger and pressure are reinforced through the characters’ dialogue and heightened by the urgency of the actresses moving quickly to change between roles, a practicality of touring a show on a limited budget that accentuates the disturbance of realist conventions by preventing identification with a single performer/character for the duration of the performance.
Stereotyping and black feminist aesthetics The images in Pinnock’s plays can easily be read through stereotyped lenses and the characters can be grouped into familiar tropes of black womanhood. The younger characters (Del, Viv, Leela, Claudette, Minda, Ishbel and Sis) fit with notions of the second-generation black British as being either very studious (Viv, Sis, Leela) or rebellious (Del, Minda, Claudette). The older characters (Nana, Enid and Mai) fit perceptions of first-generation matriarchs who push their children hard. The male characters (Bentley, Broderick, Len, Mikie and Stanley) all in some way correspond with ideas of feckless black masculinity against which the women’s lives are placed. In A Hero’s Welcome Minda manipulates the male characters for her own personal gain. She has an affair with her employer’s husband and when he dies she moves her attention onto Stanley even though he is her friend’s boyfriend. Milton Shulman describes Minda as ‘a shameless tart, ready to give her body to any man who will help her escape from her family poverty’ (Shulman, 1989, p. 39) and Harry Crabbe sees her as ‘a ruthlessly restless spirit who uses sex and friendship as foils to her dreams and ambitions, trampling over anyone foolish enough to stand in her promiscuous (in all sense of the word) way’ (Crabbe, 1989, p. 42). Nicholas de Jongh likens Minda to ‘one of those devious femmes fatales [ with] little to fall back on except their sex appeal’ (24) and comments on the irony that the Women’s Playhouse Trust presented such an image ‘which depends all over again on the old wicked lady syndrome’ (24). Minda is out for all she can get, even if it is at the expense of her ‘sisters’ – a pattern that is unusual in black feminist writings seeking positive images of black women. These limitations may be accounted for by Pinnock’s use of the yard play
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format, which carries a range of associated stereotypical characters. In yard play terms, Minda is the prostitute, Nana ‘the earth mother’ (Stone, 1994, p. 32), Sis ‘the innocent girl alone on the threshold of the merciless adult world’ (32), Stanley ‘the young bachelor burning with ambition’ (32), Len the older man who has failed in his ambitions, Mrs Walker ‘the inquisitive neighbour’ (32) and young Charlie is a representative of ‘the schoolchildren’ (32). These archetypal characters are drawn from black male aesthetic traditions, however, and Pinnock does not go very far in critiquing them from a feminist perspective. Arguably, Leave Taking depicts Enid as the domineering matriarchal god-fearing head of fatherless family, and Del as a young, pregnant and single soon-to-be welfare mother who is ‘content to sit around and collect welfare, shunning work and passing on her bad values to her offspring’ (Collins, 1991, p. 77 ). A feminist interpretation could focus on how Enid differs from the archetypal matriarch that emasculates black men, because she is mother to two daughters. Furthermore, the audience are positioned to empathise with Enid, and her difficulties and vulnerabilities are acknowledged, so that rather than being portrayed simply as a domineering mother figure the audience are given an insight into the pressures that cause the seemingly hard treatment of her daughters. Similarly, Del’s growing independence and responsibility suggests that she will not fully conform to the archetypal welfare mother trope. Mules draws attention to the ways that stereotypes of black women inform our understanding of gender and sexuality through the ironic reference to a discourse that places male-determined heterosexuality as the dominant norm and equates ‘[w]omen, criminals, blacks and children’ (Pinnock, 1996, p. 37) as irresponsible and inhumane. These wisdoms are articulated by the Bad Girls, endowing them with an intelligence and agency that might be denied in less progressive portrayals and raising the possibility that ‘bad’ (black) girls are not as bad as the stereotypical discourses would make it seem. There are certainly possibilities for seeing the feminist potential in Pinnock’s plays, but the presentation of heterosexual black women limits the potential for transcending archetypal images, ultimately rendering these plays clearly black women’s theatre but not altogether feminist. The predominant use of stock character types makes the plays easily accessible to audience members who may not be from the represented group, but although Pinnock’s work is celebrated for challenging racist and sexist histories, contradictory readings leave these images open to reaffirming the very concepts that they may have set out to
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challenge. Pinnock is very aware of the influence of trends in theatre production and berates the white, male, director-led trend setting British theatre that tends to ‘go for the safer commercial bet’ (Stephenson and Langridge, 1997, p. 46). While her own prominence has done a lot to secure a space for the representation of black women on the British stage, this seems to have come at the cost of diluting content, language and theatrical form to fit mainstream perspectives, thus a ‘political line’ that is in fact too subtle to have a valuable feminist effect.
4 Jacqueline Rudet (Re)Writing Sexual Deviancy
Sexual politics 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. Jacqueline Rudet’s Money to Live (produced 1984; published 1986)1 and Basin (produced 1985; published 1987)2 explore the trope of the evolving black woman through a re-evaluation of black women’s sexuality and ideas of sexual deviancy. Rudet was a prolific contributor to black theatre writing in the mid-1980s with two plays (Basin and God’s Second in Command) produced consecutively in October 1985. She founded the Imani-Faith Theatre Company (1983; now defunct), one of the very few black companies dedicated to presenting theatre by, for and about black women, and, although she seems to have disappeared from the British playwriting circuit, her plays remain as prominent examples of her commitment to a black woman–centred point of view. Money to Live and Basin explore typical themes within black women’s writing – beauty, sexual oppression and liberation, black sisterhood, 82
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solidarity and strength – foregrounding black feminist conceptions that black women’s relationships with each other are central to the creation of spaces where knowledge is shared and affirmation enables empowerment. One of the greatest feminist assets of both plays is the way that Rudet attempts to rewrite the notions of deviancy that are used to vilify black female sexuality. Both plays are framed around discussions of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviours, which are reclaimed as positive routes for black women’s liberation. Motifs of black women’s sexual deviancy are re-evaluated through characters whose transcendence of supposed norms becomes a route to fulfilment. Money to Live looks at black women working in the sex industry, charting Charlene’s decision to become a stripper and the responses of her family to her new career. The play explores issues surrounding pornography and prostitution and raises debates about the agency of women working in the sex industries. Basin explores black lesbianism, depicting the effects of a developing lesbian relationship between Mona and Susan on their friendship with Michele. Rudet’s exploration of black lesbian sexuality is testament to the way the bulk of representations of black women that were being produced at the time are challenged in Basin. While many other black women playwrights were wary of even declaring their work feminist, Rudet was pushing at the frontiers of accepted conventions for the representation of black female sexuality and countering ideas of black womanhood as fundamentally heterosexual. Black women’s bonding is articulated in terms of a zami identity that is thought to unite black women across historical and geographical boundaries. Rudet’s Afterword to the published script explains the significance of referring to the women as zamis. The two “zammies” in Basin become lovers but “zammie” is not “lesbian” in patois. The word refers more to the universality of friendship between black women; no matter what nationality, no matter what class, all black women have very important things in common. They’re the last in line; there’s no one below them to oppress. Whether they like it or not, every black woman is the “zammie” of every other black woman. It’s almost an obligatory thing. (Rudet, 1987, p. 114) The symbol of the basin, ‘the one article that all black women possess’ (114), is central to the idea of commonality between black women who are shown to share a deep understanding of each other that ensures the maintenance of their friendships despite quarrels and friction.
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Mona and Susan are always arguing with Michele who temporarily rejects their friendship after she finds out that they have become lovers. But the bond is reinstated after a few days and even the fact that Michele is the other woman in Mona’s recently departed (male) partner’s life is little challenge to the women’s friendship.
Sexual deviancy (re)examined There are many levels on which the characters in Money to Live and Basin might initially appear deviant, as pornography, extra-marital sex, prostitution and lesbianism have all at some point been considered antisocial, deviant and pathological sexual behaviours. However, the plays demonstrate how such notions of deviancy are constructed through white hetero-patriarchal ideas of the norm and Rudet invokes an ambivalent attitude towards sexual deviancy that destabilises conventional perspectives in thought-provoking ways. Sexual deviancy in men is not tolerated at all and is severely critiqued in both plays, whereas the black women’s deviancy is conceived as a necessary transgression for their emancipation. Both plays criticise articulations of black masculinity that are premised on tropes of irresponsible and rampant hypersexuality, and such male sexual licentiousness is condemned for its impact on women. In the opening scene of Basin the women talk disparagingly of Mona’s boyfriend Michael as only wanting Mona for ‘jook, jook, jook’ (115). Similarly, the opening scene of Money to Live shows Charlene condemning her brother Julius for perversely pursuing women and ‘roaming the streets like a hungry wolf’ (Rudet, 1986, p. 148). She criticises his sexual recklessness with the accusation ‘[a]ll you ever do is fuck, Julius, don’t you think you’re capable of breeding’ (148). Susan Carlson identifies the complexities of representing women’s sexual identity with the observation that some plays tend to deliver contradictory messages. Carlson argues that ‘connections between sexuality and self are as troubling as they are liberating’ (Carlson, 1989, p. 158) because attempts to liberate women through a focus on women’s bodies as erotic objects of desire can work ambiguously to sustain hetero-patriarchal assumptions about women as sexual objects. In the same way, the constructions of sex and sexuality in Money to Live and Basin foreground the women’s deviancy as a site of transgression, but equally could work to perpetuate notions of black female sexuality as deviant. Different types of sexual deviancy and attitudes towards it thread through both plays and there is an inherent contradiction in condemning some sexual behaviour as deviant while trying
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to celebrate others. In Basin Michele’s heterosexual sleeping around is condemned as deviant, whereas Susan and Mona’s lesbian sexual ‘deviancy’ is celebrated. In Money to Live Charlene’s decision to engage in ‘deviant’ sexual display as a go-go dancer is celebrated by some characters and condemned by others. On the one hand sexual deviancy is sanctioned as a tool of liberation, while on the other hand it is shown to lead to unwanted pregnancies and encourage the abuse and rape of women. These ironic contradictions are perhaps best captured in Charlene embracing a ‘deviant’ activity ‘to be a citizen of the world’ (Rudet, 1986, p. 169), when citizenship rights have at times been revoked for those considered deviant. The portrayal of issues surrounding sex industry employment in Money to Live offers a substantial discussion of the consequences of male sexual objectification of women. The characters present contrasting arguments in the porn/anti-porn debate, drawing comparisons with the daily objectification of women to question perceived assumptions about deviancy and normality. The question of whether Charlene’s erotic dancing reaffirms notions of black women as sexual objects for a white male gaze is important to this particular debate. Judy encourages Charlene to take up dancing with the suggestion that it is a radical way of resisting the free abuse of her body by getting men to pay for it, which raises the question of whether women can subvert the male gaze through their own agency and control of their bodies. Judy is initially adamant that women empower themselves through stripping because you ‘might as well have bad sex and get paid for it, rather than have bad sex and pretend it’s good sex’ (153). She sees black women’s stripping as a way of getting one over on the exploitative white man that has historically denigrated her. JUDY: I exploit every man that watches me. I’m a confidence trickster. I give them – what they think is – my body, and at the same time I reach into their back pocket and take out a pound note. [ ] People pay good money just to see what I’ve got in between my legs. They pay big money just to see that. [ ] If they want to see it, fine, all they have to do is give me that big money. I don’t feel exploited. It’s me who’s taking the piss out of them, it’s me who’s making them look fools, how could I feel exploited? (167) Charlene’s day job pays her just enough to live on the breadline, but Judy sees stripping as a way of attaining a more comfortable and luxurious
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life, a way for black women to earn more in a Thatcherite context where unemployment is rife and opportunities are limited by glass ceilings. Judy is able to purchase nice clothes and a car and her commitment to her own immediate material independence seems to far outweigh any concerns for the possible long-term impact on women. Judy and Charlene are caught up in Thatcherite sentiments that place concerns for their individual gain over and above any ramifications for black women as a community. Jennifer accuses Judy of ‘not helping women by being a stripper [ ] carrying on the great tradition of the woman as the lump of flesh existing just to be fucked’ (166). Yet it is Judy who makes enough income to sustain an independent existence, whereas Jennifer is unemployed and reliant on her parents for monetary survival. Judy counteracts Jennifer’s wholesale condemnation of stripping by pointing out that the income she receives from her work puts her in a better position to give financial donations to women’s organisations, whereas Jennifer might maintain her dignity and feminist principles, but cannot contribute the much needed funds that would help these organisations to function. Judy’s decision to become a stripper has resulted in her estrangement from her family, and Charlene’s involvement in the sex industry disconnects her from women’s politics. Charlene justifies her decision to become a stripper with the argument that it allows material fulfilment, but towards the end of the play she realises that material fulfilment could lead to spiritual emptiness, thus conveying Rudet’s message that community should be preferred over personal gain. CHARLENE: I’ve got no more financial worries, but I’m not that much happier. I’ve got more pleasure out of helping you with your problem, it’s more fun plaiting Jennifer’s hair and talking with her, and it’s given me more satisfaction sitting down and chatting with my parents than I’ve felt spending my new wealth. (173) Pornography and prostitution have been fundamental in fostering the subjugation of black women throughout history, particularly in the display of naked black women on auction blocks during slavery and the subsequent exploitation of black women’s bodies for white male gazes. Patricia Hill Collins asserts that ‘[b]oth pornography and prostitution commodify sexuality and imply to the ‘white boys’ that all AfricanAmerican women can be bought’ (Collins, 1991, p. 175). Jennifer’s suggestion that stripping is a form of pornographic prostitution in
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a system that is oppressive to women upholds the anti-pornography argument that views pornography as an intentional way to degrade women and maintain their subordination to men. Charlene fiercely defends her decision to become a stripper against accusations that stripping encourages the continued devaluation of women. She defends her choice of profession by paralleling the erotic effect of stripping with the possible arousal created by the everyday exposure of women’s bodies through clothes that show bare flesh, a view that resonates with the ‘she was asking for it’ defence for sexual assaults against women. Jennifer ardently presents a radical feminist viewpoint that challenges any ideas that stripping can be thought to be a progressive act, considering the impact of stripping on attitudes towards women and arguing that female strippers are part of a system that maintains the disrespect of black women and condones the production of male gazes that objectify women as sexual objects. Jennifer’s condemnation of stripping and her refutation of the idea that there can be any agency for women within acts designed to sexually denigrate them invokes the central tenets of the anti-porn debate. Rosemarie Tong summarises the feminist anti-pornography perspective that ‘although in and of itself pornography is not harmful in the way that sexual harassment, rape, and woman battering are, it encourages people (men) to behave in these harmful ways’ (Tong, 1989, p. 114), a perspective echoed in Catherine Itzin’s view that ‘pornography plays a part in the social construction of sexual inequality’ (Itzin, 1993, p. 57). Jennifer makes direct links between stripping and rape, using a persistent barrage of provocative questions to systematically highlight the weaknesses in Charlene’s rationale. Jennifer’s argument pre-empts the last scene of the play where she is assaulted by a man on her way to visit Charlene late at night, but Charlene’s responses ensure that both sides of the debate are heard equally. JENNIFER: When the show’s over, where do they go? CHARLENE: Home. JENNIFER: But if they’re excited, and they don’t live with a woman, how are they going to relieve themselves? [ ] CHARLENE: Are you saying that guy’s going to rape someone? JENNIFER: More than likely, or try to rape someone, and it will have been your fault. You excited him. CHARLENE: What about those blue movies? Anyone can walk in and see them and get excited.
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JENNIFER: They’re sick too. Don’t you understand, all of you dancers, all of those nude models, all of those blue movie actresses; you make women seem like all they’ve got on their mind is sex. CHARLENE: (thinks): OK. Take away all the go-go dancers, all the dirty books, all the blue movies. Men would still find things to get excited about. They’d start getting heated over girls in boob tubes or halter necks, they’d start getting excited over the slightest thing; you can’t stop people getting excited. [ ] There are some women, respectable women, who wear even skimpier clothing because it’s some fashionable item. What are they doing to men? (Rudet, 1986, p. 163) Jennifer’s comments suggest that the feminist potential in the female display of her body is seriously troubled by male presence because a male audience member can use women’s bodies for their own sexual needs, which undermines the possibilities for female agency. Given this view, it is interesting to consider that Rudet took issue with the directorial choices of the male director of the production (Gordon Case). Money to Live was Black Theatre Co-operative’s first play by a black woman, placing Rudet at the cutting edge of black theatre in taking the risk to state her case with an overt feminist stance. In her Afterword to the published edition of the play, Rudet suggests that the feminist potential was sabotaged by the male director who geared the piece towards a titillating male gaze. It was a mistake having a man direct the play. In the production, he created a scene where Charlene and Judy perform at a club. Without my consent, he removed the scene where Charlene and Judy rehearse. This is an important scene. The girls take their clothes off, then they put them back on again. This scene shows how mechanical stripping becomes for a stripper; the play is not about stripping but the scene should not have been omitted. A man can’t deal with the truth. What women create in life, men destroy. (180) The scene in question (scene five) is a short visual piece with no dialogue, showing Charlene and Judy rehearsing possible strip acts. The scene is designed to demonstrate their view of stripping as mundane by showing the women dismantling the act into its component parts of routine and mechanical movements. They are sharing a private dance for
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each other, which disrupts the male gaze by showing the construction of the female body as a sex object for male consumption. CHARLENE’S room, one early evening. Pulsating, sensual dance music plays, while a strobe light flashes on and off. JUDY is teaching CHARLENE a few moves. Both wear typical costumes. JUDY is instructing the sexiest way to uncover breasts. JUDY demonstrates. CHARLENE attempts, JUDY motions that it’s not right, CHARLENE puts her top piece back on and tries again. JUDY motions that she’s got it right this time. (165) Aston describes this scene as using a technique of ‘ “over-display”, on rehearsing/constructing the female body as a spectacle, [which] transforms the body from a sight of looking to “lookingness” ’ (Aston, 1995, p. 95). Overdisplay of the body allows a critical distance as the spectator is offered a deconstruction of the objectification of women, which lessens the possibilities for using the body for sexual pleasure. The combination of strobe lighting, loud pulsating music, the stopping and starting of the strip act and Judy’s female gaze on Charlene disrupts the potential to objectify the women as sensual objects of a male gaze. Evidently, however, any display of women’s bodies runs the risk of objectification and Rudet was upset about the replacement of the scene that she had written with a full-on striptease act. The removal of this scene and addition of a stripping scene undermine Rudet’s attempts to disrupt the male gaze by creating moments especially for male voyeuristic sexual pleasure. As R. B. Marriott’s review suggests, ‘there is no need for a strip cabaret scene when all the work the girls do at clubs has been described in much more detail’ (Marriott, 1984, p. 13) in ways that fitted the feminist focus of the piece. A male gaze can easily objectify any depiction of naked black women on stage in provocative poses. Judy and Charlene could be celebrated as manipulating the system to their own ends, effectively taking control of their lives and becoming emergent and independent women, but their means to autonomy still retains them within the power of the male gaze. As strippers they run the danger of reaffirming stereotypical views about black women as whores and jezebels, which makes the play’s feminist potential to reclaim attachments of deviancy with black womanhood problematic. Judy’s defence of her role as a stripper as liberating her from white male power is a weak justification that ignores the long history of black women’s display and sexual objectification for white male sexual fulfilment.
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JUDY: [ ] We have to live and work with white people. See me: I work with white people, my boss is white, all the owners of the pubs are white, but only a few of my friends are white. I make good money in the white man’s world and that allows me to spend my free time with the people I want to spend time with. (Rudet, 1986, p. 154) Rudet’s didacticism in discussing ‘deviant’ behaviour opens up a space for debate that is imperative to black and feminist aesthetics that seek to encourage an active audience and instigate political change. In fact, all but two of the thirteen scenes in Money to Live are two-handers, which are used to present opposing opinions on pertinent issues – porn/anti-porn, black feminism/white feminism, returning to the West Indies/staying in England. The episodic structure keeps the audience at a distance that makes emotional engagement with the characters difficult and the presentation of conflicting viewpoints in the dialogue between the characters demands the spectator’s critical engagement with the issues. The presentation of both sides of the porn/anti-porn debate, in particular, reflects the stalemate amongst feminists and leaves audience members to decide which argument they choose to ally with.
Evolving into black womanhood The content of both plays fulfil black feminist agendas by depicting black women’s quest for autonomy and invoking the black feminist trope of the evolving black woman. Charlene and Mona both fit the trope of the downtrodden but resilient emergent black woman who earns the respect of those around them. Brown-Guillory identifies that evolving black women are often ‘preoccupied with themselves because they have been disappointed by the men who have come into their lives [ ] and are no longer willing to play the role of “woman-behind-her-man” ’ (Brown-Guillory, 1990, p. 120). Charlene and Mona both fit this concept as the plays open with them bemoaning the irresponsible men in their lives. They initially appear downtrodden and in early scenes they are highly domesticated – cleaning, ironing and knitting – fulfilling roles typically ascribed to the female gender; but as the plays develop they begin to resist these prescriptions and forge new roles for themselves as independent black women. The domesticated openings are exploded as the characters search for new self-determined ways of expression. Their initial placement makes the later recourse to feminist rhetoric all the more transgressive as the women exercise agency over the direction of
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their lives, resisting expectations of femaleness such as domesticity and compulsory heterosexuality. An important part of the women’s evolving is their gradual transition from focusing on men as the centre of their lives to a greater engagement with women. Charlene and Mona begin the plays as women who are angry at the ways that white/male culture has subjugated them and they are determined to rise out of it. They are both demoralised by their relationships with black men and are beginning to rediscover themselves through their relationships with black women who support and encourage them to overcome depression and low self-esteem. Both women are man-less by the end of the plays, drawing their main sources of support from a woman-centred network of family and friends who unite to expose and resist patriarchal conditioning. Both emergent women also play central roles in providing advice and support for their kin, which is recouped in their own individual growth. In Basin Michele also undergoes a significant transformation commensurate with the evolving black woman trope. At the beginning of the play she is negatively regarded as sexually deviant, fulfilling the stereotypical role of the black whore by sleeping around with different men, and fitting the welfare mother trope of black womanhood by choosing not to work and claiming that she had a baby in order to get a council flat. Michele continually borrows from Mona and refuses to act responsibly, but stereotypical views about black women’s deviancy are destabilised as she becomes more independent throughout the course of the play. By the second half she has found herself a job, begins to return her loans and is starting to be a more responsible mother. She becomes more accepting of Mona and Susan’s relationship and begins to develop a consciousness that she did not have at the beginning of the play. Ironically, it is Mona’s ‘deviancy’ that is the catalyst for a change in Michele’s ‘deviancy’. Mona’s confession of a lesbian sexual relationship initially disgusts Michele, causing the pair to argue and temporarily terminate their friendship. Therefore, Michele no longer has someone to look after her and she re-emerges at the tail end of the play with new attitudes and a newfound independence.
Lesbianism, zamis and matriarchal communities The feminist potential in Basin is apparent in its focus on women’s communities and its radical acquiescence to lesbianism as a site for female unity and transgression. Its feminist debate surrounds the concept of sisterhood in black women’s communities and the question
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of whether lesbianism is biologically determined. Basin follows a narrative trajectory that normalises lesbian sexualities, opening with a focus on heterosexuality as the norm as the women discuss the previous night’s party and their respective boyfriend issues. However, as the play progresses, Mona’s identification shifts from heterosexual to zami, which presents lesbianism as a more favourable sexual identity for evolving black women. As M. Susana Redondo’s analysis of Basin emphasises, ‘[i]t establishes a hierarchy of discourses in which heterosexuality is presented as vastly pernicious for women; the homosexual choice is thus offered as a refuge from the negative experience of heterosexuality’ (Redondo, 1997, p. 480). A lack of tolerance for heterosexual ‘deviancy’ functions to normalise lesbian behaviours, which is specifically underscored by the women developing a love-based, political and sexual union, rather than one initiated purely by sexual desire. The invocation of zami identity as a normal bond between black women, rather than lesbianism as a deviant sexuality within white hetero-patriarchal discourses, invites a reconsideration of what it might mean to be normal. The reversal of heterosexual dominance as a norm and the crucial impact of Mona’s coming out present contradictions to beliefs about deviancy and normality that encourage a re-evaluation of prior assumptions and an acknowledgement of the complexity of stereotypical ideals. Michele is severely reprimanded for her flagrant sexual exploits, as is the absent male character (Michael) that the women discuss. Michael and Michele’s deviance is counterpoised to the relationship developing between Mona and Susan and is used to reverse the stereotypical view that lesbianism is tantamount to deviancy. Michael is described by the women as unreliable and unable to satisfy Mona’s emotional needs, and she eventually rejects the compulsory heterosexual mode that a heterosexist society dictates. By comparison, her relationship with Susan is based on intense feelings of love, respect, devotion and the commitment to nurturing their growth as independent black women in Britain. Rudet’s inspiration for Basin occurred after a holiday to Dominica. She explains that prior to her trip her connection and love for other black women had been ‘lost [ ] through the general pressures and distractions of domestic life’ (Rudet, 1987, p. 114), but ‘[w]hile out there, I’d suddenly realised how strong, how loving yet how abused and unappreciated black women are’ (114). She ‘returned to England with a love for black woman’ (114) and wanted to write a play ‘to show that all black women had much in common’ (114). That this realisation came after a
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trip to the Caribbean is significant to the constructions of deviant and normal behaviours in Basin, because the invocation of zami identity evokes a matriarchal focus of the Caribbean that instils different perceptions of normality. The matriarchal emphasis of the Caribbean and the close living of communities of black people, without the dispersal experienced in England, rekindled a woman-oriented focus that inspired an exploration of zami identity. The idea that the Caribbean is a matriarchal society resonates throughout the narrative of Basin, where it is sited as a place for lesbianism to flourish from the shared experiences of black women. Though a romanticised view of the Caribbean (and indeed of lesbian relationships seen through the age-old euphemism of sisterhood) it provides a useful framework for exploring attitudes to lesbian sexuality that are anchored in a place where different values dominate. Michele’s stereotypical views about lesbians as dungaree-wearing vegetarians ‘[h]air-cropped, looking like man in trousers, braces, big boots, [and] badges’ (128), or purely ‘a biological thing’ (128), are counteracted by the affirmation of the idea of a shared culture and experience between black women that distinguishes them from other groups and is shown to manifest in zami identity: MONA: [ ] Michele, we’re all in the same boat. We all have so much in common. Black woman have so much in common, so why are we arguing? Who will love us? White people? Black men? Who will love us if not other black women? (132) A shared black women’s culture is signified by the acquisition of the basin and the role that it plays in their lives. The basin is part of a black woman’s tradition and the oral knowledge that is passed down through the generations. The basin symbolises shared black female experiences, which means that they are the only group that could truly know each other. Susan states ‘[h]ow can I help but feel a special warmth towards other black women. You see, not only do I love you but I know how it is to be how you are. [ ] The love I feel for you is one I could never feel for a man’ (125). She describes the acquisition of the basin as part of a rite of passage towards black womanhood. My mother gave me my own basin when I was about four. I think it was probably the first thing I possessed. Just before we went to bed, my mother would tell us. “Go wash your kookalook!” That was when
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I first became conscious of being a woman and what it meant to be feminine. That was when I first began to think about my mother, and her mother. (129) The basin’s initial use in training women towards cleanliness aimed at a future heterosexual desirability for men is subverted by placing their acquisition of it within a lesbian context. A zami identity is adopted as a spiritual existence that goes beyond their material lives and unites black women across place and time. In contrast, Rudet shows how a focus on material gain might lead one to forget connections with other black women. Michele’s initial condemnation of Susan and Mona’s relationship shows her to be disconnected from the other black women with whom she shares her life. She invests in an old-fashioned compulsory heterosexist ideal that thinks of men as the provider and she desires to find a rich one. Michele’s sexual identity depends on male approval and desire, which is completely opposite to Susan’s and Mona’s whose lesbian sisterhood is posited as a route to female autonomy. Even though Michele is the cause of Mona’s heterosexual relationship breakdown, the final confessional scene shows them rebuilding their friendship, highlighting the importance of sisterhood above all else and especially as more important than their relationships with men. Though a ‘kiss and make up ending’ (Barber, 1985, p. 15), as John Barber’s review suggests, it testifies to Rudet’s belief that all black women are zamis to each other. The removal of men from the equation of desire liberates the discussions of sex and sexuality and the women in both plays talk freely and intimately about their sexual exploits. It is possible, however, that these discussions and overt displays of the female body can equally work to titillate an audience, as evident in the issues surrounding Gordon Case’s direction of Money to Live. It is this possibility of presenting the characters within the constraints of a familiar dominant gaze that most undermines the feminist potential in these plays. The recourse to lesbianism in Basin offers a more assertive resistance to the male gaze by challenging conventions that place women as objects in opposition to male subjects. Putting two women at the centre of the play reconstitutes the equation by replacing male desire with a female-to-female desire that disrupts the male (subject-desiring)/female (object-desired) dichotomy. The representation of lesbianism in Basin follows Monique Wittig’s suggestion that lesbian sexuality disrupts conventional beliefs about the nature of woman, because the lesbian refuses to become a woman as understood
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in opposition to a man. Carlson shows how the celebration of the lesbian self in Basin figures Mona’s rejection of heterosexuality as a way of activating the beginnings of ‘an all-female alternative’ (Carlson, 1989, p. 168) separatist economy for black womanhood. A female-to-female gaze becomes a radical tool for rethinking black women’s sexuality on their own terms, where they are simultaneously subject and object of their own politicised separatist gazes.
Making the familiar strange: Re-viewing black women’s theatre Rudet clearly makes some inroads in her portrayal of black lesbianism, but her attempts to normalise lesbian relationships backfired in reviewers’ easy interpretations through heterosexual models and conventional narrative discourses. Reviewers’ responses to both plays play down their radical aspects and contain the subversions of deviancy within accepted norms. A particular pattern in reviews of black women’s theatre is the tendency to emphasise a play’s appeal to a wider audience through generalised comparisons with conventional genres of drama and storytelling narrative. The radical potential of lesbianism in Basin is contained by accentuating parallels with images of love, betrayal and jealousy found in heterosexual romantic narrative plots. Reviewers highlight a dramatic story where the emphasis of a love story takes precedence over the politics of the play. Ann McFerran describes Basin as the story of ‘heterosexual women-in-love’ (McFerran, 1985, p. 85) and Nicholas de Jongh suggests that it is ‘highly conventional, almost Barbara Cartlandish and content to be a true romance’ (de Jongh, 1985, p. 12). John Barber compares the play to Madame Bovary with ‘all the banality of the flowering amour, the madcap jealousy and the thrilled kiss-and-make-up’ (Barber, 1985, p. 15), before ultimately stating that ‘[n]either colour nor deviance brings much freshness to this commonplace affair’ (15). Reviewers trying to make black women’s plays understandable to a white readership often draw comparisons with white Euro-American plays and literature. McFerran compares Money to Live with the ‘the nineteenth century tear-jerker’ (McFerran, 1984, p. 93) and Martin Hoyle likens Charlene to ‘the good woman of Szechwan’ (Hoyle, 1984, p. 21). The tendency to compare black women’s plays to well-known whiteauthored literature and performance presupposes a knowledge of these theatre texts and traditions by their implied reader (the white theatregoer). Thus reviewers emphasise the general appeal of the plays and play
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down the specificity of a black feminist discourse, which is only thought to be of interest to black women. McFerran generously describes Money to Live as ‘a sparky, thought-provoking play which will touch many women (and men) no matter what the colour of their skins’ (McFerran, 1984, p. 93). McFerran felt that ‘the race issue is pushed aside’ (93) and frames the play as being about gender, ‘brimming with brisk social comment, lively feminist argument and a wry humour’ (93). Rosalind Carne insists that race is a secondary issue because ‘[f]ive years of relative artistic success has given the company sufficient security to allow racial politics to linger in the sub-text, while concentrating on a powerful feminist scenario’ (Carne, 1984, p. 18). Lyn Gardner is the only reviewer to recognise Money to Live as ‘a welcome new direction for BTC who have at last found a voice to describe what it means to be young, black, poor and female in Britain today’ (Gardner, 1984, p. 60). Basin is also interpreted by a majority of reviewers as a feminist tract that places race as a secondary issue. Hoyle claims that Rudet focuses on the characters as people rather than their specific issues as black women. He reads the characters’ blackness as coincidental, rather than integral to the plot and concludes that ‘Miss Rudet’s interest in individuals, her curiosity about relationships and an innate good sense make her forget their colour’ (Hoyle, 1985, p. 27). The focus on emergent lesbians means that the gender issue seems to be paramount and racial dimensions are taken to be inconsequential, which, Hoyle suggests, ‘indicate the emergence of an essentially middle class black theatre [ ] in which blackness seems to be losing its importance as an issue’ (27). However, he remains perplexed that ‘the elements of being black in a white society seem so extraneous to Miss Rudet’s central theme’ (27) and consequently implies that the play’s production by a black company seems to have ‘sneaked in under false pretences’ (27). These responses highlight the difficulties that black feminists encounter when trying to treat race and gender as interconnected issues. Basin is clearly about relationships between black women and the way that their knowledge is passed down throughout generations, and Money to Live evokes analysis of how black women working in the sex industry relates to the historical degradation of black women’s sexuality. Indeed, part of Judy’s justification for stripping is that ‘our great-grandmothers got used to a lot worse things’ (Rudet, 1986, p. 155). Reviewers’ reluctance to seeing the plays as dealing with race and gender, despite the fact that all of the characters in both plays are black women, echoes the tendency of some black women playwrights to foreground one over the other. Rudet may welcome the view that her plays have an appeal that
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goes beyond the specifics of black womanhood as she describes Money to Live as ‘a story about hard times’ (Rudet, 1986, p. 180) and is adamant that ‘the references to the West Indies are hard to translate into any other culture, but the play shouldn’t be treated as a “black” play’ (180). The racial dimension is lessened somewhat by not placing the characters in relation to white society, but Charlene’s story has a particular resonance with the poverty experienced by first- and second-generation black women whose employment choices are further limited by the combination of racism as well as sexism, and the issues surrounding her sexual display have a unique significance for black women. The exploration of zamis in Basin also situates it within a specific black woman’s context, which makes it difficult to completely ignore the racial discourse of the play. As well as stressing the normality of the stories, reviewers cast aesthetic judgements that criticised the plays as banal, contrived and fundamentally poorly constructed, with political rhetoric stilting an otherwise normal narrative flow. Hoyle describes Money to Live as ‘slightly disjointed’ (Hoyle, 1984, p. 21), Gardner felt it ‘suffers from repetition, lousy direction, over simplification and a weak ending’ (Gardner, 1984, p. 60), and Christopher Hudson found Rudet ‘terribly stilted [ and] clumsy [ ] in the way she manipulates her characters to press home her arguments about male hypocrisy and sexual exploitation’ (Hudson, 1984, p. 28). Barney Bardsley makes a similar criticism of Basin, which he found ‘[l]east convincing when it trys to make right-on political points’ (Bardsley, 1985, p. 59). Carole Woddis’s examination of theatre reviewing demonstrates how reviewers read plays through status quo conventions set ‘long ago by the male rule of logic, reason and objectivity, which seem to deny the existence of any personalised hidden agendas’ (Woddis, 1994, p. 195). Woddis contends ‘that there are several agendas at work in a reviewer’s review: that feminism, or reactions to it, is certainly one of them’ (Woddis, 1994, p. 197), which has led to the articulation of overt feminist viewpoints within women’s plays being received less sympathetically than if the playwright is male. The reception of Rudet’s plays can therefore be seen as an expression of the reviewers’ unease with the viewpoints being articulated, where they displace their discomfort with the political rhetoric of plays that question dominant values by focusing on the idea that the plays are aesthetically weak. The reviewers deploy a hegemonic definition of romance, which does not typically include man-hostile lesbians, to criticise Rudet for showing her political feelings
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inappropriately, in a place – a light romance – where politics do not belong. The whole aesthetic structure of Western critical taste and judgement exists to support the white/male status quo, so the black woman playwright necessarily has to transgress some Western aesthetic principles to make her point. However, transgressions of the expectations of dramatic form leave her open to being criticised for not sticking to the rules of the theatrical discourse that she is attempting to enter. These issues are particularly acute for plays that are produced at venues such as the Royal Court (where both of these plays were presented) where certain standards of writing and performance are expected.3 In an era that had yet to see much explicit black feminist theatre, political rather than purely aesthetic considerations underlie the negative reception of Rudet’s plays. Most of the reviewers were white men, reading through their own criteria of dominant aesthetic standards and familiar existing codes that might not be so appropriately relevant to a newly emerging black British female voice. They ignore the possibility that playwrights with different political agendas might work in relation to different aesthetic principles, which is the belief underlying black aesthetician’s claims that black theatre should be measured by its own standards and not compared to white theatre. Black women’s search for a voice has resulted in some rejection of mainstream cultural forms and dominant values, which have led to their theorising through poetry, prose, novels and plays, and a more positive reception of Rudet’s plays than that allowed by the reviewers can be reached if they are considered through tropes of black women’s literature and performance. Henry Louis Gates argues that black literary traditions are characterised through the trope of ‘Signifyin(g)’ (Gates, 1988, p. 44) upon formalised white languages and literary traditions. According to Gates, black literature is written with a rhetorical or self-referential difference from the discourse that it seems to inhabit, causing a disruption to a singular voice and instating an intertextual double-voice that modifies the typical patterns of representational discourses and makes the familiar strange. Black women’s potential to Signify upon white and black male literary discourses is apparent in Rudet’s plays, which integrate political discussions within theatrical narratives to re-write conventional attitudes towards deviant behaviours. Discussions of sexual politics are interwoven into a romantic story in Basin and a clear debate about the ethics of sex industry work is launched in Money to Live. Interweaving political comment with
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aesthetic concerns offers pertinent models for black feminist performance practice. Disruptions to the expectations of a generic form, by inserting moments of explicit political rhetoric, highlight Rudet’s Signifyin(g) on the dominant narrative form (such as the romantic drama) to secure an alternative outcome for black women. Politics are prominent throughout both of these plays, evident in Rudet’s re-writing of deviant sexualities, overt feminist rhetoric and deviations from the expectations of dramatic form, which instates a black feminist voice that makes the familiar feel strange. As Redondo observes, the typical heterosexual romantic plot is reversed in Basin; ‘there is no man waiting at the end of the road, instead, there is another woman in what looks more like the beginning of the road’ (Redondo, 1997, p. 479). Michele ‘performs the woman/feminine role within a heterosexist economy’ (484), while Susan and Mona defy the expectations of heterosexist discourses and refuse the roles of typical romantic heroines. The multiple stories and viewpoints remind the spectator that this is a play about black women’s lives and not a Barbara Cartland fiction as one reviewer observed. The feminist potential is paramount in the moments of confrontational dialogue and debate where the women characters resist typical positions for themselves; interestingly these were the points that the (mostly white male) reviewers wanted less of. Reviewers severely criticised the didacticism and dialogue as shortcomings that make the characters appear contrived, offer an overload of information and highlight inexperience in playwriting and direction. Indeed, Rudet was only in her early twenties when the plays were produced. As one of the early plays by a second-generation black British woman to be staged professionally they represent a ground-breaking first stage black feminist approach in British black theatre. The ‘weaknesses’ in Rudet’s plays could be understood more positively as the beginnings of a black feminist’s search for a voice and the reviewers’ reception of an overtly feminist political polemic with displeasure might equally be a measure of the extent to which her black feminist voice succeeds.
Subversions of realism and lesbian aesthetics On first principles, the portrayal of an evolving black woman in Money to Live and Basin seems to be necessarily placed within a realistic theatrical style, which invites the spectator into the world of the central heroine. The progression of her evolving drives the narrative from start
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to conclusion, with the other characters supporting the thrust of her story. However, there are elements in both pieces that work to subvert the conventions of a realist genre. Significant to feminist drama is the disruption of the single male character at the centre of a narrative. Money to Live appears to be Charlene’s story, but its resonance across kin and generations means that no singular narrative is privileged. Marriott’s incisive review describes the play as a ‘series of vignette stories’ (Marriott, 1984, p. 13) that displace a singular narrative by showing how the impact of Charlene’s growth manifests in new outlooks for the rest of her family. Charlene’s mother Olive reveals that she had worked as a prostitute and is given poignant moments to discuss her opinion with Charlene and with her husband Norbert. Olive’s several two-hander scenes with Norbert give her an independent voice that is not modified by Charlene’s presence. Similarly, Jennifer is given a loud feminist voice with which to stage her protest against Charlene’s new job and it is she that has the final word on the effect of stripping in encouraging an ‘inherent, deep, deep disrespect’ (Rudet, 1986, p. 179) of (black) women. The staging of Money to Live further disrupts realist convention as outdoor street scenes are placed at the front of the stage with Charlene’s flat always seen in the background and limited props such as a bus stop are used to indicate a change of place. The added club scene against the same backdrop also breaks with naturalist tendencies to re-create an undisturbed realistic setting. Dolan argues that a subversion of dominant ideology is best achieved in contemporary theatres that challenge dominant economies of desire and represent women in feminine forms that disrupt conventions of the theatrical mirror. According to Dolan, ‘the lesbian subject [ ] personally, artistically, and spectatorially [ ] offers the most radical position from which to subvert representation’ (Dolan, 1988, p. 119). Representing lesbian sexuality begins to challenge dominant narrative structures by reconfiguring ‘the dynamics of desire’ (59), but does it also require specific modes of representation for full effect? As well as presenting lesbian desire within the content of a play, a disruption of a heterosexual narrative economy can be further endorsed by explorations with form. It could seem that placing Mona at the centre of Basin, setting the play in her flat and following her coming out story, relegates the other female characters to the textual margins. However, the other characters are vital to Mona’s growth and also undergo their own transformations. The predominance of a shared sisterhood undermines notions of a singular heroine, as the three women share the story. Susan’s declaration
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of her love for Mona initiates the drive of the romantic story line, and Michele’s reaction to the women’s relationship is integral to the narrative trajectory and the motivation behind her own reform. The final scene belies an absolute closure as Mona and Susan begin a conversation that ‘continues and trails off, swamped by music. Lights fade’ (Rudet, 1987, p. 139). Nina Rapi suggests that there are ‘two perceptions of the lesbian [ ] reflected in many lesbian plays’ (Rapi, 1993, p. 154), which manifest in two different narrative thrusts in performance. The first perception recognises the sexual dimension of lesbian lives and frames stories with overt references to the women’s sexual relations. The second type of lesbian is one where women are shown to share a unified sisterhood based on ‘bonding against male tyranny’ (154), framing lesbian relationships in terms of a love ethic, ‘where the two women’s relationship seems much more based on love than on sexual desire’ (154). Rapi notes that even the more overt lesbian dramas do not necessarily offer explicit showings of women’s desire on stage and her search for a lesbian theatre aesthetic asserts that ‘lesbian theatre is characterised by intersubjective reciprocity’ (155), whereby the lesbian character is both desiring and desired. This distinguishes lesbian theatre from plays ‘written by heterosexual men or women containing lesbian characters, [where] the lesbian is inevitably presented as desiring but not desired’ (155). The heterosexist/heterosexual playwright inevitably reproduces dominant perspectives of lesbians as perverse women that seduce other women. Using Rapi’s distinctions, Basin fulfils the criteria for a lesbian play focused on Mona’s easy transfer to lesbian desire. At first, it appears as though Susan is the real lesbian of the narrative, because her long-held desire for Mona fulfils stereotypical assumptions of the perverse lesbian seductress. Susan initiates the relationship with Mona, who could be read as a heterosexual woman who converts to lesbianism because she is disillusioned by her relationships with men. In the opening scene Mona’s initial reaction to Susan’s declaration that she fancies her is the typically homophobic ‘[m]aybe there is something wrong with you! [ ] This is one of the phases that little girls go through’ (Rudet, 1987, p. 121), and the scene concludes with no hint that a sexual relation might occur. The following scene emphasises Mona’s resistance to their sexual liaison as she refuses to ‘discuss last night’ (121), again initially reaffirming a heterosexist attitude that she was seduced by the ‘real’ lesbian.
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SUSAN: Last night meant nothing to you did it? MONA: You’re right, I’m too maternal, I’m too soft, I make sacrifices for everyone. You wanted me, I complied. (122) Scene three marks the beginnings of Mona’s transformation, challenging the dynamic set up in the previous two scenes. Her change begins with an acknowledgement of Susan’s friendship, which infers euphemisms for lesbianism that denies sexual desire. However, this simple reading is immediately subverted as Mona is shown to become more active in expressing her love through sexual desire. MONA: Now that I think about it, who was always there for me? Susan. [ ] Maybe we’ve always been lovers? I’d never made love to her before, but maybe we’ve always been lovers? I always turn to her when I need comfort, I always turn to her when I need help. Maybe we’ve always been lovers. (123) Each attempt to lock Susan into a familiar heterosexist frame as deviant is counterbalanced in a later scene. Mona becomes jealous that Susan is being the typically ‘manlike’ promiscuous lesbian, but Susan proves not to be guilty of these accusations, which subverts the original belief and brings assumptions about lesbian sexuality under scrutiny. If taken at face value, Susan’s distance from Mona after she has had sex with her could reaffirm the seducing lesbian stereotype and be likened to the male treatment of women identified at the start of the play where Michael is thought to be emotionally distant. Mona reads Susan through the heterosexist gaze and doubts her love and commitment to the relationship as she reads her through the jealous gaze that she has cultivated with Michael. The audience’s knowledge of Susan is mostly mediated through Mona’s comments about her, which Susan reappears to undermine briefly in the final scene. However, by this point, the audience could easily be so caught up in the happy ending of the romance that they could miss it and would leave the theatre unchallenged in their perceptions of lesbians as man-hating, promiscuous, predatory, seducers. The weakness of the portrayal of lesbianism in Basin as unarguably feminist results from the reiteration of certain beliefs about black womanhood within a predominantly realist text. These limitations are
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most evident in the reproduction of heterosexist ideals of lesbian identity such as the friendship euphemism for same-sex attraction, and the placement of lesbianism in relation to heterosexuality. The women’s turn to lesbianism as a result of dissatisfaction with men is particularly problematic. Michele’s acceptance of her friends’ relationship could be misleadingly hopeful in suggesting that because they have overcome their personal differences that black lesbian women can easily co-exist with their heterosexual ‘sisters’.
Exploring essentialism In many ways Money to Live and Basin draw on the essentialised characteristics of black women that were significant to the representation of an autonomous black British female political identity in mid-1980s Britain. Essences are deployed strategically to explicitly articulate Rudet’s political feminism through a focus on sexuality that stretches beyond typical realms and into areas of black female sexual expression that are not usually seen on stage. Both plays depict black women (re)constructing their identities, however, which destabilises absolutely fixed essential views. Redondo terms Basin ‘pseudo- or neo-realism [ where] the female subject is constituted differently [ ] fundamentally characterised by contradiction, plurality, and instability’ (Redondo, 1997, p. 486). She argues that ‘the construction of characters challenges notions of subjectivity as coherent, unified, and stable’ (481), rendering identities a process of becoming rather than a pre-given absolute. The transformation of all of the female characters means that none of them occupy a stable position for the duration of either play, and the contradictions and complexities in their characterisations challenge the idea that black women are a homogenous group, although this is itself contradicted by the invocation of a zami identity as uniformly shared. It is possible to read these plays in various ways depending on one’s own political outlook. Reviewers highlighted weaknesses measured by their own aesthetic and political standards, whereas Carlson and Redondo provide more favourable feminist readings. The ambiguity in these plays is evident not only in their style, but also in the way they discredit some stereotypes while reaffirming others. As part of a first wave of black British feminist cultural output, stereotypical attributes are invoked in assertion of a collective identity with which black women could identify. On the other hand these are notions that have been used to uphold opinions of black deviancy, which could be more
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successfully challenged in black feminist playwriting. Rudet’s success in dismantling stereotypes of black female sexuality is dependent on the way that the stereotypes are written in relation to each other. Placing lesbian love in opposition to a promiscuous heterosexuality marks the latter as deviant, whilst normalising the first. Likewise, despite her job as a stripper, Charlene’s moral values are shown to be more normal than those of her promiscuous younger brother. Significantly, the feminist potential in both plays is best seen in the way they invest in political debate and dialogue that begin to educate audiences about black women’s lives.
5 Jackie Kay and Valerie Mason-John’s Zamis, Lesbians and Queers
Lesbian playwrights 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.2 Kay is one of very few black women playwrights to outwardly state her commitment to challenging racism, sexism and homophobia in her plays. Although she now concentrates on novels and poetry, her plays offer some of the firmest examples of a distinct black British feminist drama.3 Kay’s Chiaroscuro (produced 1986; published 1987)4 and Twice Over (produced 1988; published 1989)5 were produced in the mid-tolate 1980s by The Theatre of Black Women and Gay Sweatshop respectively – two companies with a stated dedication to a politicised theatre practice. Written amidst emergent debates about the intentional promotion of homosexuality in schools and councils under the Clause 28 Act, Kay’s plays dealt explicitly with the stereotypes associated with black and mixed-race lesbian identities.6 The feminist sensibility offered within the content of Kay’s plays is underscored by the disruption of 105
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realist narrative conventions through the integration of poetry, comedy, audience address and the relinquishment of realistic stage settings and linear time sequences. Mason-John is an actress, club promoter, novelist, journalist, performance artist, poet, playwright and workshop facilitator who has played a pivotal role in documenting British black lesbian experiences.7 MasonJohn’s Sin Dykes (produced 1998; published 1999d)8 was produced at the end of the 1990s during an era that saw lesbians being portrayed in primetime television soap operas such as Eastenders (BBC) and Brookside (Channel 4). Such innovations seemed to suggest the end of a need for feminist intervention and Mason-John’s post-feminist attitude is summed up in her comment that ‘[o]nce I realised that what I had to say didn’t fit into the comfortable niche of black, lesbian and feminist, it gave me the courage to say what I wanted without fear of criticism’ (Mason-John, 1999c, p. 2).
Lesbian narratives Kay’s Chiaroscuro and Twice Over and Mason-John’s Sin Dykes provide fervent examples for a radical black feminist theatre that exemplify how explicit discussions of sexuality can add to the overall political effectiveness of a play. All three plays are concerned with questions of black female sexual identity, categorisation and stereotype and consider the political and emotional choices of sexual behaviour. Chiaroscuro was commissioned by the Theatre of Black Women and first shown as a rehearsed reading in the Gay Sweatshop × 10 festival in 1985, before receiving a full production in 1986. Produced during an era that marked a high point in black and women’s theatre production in Britain by a company that openly declared their commitment to black feminism it has an obvious politic incorporated into its subject matter and style. Chiaroscuro explores questions of identity politics and considers how discourses of collective black female solidarity are affected by differences across the intersection of race and sexuality. Four black women characters (Aisha, Beth, Opal and Yomi) consider how African and Asian heritages inform black, mixed race and lesbian identities in Britain, how race intersects with sexual identity and how black lesbians are affected by racism, sexism and homophobia. Twice Over was first shown as a rehearsed reading at the Gay Sweatshop × 12 festival in 1987, before receiving a full production in 1988. It was Gay Sweatshop’s first play by a black woman writer and produced during heightened discussions about Section 28 for ‘an audience that
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needed to be heartened and encouraged’ (Osment, 1989, p. lxvi). The two main lesbian characters in Twice Over are white women, but it is included in this study as an example of a play by a black lesbian writer that foregrounds a lesbian relationship seen through the eyes of black characters. Twice Over is a romantic political play that depicts the importance of ‘coming out’ to lesbian lives, which is explored by paralleling the dilemmas of older lesbians coming out with the experiences of teenage schoolgirls learning about sexuality. The play deals poignantly and politically with the reaction of a young black woman to the discovery that her recently deceased white grandmother was a lesbian, launching debates about lesbian identities that are designed to encourage teenage audiences to rethink their prejudices.9 After Cora’s death, her black teenage granddaughter (Evaki) discovers diaries, letters, photos and memorabilia that detail the nature of Cora’s long romantic relationship with Maeve. The play opens at Cora’s funeral, where her lover Maeve cannot grieve openly because they had kept their relationship hidden. Maeve remained ‘dry eyed’ (Kay, 1989, p. 124) at the funeral while her co-worker Jean cried openly and Jean cannot therefore understand why Maeve is so upset and is unable to go back to work straight after the burial. Cora is determined that her secret life should be revealed, which would allow Maeve to grieve for her properly, and she wanders around the stage prompting Evaki and the other characters to discover her secret past. As Evaki reads extracts from Cora’s diary, Cora and Maeve re-enact key events such as their first realisation that they loved each other and their first romantic and sexual unions. CORA: It is so ironic to be lying next to my husband after all these years. (She gazes around at the mourners, then sits.) Being dead gives me a new perspective on things. If I could have lived my life twice over, I would never have pretended. (123) Cora’s posthumous ‘coming out’ is placed against the stories of Evaki’s teenage friends (Sharon and Tash) who are discovering their sexualities through their encounters with boys and each other. Sharon has recently had her first sexual experience with Jean’s son Steven. He refused to use a condom and she spends much of the play addressing the audience from a toilet seat about her worries that she may be pregnant or has caught AIDS. Tash spends most of the play alone in her room, drawing pictures that express her internalised rage about being sexually abused by her
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white father. The discovery of Cora and Maeve’s relationship helps the young women to begin to understand diverse sexualities and face up to the responsibilities of their own sexual lives. Maeve has come out by the end of the play, which means that she can finally be acknowledged as Cora’s grieving widow, and the last scene shows Cora’s funeral as it would be once Maeve is rightfully acknowledged as her partner. Sin Dykes was first performed at the Oval House Theatre Upstairs in 1998 and is firmly located in debates about contemporary lesbian identities. Sin Dykes is billed as ‘a play for the twenty-first century’ (Sin Dykes Flyer), ‘[a] hard hitting comedy which puts the sting in the story of black and white relationships’ (Mason-John, 1999d, p. 41). Within the context of in-yer-face theatre in the late 1990s, Mason-John supersedes discussions of ‘what a lesbian looks like’ to examine the diversity of lesbian sexual experiences more entirely and launch an up-to-the-minute discussion about what people might do for sex, how sex might become political and how sexual desire might cause a rethinking of one’s politics. MasonJohn’s introduction to the published version of the play text summarises the main themes and context: The story of one woman’s exploration of sexuality, as she comes face to face with the issues of relationships between black and white, SM in mixed relationships, and SM between black women. Set in the late 1990s, in London. Dykes are out of the closet. Black dykes openly do SM, dykes openly sleep with gay men. There is dialogue, debate, and outrage, but nobody is listening any more. (41) Sin Dykes focuses on Trudy’s deliberations about whether to engage in sadomasochistic sexual practices and, if so, whether to do it with white women, to explore issues surrounding how racial discourses might influence sexual desire and affect inter-racial sexual relationships between women. The play centres on Trudy’s relationships with a group of black and white lesbians and examines their dialogues about how race might affect sexual desires. Mason-John shows how the women are shaped by history and politics where race has become loaded with such significance that it influences their relations with each other. Sin Dykes is a complicated play to consider from a feminist point of view because the representation of sadomasochistic relationships that involve playing with power, domination and objectification could be seen to counter any feminist project.10 Mason-John does not see herself as a feminist playwright or Sin Dykes as a feminist play. However, the dialogues that the play raises
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about racialised discourses of gender and sexuality destabilise simplistic understandings of black women that offer some level of feminist intervention. Maddy Costa’s review describes Sin Dykes as ‘a very accomplished, confrontational yet unaggressive challenge to the assumptions of its mostly white female audience’ (Costa, 1998, p. 131). The political issues are not as obviously expressed as in Kay’s plays, but are evident in the performance strategies and the effect that the dialogue and debate have on the audience. Marilyn Farwell identifies the difference between traditional lesbian theory and postmodern theory’s opinion on the constitution of a lesbian narrative. According to Farwell, traditional lesbian theory ‘treats the lesbian narrative as a text determined by the shared experience among identifiably lesbian authors, readers, and characters and treats narrative itself as a relatively neutral tool into which lesbians can be written’ (Farwell, 1996, p. 5). Traditional lesbian theory focuses on the content of the narrative, with the insertion of lesbian characters into realist plots being enough to define a text as lesbian. Such narratives might be found in lesbian detective stories or in romantic plots, which work within the conventions of conflict, crisis and resolution structures. In contrast, ‘postmodernist theory valorizes only the nonlinear disruption of the “master plot” ’ (5) because realist and linear narrative drives are deemed to be fundamentally heterosexist, which delimits the lesbian potential within such texts. Jill Dolan also argues that ‘[s]everal lesbian performance texts written in the 1980s impart an implicit understanding that the variety of lesbian lives and the experiences of lesbian bodies cannot be expressed within the constraints of realism’ (Dolan, 1989, p. 152). Kay and Mason-John follow models for innovative theatre aesthetics that challenge the conventions and ideological outcomes of traditional realism by experimenting with how dramatic form contributes to the overall effect of a performance. Chiaroscuro, Twice Over and Sin Dykes break with realist spatial and temporal stage conventions through techniques such as direct audience address, comedy, physical theatre, mime, dance, song, storytelling and poetry.
Naming rituals Chiaroscuro is an overtly political play that is fundamentally concerned with questions of naming, belonging and self-definition and specifically with the adoption of the labels ‘black’ and ‘lesbian’. Audre Lorde argues for the importance of self-definition for black lesbians, stating that ‘if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others – for
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their use and to our detriment’ (Lorde, 1984, p. 45). The importance of self-definition and naming is imperative for black lesbians who are silenced as black and female and lesbian, prone to being subsumed under heterosexuality as black women or within white lesbian experiences. Chiaroscuro was workshopped for four weeks and went through several permutations between the rehearsed reading and the full production. Kay’s Afterword to the final published version explains that she ‘fed the inspiration and the motivation from these workshops into a reworking of the play’ (Kay, 1987, p. 82), refining ideas from the readings, workshops and productions to rectify some of the imbalanced combination of realism and symbolism in the play’s form for the published version. Her main constant concerns focus on the issue of naming: In all of the drafts of this play I have been obsessed with naming. What do we call ourselves as lesbians and black women? How did we get our names? How do we assert our names? What are our past names? Each of the characters tells the story of her name. She is also searching for another name. She is in flux, reassessing her identity, travelling back into memory and forward into possibility. In order to change we have to examine who we say we are and how much of that has been imposed. (82) Kay tackles naming as something that is passed down, inherited and then redefined, showing that identity is open to reconstruction and change. The four characters explore how their names have come from their foreparents and their significance to black history. Aisha is named after her maternal grandmother, ‘born in the Himalayas at dawn’ (59) and Beth is named after her paternal great-great-great-great grandmother ‘who was taken from Africa to slavery in America and raped often’ (59). Opal says, ‘[t]hey had no one to name me after, so they called me after a stone [ ] after a very old nurse who wore opal earrings all the time’ (59). Yomi’s story about Old Yomi, her mute grandmother after whom she is named, invokes a historical tradition of black women’s resistance to being silenced. Old Yomi told stories through drawing and painting, passing down knowledge about black womanhood in spite of her silence. Yomi’s birth story is compared with that of her daughter Fabayo who did not speak until she was three and has inherited her great-grandmother’s tendencies towards drawing pictures. These stories are told to demonstrate black women’s resistance to being silenced and
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signal the importance of communication to create change for the future generations. Chiaroscuro details how identities are negotiated in a culture premised on the idea of fixed differences between races, sexes and sexualities, and explores how mixed race people and lesbians disrupt such notions of pure race or gender categories. The women’s experience of their race and sexuality are influenced by the assumptions, myths and politics surrounding what it means to be black British women and their identities are conceived as a negotiation between memories and herstories of past myths and present experiences, which are used to create possibilities for the future. The four characters debate identification and labelling, acknowledging their homophobic and racist views to (re)invent themselves by reflecting on their internalised programming and identifying ways to move beyond the concepts of fixed definitions that are used to subjugate and oppress black people, homosexuals and women. All four performers remain on stage throughout the performance and their stories are interweaved to emphasise the parallels between their individual experiences of racism and (hetero)sexism. Kay refuses to simply romanticise black women within ideas of a shared and uncontested sisterhood, however, showing instead that (re)inventing and (re)naming black womanhood comes with recognition of both the similarities and the differences between them. Barney Bardsley’s review writes, ‘[d]iscarding the superficial notion of harmonious sisterhood, Jackie Kay examines the complexities and contradictions of each woman – how she moves with and against her friends; how she comes to terms with her race, her sexuality, her history and her destiny’ (Bardsley, 1986, p. 11). The effect of four black women performers ‘all wearing the same outfit: an all-in-one jumpsuit made from stretchy material’ (Kay, 1987, p. 59) gives an initial impression of a shared identity. However, each woman adds bits of costume or jewellery at various points to mark out their individuality and difference from each other. A naming ritual in the opening sequence sets up the individual experiences of each character who has an object that resonates with her personal story and the issues that she needs to resolve in her (re)naming. Beth’s photo album alludes to her lesbian and mixed race identity, containing pictures of ‘[a]ll her old boyfriends [ ] the ones she pretends she never had [ ] all her childhood friends – all white. And her mother pale and frightened-looking’ (61). Aisha’s cushion was made by her grandmother and passed down with the story of her birth and naming. Opal’s prop is a mirror, which she fears both for the superstition that a broken mirror brings seven years’ bad luck and for
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the way that it reflects her image back and forces her to accept herself as black. OPAL: My face was a shock to itself. The brain in my head thought my skin white and my nose straight. It imagined my hair was this curly from twiddling it. Every so often, I saw me: milky coffee skin, dark searching eyes, flat nose. Some voice from that mirror would whisper: nobody wants you, no wonder. You think you’re white till you look in me. (65) Yomi has a black doll which she was teased about when young and upon which she projected her internalised racial hatred. OPAL: [ ] Just because you’re a darky does not mean you have to have a darky doll. AISHA: So when she got home, she took it out of her pram and put Amanda in the airing cupboard. Every so often she guiltily pulled her out and called her names OPAL (vindictively): Nigger. Wog. Sambo. Dirty Doll. (60–61) Opal’s role in telling Yomi’s story of racist taunts resonates with her own internalised hatred of her blackness. Similarly, Aisha helps to narrate Beth’s experience as a young lesbian, which echoes her own issues and anxieties about whether or not she is a lesbian. AISHA: [ ] She first thought she might be a lesbian at school. She was terrified. None of the textbooks mentioned her name. She searched for boyfriends to cover her terror. To play at the stories in all of the school books. She was in love with her female English teacher. Once she looked up lesbian in the medical dictionary. She worried about her hormones. When she was older she discovered the hidden world – the clubs and the pubs. She was still alone. (66) Kay explains that the chest from which objects are retrieved ‘is an important symbol; it functions as the past and also as the chest in the human body. In order to breathe, these four women have to get things “off their chest”. Everything that is important to them is contained in the chest’ (82).
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Mixed race identity Barbara Tizard and Ann Phoenix indicate that sociological research on mixed race identity has historically suggested that ‘a positive image for mixed-parentage people can come only from assuming a black identity and identifying with other black people’ (Tizard and Phoenix, 2002, p. 102). They highlight the growing tendency to use the terms ‘ “black with one white parent” [ or] “black mixed parentage” ’ (11) as a way to ‘maintain solidarity with black people and potentially give recognition to racisms as affecting people of “mixed parentage” and “black” people in similar ways while recognising that some issues are particular to people of mixed parentage’ (11). Anne Wilson also suggests that ‘[c]ontrary to the popular stereotype of mixed race people as torn between black and white, many children seemed to have found a happy and secure identity for themselves as “black mixed race” ’ (Wilson, 1987, p. vi). Wilson argues that many mixed race children tend to ‘consider themselves full members of the black community, since any attempt to adopt a white identity is likely to bring conflict and rejection’ (1). As mixed race populations continue to grow in Britain, the 2001 British census included mixed race categories for the first time.11 Chiaroscuro (a word that combines the Italian terms for light (chiaro) and shade (scuro)) sets out to challenge prejudices towards mixed raced people, looking at how the roots of fear towards mixed race people lie in the way that they render biological assumptions about racial purity and difference questionable. Biologically essentialist ideas about racial difference are used to maintain the boundaries between people in different categories and uphold notions of racial inferiority and superiority, but mixed race people challenge such segregated perceptions of identity. Debates about terminology (mixed race, mulatto, half breed, mixed origin, half-caste, Anglo-Caribbean, mongrel, metisse, mixed parentage, dual heritage, bi-racial, multi-racial, multiple heritage etc.) and about who has the right to adopt a certain name are raised in Chiaroscuro. Belonging, both racial and sexual, is a central theme that runs throughout Chiaroscuro as each of the characters at some point questions her place in a certain group. Opal was transracially brought up in a children’s home in Hampshire and questions her black identity, and Aisha’s anxieties about whether or not she is a lesbian are overlaid with questions about racial heritage and belonging as an Asian character. Beth deliberately purchases ‘black’ identity accoutrements (blues, funk, jazz and soul music, and books by renowned black authors) to signal her political affiliation with black culture, and ideas that mixed race people
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face inherent difficulties of identity are countered by an emphasis on the issues as resulting from the reactions of the other characters towards Beth’s identification. The boundaries between identities and the racist attitudes they uphold are challenged in Kay’s feminist rhetoric, which compares biologically deterministic ideas about race with similar preconceptions about sexuality. The characters launch an explicit discussion of how maintaining boundaries between identity groups is used to propagate racism, sexism and homophobia, during which Yomi articulates the stereotypical view that mixed race people suffer an identity crisis because they cannot fit completely into either black or white cultures. Yomi’s reaction against Beth’s politicised identification with blackness is shown to be the bigoted eugenicist internalisations of someone wishing to maintain racial separatism by policing the boundaries of ethnic identities. Her dubious racist and homophobic beliefs are challenged and she is encouraged to question her derogatory attitude to ‘half caste’ (Kay, 1987, p. 70) people and understand the political significance of mixed race identifications.
Learning about lesbians: Coming out stories Coming out is a way to counter assumptions of compulsory heterosexuality and state lesbian difference from the heterosexual norm. Not surprisingly then, coming out stories have formed a significant section of lesbian literary outputs and oral histories. All three plays discussed in this chapter are coming out stories to some extent, showing lesbians making discoveries about themselves and telling others about their sexuality. Dolan argues that heterosexist realist coming out plays ‘focus on her choice to leave heterosexuality more than on her adaptation to her lesbian lifestyle [ and] their conflicts are usually centered on the new lesbian’s struggle to validate her identity against the negative definitions of the dominant culture’ (Dolan, 1989, p. 150). Kay and Mason-John subvert these conventions of lesbian realism and the typical coming out drama’s focus on the shift from heterosexual to lesbian desire does not feature in any of these plays. The characters in Chiaroscuro and Twice Over come out with only a passing reference to heterosexuality. Cora and Maeve’s retrospective coming out in Twice Over is figured through the secret of the lesbian relationship that they had kept hidden for several years. Thus, the play does not focus on the ‘problem’ of a new lesbian lifestyle or a transitory stage, but is a nostalgic reflection on a life already
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lived, which disrupts the conventional narrative trajectory of coming out tales. Twice Over presents explicit political discussions that do not allow us to rest comfortably with easy or stereotypical beliefs about lesbian sexuality. Kay’s impetus for writing the play came after researching attitudes to lesbianism and discovering that young people typically believed that all lesbians were young. As a TIE project, it launches debates about stereotypical perceptions of lesbians that challenge homophobic and biologically determinist views and encourages the young women in the audience to rethink their beliefs and prejudices. Binary dichotomies (black/white, old/young, and lesbian/heterosexual) are dismantled, and ageist perceptions of lesbians are challenged by depicting older women that cannot be easily boxed into familiar lesbian types. Kay is specific about the age and race of all of the characters – ‘EVAKI, 17, black; CORA, 59, white; TASH, 17, black; SHARON, 17, white; MAEVE, 58, white, Irish; JEAN, 48, black’ (Kay, 1989, p. 122) – giving a voice to 17-year-old teenagers and women over 45 and rendering silent the 18–45 age group who are usually represented on stage. Race, generation and sexual preference separate Evaki from her grandmother, but the play also emphasises points of similarity between women, as racism, sexism, homophobia and ageism are shown to affect all of the characters. The potential racism that Evaki faces as a black woman is comparable with the ageist homophobia that her grandmother Cora faces as an older white lesbian. Maeve’s Irish identity adds diversity to the representation of racial categories, while creating obvious analogies between homophobia in black and Roman Catholic communities. Jim Hiley sees Evaki as ‘drifting with Tash [ ] into a possibly lesbian alliance’ (Hiley, 1988, p. 37). Hiley picks up on hints that Tash is a lesbian, and her reluctance to state her sexuality openly is comparable with the difficulties faced by the older white couple. Cora and Maeve’s difficulties are exacerbated by their (older) age and the attitudes (presumed and real) of their generation, whereas Tash’s issues are compounded by youth and intensified by the blatantly homophobic attitudes of her friends. Helen Rose’s review describes the play’s clear trajectory in mapping Evaki’s ‘rite of passage from prejudiced ignorance to understanding acceptance of Cora’s relationship and lesbianism in general’ (Rose, 1988, p. 44). Evaki and Sharon initially find it difficult to accept that Cora and Maeve were lesbians because they were old, ‘[t]hey both wore skirts [ and] they don’t look like men or walk like men. They just don’t look like lezzies’ (Kay, 1989, p. 139). As Evaki gains insight into
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Cora’s past, she reconsiders her own stereotypical preconceptions about lesbians and encourages her friends to think differently. Her revelations counter Sharon’s stereotypical arguments that lesbians are young predatory creatures that look, dress, act and walk like men, or do men’s jobs. Sharon voices the possible prejudices of the assumed school-aged audiences that the play was aimed at, and Evaki’s response encourages them to reconsider the stereotypical perceptions of lesbians. Shaila Shah’s review comments that ‘[u]npalatable as some of the responses may be, Jackie Kay treats them not in terms of good or bad, right or wrong, but explores the complexities that lie behind and beyond, with the utmost warmth, understanding and humour’ (Shah, 1988, p. 31). Twice Over is hopeful of communication across racial and generational gaps, countering tendencies towards homophobia that may have been endorsed by the Clause 28 Act by presenting a story that enables younger audiences to learn about lesbians differently.
Lesbian, queer, butch, femme Sin Dykes ‘explores the ring of lesbian sexuality, black and white, touching on the taboos of all black–white relationships in everyday culture and sado-masochistic sex’ (Mason-John, 1999c, p. 4). The play follows Trudy’s decision about whether to engage in sadomasochistic relationships, exploring coming out into new sexual practices that moves beyond the lesbian-as-problem mould to offer a celebration of (black) lesbianism as a politically charged lifestyle choice. Sin Dykes presents a diverse range of out black and white lesbian characters who openly engage in discussions about how racial politics affect sexual practice at the end of the twentieth century. Mason-John follows up on some of the debates that were raised in Kay’s plays and shows how some ideas have moved forward whilst many remain unresolved. Mason-John gives specific details about the characters’ age, race and cultural affiliation, and the presumption of difference between the women forms the basis for much of the debate and humour within the play. The description of the characters initially seems fairly prescriptive, but the play constantly challenges our expectations and does not allow us to settle for an easy and comfortable understanding of fixed types. TRUDY: a Brixton babe, African-Caribbean, aged 25; non-specific black British accent; femme. GILL: a scene dyke, white European, aged 32; non-specific English accent; butch/femme on the streets, butch between the sheets.
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KAT: an afrekeke dyke, African-Caribbean, aged 33; Jamaican accent (patois); femme. BD: a bull dyke lesbian, white English colonial, aged 40; English accent, with a trace of South African twang; bull dagger dyke, closet SM queen. CLIO: a travelled black dyke, aged 28; Cockney (‘Essex Girl’) accent; dominatrix, whether top or bottom, always in charge. TRACE: an SM white dyke who sleeps with gay men, and enjoys the role of the slave; as a slave she is submissive but butch and adores her mistress; when not in role of slave is laddish and cocky; when in slave role speaks only with her body.12 (42) One of the ways in which lesbian theatre is thought to have the provocative potential to challenge heterosexist assumptions is by replacing an objectifying heterosexual male gaze with a female-tofemale gaze. Sue-Ellen Case argues that the ideal feminist subject is a lesbian woman, because female-to-female desire upsets the male (active/subject)/female (passive/object) dichotomy, and replaces them with butch-femme couplets, ‘a dynamic duo, [that] offer precisely the strong subject position the movement requires’ (Case, 1989, p. 283). Case sees butch and femme as equal and interdependent categories, which work together to diffuse heterosexist ideas of sexual difference. Butch-femme functions differently from the heterosexual male and female, holding the potential to ‘constantly seduce the sign system, through flirtation and inconstancy [ ] replacing the Lacanian slash [/] with a lesbian bar [-]’ (283). Case concludes that ‘[i]n recuperating the space of seduction, the butch-femme couple can, through their own agency, move through a field of symbols, [ ] playfully inhabiting the camp space of irony and wit, free from biological determinism, elitist essentialism, and the heterosexist cleavage of sexual difference’ (297–98). Mary F. Brewer also argues that ‘[o]ne of butch/fem’s most valuable features for lesbian sub-culture is the way in which it overturns the taboos surrounding women’s sexuality and provides the means for developing a liberated female sexual discourse’ (Brewer, 1999, p. 139). Brewer contends that ‘the discourse of butch/fem is not sentenced to replicating unchallenged relations of domination’ (140), but rather can reconfigure ways of seeing through a woman-to-woman lens. Lesbian theatre’s experiments with butch and femme identities challenge stereotypical notions of woman and lesbian and offer alternatives to conventional theatrical structures. Exploring butch–femme
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sexuality in black lesbian performance provides a way to move beyond the zami metaphor of a shared sisterhood and fully acknowledge the sexual dimension of black lesbian relationships. Kay and Mason-John rework concepts of butch and femme beyond heterosexist notions. In Chiaroscuro the coming out stories are figured against stereotypical assumptions about what a lesbian looks like, the possibility that feminine women are lesbians too and a refusal to fit neatly into butch or femme categories. Yomi’s homophobic image of a ‘real’ lesbian as ‘a tall angular looking woman [,] white with men’s things on, too much hair around the mouth and always on the prowl’ (Kay, 1987, p. 78) is challenged by Opal’s relationship with Beth. In Twice Over Cora and Maeve’s lesbian sexuality is questioned because they wore skirts and did not fit the stereotypical concepts of butch lesbians. Mason-John takes these discussions a step further to push at the definition of the butch/femme dichotomy and offer a scripting of contemporary and shifting lesbian identities. Butch and femme roles are figured as liberating for the women in Sin Dykes, emblematic of their individual sexual choices rather than as an acceptance of dominant and subordinate sexual positions. One of the immediate challenges that Sin Dykes presents to heteronormative thinking is its placement of the femme character to take control of acting on her sexual desires, which goes against concepts of femininity as sexually passive. Placing a feminine woman in control of the audience’s gaze disrupts the idea that only a masculine butch lesbian could control the narrative. The women are set up as equally desiring in the opening scene where Clio ‘flirts with the dancers’ (Mason-John, 1999d, p. 42) until she meets Trudy and recognises a mutual attraction. Scene two shows Trudy’s active desire for Clio, when she admits, ‘I’ve been watching you for months. [ ] Last night I was so turned on. Your bum in those chaps looked so cute’ (45). Trudy’s shared desire and power in the sexual pursuit chisels away at assumptions that butch and femme lesbians are synonymous with active masculinity and passive femininity. The women’s sexual identities are depicted as fluid and changing, playfully troubling preconceptions about butch/femme power arrangements to reflect the performativity of contemporary queer lives. The women fluctuate between butch and femme, dominant and submissive, active and passive, desired and desiring, figuring the complex shifting of contemporary identities. Gill is ‘butch/femme on the streets, butch between the sheets’ (42), an androgynous construction that refuses easy pigeonholing, and Trace’s presentation as ‘submissive but butch’ (42) invites a questioning of stereotypical behavioural attachments to butch
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and femme lesbians. Kat is submissive femme with BD but active with Gill, and Trudy is femme with Gill but butch/femme with Clio. In scene three BD’s ‘bull dyke’ (42) exterior gives way to a contradictory image as she ‘takes her trousers and jeans off, revealing sexy suspenders’ (60), and in scene four Trudy’s wearing of a strap-on dildo unsettles preconceptions that only butch women use dildos to imitate men. Their engagement in role-play emphasises identities as unfixed and contradictory, encapsulating the subversive potential of butch and femme to free lesbians from prescribed gender ideologies. Mason-John’s characters evoke Brewer’s suggestion that ‘in contemporary lesbian communities [ ] butch/fem allows an interchange between and a variation within roles. These roles no longer represent a system of masculine and feminine extremes; instead, there now exists within this discourse a whole spectrum of positions which lesbians may occupy: stone butch, butchy femme, femmy butch and so on’ (Brewer, 1999, p. 154).
Sadomasochism and (inter) race relations Racial discourses are as imperative to Sin Dykes as sexual ones as MasonJohn reflects on how racial taxonomies have resulted in different political allegiances between black and white women. Sin Dykes moves firmly beyond biologically based discussions to examine how history and politics affect race relations. Internalised racist attitudes from black or white characters do not go unquestioned as the play mounts a dialogue about the politics of inter-racial sadomasochistic sexual relationships. South African bar owner BD has a special penchant for her black women workers, which is presented as a continued projection of colonial fantasies of dominance and subordination. Black SM dominatrix Clio orders around a willing white slave partner (Trace) reversing the typical (white) master/(black) slave binary to raise questions about how race influences domination, submission and desire in neo-colonial contexts. Trudy is eager to experiment with SM sex but feels unable to explore it with her white ex-girlfriend because of the connotations that arise for her about white people exercising power over black women. TRUDY. How can I make you understand, Gill? So many of blackwhite relationships in this society are based on the fact that black people have very little power. How do I know that when I give up my power to you in the bed, that you’re not thinking “nigger, slave, mugger”? And if you are, how do I know you won’t play those thoughts out on my body? [ ] I’m not sure why, but every time
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I thought of you and I experimenting, I could hear my black sisters screaming, “Remember slavery”. (68) Trudy is able to explore her SM fantasies with Clio, another black woman, but the potential for simple readings of a shared zami sisterhood are undermined by the gradual revelation of contradictions and hypocrisies that unsettle the broad character types. A range of racial and sexual stereotypes are set up in the first act and dismantled in the second, casting sexual desire amidst assumptions of racial stereotypes and their consequent transgression. Kat, Trudy and Clio represent contradictory variants in the identification of black British lesbians. Trudy refuses to compromise her desires on racial grounds, whereas Clio will sleep with white women as long as she is in charge. Clio is an openly proclaiming SM dyke who wears open buttock leather trousers and enacts her dominatrix routines in the bar, contradicting Trudy’s belief that black women do not flaunt their sexuality publicly and that only white women wear chaps.13 In the first half of the play, Kat is recognisable as an Afrocentric black woman, wearing an African fabric head-wrap and sarong and speaking mainly in patois. She denounces inter-racial relationships as consorting ‘with the enemy’ (59) and condemns sadomasochism with the suggestion that ‘black women don’t do SM’ (79). In the second half, however, it transpires that Kat is engaged in a master/slave play for pay relationship with her white boss BD who gives her extra wages for sexual favours. So not only is Kat a black woman doing SM, but she is doing it in an inter-racial liaison with a white woman, which completely contradicts both of her earlier assertions. Nothing can be taken for granted and the audience are continually made to question their preconceived assumptions on several levels. Expectations are challenged at twists and turns culminating in the final scene showing the previously domineering BD being subservient to Clio’s control and Clio and Trudy playing a sadomasochistic sexual game. The last scene of Sin Dykes is most problematic when seeking a feminist interpretation of the play, because it shows Clio acting out humiliating dominatrix behaviour on BD and Trace. The typical racial dichotomy of black slave/white master is reversed to show a black woman dominate and humiliate two white women while Trudy watches. CLIO. Watch me. Turn, you son of a bitch. (BD is on all fours. She turns to face CLIO with head towards the floor.) Lick my boots. (TRACE
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prepares the boot, caressing it with her face. CLIO yanks her by the collar to bid her stop. BD seductively licks both boots. CLIO pulls BD’s head up and spits in her face. TRACE is jealous.) You’ve left a mark. (TRACE pushes BD out of the way and licks the boot.) Good girl. TRUDY. Stop! Let them go, it’s horrible. (BD, TRACE and CLIO stop.) (82) The feminist effectiveness of this scene depends upon the extent to which the audience condone Clio’s behaviour and enjoy BD’s humiliation. The Oval House production was performed in the small upstairs space where the audience is closely subjected to the scene and forced to examine our complicity in BD and Clio’s act. Their actions are neither completely condemned nor condoned, but force some recognition of how racial discourses might have influenced this outcome. BD and Trace are willing participants, but the audience can view the scene critically through Trudy’s eyes, and attempts to gain sexual satisfaction are disrupted by her response: ‘[t]hat was repulsive, it’s no different when the roles are reversedz either’ (83). Clio and Trudy’s closing sex game illustrate how Mason-John deconstructs preconceived ideas about race. Trudy assumes that it is safe to explore SM sex with another black woman because the potential power dynamics inherent in an inter-racial liaison are not at stake. Yet, in actuality, it is Trudy herself who gets dangerously carried away with the power game and has to be stopped by Clio, which highlights that her prior assumptions about race are problematic because power dynamics can be just as much played out between black lesbians as they might across gendered or racial differences. TRUDY grabs hold of the whip and begins to crack it. She becomes intoxicated by its power. They pull the whip from each other, cracking the floor with it. CLIO remains sexual in her whipping style, while TRUDY becomes excited, dangerous, out of control, unsafe, going beyond boundaries. She begins to crack the whip at CLIO and becomes more and more excited and carried away. CLIO: Stop! Instant Blackout. (90) Sin Dykes works towards moving beyond the constrictions of fixed and essentialised definitions of race, gender and sexuality, provocatively presenting issues that encourage the audience to consider how complicit
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they are in upholding certain value systems and therefore the role that they can play in changing them. Importantly, this dialogue occurs between black and white women who are all shown to be living out the preconceptions of their race and sexuality. A cross-racial dialogue, aware of race as a social and historical construct, sets this play beyond that of earlier black women’s plays where the dialogue occurred intraracially. The audience are invited to witness these debates, to become more aware of the ways that the past might impact on the present and particularly to think about how racist discourses inform our perceptions of identity. Mason-John urges the audience to learn from the past and not revere it as an absolute determinant of the politics of the present. Characters such as BD, Trudy and Kat draw attention to the racialisation of desire and show that it might be possible to transcend the limitations of racist fantasies and forge new futures based on a shared cross-racial understanding. Post-show forums were held to discuss the issues raised in Sin Dykes, opening up the dialogue that is crucial to a black feminist practice that seeks to bring ideas to the public consciousness and promote political change. Although Mason-John does not claim to subscribe to any particular black or feminist political agenda, producing a play that deals explicitly with sensitive racial and sexual issues and initiating an after-show discussion about them undoubtedly have some feminist effect.
Black feminist form: Comedy, choreopoem, audience participation Theatrical form is central to black and feminist theatre aesthetics, where it is viewed as fundamental to a play’s capability to challenge dominant performance models. Realism has come under particular attack, where it is seen as a system that is invoked to uphold ideas of fixed differences, and feminist and black aestheticians have called for experiments with form to counter the assumptions of realism. Sin Dykes and Twice Over use humour to unsettle realist understandings, which invite analysis of how and why black lesbian theatre practitioners use comedy and its effect on the audience. Susan Carlson’s suggestion that ‘comedy must be approached as a genre created in and conditioned by a patriarchal society’ (Carlson, 1991, p. 159) makes it imperative to consider how a feminist comedy might work. The use of comedy could be considered a ploy to make the representation of lesbianism more palatable to mainstream audiences, or it could be
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conceived as a device that forges lesbian unity through shared humour between audience and performer. Dolan argues that a ‘lesbian subcultural context and mode of production often make these performances illegible to the heterosexual reader/spectator’ (Dolan, 1990, p. 40). Lesbian comedy is conceived as a way to celebrate community between a knowing lesbian audience who can interpret the in-jokes and laugh along with the performers on stage. Lesbian theatre works best when performed for lesbian audiences because in-jokes ‘rely on the subcultural language of lesbian community audiences to be meaningful’ (Dolan, 1989, p. 153). Sin Dykes certainly seems geared towards a knowing lesbian community who could pick up ironic references and laugh along at its tongue-in-cheek humour. A predominantly lesbian audience is expected to have some sense of the play’s discourse and to be able to reflect on discussions and behaviour traits that they may well have some direct experience of. Humour is used to create an allegiance between the lesbian audience and the characters, while also rendering the subject matter more easily digestible and making it easier for the audience to watch debates about the sensitive issues raised in the play. Women spectators of Twice Over appreciated the combination of humour with poignant sentiment and didactic feminist rhetoric and several reviews comment on the effectiveness of the play as both entertaining and thought provoking. Much of the humour is produced from references to the differences in attitudes that come from the generation gap between older and younger lesbians, and the jokes simultaneously promote lesbian camaraderie and encourage schoolgirls to reflect on their attitudes. Male spectators are marginalised by the play’s focus on women’s perspectives of unwanted teenage pregnancy, lesbian sexuality and sexual abuse, however. Kay was reading Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (1977) just before writing Chiaroscuro and ‘was impressed with the way she made poetry work as theatre’ (Kay, 1987, p. 83). The influences are evident in Kay’s piece, which, like Shange’s, deals with black women coming into sexual awareness and maturity. The choreopoem, as Neal A. Lester describes it, is ‘a theatrical expression that combines poetry, prose, song, dance, and music [ ] to arouse an emotional response in an audience’ (Lester, 1995, p. 3), which is located within a black ritual theatrical style that ‘emerges from an African tradition of storytelling, rhythm, physical movement, and emotional catharsis’ (3). The fragmented form of
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shifting between naturalistic moments, poetry and song symbolises the diversity of the women’s identities, through which the audience are offered contradictory perspectives. The choreopoem’s improvisational qualities allow space for the performers’ emotional and personal responses to become a part of the performance, disrupting realist conventions by blurring the line between performer and character. This device is used at key moments where the performers address the audience to guide them through the play. Chiaroscuro opens with an acknowledgement of the audience and the theatricality of the event. The stage directions prompt that ‘BETH scrutinises the audience’ (Kay, 1987, p. 59) and the women sit in a circle, each speaking in rotation as they turn to face the audience who are deemed a prerequisite element of each individual performance. At the beginning of act two Opal ‘stands at one end of the stage peering into her imaginary mirror (the audience)’ (73) and states ‘It’s you again. I might have known you wouldn’t be gone for long. So what do you want me to do, welcome you back? I had a good break without you’ (73). Her words are doubly addressed to the feared mirror and the theatre audience. After Yomi’s racist and homophobic outburst during the dinner party scene, Aisha appears to step out of character to comment personally on how she feels: ‘Well that bit is over. It was too near the bone’ (72). Mary Karen Dahl suggests that this offers a poignant moment of complicity with Aisha’s difficulties, during which the audience ‘may acknowledge their own discomfort observing the scene or the pain of similar arguments with friends’ (Dahl, 1995, p. 47). Dahl maintains that ‘[t]he quasi-realist enactment of strong emotions invites spectators to identify with one or more of the positions articulated’ (47). Immediately after this, the performers use percussion instruments to sing a song describing their various experiences of alienation and their need to find a ‘meeting place’ (Kay, 1987, p. 72), leaving the audience with the dialogue in their minds as the play breaks for the interval. As Dahl observes, the timing of the interval is crucial to allow the audience to reflect on the sensitive issues that have just been hotly debated; ‘during the break, spectators can carry on the dinner debate alone or with others. They can attempt to clear the air, bridge rifts, and carry on the search for one another that the song describes’ (Dahl, 1995, p. 47). Kay describes Chiaroscuro as ‘an elaborate déjà vu’ (Kay, 1987, p. 82), wherein the women have met and performed together before and ‘all see the play, the journey, as part of a painful and enjoyable process that they have to go through, and which they’ve been through already. [ ] The more these four characters perform this play the closer they get
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to who they are’ (82). The characters’ conscious reference to previous performances disrupts linear notions of time, linking the past with the present and the future as a crucial element in the reconciliation of their stories. The choreopoetic form of Chiaroscuro necessitates the communal use of the stage space to allow the performers to shift the focus of attention between them and move from fairly realistic scenes to abstract dance and recitation. The neutral greyness of the stage cloth, black and white stools and photographs, and the similarity of the performer’s costumes, breaks away from mimetic realism, whilst signifying the play’s theme of black, white and mixed (grey) identities. Similar techniques are used to disrupt realism in Twice Over, where all of the characters are on the stage throughout the performance, occupying their own area suggested by a prop or object. The setting allows a fluid transition between scenes and spaces, past and present, and the overlaps between the various characters’ stories to be made evident. Kay’s stage directions purposely state that productions should not attempt to imitate the real. The stage is broken up into different areas: MAEVE’s kitchen, CORA’s coffin, the street, JEAN’s shop, TASH’s room. The set should not be totally naturalistic, so one or two objects indicating the above areas should be enough. (Kay, 1989, p. 122) In Gay Sweatshop’s production, Cora’s coffin was a trapdoor in the centre of the stage, which doubled as the chest from which Evaki retrieves Cora’s diaries and belongings. The centre-stage placement puts Cora in an ideal spot from which to guide the narrative and correct and refine the other characters’ accounts of the past. The audience are placed in complicit alliance with Cora’s viewpoint because they can see and hear her whereas the other characters in the play cannot. Most of the dialogue in Twice Over consists of monologues addressed directly to the audience, and humour and direct address are used to create an alliance between the characters and the audience. The comedy is loaded with double entendres that are heightened by the co-existence of dead and live characters. Philip Osment suggests that ‘[s]ecrecy is a thread that runs through the whole play as every character has something to hide’ (Osment, 1989, p. lxv). Tash’s secret sexual abuse is compared with the secret lesbian liaison between Cora and Maeve and Sharon’s secret fear that she may be pregnant. The audience are the only members of the
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production privy to the entire story and fully aware of all the secrets, as the characters confide in the audience rather than each other. Several of the secrets are gradually revealed to the other characters throughout the play and the overall message warns against keeping silent and highlights the importance of creating spaces for (black) lesbian voices to be heard.14 Sin Dykes also works with a conscious awareness of the presence of the audience. The opening scene is set in BD’s bar, which is pre-set with the performers dancing on stage. The fourth wall boundary is immediately disrupted as ‘[t]he audience enter into a clubby atmosphere and are frisked by BD, the owner of the bar’ (Mason-John, 1999d, p. 43) who directs lewd jokes at the new entrants. The audience are not allowed anonymity as the actresses watch us watching them. BD’s club bar doubles as a bed in Clio’s and Gill’s bedsits, a budgetary and spatial decision that endorses the challenge to realism inherent in a play that combines primarily naturalistic scenes with comedy and ‘some physical theatre and mime’ (42). The plays’ experimentation with theatrical form opens up various possible interpretations. In the naming process and dialogues within Chiaroscuro meanings are difficult to try and pin down to a finite end. As such the piece can be read as representative of a woman’s circular form and circles are a key feature of the production. The play opens with the women sitting in a circle and turning, each beginning the narration of her own story as she faces the audience in their search for a precise place to start. The end sees the women return to their naming ritual, before leaving the stage and the pre-set objects exactly as they were at the beginning, which creates the possibility for the play to be started again. Thus the circular form resists complete closure and indicates that the end constitutes the start of new directions for the discussion to continue to. Twice Over also has a circular form, finishing with a potential ending (Cora’s funeral if her relationship with Maeve was acknowledged) and new beginning (Maeve’s life with family and friends supporting her through her bereavement). The characters, like those in Chiaroscuro, have travelled on a journey towards understanding and the play closes with a scene of hopeful acceptance of Maeve as Cora’s grieving lover. Sin Dykes finishes in the middle of a sexual game between Trudy and Clio, who create a visual image of a chasing each other around in circles through various dominant/submissive fantasy role plays (including Tarzan and Jane, Samson and Delilah, Tom and Jerry, and Romeo and Juliet) before eventually being drawn to a ‘Stop!’ (90) by Clio. Blackouts disrupt the game at several key moments before the final end, teasing
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the audience into guessing when the show might stop and where it might continue to.
Negotiating differences: Moving beyond stereotypes Brewer’s suggestion that a progressive feminism is one that recognises difference as positive is imperative to understanding the feminist potential in these plays. Feminist activism was initially founded on the idea of similarities between women, but it soon became apparent that the denial of differences excluded certain women, notably black, lesbian and working-class women. The plays discussed in this chapter all challenge monolithic concepts of women by highlighting the potential differences between people within an identity category. Black Britishness is linked to diverse histories and identifications – Asian, African, Caribbean, mixed race, transracially raised in foster homes and so on – distinguishing these plays from those that are primarily focused on Caribbean images of black Britishness. In Sin Dykes, Trudy, Clio and Kat are all black lesbians, yet each of them has their own particular articulation of race and sexuality that is grounded in personal identification, politics and lived experience. Chiaroscuro shows that the women can still share a friendship and support network in spite of their differences, implying that black women can engage in communities while acknowledging multiplicity and differences. The depiction of black lesbian sexuality as an independent emotional and sexual choice, which goes beyond metaphorical allusions of a woman-centred discourse, is central to these plays’ shift away from mainstream theatrical values. The representation of lesbians offers a way to move beyond hegemonic ideas of race and sexuality by sidestepping familiar topics in black women’s plays. The depiction of a diverse range of ‘black’ lesbians promises to transcend the heterosexually identified archetypal black women types and show images that are rarely seen on British stages. Both playwrights present images that shatter stereotypical perceptions of black women, and attempts to read the characters through archetypal perspectives are confounded by contradictions and complexities. Yomi in Chiaroscuro could be seen as a welfare mother, for example, but her relationship with her daughter is described in such a way that the audience are actually encouraged to celebrate her single parenting not as a problem but as a different and equally viable family style that resonates with concepts of lesbian mothering as an alternative to heterosexual parenting. In Sin Dykes, Afrekeke dyke Kat could be understood
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as a spiritual Afrocentric black woman, but such an interpretation is unsettled by the contradictions in her character discussed earlier. It is significant that these are lesbian plays which bring notions of identity into question, as lesbians have been perceived critically as a group that challenge essentialist views about what it means to be a woman. Monique Wittig’s pronouncement that as ‘ “woman” has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems [ ] lesbians are not women’ (Wittig, 1992, p. 32) indicates the subversive potential of lesbianism to challenge heterosexist positions. As out lesbian playwrights with mixed race backgrounds, Kay and Mason-John rise to this potential, freely interrogating dominant and subcultural attitudes to race and sexuality that offer pertinent models for a black feminist practice that speaks to our twenty-firstcentury selves. Chiaroscuro, Sin Dykes and Twice Over innovatively highlight internalised values – negative and positive – accrued from living in institutionally racist hetero-patriarchal societies, didactically discussing and critiquing prevailing images of black women, while paying equal attention to the entertainment aspect of theatre through song, dance, music and comedy. The combination of progressive lesbian presentation alongside an innovative use of theatre form enhances the subversive potential in these plays. The presentation of diverse images of lesbians implies a certain ‘insiderness’ by out lesbian playwrights who understand the complexities and can move beyond heterosexist representations. Kay writes, In all versions of Chiaroscuro my main interest has been communication. Can these four women communicate or not? What do they say with their silence? What don’t they say with their words? I wanted to show how difficult communication is in a racist and homophobic society. (Kay, 1987, pp. 82–83) In writing plays that deal politically with black lesbian lives Kay and Mason-John are indeed breaking a history of silence and saying important things that could forge the political change that Kay hopes for. They both refuse to reduce black women to the few types that are often found in black literary creations, and their characters are conceived through a barrage of questions and discussions about racial and sexual politics that counter simplistic assumptions about what it means to be black, female and lesbian in contemporary Britain. Communicating
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with a multi-racial audience encourages debate and dialogue that makes a significantly original contribution that might activate towards really ending racism, sexism and homophobia. As Lorde says in her discussion of ‘[t]he transformation of silence into language and action’ (Lorde, 1984, p. 40), ‘it is not difference which immobilises us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken’ (44).
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Part III Performances
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6 Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop
Modernising mime Black Mime Theatre (BMT) was formed in 1984 by David Boxer and Sarah Cahn ‘to encourage the emergence of Black performers in Mime’ (Drowning programme, p. 9). Denise Wong joined the company as an actress at its inception, and took over as Artistic Director in 1986 until the company folded in 1998. Under Wong’s leadership BMT sought to develop a new mime that reflected their concerns as black British people. Their aesthetic was premised on the principle that ‘[i]t is a world of gesture, facial expression, and sound that reveals what we have in common’ (BMT Press Pack), thus they aimed ‘to provide entertaining and thought-provoking experiences, relying on visual rather then verbal skills to break through barriers of language, accent, age and class’ (BMT Press Pack). BMT wanted to break down barriers of age, class and race, and they drew influences from black street culture, cartoons, comic strips, popular film, music, television and visual arts to develop versatile productions that could be toured internationally and performed as well on the street, or in youth and community centres, as in arts centres and proscenium arch theatres. BMT shows were performed in a broad range of national and international venues, including several productions as part of the London International Mime Festival and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They also drew from the styles and methods of prominent (white) 1980s dance and physical theatre companies, such as DV8, Moving Picture Mime Show, Théâtre de Complicité, Trestle and Volcano, and practitioners such as Paul Allain, Steven Berkoff, Nigel Charnock, Lecoq, Phillipe Gaullier, Robert Lepage and Mladen Materic. These diverse influences were amalgamated to initiate a move beyond the conventional 133
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perspectives of mime that were associated with the white-faced silent clown and develop a style that was accessible to broad audiences, especially to young black audiences. As Bernadine Evaristo explains, BMT shows were anything but silent, reflecting modern innovations in mime that moves beyond the classical traditions from which it stems. Gone is the silent classical mime of white painted faces and invisible walls. Instead the genre is much energised and modernised by the use of text, music, sounds, movement and dance. (Evaristo, 1992, p. 23) BMT’s performance style of a genre heavily influenced by film, television, popular music and physical theatre was inaugurated by The Men’s Troupe whose devised physical theatre performances incorporated hip-hop inspired percussion, human beatbox, music, song, dance, the creation of sound effects and speaking. The mime element was kept simple, mostly encompassing everyday actions – drinking, eating, opening doors, driving, ironing and so on – which were interspersed with stylised physical sequences and dance. The simplicity of the mime was such that the performers did not need to be formally trained, nor was prior knowledge of the form required to interpret their mime, which kept the shows accessible to diverse audiences. BMT’s challenge to Eurocentric traditions of mime and physical theatre is exemplified by the development of a style that evoked profoundly ‘black’ cultural gestures, movement, physicality and sound. The performances interrogated black cultural identity and experience, drawing on the performers’ shared patterns of oral and physical communication and incorporating their observations and interpretations of the world to explore the ways that black bodies move and sound, and the mannerisms and idiosyncrasies of black culture, experience and expression. Taking a quintessentially Eurocentric form and loading it with ‘black’ influences, gestures and styles of moving breaks down the elitism associated with mime and makes it entirely relevant to young black British people. Wong formed The Women’s Troop in 1990 to create opportunities for black women performers to work in physical theatre forms from which they are marginalised. The three Women’s Troop shows – Mothers (1990), about mothers and daughters, Total Rethink (1991), a spoof on Hollywood macho action hero blockbusters, and Drowning (1991), about women and alcoholism – exemplified BMT’s commitment to making entertaining and accessible issue-based performances with a special emphasis on issues of concern to women.1 The formation of The
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Women’s Troop led to alterations to the types of issues addressed by the company and to the overall performance aesthetic.2 They continued to draw inspiration from cinema, television and comic strip culture, and merged popular dance, music and songs with their own percussion rhythms, but one noticeable change from The Men’s Troupe’s approach was that less of an emphasis was placed on hip-hop style rap, and the women developed their own style grounded in a cappella singing and harmonising. The women’s shows’ energetic mixture of physical theatre with various elements of popular street dance styles and mime cemented BMT’s reputation for sketchbook style performances that emphasised the visual comic elements of mime. Evaristo’s preview of Drowning notes that ‘the company has developed an outrageously zany humour which is fast becoming its trademark’ (Evaristo, 1992, p. 23). Wong explains that ‘[t]he choice of using comedy was partially due to the prevalence of comedy in mime, but was also a deliberate choice to make the subject matter accessible’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 173). We often use comedy in our work because we tackle emotionally charged subjects. In time we may choose to use less comedy, but humour as a vehicle to make points for young people is very important. (173) In 1992, BMT secured three-year franchise funding from the Arts Council of England and related revenue funding from the London Arts Board and London Borough Grants Unit. These funds supported the merger of the male and female troops to form the Black Mime Theatre Ensemble.3 BMT Ensemble’s final production Mourning Song (1997) started research and rehearsals as a mixed gender project, but ended up as an all-female show, which, according to Wong, was ‘in a sense, a return to the women’s troop in terms of the energy that the piece now has’ (Mourning Song programme, p. 1). Rehearsals for each show usually lasted between eight and twelve weeks, starting out with an empty stage onto which the performers and director would scribe their responses to the subject under investigation. The company members conducted interviews and collated case stories and anecdotes from people in the specific communities around which a play was based (single mothers for instance, or women dealing with alcoholism) before proceeding to improvise around the issues raised to create the comic/sketchbook performance of the central themes with which the company became associated. Devising in this way allows
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opportunities for all of the company members to make their own input, thus articulating a variety of black women’s voices within each production. The rehearsal room is an experimental space for the performers to try out their ideas and discover together what works practically and aesthetically in the development of the final performance. BMT Women’s Troop’s devising of issue-based performances that present self-defined perspectives of their diverse experiences suggests a feminist sensibility on a basic level. The collaborative nature of devised work breaks down the conventional director–playwright–actor arrangement, and they replaced naturalistic text-based emphases with eclectic performances that incorporated the various influences of the devising company. The breakdown of the elitist and exclusive mime form within a devised context frees the performers to draw from their individual experiences and prior performance practice, bringing elements to the show that might not have formed part of their initial outlook and adding to the variety of the overall performance style. Wong’s directorial eye gave an overall shape to the productions, but building their shows around the performers’ own experiences and a multitude of case studies meant that contradictory viewpoints and styles were inevitably able to surface. Alison Oddey’s suggestion that devising allows the ‘potential freedom or opportunity to move in a number of different directions through a collaborative work process’ (Oddey, 1994, p. 3) is echoed in Wong’s account that sometimes shows would develop in ways that she had not anticipated. We decide what we want to achieve, then start working, researching, devising, trying things out. Sometimes we achieve something very different from what we conceptualized. [ ] Of the three women in Mothers, one was a session singer, and all had some experience of singing. So even when I had a certain kind of music imagined for the piece, I would find that my notion of what the music should be would change when I saw – or heard – what the performers could do, what they envisioned. (Goodman, 1993, pp. 170–71)
Mothers, matriarchs and black superwomen Mothers (1990) was The Women’s Troop’s inaugural production, which toured nationally and included performances at the 1991 London International Mime Festival. The three performers (Cindy Affleck, Paulina Graham and Sky Hunt) are dressed identically in loose black tracksuit
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bottoms, cerise tops and trainers, neutral clothing designed for movement and enabling them to play a host of different male and female characters throughout the performance – mothers, daughters, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives. The piece is made up of several short scenes and vignettes exploring how a girl’s development corresponds with her relationship with her mother. The performance gives a general overview of young women’s experiences – learning about their bodies, meeting their first boyfriends, having their first sexual encounters, their relationships with fathers, men, domestic abuse and so on. Mothers roughly follows the chronology of young women’s development from childhood to adulthood and becoming mothers themselves, but complete linearity is unsettled by the short vignettes and sketchbook style of the performance. Patricia Hill Collins argues that the idea of the superstrong black mother as ‘richly endowed with devotion, self-sacrifice, and unconditional love’ (Collins, 1991, p. 116) is a glorified image of black women inadvertently created and sustained by black men seeking positive images of their own mothers. Black feminist theorists, novelists and playwrights have started to unpick stereotypical images of black mammies, matriarchs, welfare mothers and supermothers and highlight the various mothering and (other) mothering styles that are informed by African-Caribbean systems of parenting. Carole Woddis felt that the performance’s merits lay in ‘offering a thoughtful antidote in the eternal expectation that mothers must always be perfect’ (Woddis, 1991, p. 61), fulfilling Wong’s aim to unsettle concepts of the black superwoman and make the audience ‘more aware of motherhood as a permanent role with lots of problems attached’ (Goodman, 1996b, p. 196). The first scene demonstrates BMT’s overall kaleidoscopic style of merging dialogue with movement, acrobatics and song. The three performers start in separate areas on the stage performing children playing games and singing a nursery rhyme, which is broken up with enactments of snippets from different scenarios that juxtapose the innocence of the children’s play with the pressures on their mothers. The loving and playful moments are undercut by the children re-enacting violent outbursts that they are subjected to. PERFORMER 1: “Who’s mummy’s favourite girl? (Exaggerated kisses) You are, and I love you.” [ ] (hums the sound of an ice-cream van) PERFORMER 2: Mummy, mummy can I have an ice-cream?
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“No you can’t have an ice-cream you’ve been a naughty girl.” Oh please can I have an ice-cream? “Only if you give mummy a big kiss” (Exaggerated kisses). [ ] PERFORMER 3: “I told you pow (slaps) to eat your dinner pow (slaps) and if you don’t eat your dinner pow pow (slaps twice) you’re going straight to bed (punches).”4 The next scene establishes a dichotomy between men and women that forms the basis for gender caricatures throughout the performance. A mother (Paulina Graham) plays with her daughter Patricia (Cindy Affleck) while her father (Sky Hunt) takes photographs. The mother nurtures the child by practising counting and getting her food and drink whilst the father captures a ‘daddy long leg’ and makes a joke of scaring Patricia by tossing it in her face. This scene highlights the stereotypical assumptions about men and women in patriarchal societies, setting up a division where women love, nurture and protect their children from brusque and insensitive men. Later scenes show the mother tending to her daughter at bath time where they bond through discussions of femininity in relation to make-up, women’s body parts and menstruation cycles, or domestic scenes of the woman cooking, cleaning and washing up. Men are depicted as chauvinist in extreme, as fathers and husbands who are controlling perpetrators of domestic abuse that starts innocuously with demands for dinner and potentially escalates into all-out violence. Mothers presents a broad sketch of these simplistic images of gender roles, which are contradicted and destabilised at various points throughout the piece. Perceptions of masculinity are undermined through comic caricatures, with one such moment showing the father struggling to muster up the strength to get the oil drain cap off from underneath his car only to succeed and find himself drowned in oil. Equally, the mother argues back against a system that locates her entirely in a domestic role by bickering with the father, threatening to throw his dinner in the bin and refusing to wash his clothes. Another scene evokes the pressures on women in capitalist patriarchal cultures where they are expected to acquiesce to the emotional and physical demands of partners and children, and combine good mothering and domestic duties with salaried work outside the home. The women rapidly play a variety of parts quickly after each other, which demonstrate their expected roles in society – mothers answering the door to an assortment of callers (sales people, meter readers, delivery drivers and Jehovah’s Witness preachers) as the children shout and play at their feet, women looking after
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demanding children, and women fulfilling men’s domestic, emotional and sexual demands. The scene builds up in intensity and pressure before exploding to end with a child witnessing a man hitting a woman ‘(punch) I told you (punch) to behave yourself (punch)’, before the couple embrace and the child lashes out at the man shouting ‘Leave my mummy alone!’ BMT’s style of undercutting tension with humour sees this scene quickly fade into the next. The dramatic climax of the beaten woman and the child’s protection of her mother is frozen for a short beat, before being undercut by the three performers slowly rising from the tableaux clicking their fingers to create the underlying percussion and backing rhythm of a 1950s love song. Bom, bo Bom (clicking fingers and moving one step forward and one step back) Bo bo bo Bom, bo Bom Bo bo bo Bom, bo Bom Bo bo bo Bom, bo Bom Bo bo bo Bo bo bo bo bo bo Bo bo bo bo bo bo Bom (two beats) Oh girl (backing: Bo Bom, bo bo bo Bom, bo Bom) You know I love you, oh girl You know I need you I love you, I want you, Oh girl (the lead singer does the splits and rips trouser gusset) Rip! The women’s movement becomes more exaggerated as the song descends into a caricature of male pop songs that are premised on constructing women as sexual objects. As Lizbeth Goodman points out, the humour in this scene comes from the gender reversal where the ‘three women sing the song as if they were men, crooning to their female audience’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 170). The exaggeration in the women’s impersonation highlights their critique of fading male pop stars desperately coveting female attention. Wong explains that the scene was trying to demonstrate that ‘what is sung about in ‘male’ love songs and what we represent in our songs as love are very different. The dichotomy
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makes a point. We pushed that to the limits, and made it comic as well’ (Goodman, 1996b, p. 197). BMT’s style of moving rapidly from scene to scene in a continuous performance means that the audience are quickly subjected to the whole gamut of emotions, from love to laughter, to pain and back again. The movement from the scene of domestic abuse to the song undercuts the tension with humour just as the first children’s scene juxtaposes their pleasure with pain. The next series of scenes show teenagers making the transition from childhood to womanhood – beginning to wear bras, starting to have their periods and having their first sexual encounters – and offers an alternative to the view of mothering presented in the first section. This series of scenes show the pressures that might cause exasperation and prevent demonstrations of love, affection and nurturing, resonating with Collins’ suggestion that ‘the demands of providing for children in interlocking systems of oppression are sometimes so demanding that they [ black mothers] have neither the time nor the patience for affection’ (Collins, 1991, p. 127). The three performers repeatedly mime the mundane cycle that women might face – ironing, hanging out washing, vacuuming, cleaning, cooking and typing – demonstrating the pressures on the working mum who also has to fulfil domestic duties. A daughter’s (Cynthia, played by Sky Hunt) request for her mum (Cindy Affleck) to cut her hair is met with exasperation, impatience and anger, rather than tenderness, exemplifying how day-to-day pressures might lead to stern mothering styles. This mother refuses to allow her daughter any autonomy, or nurture her move into womanhood, contradicting the images of the patient mother depicted in the first section. Cynthia’s mum adopts what Collins describes as a ‘strong disciplinarian’ (125) approach to ‘protect’ her daughter from impending womanhood. When Cynthia comes home from school early to find her mother naked and Mr Michaelson (Paulina Graham) emerging naked from an upstairs room, Mr Michaelson’s lewd acknowledgement that Cynthia is becoming a woman is met with her mum verbally admonishing her for wearing short skirts and make-up before throwing her out of the family home. The section continues to show Cynthia’s first sexual encounter with Clive (also played by Cindy Affleck), a security guard that she meets while shopping for clothes. The doubling of Cindy Affleck as the mother and Clive is used to infer parallels between the mother’s mundane sexual relationship with Mr Michaelson and her daughter Cynthia’s abusive first sexual encounter. The two performers stand separately on the stage, facing the audience, and mime mechanically
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undressing, while apparently talking to each other. Cindy Affleck (simultaneously as mum and Clive) spreads the bed linen and looks away as she mimes a sexual pushing action with heavy breathing sound effects. CINDY (as Mum): Look Michaelson, wait. (starts heavy breathing sound and pushing action) CYNTHIA: (in tears, squirming) Stop it! CINDY (as Mum, exhausted ): You not have enough? CYNTHIA: Stop it! CINDY (as Mum, disinterested ): Get off of me. CYNTHIA: (mimes pushing CLIVE off ) Stop it! CINDY (as Mum): Stop it. (CYNTHIA gets dressed ) (As CYNTHIA starts to leave a hand pulls her back) Cynthia returns home in tears and the women hug in a knowing embrace, but the sympathetic moment is quickly undermined by the mum’s stern refusal to discuss Cynthia’s request to start taking the contraceptive pill, which pre-empts the next series of scenes of Cynthia as a young single mother with two small noisy boys. Cynthia repeats the cycle of impatient, angry and brusque treatment that she had received from her mother and her experiences as a single mother gradually give her an understanding of the pressures that her own mother faced as a first-generation migrant bringing up children alone in Britain. These brief synopses show the two contrasting mothering styles depicted in Mothers, which highlights the obstacles of being perfect mothers all of the time when responding to the demands of nuclear families and as single parents. The inference of the good mother/bad mother dichotomy as split between married family woman and unmarried teenager is problematic, however. Caricatures of black men as incompetent, lecherous, and demanding, or taking little responsibility for the care of their children, plays into perspectives of feckless black masculinity and it is limiting that the role of nurturing and support, even when performed brusquely, is associated entirely with the mother. As Naseem Khan’s review indicates, ‘[u]sing stereotypes to attack stereotyping is paradoxical and tricky’ (Khan, 1991, p. 33). Despite these shortcomings, Mothers invites the audience to recognise women as people, rather than just in their function as mothers,
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a sentiment that is captured in the centrepiece song – ‘Unconditional Love’ – written especially for the show by Claude Challe. ‘Unconditional Love’ is performed three times throughout the piece – as an upbeat dance track in a club scene, as a poignant riff as Cynthia hugs one of her children at the end of a long day, and finally in its entirety at the end to leave the audience with the message that mothers have needs too. Yeah Hear out loud And here I cry Maybe cos I’ve been denied It’s a lonely life Look at me I’m here tonight But you can’t see my trepid past It’s a lonely life Looking at dreams In my head Remembering words my mother said It’s a lonely life Un-conditional Love Impossible, impossible, impossible (Lights fade)
Totally rethinking action Hollywood Total Rethink makes its feminist intervention as a critical ‘spoof on macho adventure movies’ (Total Rethink publicity flyer) that marginalise and objectify women. The piece is framed as the shooting of a film within a play, containing three caricatures of archetypal film or cartoon characters – the older male hero Jerry (played by Paulina Graham), his son Mikey (played by Syreeta Kumar), and his girlfriend Gloria (played by Sky Hunt) – all performed with exaggerated mock American accents. All of the performers also play a number of other supporting characters (including ice-cream vendors, checkout assistants and police women) as required by the piece.
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Gloria is constantly sidelined and humiliated by the acts of masculine bonding between father and son. One scene is set on the beach where Jerry and Mikey engage in ritualistic macho play fighting that excludes Gloria. Mikey’s tearful jealous rages about the attention his father gives to Gloria are met with the reprimand ‘be a man, Mikey, be a man, be a man’,5 followed by more play fighting that escalates in increasing violence. Mikey will go to any lengths to get his father’s undivided attention, and the men unite in their sadistic acts of cruelty towards Gloria – mimicking her, locking her up and sending her out into the sea to drown. The suggestion here is that there are direct correlations between the demands of masculinity established in childhood and those continued through adult displays of machismo and the violent action films that sideline or denigrate women. Clare Bayley’s review suggests that ‘Black Mime Theatre pinpoints with terrifying accuracy Hollywood’s obsession with casual sadism and the banality of cruelty. In the perverse hierarchy of shlock-horror women are at the bottom of the heap’ (Bayley, 1991, p. 33). Gloria is oppressed as a woman in a predominantly male film world where she is treated as a ‘bimbo’ and a sex object. A hiatus in the main story shows a female rookie cop halting what appears to be a supermarket hold-up by killing the robber, before discovering that she had misread that the situation was part of a flirtatious weekly role-play game between the customer and the checkout worker. Humiliated and exasperated, the policewoman turns the gun on herself suggesting that women are so undermined by their placement in action films that their only reprieve is death. The scene offers a parallel for Gloria’s plight as a woman in a man’s world, and the performance quickly returns to the central plot of a scene with Gloria, Jerry and Mikey where the father and son are continuing to mock, tease and send her up. The device of a film within a play means that the action is cut at pertinent moments and allows for the incorporation of film and mime slow motion techniques, comic asides and flashbacks to emphasise glimpses of feminist resistance or the implausibility of some moments. The first two cuts happen immediately after the humiliation of a woman – the first after Mikey and his father lock Gloria into a cupboard and the second after the policewoman shoots herself. The director momentarily cuts these scenes of woman’s embarrassment before quickly setting the camera rolling again. The third cut is not so straightforward, however, highlighting feminist resistance to the subjugating male gaze.
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GLORIA: (in tears) Why you making fun out of me? MIKEY: Because you’re so funny. GLORIA: I thought you loved me Jerry. JERRY: (mimicking) I thought I loved me too (laughs). GLORIA: Why are you doing this? Stop it! (JERRY and MIKEY laugh) JERRY/MIKEY: (mimicking) Why are you doing this? Stop it (laughs)! [ ] GLORIA: (screams) No oooooo! JERRY: No?! No’s not in the script! No’s not in the script! GLORIA: (shouts) No! DIRECTOR: Cut! What’s wrong? GLORIA: I am just sick and tired of playing bimbos. [ ] They’re always making fun out of me, calling me names, [ ] I just can’t cope anymore. I want to play characters with real substance, creativity, passion. You don’t even know my name now do you? DIRECTOR: Yes I do. GLORIA: Say it I said say it say it or she gets it? DIRECTOR: (racking his brain) She gets it. [ ] Course I know you’re name, it’s Susan Hula Hoop. GLORIA: (exasperated) Sharon Hula Hoop. DIRECTOR: Scriptwriters ‘Total Rethink’.
Gloria’s revolt comments on the marginalisation of (black) women within the Hollywood film industry, where they are constructed simply as objects for the male gaze, and she seems perched to answer back to the long history of oppressive representations by refusing to continue in the vein of the script. Bayley saw this scene as having the potential to make a challenging statement that was not followed through as fully as it could have been.
Once Gloria has stood up and declared herself a feminist, what next? How can she transform the genre? Can the balance somehow be redressed? Black Mime don’t seem sufficiently confident of the answer to this question, and so revert rather quickly to the frenzied momentum of comedy and parody, rendering the show enjoyable, but not so much a total as a partial rethink. (Bayley, 1991, p. 33)
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Total Rethink highlights how (black) women are constructed in mainstream film discourses, but, as Bayley points out, the critique does not extend itself to suggest solid alternatives, which perhaps also gives some indication of the futile difficulties of trying to subvert the Hollywood system from within. Nevertheless, the final suggestion is hopeful that there can be different outcomes for women in a (feminist) fictional world as the director cuts the action, rewinds and plays the scene again to show Gloria attacking the father with slurring insults and smacking Mikey before knocking them both out with kicks and punches reminiscent of video games. The depiction of Gloria’s ability to win over the men insightfully pre-empts the spate of Hollywood victorious female action heroines of the twenty-first century in films such as Kill Bill 1 (2003) or Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).6 Total Rethink opens with an audition to find the most sinister Mikey and ends with a man, his son and girlfriend leaving the cinema having just watched the film. The son’s (Mikey) sense of travesty that ‘the boy died’ and the man’s (Jerry) perception that ‘the father was the best thing in it’ are drowned out by the woman’s (Gloria) answering back to them, clearly revelling in the prospect of a newfound ‘girl power’ encouraged by the character’s resistance. The reprise of a song to the tune of Laura Branigan’s 1982 pop hit ‘Gloria’, used earlier in the performance to denigrate and dismiss Gloria’s attempted revolt, is now replayed to celebrate the energy and power that she requires for feminist intervention. Calling Gloria Gloria Gloria Gloria Gloria Gloria Gloria I think I got your number, Gloria I think you got energy, energy I think you got power, power I think you got everything, everything I think that you’re a woman Feminist, feminist Was it something that I said? Put those voices in her head Calling Gloria Gloria (Lights fade)
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Drowning women’s sorrows Drowning explores some of underlying reasons for alcoholism among women and the dangers of recreational drinking. The piece was developed with substantial research into statistics of women’s alcohol use and discussions with women in recovery from alcoholism. The Women’s Troop wanted to highlight the broadly gendered attitudes towards male and female drinking that their research identified, to show the double-standard whereby drinking among men is celebrated and encouraged whereas women’s excess drinking is frowned upon. The performance demonstrates this dichotomy by a split between maleoriented recreational drinking, which is sanctioned by pub-culture games that go hand in hand with loutish behaviour and disrespect for women, and women drinking alone to numb emotional pains or to ease the pressures of work and childcare. One scene, using only gestures and sound, caricatures three white men having a rowdy beer drinking contest, clearly having fun in their excess indulgence and egging each other on to direct unwanted lewd attention to three women who are drinking quietly together. Women’s drinking, on the other hand, is associated with struggle, and the shame of finally admitting that one might have a problem. Drowning breaks down the assumed split between private or solo drinking and recreational binging by showing humorous scenes of enjoyable recreational drinking invariably breaking out into arguments or violence that result in the women being left drinking alone. The piece is organised around the stories of three women – Anna (played by Cassi Pool), Karen (played by Tracey Anderson) and Remi (played by Arosemaya Dierdrick); each segment follows one of their lives from childhood to adult alcoholism. All of the women are shown as victims of troubled childhoods who seek solace in alcohol. The three stories are framed as if in a counselling session where the character has begun to acknowledge her problems with alcohol and has turned to a 12-step recovery programme, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. The performers present voice-overs to introduce each character, preceding a flashback that shows their route into alcohol, which is followed by a summary voice-over to end each section. Their three stories indicate that there is no singular route into alcoholism, but they have all suffered traumas of abandonment, abuse, bullying or neglect. Anna is caught in the middle of her parents’ loveless marriage where they embroil her in their arguments and power struggles. She is frightened of her domineeringly violent father, bullied at school and
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sent away to live with her aunt. A visual/dance scene, performed to ‘It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To’ in a cappella song and rap versions, shows how Anna starts recreational drinking as a teenager and continues ‘every weekend for the next ten years’7 always with the same result of complete inebriation and an inability to function. Karen is teased and disrespected at school, developing low self-esteem that continues throughout her adult life where she binges on alcohol to relieve her anxieties. Drowning uses slow motion to highlight moments of feminist resistance. One such scene is a visual scene showing the pressures on Karen as she serves two male potential business partners in her restaurant. These characters are clearly conceived as white men who demonstrate their status and power over Karen through belittling gestures and patronising laughter. Their goading demands are interspersed with a flashback that reminds her of past feelings of disempowerment and the action breaks into a slow motion of her pouring a bottle of wine over them, painfully squeezing one of their genitals, and knocking them both out with a simultaneous punch that follows through to arms raised in victory, before quickly cutting back to continue the scene in its original rhythm to show her acquiescing to their demands. The use of slow motion emphasises this as a moment of fantasy where Karen gets to enact her rage towards male oppression, and the quick return to her compliance with their orders suggests that (black) women have to suppress angry feelings in order to function in (white) patriarchal society. Karen’s story is used to suggest that there is a very thin line between recreational drinking for pleasure and the solo drinker’s serious alcohol abuse. Karen’s work pressures and incessant teasing from friends causes her to get increasingly drunk at after-work trips to the bar and Smokey Robinson’s ‘Tracks Of My Tears’ plays over the sound system as she angrily alienates her friends and is eventually left drinking alone. The summary voice-over describes perceptions of attitudes towards drinking as gendered, focusing on her (ab)use of alcohol as a way to numb repressed anger. No one tries to understand, They just see a woman who is drunk and I’m labelled there and then. If I was a man, someone would at least try and take my part, They would say I was misunderstood. But I’m not a man, I’m a woman, Under pressure, insecure, and frightened of my anger. Remi is uprooted from her grandmother in the Caribbean and sent to live with her mother who has migrated to England. Brought to
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a strange land to live with a woman that she hardly knows, she engenders the difficulties of migrants who leave the familiarity of their homelands and start new lives abroad. Remi’s romantic relationships are destroyed by her alcohol abuse and she is left bringing up two demanding young children alone with trips to the off-licence or drowning her sorrows while the children play in the beer garden providing ways to escape. The final image shows her repeatedly guzzling large glasses of alcohol as the children are left fending for themselves and wondering when they will get to go home. Remi reflects on the dangers of alcohol (‘Cirrhosis? Liver Cancer? Urinary Infections? Blackouts?’) as ‘horror stories – a way of keeping women in their place’ and her alcoholism becomes a way of resisting falling in line with the expectations of women as wives and mothers. The show’s centrepiece song – ‘You Got Me Drowning’ – is sung a cappella as she rejects a marriage proposal and reaches for the ‘safety’ of the bottle as her partner leaves. You make me feel warm, You make me feel safe, You make me feel loved and in the right place, Broken promises, You got me drowning. You make me feel pretty, Ooh, make me feel giddy, Make me feel lame, With deepness of shame, Broken promises, You got me drowning. The final stylised scene shows the three performers recovering from ‘drowning’, repeating the action of falling off chairs with one arm outstretched and climbing back on again, before the closing voice-over presents a government health campaign style warning of the problems associated with drink and their resonance for women. Alcohol is a legal drug. Alcoholism is a dirty word. Where do I go to get help, I’m stuck? (repeat several times) It is the only drug that affects every major organ in the body – the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and brain.
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Women are seen as carers and nurturers, responsible for the moral welfare in society. When they become dependent on drugs in a way that changes their role in society, the penalties are harsh. No one considers that maybe society has been too keen to market a potent drug, one that is considered legal. That a reduction in alcohol consumption is in direct conflict with the interests of the government. It can happen to anyone (repeat twice) (Lights fade) Drowning presented the common elements of women’s alcoholism that the company members uncovered in their research, and the piece was kept accessible for young audiences with these simple and straightforward stories. The catalysts for women’s alcoholism are familiar issues of broken relationships, single-parenting and emotional and sexual abuse, which, although obvious and simplified, offer a thoughtprovoking starting point for the young women in the audience to reflect on their own alcohol use. However, the performance was criticised for being too one-sided, showing women’s drinking causing angst and violence, and one would expect a provocative and challenging feminist critique to present a more balanced view of the issues.
Death, suicide and mourning songs Mourning Song was BMT Ensemble’s final show before funding cuts led to the company disbanding in 1998. BMT wanted to explore ‘a subject which was felt to be taboo [ ] to promote a better understanding of death’ (Mourning Song programme, p. 1). The performance draws on a range of cultural traditions and rituals, to explore concepts of death, dying, suicide and bereavement. Mourning Song perhaps best exemplifies how BMT’s devising process takes on board the personal histories and experiences of the individual company members. The five performers (Marva Alexander, Gurpreet Bhatti, Tracy Bickley, Hazel Holder and Mai Vu) are from diverse cultural backgrounds (black, mixed-race, Asian and Vietnamese) with a wide range of cultural and performance experiences that clearly inform the piece. Forum theatre methods were used during the rehearsal process and the show incorporated various foreign
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languages, including African chanting, Punjabi and Spanish, as well as African dancing and drumming. Mourning Song culminated BMT’s 13-year existence and extends their experiments with form to merge signature tropes (women playing men, humour, mime, slow motion movement and acrobatics) with carefully choreographed movement, multimedia projection, poetry and gospel music. A notable difference from the previous BMT women’s shows is a shift away from the literal storytelling and use of humorous clichés towards placing a greater emphasis on abstract movement, music and mime. There are still moments of slapstick parody, notably in an opening scene that comically sets up the sound and image of a multi-ethnic London market replete with the various character types we might find there (ticket touts, fragrance sellers, ‘herbmen hustling’8 and vagrants begging) but the overall feel of the performance is generally more serious, combining popular songs, spiritual chants, a cappella gospel singing, and stylised movement to create a mesmerising spiritual ambience on the candlelit stage. Cross-cultural concepts of dying, suicide and grieving are juxtaposed through the interweaving of three central stories – a black man shot dead in the street, a (mixed race) child committing suicide, and a Vietnamese boatwoman jumping ship before she reaches the final destination. The performance moves back and forth between these three stories showing the issues that have led up to and caused the deaths and how friends and families cope with their bereavement. Senseless ‘Black on Black’ violence reverberates through the death of a black male drug dealer (Michael) shot dead in a turf war, and the effect that his murder has on his lover left to grieve. A mother mourns the death of her young son (Darren) who is subjected to racist taunts, beaten up and left for dead at a bus stop, before eventually scalding himself to death in a boiling hot bath whilst trying to wash the colour off his black skin. A Vietnamese boatwoman jumps overboard, choosing to die rather than drift onwards to the unknown. Her grieving friend witnesses the suicide, and is literally haunted by the experience as she ends up working as a cleaner in a foreign land, recalling the lyrics of the emancipation song ‘Oh Freedom’: ‘And before I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord, And be free.’ This story is inspired by Mai Vu’s childhood memory of the journey from Vietnam to Australia, while also symbolising the migration across waters for black people coming to Britain and evoking the Middle Passage of slave ships making overcrowded journeys to an unknown land. The woman sacrifices herself to save the others on the overcrowded boat that is in danger of sinking, which also provides an
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allegory for slaves offering themselves to the water as a way of linking with their African ancestry and those who would rather die than be enslaved. bell hooks identifies ‘a mood of rejoicing and celebration to death that has been a unique characteristic of traditional, Southern-rooted, diasporic African-American ways of dying [ ] informed by African, Caribbean, and South American approaches to dying’ (hooks, 1993, p. 1). BMT Ensemble use the mantra that ‘death is a celebration of life’ (Mourning Song publicity flyer) and emphasise reminiscing as one way to cope with the sudden loss of a loved one. Each death is followed by the bereaved recalling happy memories of their lost ones, such as Darren’s mum remembering happier bath times and Michael’s lover poetically describing his positive qualities. The difficulty for both women comes from other people’s attitudes towards their bereavements and the refusal to openly discuss and support their grief. The final song provides a reminder of the inevitability of death as a response to Wong’s sense that ‘the only certainty we have in life is that we are going to die, and yet we spend our lives shying away from it’ (Mourning Song programme, p. 1). We all, every one of us, have to come home again We all, every one of us, have to come home again Some of us were born on the bottom We lived on the bottom We grew up on the bottom And then we declared That we’d never return to the bottom We all, every one of us, have to come home again We all, every one of US (Lights fade) Mourning Song is the most abstract of BMT women’s shows, epitomising their fragmented style of performances that do not follow a wholly linear sequence. Uncannily for a mime show, reviewers’ lasting impressions focus more on the way it sounded, the choral qualities of the songs and chants, rather than on the visual elements. Several reviews imply that the most easily understandable parts of the performance were communicated verbally rather than visually. Adrian Turpin suggests that ‘[t]he parts of the story told through gestures are often incomprehensible’ (Turpin, 1997, p. 23) and Lyn Gardner comments that ‘the mime work is imprecise and the movement repetitive. Worst of all it is often
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frustratingly difficult to work out exactly what is going on’ (Gardner, 1997, p. 14). The stylised elements are beautiful to watch, but difficult to interpret and translate into review or analysis that maintains a sense of the visual, which clearly complicates BMT’s quest to keep their mime simple and accessible.
Black feminist mime? Goodman ‘consider[s] Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop to be “black feminist theatre” in that it is made by black women, about black women, and is intended to raise questions of social concern, to represent the issues relevant to the everyday lives of many black women’ (Goodman, 1993, p. 172). Under her rubric, The Women’s Troop is feminist because they deal with issue-based content in a narrative form that is decidedly non-linear and breaks with realist conventions. A material feminist function is certainly accomplished through The Women’s Troop and The Black Women’s Training Project’s creating of opportunities for black women to work in a form that is conceived as predominantly white-male oriented. Women performers without formal dance, mime or physical theatre training could join the company and develop its own aesthetic that draws on recognisable black cultural tropes and popular stereotypes. BMT Women’s Troop’s work stands in its own right, and certainly can be seen to be feminist when we consider the limits for black women within mime and physical theatre, where white-led companies like DV8, Trestle or Théâtre de Complicité receive the most artistic and scholarly attention. The Women’s Troop shows draw attention to male supremacy and explore how gender behaviour is determined by patriarchal systems. Their cross-gender performances critique stereotypes of black and white masculinity through parodies such as Jerry and Mikey sparring in Total Rethink, the soul crooners in Mothers or the yobbish drinking contests in Drowning. The issue-based performances are designed to provoke thought and raise awareness about issues of particular relevance to women. Mothers was performed by three women, directed by a woman and aimed at ‘women, young mothers, [and] teenagers who might be becoming sexually active’ (172), and Goodman includes it as a black women’s entry in a list of ‘exemplary feminist plays’ (228). However, Wong was reticent about wholeheartedly applying the feminist label to Mothers, claiming that ‘[s]taunch feminists might think our work too naïve, or not political enough. We talk about motherhood rather than about “political issues” ’ (197). Wong explains that The Women’s Troop
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was founded as part of the company’s development towards the mixed ensemble and while they were committed to exploring issues from a female perspective the aim was never to develop a feminist mime. I have always been interested in women’s roles in the theatre – mainly because I’m an actress myself – and I wanted to try out the idea of a female group, to explore issues relevant to women. We needed to diversify and to recruit women in order to achieve a mixed ensemble. It needed to be a separate company at first, so the women could develop their own style and not be overshadowed by the men. (167) The impressionistic sketch book style fits concepts of feminist performance aesthetics that elide singular interpretations and provoke thought without determining any finite conclusions. Naturalism is broken down by the sheer number of different characters that each performer plays, coupled with their use of mime to represent the innumerable objects that would be set or props in realistic productions. All of the pieces discussed in this chapter used minimal sets – bare stages in Mothers and Total Rethink, three chairs in Drowning, and sticks in Mourning Song. However, BMT’s non-linear and issue-based style is part of the company’s ethos as a whole and not unique to the women’s shows, so while it is certainly possible to accept the company as offering an alternative to dominant theatre models, the idea that this constitutes a feminist sensibility, as distinct from women’s theatre, is arguable. BMT were uniquely the only black mime company in Europe, which distinguishes them from the majority of other black British theatre companies in operation during the 1980s and 1990s. If we compare them to DV8 or Théâtre de Complicité we are likely to consider their work less refined, simplified or even crude. However, they were not trying to emulate these (white) companies, and were trying fundamentally to develop a practice that was unique to them as black performance practitioners. To this end, they made significant innovations to mime and black performance aesthetics. The Women’s Troop’s relations to feminist aesthetics are debatable, but, as Khan comments, as an alternative (women’s) performance company ‘Black Mime Theatre has cracked the hardest task of all – disposing of the stereotypes of black work and mime work’ (Khan, 1991, p. 33).
7 Solo Voices: Performance Art, Dance and Poetry
Performance politics In a 1994 article for black listings magazine Artrage, Bernadine Evaristo highlights Catherine Ugwu’s (then Deputy Director of Live Art at the ICA) conviction that ‘[b]lack theatre may be disappearing in one form but it is reinventing itself as live art’ (Evaristo, 1994, p. 15). Ugwu’s Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance (1995) is the first book to offer detailed analysis of black live art in Britain. Ugwu argues that ‘[g]rowing numbers of black artists are engaging in live art practice, viewing it as one of the few remaining spaces available to express complex ideas of identity’ (Ugwu, 1995, p. 54). Ugwu highlights the centrality of cathartic testimonials in black women’s solo performance that ‘attempts to engage both the artist and the audience in a process of memorialisation, within which it is hoped some kind of purification will occur’ (61). Significantly, she sees the potential of live art ‘as a critique of the timidity and the undaventurousness of a large amount of the output of black theatre and performance in Britain in recent years’ (82). Similarly, Beth-Sarah Wright argues that black British performance poetry (a generic term that includes dub poetry, jazz poetry and hip-hop or rap poetry) is ‘commonly situated within the arena of struggle and the consequent empowerment of its exponents [ ] is multifaceted and engages with confrontations with issues of class, race, sex and other forms of social injustice and oppression’ (Wright, 2000, p. 274). The live artists and performance poets whose work will be discussed in this chapter draw on their autobiographical experiences to interrogate identity politics and explore themes of belonging, displacement and fragmentation that capture the complex dynamics of black women’s 154
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lives in Britain. As Wright observes, ‘the poetic themes often confront issues of historical racism, discrimination, contemporary politics, but not so much to document events, rather to, emotionally and quite obtrusively, relive moments and memories with the willing audience, in effect writing the history of the present’ (278).
‘The personal is political’: SuAndi’s This Is All I’ve Got To Say SuAndi OBE is a Manchester-based performance poet and Cultural Director of Black Arts Alliance (BAA) who is committed to addressing racism in the arts and campaigning to secure better conditions for black creative artists in Britain. She performs internationally in a range of contexts, including performance art venues, theatres, schools, youth/community centres, and at festivals and conferences.1 SuAndi believes that ‘[t]he most interesting stories in the world are our own’ (Ugwu, 1995, p. 154) and her performances draw heavily on her personal experiences of being a black woman with a white mother, which she shares to provocatively confront difficult issues of racism and sexism. This Is All I’ve Got To Say (1993) is a multimedia performance piece in which SuAndi sits on a stool reciting radical black poems in dialogue with the audience.2 British National Party (BNP) and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) propaganda have been distributed onto the audience’s seats, and taped excerpts of BNP speeches and KKK songs are played over the loudspeakers, accompanied by a ‘resistance to racism’ slide show of images of black power, black heroes, musicians and actors (including Ira Aldridge, Martin Luther King and Paul Robeson). The opening projection of an African proverb emphasises how history is open to interpretation and stakes a claim for the voice of the black woman poet and the need to speak and define her own history or else risk being spoken for by others for their needs and to her detriment. The performance presents a counter-history of a black woman whose lineage can be traced back to slavery, evoking the ancestral oral tradition of the griot to celebrate her survival and continued resistance. SuAndi directly addresses the audience with ad libbed ironic asides and self-reflective critiques that explain the direction of the piece, offer reassurance and tell stories of the personal experiences that inform the work. One anecdote describes how institutional racism affects how she is labelled as a ‘black woman practitioner’, where she is rarely invited into schools as a performer but is interminably asked to contribute
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to ‘multicultural week, book week, Africa week, peace week [and] positive image week’.3 Another story tells of being able to buy models to build your own miniature replica slave ship from a museum in Hull, which she uses to remind the audience that contrary to ideas that slavery is in the distant past its resonances remain with us. ‘We carry the genes of our ancestors inside us’ and neo-slavery attitudes are passed down through subsequent generations, which the BNP literature and KKK imagery and recordings are a reminder of. The personal approach means that the poems and anecdotes are slightly modified and tempered for different audiences and she uses laughter, silence and direct audience gaze to underscore the sentiment in response to the performer/spectator dynamic of each performance. This Is All I’ve Got To Say is conceived in terms of black women’s empowerment through SuAndi’s challenge to the idea that black people who continue to discuss slavery have a chip on their shoulders. She situates her compulsion to keep questioning the past as part of her healing process and each performance acts as a catharsis for her personalpolitical anger through a raw didactic style that nudges the consciousness of the spectator and opens up important dialogues about racial oppression. The poems explore the myriad ways that black women have been mistreated through ‘domestic violence [ or] love turned to rape’ and the audience are dually addressed as the perpetrators of love’s hurts and people whose ancestors traded slaves: ‘People say that I tell the same ole story, that I should let the past rest, but I can’t stop myself asking, why did you hurt me so? Taking so much, leaving nothing.’ The performance highlights black women’s strength to survive neocolonial conditions. One poem narrates the story of a black woman whose weary legs carry her up from slavery, through forced and voluntary migration, ‘across waters wild [ ] through cotton picked and whipped and lashed [ ] to reclaim my space, place, in humanity’. ‘Life’ defiantly declares, ‘I’ve been called Mamma, Aunt Jemima, even “Girl”. I’ve been chained and I’ve been shackled, But now I’m on the freedom trail’ (SuAndi, 1990, p. 61). ‘Playing for Life’ epitomises how SuAndi’s confrontational poetry style raises pertinent questions about race and representation. The accompanying slides project caricature comic strip images of black buffoonery and minstrelsy as the poem sardonically recounts the various ways that acting is central to her survival as a black woman in a white-dominated society.
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Playing for Life Am I an actress! You’re fooling. Ask me if I’m black. Ask me that, go on ask me that. The role I play wasn’t written just for me. The script is etched upon my heart. With birth of life I learnt my part. The stage I play is all the world. ’gainst backdrops painted shades of white Is how I’m seen and heard. Upstage I play adversity. Downstage I act humility. Stage left perform soliloquy. Stage right hear the freedom in my delivery. Sometime the audience the ‘I’ cannot see As backstage my voice speaks distant hauntingly. And in their seats a quivering mass Pray for the guilt ridden scene not to last. In mime I’m brilliant See the emotion in my eyes. The silence is terrifying For in silence there are no lies. Sometimes I do comedy Yes, yes, laugh at me. Laugh on till your tears flow. Laugh, enjoy my show. Do I sing Honey I can hit a note. Soulful melodious, so rich in the Blues You heart will jolt. You’ve seen my dance, Seen me flick and twist. There’s that rhythm in my feet Upon which you insist. The actress has many faces There are many sides to me. And you will be mesmerised
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In your search for my reality. In centre stage I am the star. The depth of my talent has taken me far. And this play I am in is 400 years old. The end is not yet written. The final chapter still untold. And you have been watching Will then finally understand That the need for all my acting Has been your oppression Whiteman (© SuAndi, 1992, pp. 6–7) Until the final verse, the poem is a light-hearted critique of stereotypes of black performers as comedians, dancers and singers, and recognising that this moment might cause particular discomfort SuAndi breaks the audience/performer boundary and seeks out a white male audience member’s hand to shake to emphasise that dialogue, facing and discussing issues rather than ignoring them or pretending that they do not exist, is an important part of the process of resolving the past and moving forward. The importance of this moment becomes clearer as the final story acknowledges her mixed parentage, her African father and white Liverpudlian mother from who she learnt ‘that all white people are not the same. So I won’t hate all of you [ ] Impossible to hate all of you [ ] Bloody stupid to hate all of you [ ] Just the racist bigots.’ The last slide, a picture of her mother, pre-empts a later project in which she celebrates the significance of her female lineage.
Mother/me: The Story of M The Story of M (1994), a tribute to her white mother, is one of SuAndi’s most requested works nationally and internationally.4 SuAndi plays the character of Margaret, who is dying of cancer, and the piece is set in a hospital room where she sits on a chair and bed and recounts memories of her experiences of bringing up mixed race children in Liverpool and Manchester in the 1950s and 1960s. The Story of M is a cathartic retrospective of race relations in 1950s and 1960s Britain, inviting the audience to consider how far attitudes to race have changed and, as Ugwu argues, to ‘expose the limited ground covered in eradicating racism in all its guises’ (Ugwu, 1995, p. 68). The Story of M uses similar strategies of audience address and ad libbing as This Is All I’ve Got To Say, beginning with M announcing ‘I’ve
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got cancer’ (SuAndi, 2002, p. 2) before proceeding to reminisce about her life with projected slides of family photographs acting as prompts for the memories that she shares with the audience. The final slide reveals a photograph of M, making it clear for the first time that she is white – SuAndi’s mother Margaret who brought her children up singlehandedly and was subjected to racial abuse because they were black. There are clues to M’s ethnicity throughout the piece – such as her ardent Catholicism – but these remain inconclusive until the last slide is shown, and the audience would often gasp at this final revelation because they had assumed that SuAndi was playing herself – a black woman.5 At this point, SuAndi removes the hospital gown and appears as herself to explain the layers in the piece where ‘M is for Margaret, M is for Mother, And now M for Me. And my name is SuAndi’ (18). The biography works on several levels, as a tale of Margaret as retold by and through SuAndi, a black woman embodying and replaying her version of her white mother’s story, and also as a story of SuAndi’s childhood. By knowing Margaret, the audience gets to know SuAndi, who has been shaped by her mother’s resistance to racism and determination to raise her children to be proud of their black heritage in the face of hostility. The audience is positioned to empathise with both the mother and the daughter as targets of racism, as they are told about the literal effects of institutional racism towards a daughter refused entry to ballet school and a mother who ‘racially is marked through her choice of black relations and mixed-race children’ (Aston, 2003, p. 145) as Elaine Aston argues. Aston suggests that Margaret is ‘ “othered” by mixed race relations [thus] also viewed as a “black” mother’ (145).6 SuAndi ‘wrote M following a mediocre production that closed with homage to white women who had endured racism following their interracial marriages’ (SuAndi, 2002, p. 1), completing much of the piece on her train journey home to Manchester. The rawness of an immediate response to racism is captured throughout the stories of harassment and hostility that M recounts – of her children being exoticised, having their hair patted to check the texture or their skin rubbed to see if the colour will come off, or being subject to racial abuse and police brutality. M also experiences direct racism, where she is spat at on the streets, ignored by neighbours and refused credit or mortgages because ‘they didn’t give credit to coloured families’ (12). As the working-class white mother of black children, M’s anxieties about her children’s safety differs from the mothers of white children. One story describes how she left her son Malcolm to look after SuAndi,
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then aged seven, while she worked nights, returning home to find that the police had raided the house looking for Malcolm and finding nothing but SuAndi ‘Home Alone’ (10) had taken her to the police station where she was left waiting all night without contacting her mother or even Social Services. Recollections such as these identify the effects of a racist patriarchy and present an alternative view of policemen as perpetrators of abuse that fail to protect Margaret or her children. M’s refusal to be compliant with racist treatment is foreground as she openly defends her children and confronts bigoted attitudes. She is thankful that ‘no one wanted a Black lad’ (4), which meant that her son was not taken away for adoption as the white babies of single mothers might have been. She slaps a child that makes racist comments to her daughter, and retaliates to a neighbour’s remark ‘ “Don’t cut the branches on that side, I don’t want those niggers looking in on me” ’ (13) by erecting her own big fence ‘To stop that racist [l]ooking in on us. To stop him looking in on us’ (13). These stories are balanced with M’s account that as much as her children’s consciousnesses were shaped by the negative effects of racism, they were also positively influenced by the impact of the 1960s Black Power resistance movement where her son in particular was empowered by ‘reading the Solidad Brothers and quoting [Malcolm] X’ (14). M’s memories are presented as snippets of thoughts, non-linear and fragmented, moving back and forth. There is an improvisatory quality to the performance that responds to the particular audience dynamic and at one point M appears to lose her trail of thoughts and asks the audience for a prompt of where she is, opening up a dialogue that refuses to allow them to watch passively. The relationship created between M and the audience is such that she is able to challenge instances of complicity in racism. After describing how she solved the issue of ensuring that everyone knew that her daughter was clean by embroidering the days of the week onto her school uniform and alternating daily between jumpers and cardigans, the audience’s laughter is cut short by M’s interjection. You’re laughing, I’m laughing. But it’s not funny to be called dirty and smelly. So why are we laughing. (8)
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By centering on the lineage from M’s mother to SuAndi, and highlighting M’s teachings to her daughter, The Story of M invokes black feminist sensibilities of mothers as central to ensuring the passing down of the knowledge and tools for black women’s survival in white supremacist patriarchal societies. Even though her mother is white, she is still perceived as best able to equip her daughter with the necessary skills and the ultimate homage honours SuAndi’s proud black mixed race identity conceived and nurtured by a loving mother who ‘instils in her children a sense of honour for their bloodline to Africa, a bloodline maintained through constant contact from the father’ (SuAndi, 2006, p. 127). So, if any of you think that all mixed raced people Grow up confused, without identity Think again [ ] I know exactly who I am – I am a Black woman A mixed race woman I am proud to be a Nigerian daughter [ ] And I am equally proud to be the daughter of a Liverpool woman of Irish decent. Confused. Get out of here. (SuAndi, 2002, p. 18)
Power dancing: Susan Lewis’s Walking Tall and Ladies Falling Susan Lewis (now Subassa Imani Lewis) is a mixed race (Vincentian/English) dance-based performance artist whose work includes productions for the ICA, Shinkansen and the Arnolfini.7 Lewis’s performance pieces merge self-choreographed dance and movement with sound effects, costumes, films and slides to explore how black women’s bodies are located within racialised dynamics of gender and power. Walking Tall (1993) and Ladies Falling (1994) were performed as part of the ICA’s Respect (1993) and More Respect (1994) seasons and internationally toured as a double-bill.8 Lewis sees her ‘creativity as a vehicle to heal’9 and her performance work is pertinent to understanding herself as a black identified mixed race woman in Britain. Both pieces draw on
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Lewis’s personal biography to interrogate complex questions of identity and belonging and explore how notions of Britishness intersect with ideas about race, class and gender. Walking Tall ‘draws on the myth of Isis to examine the contemporary black female experience’ (Ugwu, 1995, p. 65). Lewis responds to how black women’s self perception is affected by Western ideals of beauty and femininity in an attempt to counter internalised racism and celebrate resistance to subjugating images of black womanhood. Lewis’s inspiration for the piece came from her recognition that black women are typically rendered absent from images of beautiful women, where goddesses for example are usually conceived as white, and she wanted to make a performance in which black women could see themselves positively reflected and recognise their beauty, struggle and vulnerabilities.9 The piece was devised over a period of a year and a half, during which she held informal discussion groups with a cross-section of about eighty black British women between nine and eighty years old, consisting mainly of the British-born second-generation and older first-generation migrants. The women met in groups of about ten at a time to reflect on their lives as black women and their stories and experiences are integrated into the production, primarily as a collage of recorded sound bites that capture black women’s resistance to racist and sexist projections and fetishisations: ‘I wouldn’t change my colour for anything [ ] We were just used as rape machines [ ] We are powerful [ ] We are beautiful [ ] We’ve got life, passion and a lot of soul’ (148–49). The incorporation of recorded interview extracts means that a multiplicity of black women’s voices are heard, which offers a political backdrop for Lewis’s fairly abstract dance. The effectiveness of the piece as a political comment on black womanhood is built upon the blending of seemingly abstract dance movements with a soundscape that references the political history and context in which black women’s identities are made and understood. Walking Tall highlights black women’s struggle to feel powerful and beautiful in the face of a denigrating Western white male gaze. Hair is a central symbol because black people’s natural, kinky hair has historically been vilified as ugly. Refusing to straighten hair by pressing, perming or relaxing, and not wearing a weave-on or extensions, is seen as a resistance to Eurocentric notions of feminine beauty. These debates have shifted in recent years, but were key concepts in black women’s literature and performance throughout the 1980s and 1990s.10 ‘We are powerful, we are beautiful’11 is repeated on the soundtrack as Lewis stands naked at the start of the performance, covering her face, crying, shaking and
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refusing to look, before getting dressed in a white vest and black shorts. Two further soundscapes ‘feminine, feminine, feminine’ and ‘dem a bleach up dem skin’ refer to the measures taken by some black women to achieve Western ideals of beauty as Lewis peeps through her hands to look at the audience. In her nakedness, her pubic and armpit hair matches her natural afro and combines with her hairy legs to state a defiance of notions of beauty and femininity that have been augmented by a white Western patriarchal gaze. Lewis counters suggestions of the problematic insinuations of exposing a black woman’s body on stage with the explanation that the nakedness is used as a symbolic gesture to ‘start in total power’,9 an allusion to being born naked with the ‘power in not having to hide, which is lost as the world scribes us’.9 As if to underscore her resistance to typical readings of black women’s nudity, she removes her clothes again during the performance to confrontationally expose her body while returning the audience’s gaze. Lewis interrogates how racial binaries are invoked to position mixed race women, who have historically been excluded by black and white people, conceived as confused split subjects or eroticised as sexy lighter shades of black. These contradictory impulses are displayed through the enactment of a manic dance to a soundscape of conflicting voices of fantasies and fears projected onto the light-skinned black woman – ‘exotic creole princess sexy very sexual split psyche madness’, which provides a socio-cultural context for linking the movement to concepts of mixed race identity. Lewis uses similar performance styles in Ladies Falling, which explores questions of cultural identity and Britishness through an interrogation of notions of Englishness resonant with nineteenth-century imperialism and Empire. The opening sound collage merges Rule Britannia with English Country Garden and Jerusalem whilst various photographic stills of rural English fields, symbols of British imperialism such as the Union Jack flag and English landmarks such as Tower Bridge are quickly flashed up on a television screen. The tunes and images provide a backdrop for Lewis’s exploration of the constraints imposed on women by colonial concepts of femininity. The perspective of Englishness, vis à vis the colonial/country landscapes that are implied by the music and images, is immediately disrupted by Lewis’s presence as a black woman in the space. A mantelpiece next to the television is carefully arranged with photos and objects that celebrate her British-Caribbean heritage – a graduation photo, a photo of a woman sitting on the grass with her children and a souvenir tea towel map of St Vincent that highlights tourist attractions, but, as Marie-Anne Mancio points out, ‘has
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no reference to the slave trade or plantations’ (Mancio, 1996, p. 127). However, a voice-over reminds the audience of St Vincent’s colonial history of banana exportation and acknowledges the different stories of black migrants and their children. Ladies Falling reflects on how colonial histories and subsequent migration to Britain have complicated notions of Britishness. One anecdote describes being sat near two white women on a bus who were discussing the Brixton riots as though she was not black, with the suggestion to ‘send ’em back to where they came from’12 causing particular discomfort for a British-born mixed race woman with English parentage. Another story recalls a white British man deeming her to be ‘more British than the British themselves’, which raises the question of precisely who counts as British in his refusal to acknowledge that ‘Britannia chose thousands of us to be British.’ The performance evokes the triangular route of the exploitative transatlantic slave trade from Britain to Africa to the Caribbean, referring specifically to three key commodities of slave labour – tea, sugar and rum.13 Lewis was interested in ‘what happened to white women while black women were being enslaved, [ ] why didn’t white women do something?’9 and the performance interrogates white women’s complicity in rendering black women ‘other’. Lewis adopts the exaggerated mannerisms of an upper-class white Victorian English lady. Dressed in a bonnet, bodice, bloomers and a crinoline covered with layers of petticoats and a skirt, she performs pouring and sipping tea from a white china tea set with several spoons of sugar and a dash of rum. After she has finished, she holds out the cup and waits for the servant to come and clear it away, at which point the audience are given their first reminder that she does not have the status that she is trying to embody because no servant is forthcoming. The lady rebelliously drops and smashes the cup and rings a bell for a servant to clear away the mess, at which point a film shows a black woman’s hand trying to piece the cup together, sweeping up the debris and scrubbing the floor. This action is repeated at several points throughout the performance to imply that privileged white women are complicit in the enslavement and oppressive ‘othering’ of black women. Each time the film shows bags of sugar falling and scattering, teacups falling and smashing, or rum bottles falling and spilling, it is a black woman’s hand that cleans up the mess as a Caribbean woman’s voice-over explains the effects of cleaning products such as caustic soda on her skin and overwork on her body. Lewis is a black woman wearing the costume and mimicking the mannerisms of white upper-class femininity, and the clash between
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her (black) body and what she appears to represent (white femininity) is used to critique dominant perspectives of femininity and colonialism. She particularly explores how concepts of femininity determined by Victorian ideals and clothing are restrictive for women. She gradually undresses throughout the piece, peeling off the layers that constrict femininity, and bemusedly playing with the crinoline as a gesture of resistance to the restrictions that it imposes. Once the clothing is removed she is able to move freely, walking balancing a spoon of sugar without spilling it as a mimicry of being in a finishing school lesson learning how to be a proper lady. The interplay of the costume and gestures with Lewis’s actual race accentuates the critique of gender by making apparent her performance as an upper-class Victorian lady. The costume and the particular mannerisms used to drink the tea are made strange by their enactment by a black woman, which critiques their function at the centre of the dominant culture. The colonial discourse evoked in the performance and the literal challenge to such a discourse by the placement of a black woman in the costume of an upper-class white woman exemplify the oppositional stance in Ladies Falling as a clear example of a black feminist critique of normalising regimes of race and gender. A similar critique is evoked by recordings of Rule Britannia with Caribbean rhythms and reprisals of English Country Garden hesitantly played on a piano as though the pianist is learning to play, which troubles the usual formal placement of these tunes at the centre of English discourse. Mancio suggests that the new versions of Rule Britannia and English Country Garden imply a reconstruction of the value system to empower black women and speculates that the final video image of ‘ladies falling’ could refer to a (white) woman falling ‘losing her privilege to enable black women’ (Mancio, 1996, p. 132). The critique engendered in the Lewis’s performance certainly has connotations with the fall of the British Empire and creates the possibility of creating a ‘New Britain’ that incorporates the hybrid effects of interplay with Caribbean migrant voices.
Aristocratic aspirations: Valerie Mason-John’s Brown Girl in the Ring Valerie Mason-John’s solo performance piece Brown Girl in the Ring presents a similar exploration of aristocracy and race.14 Mason-John (here as her alter ego Queenie) performs the character of Regina as an exploration of African links to aristocracy and an ironic reference to the
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fact that ‘as a Barnado child [she] socialised regularly with the royal, the rich, [and] the famous’ (Mason-John, 1999a, p. 99).15 Mason-John’s research uncovered ‘a French Queen who also gave birth to a black child, and who they locked up for her entire life’ (Mason-John, 2006, p. 399) and she saw performance as the best way to explore stories of inter-racial links to royalty that she would not have been able to tell as a journalist. The performance also becomes a cathartic way to address painful issues of racism that she experienced as a black child living in predominantly white environments. Mason-John responds to the way racism and (hetero)sexism determine particular social positions for black lesbians and she uses the character of Regina to articulate a perspective on black Englishness that can be embodied in performance if not in real life, which she rationalises in her preface to the published text. Born to be a Queen, I wasn’t prepared for society’s stigma towards my colour, gender, race, sexuality, culture and attitudes. But by the time I evolved into Queenie I was well sussed. [ ] It took another five years to rediscover that true aristocratic self which so many of us black people left behind in our countries of origin. Due to colonial racism, many of us are constrained to live in a class lower than our real one and denied our true social status amidst the many struggles we are faced with to survive in Britain. (Mason-John, 1999b, p. 91) Mason-John’s initial idea for Brown Girl in the Ring came from being asked to bring in a picture of her family for a drama workshop, and her conscious decision that ‘instead of falling into negative mental states about not having a biological family, I looked at a picture of a jigsaw puzzle showing a group of white French aristocrats at a ball and decided this was my family’ (Mason-John, 1999a, p. 99). The jigsaw imagery is literally translated into a simple set design that emphasises Regina’s adopted identity: On the stage is a throne constructed like a jigsaw and jigsaw pieces on the floor. On the backdrop is a projected picture of a white royal-looking family. One of the female figures’ heads is missing. (101) Regina enters the auditorium ‘wearing a ballet dress with several petticoats underneath, bloomers, ballet shoes, a Georgian white powdered courtier’s wig and jewels fit for a queen’ (101), drinking champagne, performing pirouettes and yoga moves to Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, and ‘speaking in an
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exaggerated upper class English aristobratish voice’ (101). However, maintaining an upper-class status is difficult because she is read as a black woman and not given the standing that she seeks to adopt. Her guests (the theatre audience) remain seated when they should stand as a sign of respect for a queen, and the opening sequence shows her struggle to get an invisible waiter to fulfil her requests. He responds abruptly to her call for service and she humorously corrects his assumptions that she is of aboriginal origin. No no, you don’t quite understand. I am as English as Her Majesty. My title is Regina Not vagina, Regina W!O!G! My poor poppet you do seem to be losing it. I am most definitely not a Western Oriental Gentlemen. (102) Mason-John’s critique is initially achieved by the subversion engendered in her as a black lesbian performing a queen, and the selfconscious exploitation of the layers between performer and role is made explicit through references to a hybrid identity. Regina/Queenie/MasonJohn requests ‘caviar and rice and peas’ (102), and refers to herself as ‘a throw back’ (106) whose ‘twin brother [has] blonde hair and blue eyes’ (106). A ribald mockery of the accoutrements of upper-class identity is inferred by naming the members of her royal lineage after various French champagnes and alcoholic beverages – ‘Dom Perignon [ ] Pink Lady [ ] Lanson [ ] Moët et Chandon’ (104–05). Mason-John’s experiences of growing up in transracial contexts are explored by moving between the adult Regina and an eight-year-old child to humorously engage with painful memories of racism. The song ‘Brown Girl in the Ring’ is revived at several points throughout the performance with different insulting versions of the last two lines – ‘I look like the fly In the milk, milk milk’ (103); or ‘I look like the golly On the jam jar jar jar’ (108) – and childish racist taunts are shown to eventually affect her mental health. She momentarily derives a positive sense of black identity in relation to prominent male (rather than female) African Caribbean heroes – ‘Kunte Kinte, Chicken George, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley’ (104), but she ultimately struggles to maintain a positive sense of self as a black woman in racist discourses. Talking to an imaginary friend, Lizard (which also refers to being teased about having lizard-like dark black skin), she states, ‘they civilised me, taught me etiquette, deportment
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lessons’ (106), but these lessons conflict with the irremovable colour of her skin and count for little in a society where she is also taught that she ‘de-scend[s] from the apes’ (107). The character of the queen is an internalisation of a white cultural value system that is irreconcilable with her black identity, and her status is rendered a delusion of grandeur that eventually causes her to have a mental breakdown. ‘Sweep it under the carpet’ is repeated at several points in the performance, initially as an order for the waiter to clear up a broken champagne glass, and then at key moments of suppressed racial conflict or realisation with growing intensity throughout the piece. The repression of these anxieties causes Regina to regress further into a state of mental distress and by the end of the performance she stutters and stammers through the projections of racist psychological discourses: ‘My shrink says all negroes are manic [ ] My shrink says I’ve got a chip on my shoulder [ ] My shrink says all negroes are aggressive’ (111). In terms of black women’s empowerment, however, Regina’s attempt to convince the audience that being black and English are not mutually exclusive is given a hopeful end as in the final stage direction ‘[s]he takes her place in the family heirloom’ (112). As Dimple Godiwala’s analysis of the piece argues, Mason-John’s ‘adamant insistence on partaking of western culture from classical music and dance to inheriting a royal heritage makes her piece a bold and innovative celebration of her personal formulation of Englishness which is inclusive’ (Godiwala, 2006, p. 263).
Resistant rhymes: Patience Agbabi’s Rhythm ‘n’ Word Patience Agbabi is a performance poet who has performed at various national and international venues, including Apples and Snakes, the Word Up Café, The Royal Festival Hall, and Sauda,16 and she has had her work produced on radio and television.17 Agbabi writes against canonical traditions of literary poetry, creating works that are framed in terms of an oral tradition and written with performance in mind. The published versions use fonts and layout to perform on the page as an indication of what is conveyed through the live performances, but the text offers only the bare bones of the poems as performed live, where they are fully fleshed out with accents, gestures, tone, repetition and the performance of characters.
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Agbabi’s performance poetry references experiences of an openly SM-identified bisexual black British woman of Nigerian parentage, who was brought up in England and Wales, privately fostered by white people and also spent time with her black parents, came of age in Thatcher’s Britain, studied English Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford, and is interested in the revolutionary qualities of punk music and rap. Merle Collins’s introduction to Agbabi’s R.A.W. (1995) highlights how the poems offer a social commentary on a range of topical issues of racism, sexism and homophobia as a resistant ‘response to the attitudes that inform the society that shaped her’ (Agbabi, 1995, p. 9).18 ‘London’s Burning’, It’s My Party’, ‘Blonde Bombshell Defused’ and ‘Money Talks’ critically comment on a range of Thatcherite policies, such as the Poll Tax, money and enterprise, Right to Buy, arts funding cuts and Clause 28. Collins observes that ‘she is obviously conscious of a social dimension in her role as performance poet, of a dimension to be spelt out particularly in her role as woman performance poet’ (9) and there is a decidedly woman’s perspective in the many pieces that deal with ‘women’s issues’, sexual orientation and homophobia. ‘Sex is’ uses a repetitive rap to reflect on the politics of sex and sexuality, including issues of sexism and racism, straight sex, same sex, SM sex, AIDS, rape, masturbation, prostitution and sexual legislation. The inclusion of diverse sexual practices, biases and legislations strikes a chord towards liberating sex and sexuality from restrictive principles. ‘It’s Better Postthan Pre–’ takes a humorous look at PMT and menstruation with Agbabi reciting as though sitting on a toilet surrounded by reams of sanitary products. The audience members, particularly at women-only events, would be encouraged to join in with the final rendition of the chorus, a signal of one of the recognisably shared experiences of being female. I remember that first memory a dark red stain I didn’t feel no nausea I didn’t feel no pain I was a woman a warrior erotic arcane and once a month a lunatic in nappies and insane My mum she bought the towels in
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she didn’t make a fuss she told me about men and she said ‘It’s them and us’ [ ] stick em on stick em in stick em up gals stick em on stick em in stick em up if you wanna sate your lust then insert a Super Plus stick em on stick em in stick em up (58–59) Issues such as marriage and domestic violence, critiquing notions of sexual persuasion and desire that frame black and gay people as feared minorities and exploring how certain ideals of beauty subjugate and oppress women, are all subjected to humorous critiques. ‘RAPunzel’, for example, raps on the pressures of black women aspiring to whitedetermined standards of beauty by ‘weavin [ ] waxin hot comb curly perm and relaxin’ (54) and celebrates baldheads as the ultimate resistance to the norm. Agbabi’s other pieces explore experiences informed by being transracially fostered and being taught dual perspectives from her birth (Nigerian) and foster (English) mothers. ‘My Mother’ and ‘Serious Pepper’ particularly capture the contradictory voices of the women she was brought up by and the experience of being Nigerian British. Agbabi performs the various characters that she represents in her poems, using accent, rhythm or posture to suggest cockney men, African women and so on. Agbabi’s critical commentary is enhanced by performing these characters through her black woman’s body, thus refracting the voice of the character through her own consciousness. For example, ‘The Wife of Bafa’ exploits the layers between black British performer and role, as she performs a Nigerian woman refusing to accept a passive role in response to stereotypes of her culture. ‘The Black The White and The Blue’ exemplifies Agbabi’s use of the multiple layers between herself and the characters as the basis of a social critique. The poem narrates the story of ‘East End Ed’ (Agbabi, 1995, p. 26), a racist gay policeman who becomes the victim of a racist and homophobic attack after not realising that the ‘bronzed’ man he leaves a gay club with is actually Asian. The layers between Agbabi as a black woman performer and the white characters she performs are used to enact a social critique that parallels racism, sexism and homophobia.
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Agbabi plays Ed and his racist and homophobic ‘East End dad’ (27) whose bigoted attitudes to ‘Niggers and queers’ (27) have severely affected his son. The first half of the poem sets up Ed’s racist brutality with reference to ‘his muscles have a feel Made in England made of steel’ (26) and the punches that leave ‘his victims black and blue’ (26), before the central paradox is revealed mid poem: ‘gotta be a hard nut come what may so no-one will ever guess that he’s gay’ (26). The shift between oppressor and oppressed is presented by paired oppositions where the east is positioned as oppressed by its encounter with the west. The black and Asian man’s subjection to racism is captured in graffiti slogans, such as ‘PAKI GO HOME’ (26), and police brutality that is not reported in tabloid newspapers. When Asian man dials 999 covered in blood of racist crime police arrive police arrest the Asian man and kick his chest and 666 the beast walks free and THE Sun won’t print what THE Sun won’t see BOYS IN BLUE BEAT BLACK MAN cos Blue protects Blue whenever Blue can (26) The dichotomy is reversed in terms of Ed who shifts from being a racist ‘East End lad’ (27) to a vulnerable ‘West End fag same man different drag’ (27), but after he becomes a victim of assault the analogy to broader contexts of an east/west split is reinforced by the sight of his ‘East End blood on West End street’ (27). The poem thoroughly teases out the complexities in the binary pairings, launching an explicit critique of racism and homophobia that is made implicitly feminist by the very presence of a black woman playing a white man. Women are not explicitly mentioned in the poem, but the final line – ‘NIGGER PAKI QUEER when will we walk the streets without fear?’ (27) – resonates with the women’s liberation ‘reclaim the night’ marches. Agbabi also exploits her identity as a black woman to deconstruct the medium of poetry itself, using dexterous wordplay, self-conscious puns and tampering with poetic form through the integration of musical rhythms such as rap with iambic pentameter or sonnets. She challenges the expectations of form by testifying particularly to an inseparability of rhythm and word that is central to her performance style as a black
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woman performance poet. ‘Prologue’ outlines the various qualities of words, the way she can mould them to serve her purposes, and she places the resistant qualities of rap at the centre of her black woman’s critique of poetic form ‘R.A.W.’ (acronym for rhythm and word) describes rap as a way of reclaiming her voice as a black woman poet, ‘taking our languages back using our own black words and being heard it’s a political act’ (50) because ‘R.A.W. is RAP and RAP is RAW and RAW means WAR’ (50). ‘Rappin it Up’ makes a similar condemnation of the voices of dead white male poets and identifies a space for the contemporary language of her confrontational black woman’s voice. Agbabi’s rhyme offers an empowering resistance for black women audience members versed in conventional traditions. I said ‘Get off the stage and go home to your bed coz I am alive and you are dead An when you try to speak your words are obsolete while I communicate right from ya head down to ya feet’ Because I’m rappin it up in a real tight squeeze I don’t cross my i’s I don’t dot my t’s Shakespeare Milton Pope and Dryden Wordsworth Eliot Great Tradition all you poets I don’t give a fuck coz you’re dead I am PA an I am RAPPIN IT UP (63)
(Re)Connecting past and present: Dorothea Smartt’s Medusa and From Me to You to Me Dorothea Smartt is a London-based performance poet and live artist whose career includes commissions for the ICA and being the Spread the Word poet-in-residence at Brixton Market from August to October 1998. Smartt’s poems are conceived as literary texts and, although a performance environment is created with candles, slides and video projections, she performs her work as book readings rather than from memory. Smartt’s poems explore black British women’s identity as linked to a
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Caribbean heritage, focusing on themes of dual identity that affect our lives. A significant element of Smartt’s work is the incorporation of her Barbadian (Bajan) heritage into her work. Several of her poems are spoken with a Bajan accent that reconnects with the sound and rhythm of English from her childhood, which she rediscovered while developing the Medusa project.19 I was really struggling to put those poems together. I was trying to do it with my London voice until at one point I tried them in a Bajan voice and it just fell into place. In some ways it’s the voice of my childhood, my primary voice. I wanted to save it, I didn’t want to lose that way of expressing myself. (www.poetrysociety.org.uk) Smartt’s Medusa demonstrates the possibilities for recouping the feared mythic woman as a figure of black women’s empowerment.20 She conceived the project partly as a response to being teased by children who saw her dreadlocks and called her Medusa, which clearly links to the historical denigration of black women’s natural hair. Smartt begins the performance by unwrapping her locks from a headwrap and letting them fall freely, a resistant gesture to suggestions that natural black hair is ugly. Medusa uses images by photographer Sherlee Mitchell with the central image being a profile shot of Smartt with her dreadlocks tied up and draped over her face. Other images celebrate black women of different shapes and sizes, various styles of black hair and black women lying together with their natural hair entangled. These empowering images are contrasted against denigrating media images of black women with natural hair (such as the film image of Topsy) and a range of adverts used to promote products for ‘taming’ black hair. The poems themselves answer back to ideas of Medusa as a feared woman and consider ways of refiguring her as a figure for black women’s empowerment. Smartt reflects on how the Medusa myth has determined how black women come to understand themselves through denigrating ideas of ‘nappiheaded nastiness’ (Smartt, 2001, p. 57) and she powerfully returns the look that renders her natural hair ‘too tuff too unruly too ugly too black’ (58). Medusa’s feared gaze is subverted to become the resistant ‘dutti-eye looks’ (59) of an ‘Afrikanwoman [ ] natural roots Blackwoman loving Blackwomen’ (59) and her spirit is linked to strong black women, past and present. Smartt and Mitchell’s From Me to You to Me (1994)21 celebrates their love (and by extension black lesbian sisterhood) through a
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commemorative tribute to their parents (and by extension other post-war Caribbean migrants) ‘who never met in life, but through their daughters share many of life’s sweets.’22 Smartt reads her poems from a rocking chair, surrounded by candles, with Mitchell’s slides of their family photographs and popular culture images of black people (such as caricatures from cartoons and films) providing a context for revisiting and healing the past. The incorporation of melancholic songs and African drum beats creates a choral atmosphere and spiritual link to their ancestry that laments and heals loss at the same time as memorialising and celebrating how inherited cultures are translated from past to present and future generations. From Me to You to Me represents an important recuperation and expression of black lesbian voices as a nostalgic woman-centred celebration of Smartt and Mitchell’s shared stories and rituals. The narratives of sisterhood and migration explored in the poems capture the dreams and disappointments of the first generation whose struggles were lived in the hope of an improved life for their successors. The poems honour Frederic Smartt and Linda Mitchell as emblematic of the Windrush generation’s journey, the movements made to an uncertain place, and the sacrifices and separations made in the promise of a better future for the children born in the new space. Smartt presents a daughter’s response to the migratory journey that means she is ‘not a Clarendon girl, or a Bridgetown girl, but a norf, sauf, west, east London of a girl [ ] the kinda Blackwoman the world ain’t seen yet’ (Smartt, 2001, p. 14). The link from past to present to future is suggested by references to the translation of black culture and dialect in Britain, such as ‘her people filling Camberwell, Peckham, New Cross, Lewisham buses with island talk and church sister voices’, and the ensuing hybrid identities that come from ‘trading culcha, trading food; trading sounds and nuff expressions’ (14). As Goodman argues, ‘[t]he careful use of dialects and references to black neighbourhoods, communities, experiences, and even commercial products directs her performance at people of colour’ (Goodman, 1996c, p. 197). The focus on black women’s hair and cultural identity suggests an addressee of black women (and specifically black lesbians) who may share some of the experiences alluded to in the poems. Smartt’s presentation of her personal poems for the empowerment of black women as a whole locates the work within the concerns of the black women’s movement in the 1980s as part of a feminist aesthetics of performance.
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Black lesbian (ch)orality: Fo(u)r Women Fo(u)r Women (1996) is a polyvocal ‘jazz based poetry performance piece [ ] incorporating solos, solos over music and solos with echoes’ (Agbebiyi et al., 2002, p. 99).23 The idea for the piece was conceived by singer-songwriter Adeola Agbebiyi to respond to external ‘conservative white male definitions, blinkered white socialist-feminist definitions, [and] fetishizing white lesbian definitions’ (Agbebiyi, 1998, p. 168) of black women, and the performance was devised in collaboration with Agbabi and Smartt (the fourth woman being director Jillian Tipene). The piece showcases Agbabi and Smartt’s solo poems, with prose, music and songs by Agbebiyi, as well as some new material written especially for the piece. Inspired by Nina Simone’s Four Women, the performers interrogate ‘the intersection of skin tone and gender in the construction of power and identity [ ] with a particular focus on women who love and respect other women’ (Agbebiyi, 2002, p. 89). The poems reflect on experiences of being black woman in Britain in four categories of ‘mother, lover, sister, other’ (Agbebiyi et al., 2002, p. 101), but Agbebiyi emphasises that lesbians are not specifically named in the piece because ‘some Black women who love women don’t identify with words like dyke, zami or lesbian’ (Agbebiyi, 2002, p. 90). The performance fluidly segues between poetry, prose, song and movement, creating an overall effect of a broad scope of black women’s shared and separate experiences. The signature song ‘Fo(u)r Women’ chorally places the three performers’ voices to express the key themes of diversity among women and celebrate a complex lesbian sexuality. Voice one’s bass line repetition of ‘four women’ is layered over with voice two’s ‘lover, mother sister other’ and voice three’s ‘women loving women’, which develops into an articulation of ‘zami [ ] clit licking, nipple piercing sassy walking, ass slapping woman loving, woman fucking butch femme’ (Agbebiyi et al., 2002, p. 101). As a direct reference to Simone’s exploration of the resonance of skin colour for black women, ‘My Skin Is’ overlays a chant, song and poem to capture the performers’ different relationships to their own skin. Voice one (Agbebiyi) locates skin in literal dermatological terms as ‘protection [ ] the outer epidermis [ ] blood vessels [ ] hair follicles and sweat glands’ (110), drawn from the medical dictionary she used while training to be a doctor. Voice two (Agbabi) explores the skin as an erogenous zone, playing on knowledge of her celebrating her (bi)sexuality. Voice three (Smartt) construes black skin in its diversity of different shades and textures, in reference to the different skin
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tone of herself and her sister. Smartt’s ‘Faultlines’ commemorates how her positive sense of black identity derives from her foremothers’ resistance to (neo)colonial concepts of black women. An echo beat ‘skin, hair, lips, nose’ (115) used for Smartt’s recital unfolds into ‘hot comb, curly perm, relaxer’ (116) as an underlying rhythm for Agbebiyi’s monologue ‘Ident’, which narrates her story of coming to know herself as a black minority in Burnley, Lancashire, through ‘the sharp contrast between her [mother’s] milky skin and my brown sugar’ (115) skin, lips, nonRoman nose and ‘hair that no hairdresser in town had a style for’ (116). Agbabi’s ‘My Mother’ is performed with a voice speaking into each ear as a literal demonstration of the oppositional perspectives of the two characters in the poem and the conflict of being caught between the competing demands of her Nigerian birth mother and her English foster mother. My Mother speak their words one ear
has two heads alien tongue flow in in the other (Agbabi, 1995, p. 12)
Fo(u)r Women is primarily a vocal piece, but one particularly potent visual image involves the women trying to make a headtie out of a union jack handkerchief while a drum and bass soundtrack overlaid with outof-sync Big Ben chimes plays in the background. Agbebiyi’s struggles against the scarf being tied onto her head pre-empts Agbabi’s ‘Ufo Woman (pronounced Oofoe)’ a tongue-in-cheek response to an identity conflict caused by being deemed ‘other’ when her passport is stamped ‘ALIEN at Heath Row’ (Agbabi, 2000, p. 15). The symbolic action enacts a resistance to colonial discourse that is a recurrent feature of all of the artists whose work has been profiled in this chapter. Agbebiyi’s accounts of writing and rehearsing Fo(u)r Women describe how the work was informed by both personal and political processes. Ending a relationship while the show was being devised inspired her to write the poem ‘For You’, even though she is not a poet, and Agbabi’s ‘The Snow Queen’ is about an ex lover. At the same time, as Agbebiyi reflects, ‘the issues we were working with – concerning identity, belonging and the past leaking into the present – have theoretical relevance and may be seen in their rightful place in the evolutionary chain of Black female performance expression’ (Agbebiyi, 2002, p. 92). Such personal responses appear throughout the work of all of the poets and artists discussed in this chapter who employ their individual experiences as the basis for work of broader political resonance.
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Celebrating sisterhood: For we are black women The performance poetry and live art work outlined in this chapter demonstrates the various perspectives of the practitioners working in these forms. The full effect of their work is received in the moment of performance where the interaction between performer and audience is crucial and the performer is able to add complex levels of ambiguity and playful humour. All of these performance artists and poets draw from their personal biographies to create pieces with a broader resonance to a black woman’s community as a whole, which could appear to suggest a return to self-defined concepts of black feminist performance and the idea that all work where black women speak for themselves is somehow inherently feminist. SuAndi and Susan Lewis both reject the feminist label on the grounds that it refers predominantly to European white middle-class women’s perspectives that do not accommodate the experiences of African women from matriarchal ancestries. However, there is a clear political critique in their performance pieces, which question and interrogate how perceptions of black women in Britain are shaped by racism and sexism, and all of the work discussed in this chapter has a level of provocation and critique that is at the core of the feminist aesthetic that I propose. Each of these artists is concerned on some level with how the resonances of colonial discourse affect perceptions of black women; almost all of them refer at some point to the issues surrounding black women’s hair, for example. The autobiographical core of these performances is used to distinguish these images from the familiar tropes often found in black women’s plays. There are traces of ideas such as black women’s strength and popular narratives of migration and sisterhood, but in each case discussed here these are disrupted in some way. SuAndi’s exploration of the politics of mixed race identity and inter-racial relationships troubles predominant notions of black womanhood, and, as Ugwu argues, ‘extends black tradition to embrace a wide range of black experience, challenging the propensity of black as well as white to confine black experience’ (Ugwu, 1995, p. 68). Similarly, Lewis’s working-class mixed race identity becomes a basis from which to present layered performance pieces that interrogate presumptions of race, class and gender. Agbabi draws on diverse influences including transracial experiences and bisexuality, and Smartt’s work is inflected with the particularities of a Bajan voice that is rarely heard in black British theatre and departs from norms of representations of black women by placing lesbian sexuality at
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the centre. The work of all of these artists reflects Ugwu’s suggestion of a performance practice in which ‘[t]he public performance and witnessing of personal stories, honouring friends and lovers, family and ancestors allows us to grieve losses, validate our condition and invoke alternative histories which look to a future with hope’ (61). All of these practitioners are working outside the confines of Arts Council-franchised theatre companies, which frees them to follow their own aesthetic and political interests. As such they engender bell hooks’ notion of ‘talking back’ (hooks, 1989, p. 5) as part of a politics of resistance and empowerment. hooks argues that ‘[o]ppressed people resist by identifying themselves as subject, by defining their reality, shaping their new identity, naming their history, [and] telling their story’ (43) and emphasises how learning to speak in one’s own voice, rather than a mediated voice tempered for the white audience, is imperative to such a political project. Such a confrontational black woman’s voice is evident in the work of the poets and performers explored here, where a break away from conventional character-based performances is used to invoke an interrogative black woman’s aesthetic of performance that encourages the audience and performers to dialogue with each other as part of an ongoing process of social change.
Part IV Conclusions
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8 Black Feminist Futures?
debbie tucker green’s in-yer-face plays DAWTA: If yu actin like a bitch I’m a call yu it if yu lookin like a bitch I’m a call yu it If yu looking like a bitch as you lookin on me – I see yu and yu bitch ways – mi a go call you it again mi noh business Watchin yu watchin me like the bitch bitch yu is. (tucker green, 2003a, p. 4)
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 181
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eloquent language style have begun to establish debbie tucker green as the most significant black British woman playwright of recent years. debbie tucker green stormed onto the British theatre’s new writing scene in spring 2003 with two plays produced in the same season to critical acclaim. Sam Marlowe commended Dirty Butterfly (2003b)2 as ‘a very striking piece of work’ (Marlowe, 2003, p. 52), and Born Bad secured tucker green the 2004 Lawrence Olivier Award for ‘Most Promising Newcomer in a Society of London Theatre Affiliate Theatre’.3 These virtually back-to-back productions propelled tucker green firmly into the spotlight as the new black British playwright to look out for, and she has since become the first black British woman to have plays premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs – Stoning Mary (2005a)4 – and at the RSC Swan – Trade (2005b).5 The year 2005 also saw a Royal National Theatre Platform performance of Generations (2005b).6 Dirty Butterfly, Born Bad and Stoning Mary all use stories of abuse in domestic settings to raise broader questions about care and neighbourliness in contemporary societies. In Dirty Butterfly, Jo, a white woman, is the victim of systematic domestic violence; her two black neighbours – Amelia and Jason – overhear, but they do nothing to intervene. Amelia is annoyed that her sleep is routinely disturbed, forcing her to sleep downstairs on the sofa, and Jason stays awake listening through the thin walls, secretly aroused. All of the characters are on the stage for the first scene, in a three-way dialogue that is deliberately left open for the director and actors to decide ‘who is talking to who and when, with varying implications for the characters’ (tucker green, 2003b, p. 2). Stoning Mary presents three separate stories of suffering and abuse, with the interconnections revealed as the individual narratives progress. All of the characters are on stage at the start of the performance, which moves quickly between short scenes of each story with projected headings of the titles – ‘The AIDS Genocide. The Prescription’, ‘The Child Soldier’ and ‘Stoning Mary’. Four performers play a Husband and Wife, and their respective egos, who are arguing over who should have the prescription that will afford only one of them the much needed AIDS medication. Mum and Dad are bickering about who their son (the Child Soldier) loved more and who is to blame for him being taken away to become a machete wielding vigilante who killed the AIDS couple and has himself been killed in an act of retribution. In the third story, a Corrections Officer stands as sentry while Older Sister visits Younger Sister – the eponymous Mary – who is in a corrections center awaiting death by
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stoning for killing the Child Soldier because he murdered her parents (the AIDS couple). Where the broader political resonances are inferred in the earlier two plays, they are made explicit in Stoning Mary, which is written to be performed by a white cast and ‘set in the country it is performed in’ (tucker green, 2005a, p. 2). The situations are resonant of concerns in Africa, but the white characters bring the issues closer to home and urge the audience to consider whether these issues would be as easily ignored if they were happening in England. tucker green echoes Tony Blair’s speech to the World Economic Forum in January 2005, where he states ‘[i]f what was happening in Africa today was happening in any other part of the world, there would be such a scandal and clamour that governments would be falling over themselves to act in response’ (World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 27 January 2005). In a year when the ‘G8 Summit’ discussed strategies for tackling third-world debt and Live 8 concerts were organised globally to raise money to help ‘Make Poverty History’, Stoning Mary makes an important contribution to these debates by reminding audiences of how easy it is to become desensitised to issues that do not directly affect them and inviting them to reflect on inadequate responses to solving global problems. Generations was produced in June 2005 as part of the National Theatre ‘G8 Plays’ season and explores three generations of a black South African family arguing about who taught who to cook and who can cook the best. Their argument is circular, returning to the same assertions over and over again, as a representation of past and present South African generations that are not all existing in the same moment. The play opens with a choral dirge as a long list of names is called out, repeated and lamented. As the play progresses the family members dwindle (youngest first) and the dirge is hummed as each person leaves the stage never to return. The circular argument and the loss of cast members shows the consequences of African poverty, where the overwhelming feeling is that they are embroiled in a pointless debate because there is no food, there has been no food, there will be no food, and people are rapidly dying. Trade explores the politics of female sex tourism through an argument between three women on a beach in an unspecified Caribbean location. They have all been sexually involved with the same man and use age, class and race to get the better of each other. Three black actresses play the key roles of the Local, the Novice and the Regular, as well as adopting a further range of characters – Bumster, Hoteliers, Bredrin, Local Man and American Tourist. Local is a black woman who runs a beach-side
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hair plaiting service, and makes her ‘trade’ from the (white) tourists whose hair she braids in ‘authentic’ cane rows as worn by Bo Derek or David Beckham. Although they are the source of her income, she resents the influx of visitors who engage in relationships with the local men. Regular is an older white British woman whose holiday ‘romance’ is premised on her paying for the drinks and meals of her local male company. Novice is a younger white British woman who is adamant that she is not being exploited on her first trip abroad for sun, sand, sea and sex. The three women’s separate lives are interconnected by their relationship with Bumster, which they are battling to justify, and the similarities and differences between them surface as they each air their own angle on the debate. Local’s material existence is dependent on the tourist trade, and she claims to benefit from the money that her partner gleans from the white women, but she is prevented from living the luxurious lifestyle that the white tourists enjoy because some hotels and bars do not allow the local black people as guests. Regular has the capital to be able to make independent choices, such as changing hotels when dissatisfied with the service, but the other women insult her as being an ‘old’ woman who needs male affirmation. Novice feels liberated for enjoying sex without commitment, but she is criticised for being a naïve first-timer. However, she demonstrates how sussed she is in protecting herself from sexually transmitted diseases by refusing to go ‘bareback’ with men that she knows have multiple sexual partners. The issue of who is doing the exploiting and who is being exploited is shown to be complex as each of the women is shown as both victim and perpetrator of exploitative transactions. Critics have compared tucker green with Sarah Kane, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Jean Genet, Henrik Ibsen, David Mamet, Phylis Nagy, Harold Pinter, poet T. S. Eliot and even Gertrude Stein. Her plays certainly deliver the blatantly provocative, confrontational language and visceral emotional punches that Aleks Sierz alludes to in coining the term ‘in-yer-face theatre’ (Sierz, 2001, p. 3). Audience members walked out of performances of Dirty Butterfly, as they did for the first production of Kane’s Blasted (1995), and the reference to African problems in Stoning Mary is analogous with Kane’s response to the Bosnia crisis. The self-conscious use of language, form and style are easily comparable with the other playwrights mentioned also, but, as tucker green has pointed out, these comparisons say as much about the reviewers’ cultural reference points and the assumed cultural knowledge of their respective publication’s readership as they do anything about her plays.
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It is equally imperative to understand black women’s work within traditions of black cultural production, and tucker green locates her main inspirations as coming from black music, poetry and performance, particularly by women such as Jamaican poet Louise Bennett, AfricanAmerican poet-playwright Ntozake Shange, and rapper/singers such as Lauryn Hill, Beverley Knight and Jill Scott. Like Shange, tucker green rejects the authority of capital letters and conventional spelling, phonetically capturing the sound and rhythm of (black) British urban speech through short simple sentences replete with repetitions, backtracking, interruptions, overlaps, silences, stammers and stutters. The musical and poetical influences go against concepts of theatre realism, which is most apparent in the predominance of repetition as central to the overall language style. Much of the dialogue, both on page and on stage, reads and sounds like a poem or song that carries emotion and meaning as much through rhyme, rhythm and repetition as through the actual content of the conversations. The focus on language and sound is accentuated by productions using minimalist sets and very little stage action. Dirty Butterfly is set on a roof-like sloped stage where the three characters are speaking up, down and across to each other as they hang from different levels. Born Bad is simplistically staged using white screens as a backdrop and a pile of wooden chairs, rather than a realistic reconstruction of the family’s sitting room. An expanse of space is created for the production of Stoning Mary by removing the seating from the stalls of the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs space, so that some audience members stand around the blue-earthed horseshoe-shaped stage as though they are the expected crowds waiting for the pending execution in an outdoor wasteland. Trade is set in a slowly rotating circular white-sand pit (which produces slight feelings of nausea and sea-sickness) with the audiences on two opposing sides, and a single white plastic beach chair that is occupied by the characters at various points. The relative bareness and lack of props and stage business in all of these plays directs the focus towards the words and force of the arguments between the characters as primary. All of the plays start as though the characters are mid-flow of their arguments, which is emphasised by presetting the performers in Stoning Mary and Trade. Fully realistic understandings are further broken down by referring to the characters in terms of their roles and functions – Dawta, Sister, Mum, Dad, Child Soldier, Local, Novice, Regular and so on – rather than names. Refusing to give characters names that are culturally specific in Stoning Mary adds to the overall effect of a play that is set wherever it
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is performed. Trade is performed by three black actresses; Local’s accent and head-wrap locate her as Caribbean, and Novice and Regular are identified as white women in the text. However, the main emphasis is on the difference between the British visitors and the local woman, rather than on black and white, and the lack of culturally specific names amplifies tensions as between the local and the Westerners who could just as easily be black women sex tourists. The careful attention to style is even more compelling given the disturbing issues of violence and abuse that these plays deal with. tucker green’s plays highlight unpleasant elements of contemporary life, while sustaining an exquisite awareness of the aural possibilities of language. The dialogue is carefully crafted to convey the characters’ anger and resentments and their competitions for supremacy through arguments and attack. Unlike Sarah Kane, and many of the other playwrights in the in-yer-face theatre genre, tucker green refrains from showing actual instances of brutal violence and abuse, framing her stories entirely around the characters’ responses to their situations and the dynamics that it produces between them. The stories unfold from between the lines of the dialogue, through arguments that emphasise the intensity of the effects of the abuse on the interpersonal relationships between characters. Born Bad is obviously about incest but the term is never mentioned explicitly, and is inferred only from the characters’ arguments with each other and mum’s eventual unsympathetic admission that Dawta was chosen because she was ‘born bad’ (tucker green, 2003a, p. 33). The killing of the AIDS couple and the stoning are not shown in Stoning Mary, which ends just as ‘MUM picks up her first stone’ (tucker green, 2005a, p. 73). Nor do we ever see Jo’s tormenter in Dirty Butterfly, but her fear is evocatively articulated through a long description of desperately needing to go to the toilet first thing in the morning but being too scared to move in case she wakes him up. JO: you ever wanted – to piss? Beat AMELIA: no. JO: Proper get the urge to power piss. AMELIA: No. JO: Got the ultimate – do it or die, have to go – piss? AMELIA glares coldly at JO. Hold it in for the longest time convincin yourself you don’t really wanna – butcha got no choice an/haveta – [ ]
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Can’t hold out – haveta go. [ ] Haveta go before it makes its own route outta me body [ ] know I shouldn’t go but I have to get up to – this morning/ I have to. [ ] I sneak a peep, shift a touch, ease up – JASON: From under. JO: Ease out JASON: from beside him JO: and creep out JASON: of their bed (tucker green, 2003b, pp. 12–14) tucker green’s plays expose the disturbing and horrible aspects of human behaviour in a style that is gripping to watch, capturing the expression of raw emotions in a language and rhythm that makes the disturbing sound beautiful. Her characters are selfish and self-obsessed, refusing to empathise with the suffering of others and apathetically colluding in unpleasant events. Husbands and wives are at war with each other, blood sisters resent each other, women refuse to support each other and un-neighbourly neighbours are cruel to others in distress. The refusal of either of the AIDS couple to concede the prescription in Stoning Mary, using anger and verbal attack to undermine each other, is hardly the caring or generous behaviour that we expect from a couple in love. The inverted commas around these lines of dialogue is one of a series of typographical devices that tucker green uses in this play to disrupt a familiar reading of the words on the page. HUSBAND: ‘You’re never sick.’ WIFE: ‘You’d get confused lookin after anyone who weren’t you, you would.’ HUSBAND: ‘You’re never/sick – ’ WIFE: ‘You wouldn’t know if I was.’ HUSBAND: ‘You haven’t been.’ WIFE: ‘Till now.’ (tucker green, 2005a, pp. 14–15) Most people would be loathe to admit to this type of selfish behaviour, but it is the norm for tucker green’s characters whose petty jealousies are aired as they try to out-curse each other with put-downs and retaliations.
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In Dirty Butterfly Amelia’s jealousy that Jason stays in listening to Jo’s abuse causes her to snipe at him and denigrate Jo at every opportunity. In the last scene, Jo turns up at the café where Amelia works, dripping with blood, but Amelia is more concerned about the mess being made on the newly polished floor and she verbally rebukes Jo instead of helping. This scene exemplifies tucker green’s focus on the unthinkable, that in an individualistic society one might be more concerned with one’s own needs than with helping someone in despair. Ideas of a shared and supportive sisterhood are destroyed by making such a scene occur between two women. AMELIA: look what you’re doin – where you’re drippin – look at my floor! JO: Look at me. AMELIA: No JO: Look at me. AMELIA: Wha’for? JO: Look what he/done – AMELIA: why? Jo? JO: Let me show you Amelia – AMELIA: nah, cos – again – thank you – and – no. / So. JO: Amelia – AMELIA: I don’t wanna see. I don’t need to see. I don’t have to see – you. Yeh. So no. (tucker green, 2003b, pp. 40–41) Being cruel and selfish towards someone in need is best captured in Stoning Mary when Older Sister visits her younger sibling who is due to be stoned, but spends most of the time berating her and airing her resentments towards being called to visit. Older Sister expresses her sibling rivalry that Younger Sister is getting attention that she herself covets by attacking the glasses that Younger Sister has been fitted with, seemingly more concerned with the banal (younger sister’s glasses) than with the important matter of her sister’s imminent stoning. The scene is typical of the way intense interpersonal dynamics are conveyed by focusing on the verbalisations of the characters’ banal and trivial internal and unconscious thoughts, rather than by literal reference to the issue at hand. In a similar way, Mum and Dad’s expression of grief for their son focuses on his smell, which Dad deflects with an attack on the smell of Mum’s perfume.
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DAD: he did – he smelt of you – there was no smell of him – there was no smell of him left – he had no smell of his own the only aroma around him was – the only linger left on him was yourn – was from you. The smell of whatever you smothered yourself with – of whatever you drowned yourself in. Whatever you drowned yourself in he was drownin right there in the disgustingness of it with yer. The smell of your not-quite-right. The smell of the didn’t-cost-much. The smell of the two-for-one. The smell a the been-on-a-bit-too-long – (tucker green, 2005a, p. 21) Even those characters that would typically evoke sympathy are objectionable marking a clear move beyond 1980s and 1990s tendencies towards positivist representations of (black) women. Dawta’s uncompromising verbal attack on her family in Born Bad makes her instantly dislikeable and difficult to feel sorry for. In Stoning Mary, Younger Sister’s response to the fact that only 12 people have signed a petition to save her from being stoned to death (well short of the 6000 signatures she needed to earn a reprieve) is to launch a vicious attack against the ‘bitches’ who failed to rally to her cause. YOUNGER SISTER: So what happened to the womanist bitches? The feminist bitches? The professional bitches. What happened to them? What about the burn their bra bitches? The black bitches. the rootsical bitches the white the brown bitches the right-on bitches what about them? (61–62)
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And so she goes on for another page and a half, attacking ‘the mainstream bitches’, ‘the rebel bitches’, ‘the underground bitches’, ‘the bitches that gotta conscience’, ‘the underclass bitches’, ‘the overclass bitches’, ‘the political bitches’, ‘the bitches that love to march’, ‘the bitches that love to study’, ‘the music loving bitches’, ‘the shebeen queen bitches’, ‘the bitches that love a debate’, ‘the bitches that love to curse’, ‘the lyrical bitches’, ‘the educated bitches’, ‘the fulluppa attitude bitches’, ‘the high-upsed rich list lady bitch – bitches’, ‘the bitches that love their men’, ‘the bitches that love other bitches men’, ‘the bitches that juss love bitches’, railing, ‘whadafuckabout them?’ (61–62). Younger Sister’s speech makes explicit a lack of unity and sisterhood that is hinted at by the women’s relationships with each other in Born Bad and Dirty Butterfly. The diversity of women captured in this outburst connotes a fragmented women’s liberation movement that is broken down into so many finite types that solidarity and action becomes restricted. The force of the speech is ambiguous about whether it is condemning women or the decline of a feminist culture, but the speech is so eloquently crafted that it captivates. A similar confrontation about the shift from old to new feminism is aired in Trade. Local, Novice and Regular vie for power by putting each other down and as their allegiances shift they attack each other and defend themselves on the basis of race, class and age. Local emphasises the benefits she receives from their relationships with her man, allying with Novice to condemn Regular for being old and with Regular to criticise Novice’s youth and lack of experience. Local attacks Regular and Novice as Western tourists, but they distinguish between themselves on the basis of age, class and the difference between Regular’s ‘romance’ and Novice’s sexual encounter. The women’s contrasting viewpoints are grounded in assumptions about each other’s culture, highlighting the breakdown of a unified view that causes ructions and lack of support for each other. Novice’s sexual independence is a benefit of women’s liberation activism that Regular’s generation fought for, yet she separates herself from what she sees as unnecessarily radical ‘burn your bra’ feminism. Local condemns them both as British tourists who ‘ha fe find yu’self alfway round the fockin world to find back the kinda man you equal-righted right outta h’existence’ (tucker green, 2005b, p. 27), suggesting that there is a certain naivety about independence gained from feminist activism because their liberation is compromised both by the eco-sexual transactions that they engage in and by their infringement of her right to equality.
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Some critics of tucker green’s plays find it problematic that she articulates such disturbing ideas in beautiful prose, and they claim that the style detracts from the severity of the issues being explored and makes them easier, rather than harder, to ignore. But it is her ability with wordplay that lies at the centre of her accomplishments as a black woman playwright on the contemporary British stage. Black women playwrights have been criticised for being too angry in their plays and many stay on safe and familiar territory. tucker green’s plays are explicitly angry, even pessimistic, yet are celebrated rather than condemned, which may be because anger towards the powerful effects of white Western patriarchal supremacy is expressed through the characters’ emotionally violent treatment of each other, and the use of metaphors (such as Jo needing desperately to pee) that capture their fears and anxieties. The anger is generally contained within the characters’ domestic relationships with each other, and – notwithstanding the broader contexts referred to in Stoning Mary, Generations, and Trade – can be counted off as interpersonal conflicts, which could account for why tucker green’s plays have not received the harsh criticism of didacticism that other black women playwrights who directly explore the effects of white society on black subjectivity have received. tucker green moves firmly beyond the archetypal images and narratives of black British women’s playwriting to present characters that reflect complex contemporary perspectives. The picture drawn of Jo’s domineering male persecutor is offset against a stammering, stuttering and unsure Jason who appears to be as much scared to do anything to help as curiously aroused, and the hint of an omniscient negative patriarchal authority in the father figure in Born Bad is complicated by the fact that Brother is also being abused. Bumster and Bredrin in Trade typify the black man who takes advantage of women, but the play also raises questions about how the men and women’s interpersonal relationships are shaped by perceived assumptions about who they are and what they represent, such as the idea that black men are sexual predators or that (white) Western women are easy sexual pickings for the local men. tucker green’s plays offer models for a twenty-first-century black woman’s perspective that takes account of multicultural contexts. The specification of race adds to the complexity of the issues being discussed, which can be seen clearly in Stoning Mary and Trade. Similarly, in Dirty Butterfly the audience might wonder whether Amelia’s refusal to help Jo is because of the notion of frictions between black and white women. These complicated and layered plays ask urgent questions about the
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contemporary world, and human complicity in unpleasant events, that fit firmly within traditions familiar in the new theatre writing establishment. The stylistic flourishes make them a pleasure to watch, working for white audiences familiar with the many prominent playwrights that she has been compared with, whilst raising provocative issues for debate and dialogue in a way that is also decidedly shaped by her own black cultural identity and conscious rootsical politics. The ability to connect with (white) Euro-American traditions while still being true to the black influences that she draws on creates a unique combination of styles that offers an exciting model for the way forward towards culturally diverse theatre in Britain.
Winsome Pinnock’s millennial stories Winsome Pinnock wants to be seen first and foremost as a good playwright rather than as a black woman playwright and she feels strongly that her race and gender should not lead to automatic assumptions about the politics of her work. In 1990 she told Mick Martin ‘[p]eople are becoming interested in dealing with more complex issues, rather than an easy kind of half-digested political theory [ ] and I think that’s for the best. The political side of it is something you can’t escape from but, as a playwright, you are interested in human beings’ (Martin, 1990, p. 33). In an interview published in the programme for One Under (2005), Pinnock reiterates her commitment to writing complex roles and her continued resistance against writing about issues that ‘reduce black actors to something that’s seemingly essential’ (Pinnock, 2005, n. p.). Pinnock’s Water (2000) was commissioned by The Tricycle Theatre as a contemporary black British response to Alice Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness, and first performed as part of a double bill to commemorate Black History Month.7 Water invites the audience to question the role that representation plays in constructing notions of identity and to specifically consider how black women are understood through racist and (hetero)sexist discourses. Black artist Della Williams is being interviewed by black male journalist Ed about how the depiction of a povertystricken woman in her work resonates with her own life. Della has become a very successful artist whose work is celebrated for its authentic representations of black women at the bottom of the social ladder, those women whose lives are fraught with stories of abuse, suffering and struggles for survival. Della claims that this narrative reflects her own history until further probing from Ed forces her to reveal that her life was nothing like this, and that she has in fact borrowed the name
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(Sarah) and story of a woman that she grew up with as inspiration for her artwork. Della recognises the potency of representations of the downtrodden black woman and realises that subscribing to these images secures a viable market for her work by pandering to the expectations of what a black woman artist would create. The suggestion that institutional racism and (hetero)sexism determines art production has obvious parallels with the expectations of black women playwrights in Britain that Pinnock has persistently resisted and raises questions about the possible directions for black women’s art in the twenty-first century. Water raises the question of whether a time will come when black women are able to create art on their own terms, rather than those prescribed by dominant discourses, which is evocative of Pinnock’s own attempt to be free to write any story that she wishes to. Pinnock’s interview in the programme for One Under stresses ‘at this point in my writing, I just love stories. I really love stories’ (Pinnock, 2005, n. p.).8 One Under is essentially a mystery story of a black train driver (Cyrus) who is trying to understand whether the man (Sonny) who fell under his train was an accident or suicide, and, if it was suicide, why the man chose to jump under his train. The play is set in several time frames, past and present, moving between the last few days of Sonny’s life and Cyrus’s ensuing investigation of the death. Cyrus believes that Sonny was the child he had given up for adoption and he befriends Sonny’s adoptive mother Nella and foster sister Zoe in his search for answers about the reason for the suicide. Sonny believed that he had killed Christine’s child in a hit-and-run incident and he spends his last afternoon on a date with her to assuage his guilt. The shifts between past and present heighten the mystery as it eventually unfolds that the suspicions which have driven the narrative could be unfounded. One Under is a clear emotional thriller typical of its genre, but the use of a multi-racial cast further complicates how the relationships between the characters are understood. Pinnock’s script identifies only the age of the characters, but the Tricycle production cast Cyrus, Sonny, Zoe, train cleaner Ernest and Christine’s dry-cleaning assistant Aleysha as black, and Christine, Nella and tube worker Mags as white. The casting adds another dimension to the issue of family ties and separation as the story becomes one where a white middle class woman has adopted a black man’s son. The racial dynamics are mostly inconsequential to the narrative and only three of the ten reviews mentioned race. Charles Spencer specifically notes that ‘this is a drama that never mentions race
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once [ ] her characters are Londoners, and their skin colour simply isn’t an issue’ (Spencer, 2005, p. 19), which he cites as indicative of the possibilities for (black) theatre that ‘accepts the multi-cultural nature of Britain today without finding any need to examine its stress fractures [ ] a highly encouraging sign of a country at last beginning to feel at ease with itself, at least when it comes to matters of race’ (19). The primary focus is on bereavement and race is certainly not an important issue in the play, but the use of a multi-racial cast unquestionably creates a production that represents London’s inner city demographic and suggests a model for future black women’s theatre that examines the inter-racial connections that speak to our times now.
Black women’s multicultural theatre Doña Daley’s Blest Be the Tie (2004) also affords a multicultural perspective that shows the long-term effects of migration and the renegotiation of communities in a new context.9 Florence moved from Jamaica to England in the 1950s and lives in a council flat overlooking Clapham Junction station, where the sounds of the trains making their different journeys up and down the country is emblematic of her own move to England over forty years ago and the possibilities of making further journeys now. She has established a modest but satisfactory life for herself in Britain and is very proud of her British-born children’s achievements, as they have both been to university and are building successful careers. Her best friend is her white neighbour Eunice, who is married to a Jamaican and has learnt how to cook West Indian food from Florence. The play hinges on a visit from Florence’s sister Martha who arrives from Jamaica at the beginning of the play. Martha has renamed herself Cherise in the climb from being someone with ‘a likkle piece of place at Crossroads in Kingston a do people hair’ (Daley, 2004, p. 12) to becoming a successful entrepreneurial prizewinning hairdresser on an international competition tour. Martha has fully invested in the benefits of individual self-improvement and cannot understand why Florence is content with her humble life or why she sees the UK as home and does not wish to return to live in Jamaica: ‘People pee inna de lift, fighting to keep warm. Small balcony fe a garden. Yu don’t have to live like this’ (30). Martha is disappointed by London’s tourist landmarks, such as Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, which do not live up to the way she has imagined and learnt about them, and she disparages symbols of the
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British Empire by calling Eros ‘one little statue and plenty dirt and muck round de place ’ (44). As Deirdre Osborne points out, Martha’s success as compared with Florence’s lack of social mobility is Daley’s way of ‘drawing attention to the fallacy of supposed economic gains to be had from emigrating’ (Osborne, 2006, p. 87). Blest Be the Tie has a nostalgic feel to it, the markings of a formulaic story about diaspora or the effects of migration, and several reviewers describe it as not cutting edge enough for the Royal Court stage. However, the dynamic of the cross-racial friendship between Florence and Eunice troubles understandings of the play as a simple migration narrative. Daley demonstrates the importance of female support networks and suggests that sisterhood remains intact in post-feminist contexts. Notions of sisterhood are expanded to account for the crossracial relationships between black and white people who live in close proximity in urban communities. The idea of a multicultural feminism grounded in inter-racial friendships is evoked when Martha is jealous to discover that her sister Florence appears to be closer to her white neighbour than to her blood family in Jamaica. Their close friendship shows how racial gaps are bridged by new relationships forged in multi-racial contexts. One long-term effect is that Eunice’s speech is inflected with occasional traces of patois that echo Florence’s deeper variety, a simple speech pattern that signals Daley’s breakdown of essentialist perspectives of women. Millennial black women’s theatre recognises multicultural diversity and allegiances informed by aspects other than race. Tracey Daley, Jo Martin and Josephine Melville’s Shoot to Win (2002) acknowledges the diversity of identities premised on identification through the depiction of an East London netball team (The VIP Crew) consisting of six different types of black women – new age spiritualist Carrie, Christian team coach Beverly, Afrocentric Nigerian ‘Yardie wannabee’ Shenequa, reformed crack addict Mandy, insecure loner Sandra, alcoholic Jackie – and black wannabee Zowie who is the only white character.10 The play comically explores the characters’ relationship troubles, issues with drugs and alcohol, single parenting and the infighting that occurs between them because of their diverse cultural, political and religious beliefs. Shoot to Win was commissioned and produced for the Theatre Royal Stratford East ‘New Audiences Programme’ to attract people to the theatre who might not typically go, particularly young, working-class, black audiences. Monologues directly addressed to the audience encourage their response, and reviewers commend the play for this particular engagement of black aesthetics that incites ritual between stage action
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and spectator. Coveney reports that ‘[t]he whole event (and audience talk-back) is irresistible, and a significant step forward in harnessing contemporary black experience to popular theatre’ (Coveney, 2002, p. 55). Shoot to Win presents archetypes of British black experience that are likely to appeal to the young black audience at which the play was aimed, but its representation of black women does not represent a radical proposition for a feminist theatre practice for the twenty-first century.
Staging black feminisms in the twenty-first century There is clearly black feminist potential in most of the plays and performances analysed in this book, but the limitations of unquestionably accepting a black feminist perspective for all black women’s performance work must also be recognised. Forwarding views for a black feminist practice helps to move beyond understandings of black women’s performance as feminist simply because of the identity of the creator and show the more specific criteria upon which the feminist resonance of a play or performance might be judged. I have argued that black feminist aesthetics achieved through the inclusion of lesbian sexualities, mixed race identity, multi-racial contexts and/or experimentation with form holds the greatest promise for reshaping archetypal notions of black femininity and that any such feminist potential must be realised through production choices. The start of the twenty-first century has seen a re-energised surge in black women’s plays on the professional stage, which have been profiled in this concluding chapter. These plays have moved away from the explicit concerns with cultural identity that shaped black women’s performance work in the 1980s and 1990s tending to focus more on the interpersonal relationships between characters in urban multifarious (multicultural, multifaith) communities to explore the world we live in now. The plays discussed in this concluding chapter show the concerns of black women playwrights at the start of the twenty-first century, which provide the material to continue the debates about black women’s performance aesthetics within the context of the world today. The didacticism that 1980s black British women’s theatre was criticised for is largely missing from these twenty-first-century plays, whose politic is imported through complex human stories that engage with how we live now. Representations of metropolitan and inner city youth identities show that the gaps between black and white people, in terms of language, taste and cultural identification, have begun to narrow as the
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cultures continue to be influenced by each other. The variety in the topics and styles of these twenty-first-century plays shows that black women’s theatre is no longer reducible to a set of core themes that can be easily pigeon-holed, which provides a hopeful context for securing a permanent position at the centre of British theatre production.
Notes Introduction 1. Current feminist theatre scholarship tends to use the term ‘heteronormative’. The predominant use of the term ‘heterosexist’ in this study draws directly from black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde’s notion of ‘Heterosexism [as] the belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance’ (Lorde, 1984, p. 45). 2. See Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (London: Routledge, 1989) for summaries and discussions of the essentialism/constructionism debates. 3. See, for example, Elaine Aston, An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre (London: Routledge, 1995); Elaine Aston, Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990–2000 (Cambridge: CUP, 2003); Mary F. Brewer, Race, Sex and Gender in Contemporary Women’s Theatre: The Construction of ‘Woman’ (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999); Lizbeth Goodman, Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own (London: Routledge, 1993); and Gabriele Griffin Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain (Cambridge: CUP, 2003). 4. See, for example, Susan Croft, ‘Black Women Playwrights in Britain’ in Trevor R. Griffiths and Margaret Llewellyn Jones, eds, British and Irish Women Dramatists Since 1968 (Buckingham: OUP, 1993); Mary Karen Dahl, ‘Postcolonial British Theatre: Black Voices at the Center’ in J. Ellen Gainor, ed., Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance (London: Routledge, 1995); Sandra Freeman, Putting Your Daughters on the Stage: Lesbian Theatre from the 1970s to the 1990s (London: Cassell, 1997); Dimple Godiwala, ed., Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006); Lizbeth Goodman, Feminist Stages: Interviews with Women in Contemporary British Theatre (The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Press, 1996); Lizbeth Goodman and Jane Due Gay, eds, Languages of Theatre Made by Women (Bristol: Intellect, 2002); May Joseph, ‘Bodies Outside the State: Black British Women Playwrights and the Limits of Citizenship’ in Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds, The Ends of Performance (New York: New York University Press, 1998); and Meenakshi Ponnuswami, ‘Small Island People: Black British Women Playwrights’ in Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (Cambridge: CUP, 2000). 5. See Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Routledge, 1991) and bell hooks’ Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (London: Pluto Press, 1982) for explorations of the ways that seemingly divergent representational discourses meet to substantiate certain ideas about black womanhood. 6. White feminists have shown how these mythical presuppositions were used as much to control ideas of white female sexuality as virtuous. See, for example, 198
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Diane Roberts The Myth of Aunt Jemima: Representations of Race and Region (London: Routledge, 1994), for a detailed analysis of the impact of these constructs on beliefs about black and white femininity. 7. See Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom: The Crossing Press, 1984) and Barbara Smith ‘Toward a Black Feminist Criticism’ in Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith, eds, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (New York: The Feminist Press, 1982). 8. For example, Basic Instinct (1992) has been discussed significantly in film studies as making a connection between sexuality and criminal deviancy, where ‘deviant’ (bi)sexuality is positioned as a ‘mark of aggression’ (Hart, 1994, p. 1) for the central character Catherine Trammell. See, for example, Lynda Hart Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (London: Routledge, 1994); Kate Stables ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice: Constructing the Femme Fatale in 90s Cinema’ in E. Ann Kaplan, ed., Women in Film Noir (London: BFI Publishing, 1998); and Linda Ruth Williams ‘Sisters under the Skin: Video and Blockbuster Erotic Thrillers’ in Pam Cooke and Phillip Dodd, ed., Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader (London: Scarlet Press, 1993). 9. See Barbara Christian Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers (New York: Pergamom, 1985).
1
Black British women and theatre: An overview
1. See, for example, D. Keith Peacock, Thatcher’s Theatre (New York: Greenwood Press, 1999); Meenakshi Ponnuswami, ‘Small Island People: Black British Women Playwrights’ (2000); and Jatinder Verma ‘Cultural Transformations’ in Theodore Shank, ed., Contemporary British Theatre (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996b). 2. Errol John’s Observer award-winning play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl and Barry Reckord’s Flesh to a Tiger received main house productions in 1958, and during the 1960s and 1970s The Royal Court housed Sunday night, lunch time and theatre upstairs presentations of black plays and performance. 3. The list of Royal Court playwrights included John Osborne, Samuel Beckett, John Arden, Arnold Wesker, Ann Jellicoe, David Hare, Howard Brenton, Henrik Ibsen, Harold Pinter, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Joe Orton. Michelene Wandor’s Look Back in Gender: Sexuality and the Family in Post-War British Drama (London: Methuen, 1987) looks at the representation of gender in plays by several of these playwrights. 4. Adrienne Kennedy wrote only three of the twenty or so black plays seen at The Royal Court between 1956 and 1980. Despite these disheartening figures, the significance of The Royal Court, The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and The Arts Theatre as champions of black theatre should not be underestimated. Since the 1980s The Royal Court, Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Tricycle have been particularly instrumental in accommodating professional black performance work. 5. The spread of interviews in Richard Findlater’s celebration of the first 25 years of the Royal Court makes this quite apparent as interviewees constantly refer to the camaraderie within a group of people who knew each other well both privately
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7. 8.
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13.
14.
and professionally. Mustapha Matura broke into the British theatre scene because he shared a friend with director Roland Rees, who used his contacts with Ed Berman of the Ambiance Theatre (based at the ICA) to ensure a production of short plays by Matura. It was the success of this production that led to Matura’s play As Time Goes By (1972) being produced at the Royal Court in 1971. See Richard Findlater (ed.) At The Royal Court: 25 Years of the English Stage Company (Ambergate: Amber Lane Press, 1981). Pauline Henriques was an understudy for Georgia Burke in the American Negro Theatre’s touring production of Anna Lucasta (1944) at His Majesty’s Theatre (1947). The Almeida Theatre’s 1988 production of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl imported poet and novelist Maya Angelou to play the lead female role. The Dark and Light Theatre Company was founded in 1970 by Frank Cousins and folded in 1977. Temba, founded by Oscar James and Alton Kumalo in 1972, mounted plays throughout the 1970s and 1980s before disbanding in 1991 after huge cuts in their Arts Council subsidy. Connor estimates that ‘ninety-percent of the black or Afro-Asian and Oriental people who wanted to join the acting profession found their way to us’ (cited in Pines, 1992, p. 36). Connor notes the struggle to get the actor’s union Equity to relax the 40-week rule for black actors. At the time Equity membership demanded actors to prove 40 weeks of work in the West End theatre, a virtual impossibility for black actors when there were already so few roles to be shared amongst them. Following activism by black theatre practitioners such as Connor integrated casting initiatives began to become more commonplace, which was followed by the formation of a separate Afro-Asian artists register in Equity in the 1980s. Carmen Munroe and Horace James produced Ibsen plays for the Negro Theatre Workshop at St Pancras Town Hall and toured Ibsen and Chekhov plays to black community venues. One recommendation, still an issue today, was that funding panels making decisions about black work should include black members if the work was to receive the recognition and aesthetic understanding it deserved. The insinuation here is that black theatre has inherently different aesthetic standards from white theatre and therefore should not be judged by the same criteria. Yvonne Brewster was the first black woman drama officer for the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1982 to 1984. Regional theatre venues receiving black theatre tend to be in cities where there is a mixed racial demographic, thus a concentration of potential black audience members. See Lynette Goddard, ‘Black Theatre Venues’ in Alison Donnell, ed., Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture (London: Routledge, 2002) for a summary of key venues. Until quite recently the Tricycle had not produced a play by a British black woman. Most of their black productions are by African-American men, particularly James Baldwin and August Wilson, and they also produced Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind (1955) in 1992 and housed BTC’s touring production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) in 1985. Winsome Pinnock’s Water (2000) was the Tricycle’s first play by a black British woman, and was specially commissioned to accompany Childress’s Wine in the
Notes
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16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23. 24.
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Wilderness (1969) for a Black History Month double-bill in October 2000. Pinnock’s One Under (2005) was produced at the Tricycle in 2005. The Royal Court was a launch pad for the careers of other significant black women theatre practitioners such as Paulette Randall who won an Arts Council bursary to train for a year as an assistant director with the English Stage Company in the late 1980s, which led to her developing a successful freelance directing career. Interviews with black theatre practitioners in Jim Pines Black and White in Colour: Black People in British Television Since 1936 (London: BFI Publishing, 1992) and Roland Rees Fringe First: Pioneers of Fringe Theatre on Record (London: Oberon Books, 1992) discuss the significance of the Keskidee Centre. Yvonne Brewster describes the detail of her proposal and acquisition of these funds in her biography, The Undertaker’s Daughter: The Colourful Life of a Theatre Director (London: Black Amber Books, 2004). Black Mime Theatre: The Ensemble’s E.D.R: Earliest Date of Release (1993) Dirty Reality (1995) and Mourning Song (1997) performed London dates at The Cochrane during Talawa’s tenure. Yvonne Brewster was a founding member and artistic director of Talawa Theatre Company, Joan-Ann Maynard was artistic director of BTC for several years, and Denise Wong headed Black Mime Theatre Company. Steve Carter’s Eden, Trevor Rhone’s Two Can Play, Derek Walcott’s Remembrance and Beef No Chicken, Edgar White’s Moon Dance Night, Trinity and Redemption Song are among the Black Theatre Season productions. See Alda Terraciano, ‘Mainstreaming African, Asian and Caribbean Theatre: The Experiments of the Black Theatre Forum’ in Dimple Godiwala, ed., Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006) for an in-depth analysis of the Black Theatre Seasons. Alongside the plays discussed in this study are Paulette Randall’s Fishing, for the Theatre of Black Women in 1982, which showed two married women engaged in a sexual affair and Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance, which has one character – Melisa – who is purportedly a lesbian. Other reports with such oversights are Arts Council of Great Britain The Glory of the Garden: The Development of the Arts in England: A Strategy For a Decade (London: ACGB, 1984); Arts Council of England The Landscape of Fact: Towards a Policy for Cultural Diversity for the English Funding System: African, Caribbean, Asian and Chinese Arts. Consultative Green Paper (London: ACE, February 1997a); and Arts Council of England Digest of Responses to Cultural Diversity Green Paper ‘The Landscape of Fact’ (London: ACE, July 1997b). Other significant black women’s theatre companies are Imani-Faith (founded 1982) and Munirah. Elaine Aston’s An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre (1995) documents how multi-racial policies worked for the Women’s Theatre Group (later the Sphinx) and the Women and Theatre Company. Aston suggests that these companies used integrated casting and positive discrimination to change the racial balance of the companies across acting, technical and administrative roles.
202 Notes 25. Clean Break Theatre Company also produced Kara Miller’s Hyacinth Blue in 1999 and Jennifer Farmer’s Compact Failure in 2004. 26. Paulette Randall developed a good working relationship with Nicolas Kent, artistic director of The Tricycle Theatre, and has directed several black productions at this venue, whereas Pinnock established her career at The Royal Court. Black women directors often worked on black male plays, and black men or white women directed several of the black women’s plays. When Randall directed Pinnock’s Leave Taking for the National Theatre’s touring education department in 1995 this was the first time two black women had worked together at this venue. 27. Black theatre funding casualties include Black Mime Theatre, Carib, Double Edge, Temba, Theatre of Black Women and Umoja. Nitro and Talawa are the only revenue-funded African-Caribbean black clients of the Arts Council that have survived since the 1980s. 28. Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1978), The Big Life (2004), Five Guys Named Moe (1992), Kat and the Kings (1998) and Simply Heavenly (1957) are among those that have transferred to the West End. Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen (2003) is the first non-musical black British play to transfer to the West End. See Philip Hedley ‘Black Theatre Development at Theatre Royal Stratford East’ (1998) for a discussion of the politics of West End transfers. 29. BTC produced Hansberry’s Broadway success A Raisin in the Sun (1959) at the Tricycle theatre in 1985, Talawa produced Shange’s choral poem The Love Space Demands (1991) at the Cochrane in 1992, Childress’s Trouble in Mind (1956) was produced at the Tricycle in 1992, and Dr Endesha May Holland’s From the Mississippi Delta (1988) was produced by Talawa at the Cochrane in 1993. This pattern continues in the twenty-first century with productions of Suzan Lori-Parks’s Topdog/Underdog (Royal Court, 2001), Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman (Hampstead Theatre, 2004) and Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (Tricycle Theatre, 2006). 30. Paul Gilroy’s There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Routledge, 1987) discusses the Conservative Party campaigns to consolidate these views in the public mind. 31. Thatcherite values have maintained a fair level of credence under Tony Blair’s (New) Labour Government, which replaces the radical edge of ‘loony left’ (Old) Labour by building on Thatcherite ‘common-sense’ ideologies of autonomy, personal choice and individual self achievement. See Paul du Gay ‘Organizing Identity: Entrepreneurial Governance and Public Management’ (1996) for a discussion of how (New) Labour’s success builds on Thatcher’s New Right discourses. 32. Michelene Wandor’s Carry on Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) charts four phases for feminist theatre from the agit-prop and community plays of the late 1960s and early 1970s to plays by individual women playwrights in the 1980s and 1990s. 33. Such plays include ‘Bups’, ‘Bups II’, ‘Diary of a Black Man’, ‘Undercover Lover’ and ‘Yardie’, and were usually staged at The Lewisham Theatre, The Brixton Shaw, The Hackney Empire, and Municipal Theatres in Catford and Peckham. Michael McMillan and SuAndi argue that we should not criticise these plays because they belong to traditions of black popular performance that ‘brought black working class audiences to the theatre, something
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previous black theatre did not do’ (McMillan and SuAndi, 2002, p. 121). McMillan and SuAndi suggest that although often ‘dismissed as comic, sexist, and pandering to the audience’ (121) these plays engender a form of expression that allows for black expression in the theatre: ‘Audiences of recent Caribbean popular theatre are not alienated by the form or condescended to by didactic messages, but allowed to comment, cuss, participate, own, belong, [and] reclaim’ (121). 34. Edited transcripts of The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999) were dramatised in The Tricycle Theatre’s production The Colour of Justice (1999) by journalist Richard Norton-Taylor. The theatre production opened in January to coincide with the publication of Macpherson’s report on the handling of the enquiry, so the issues were of great topical interest and the production transferred to the West End in March. 35. Other 2000s plays by black playwrights include Kofi Agyemang and Patricia Elcock’s ‘Urban Afro Saxons’ (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 2003), Lennie James’s The Sons of Charlie Paora (Royal Court, 2004) and Mark Norfolk’s Wrong Place (Soho Theatre, 2003). 36. Jackie Kay no longer writes for theatre, concentrating her artistic efforts on novels and poetry. Winsome Pinnock did not have an adult play produced between 2000 and 2005; Jacqueline Rudet’s last play was produced in the late 1980s and Trish Cooke and Zindika’s were in the 1990s.
2
Black feminist performance aesthetics 1. Caroline Gardiner’s report What Share of the Cake? details figures for the employment of women within Arts Council–subsidised professional British theatre. Gardiner highlights an imbalance in male–female employees and a glass ceiling for women within theatre institutions. Women were rarely found in management positions and were mostly represented in catering, front of house and administrative roles. 2. Walker coins the term ‘womanist’ to describe ‘a Black feminist or feminist of color [ ] a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually’ (Walker, 1984, p. xi), and goes on to suggest that ‘Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender’ (xii). 3. Addison Gayle’s The Black Aesthetic (New York: Doubleday, 1971) contains a range of discussions about the development of a black aesthetic in literature and theatre. Samuel A. Hay’s African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis (Cambridge: CUP, 1994) and Carlton W. and Barbara J. Molette’s Black Theatre: Premise and Presentation (Bristol: Wyndham Hall Press, 1992) consider the deployment of black aesthetic values in AfricanAmerican theatre throughout the twentieth century. Errol Hill’s The Theatre of Black Americans: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Applause, 1987) contains a range of views from critics, practitioners and theatre theorists. 4. See, for example, a wealth of material from the 1960s and 1970s including Larry Neal’s ‘The Black Arts Movement’ Loften Mitchell’s ‘I Work Here to Please You’, Ronald Milner’s ‘Black Theater – Go Home!’, Ron Karenga’s ‘Black Cultural Nationalism’ and Hoyt Fuller’s ‘Towards a Black Aesthetic’, all
204 Notes
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
3
reprinted in Addison Gayle’s The Black Aesthetic (1971), Alain Locke’s ‘The Drama of Negro Life’, Toni Cade’s ‘Black Theater’, Ed Bullins’s ‘The So-called Western Avant-Garde Drama’, K. William Kgostile’s ‘Towards our Theater’ and Loften Mitchell’s ‘The Negro Theatre and the Harlem Community’, all published in Gayle’s Black Expression (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969). See Verma ‘ “Binglishing” the Stage: A Generation of Asian Theatre in England’ in Richard Boon and Jane Plastow, eds, Theatre Matters: Performance and Culture on the World Stage (Cambridge: CUP, 1998) and ‘The Challenge of Binglish: Analysing Multi-Cultural Productions’ in Patrick Campbell, ed., Analysing Performance: A Critical Reader (Manchester: MUP, 1996a). Verma has directed Binglish versions of Büchner’s Danton’s Death (1989), Gogol’s The Government Inspector (with Anuradha Kapoor, 1989), Moliere’s Tartuffe (Royal National Theatre, 1991) and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Tara Arts National Tour, 1994), Troilus and Cressida (1993) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lyric Hammersmith, 1997) and The Merchant of Venice (Tara Arts National Tour, 2005), drawing out nuances through distinctly Asian languages, music and movement; Tara Arts have also produced The Tempest (1993) and Cyrano (Royal National Theatre, 1995). Talawa have produced Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (Bloomsbury Theatre, 1989), Anthony and Cleopatra (Liverpool Everyman, and Bloomsbury Theatre, 1991), King Lear (Oxford Playhouse and Cochrane Theatre, 1994) and a multiracial Othello (Drill Hall, 1997). Temba Theatre Company revived several canonical texts with black casts, including Romeo and Juliet and Ibsen’s Ghosts. African-American evolving black women include Celie in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and Janie Starks in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) as well characters such as Mama, Ruth and Beneatha in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Tomorrow-Marie (Tommy) in Alice Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness (1969) and the seven ‘colored girls’ in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf (1978). See Gabriele Griffin’s Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain (2003) for a substantial analysis of issues of diaspora in plays by black women. The term ‘Buppie’ was used to describe black upwardly mobile professionals and the emergence of a black middle-class equivalent to Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals) in 1980s Britain.
Winsome Pinnock’s migration narratives
1. The Royal Court Young People’s theatre produced A Rock in Water in 1989; Clean Break Women’s Theatre Company commissioned Mules in 1996; The Royal National Theatre produced Can You Keep a Secret in 1998; The Tricycle Theatre produced Water in 2000 and One Under in 2005. Pinnock’s other plays include The Wind of Change (Half Moon Theatre, 1987) and Picture Palace (Women’s Theatre Group, 1988). 2. Pinnock has written episodes of Eastenders (BBC), South of the Border (BBC) and Chalkface (BBC).
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3. Pinnock’s radio plays include an adaptation of Jean Rhys’s Let Them Call it Jazz (BBC Radio 4, 1998), Her Father’s Daughter (BBC Radio 4, 1999), Water (BBC Radio 4, 2002), Indiana (BBC Radio 4, 2004) and Something Borrowed (BBC Radio 4, 2004). 4. Produced by Liverpool Playhouse Studio, November 1987, directed by Kate Rowland; revived by the Women’s Playhouse Trust at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, July 1990, directed by Hettie Macdonald; revived by the Belgrade Theatre Coventry, 1991, directed by Rumu Sen-Gupta; revived for the National Theatre’s education tour in December 1994 and January 1995, directed by Paulette Randall. 5. Produced by the Women’s Playhouse Trust at the Royal Court Upstairs in February 1989; directed by Jules Wright. 6. Produced at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in August 1991; directed by Hettie Macdonald. 7. Produced by Clean Break Theatre Company at the Royal Court Upstairs in April 1996; directed by Roxana Silbert. 8. See Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips’s Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1999; first published 1998) for discussions of early migrant experiences, based on oral testimonies and recollections. Tony Sewell’s Keep on Moving: The Windrush Legacy: The Black Experience in British from 1948 (London: Voice Enterprises, 1998) offers an accessible discussion of Windrush stories. Ferdinand Dennis and Naseem Khan’s, eds, Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, The Caribbean and Africa (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000) presents a collection of essays by diasporic writers and Onyekachi Wambu’s, ed., Empire Windrush: Fifty Years of Writing About Black Britain (London: Phoenix, 1999; first published 1998) offers a selection of creative writing exploring black migrant experiences from the Windrush years to the late 1990s. 9. In Welcome Home Jacko (Black Theatre Co-operative, 1979; now Nitro) Mustapha Matura portrays young black British boys who see their identities as best recuperated through recourse to an Afro-centric Rastafarian heritage, and in Meetings (Hampstead Theatre, 1982; Black Theatre Cooperative, 1991) he shows the impact of American consumerist ideals on small-island Caribbean communities. Derek Walcott and Edgar White have written plays about the first generation’s experiences of Britain and the Diaspora, and, more recently, Roy Williams has depicted British-born generations’ dilemmas. See Derek Walcott’s Remembrance (New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1980) or Pantomime, in William B. Branch (ed.) Crosswinds: An Anthology of Black Dramatists in the Diaspora (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 130–161, Roy Williams’s Lift Off (London: Methuen, 1999), Clubland (London: Methuen, 2001) and Fallout (London: Methuen, 2003). Edgar White’s Lament for Rastafari is set in England and Jamaica and contains scenes of departure and arrival. See Lament For Rastafari and Other Plays (London: Marion Boyars, 1983). 10. Pinnock’s woman-centred focus is pre-empted by Elyse Dodgson’s schoolbased oral history project, which culminated in the play Motherland, first performed at the Oval House on 9 July 1982, and the subsequent ILEA video and publication Motherland: West Indian Women to Britain in the
206 Notes 1950s (Oxford: Heinemann Education, 1984). Pinnock’s plays fictionalise the narratives based on common stories such as those found in the interviews in Dodgson’s project. 11. Clean Break’s productions of Sarah Daniels’ Head Rot Holiday (1992), Rebecca Prichard’s Yard Gal (1998), Kara Miller’s Hyacinth Blue (1999) and Jessica Farmer’s Compact Failure (2004) all used racially mixed casts to look at black and white women’s experience of prisons and mental health institutions. 12. Histories of black migration to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s tell recurring stories of the disappointment experienced by the first generation who encountered a hostile and brutally racist Britain and discovered that the ‘Mother Country’ was quite different from their preconceptions of it. See Peter Fryer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984) and Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1998) for analysis of black experiences in post-war Britain. 13. Such passing down of oral knowledge accords with representations in other black women’s plays of the period. In Zindika’s Leonora’s Dance (1993), for example, Leonora’s mother Frieda comes from the Caribbean and passes on her ‘gift’ of spiritual wisdom to Leonora’s niece Daphine.
4
Jacqueline Rudet (re)writing sexual deviancy 1. Produced by the Black Theatre Co-operative at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in October 1984 and on national tour; directed by Gordon Case. 2. Produced at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (in association with Temba Theatre Company) in October 1985; directed by Paulette Randall. 3. Woddis describes how Sarah Daniels received similar responses to the feminist rhetoric in her plays, which were received with antipathy and suspicion.
5 Jackie Kay and Valerie Mason-John’s zamis, lesbians and queers 1. The Adoption Papers (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1991) explores Kay’s multiple parentages from the viewpoints of the adopted daughter, the adoptive mother and the birth mother, and Life Mask (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2005) reflects on visiting Nigeria and meeting her biological father for the first time. 2. Mason-John’s experiences of growing up as a black girl in care are the basis for her first novel Borrowed Body (London: Serpents Tail, 2005). 3. Kay’s literary fiction includes the novel Trumpet (London: Picador, 1998), children’s novel Strawgirl (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2002) and the collection of short stories Why Don’t You Stop Talking (London: Picador, 2002). Her poetry includes The Adoption Papers, Other Lovers (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1993), Off Colour (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1998) and Life Mask .
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4. Produced by The Theatre of Black Women at the Soho Poly in March 1986 and on national tour including the Drill Hall, the Oval House and the Cockpit Theatre; directed by Joan-Ann Maynard. 5. Produced by Gay Sweatshop at the Drill Hall in September 1988; directed by Nona Shepphard. 6. See Philip Thomas and Ruth Costigan, Promoting Homosexuality: Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 (Cardiff: Cardiff Law School, 1990). 7. See Valerie Mason-John and Ann Khambatta Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves (London: Scarlet Press, 1993); Valerie Mason-John, ed., Talking Black: Lesbians of African Descent Speak Out (London: Cassell, 1995) and Valerie Mason-John Brown Girl in the Ring (London: Get a Grip Publishers Ltd, 1999d). 8. Produced at the Oval House Theatre in January 1998; directed by Paul Everitt. 9. Twice Over was originally commissioned by Theatre-in-Education company Theatre Centre. Michael Griffiths’ interview with Kay outlines that Theatre Centre had asked her to make too many changes to the script, which she objected to. So she ‘withdrew the script and sent it to Gay Sweatshop’ (Griffiths, 1988, p. 43). 10. Mason-John had difficulty raising public funding for a play about inter-racial sadomasochistic lesbian relationships, so the production was self-financed with the help of lesbian friends and the support of the Oval House theatre and lesbian and gay businesses. The play sold out virtually every night, and was so popular that it was revived for a small national tour in 1999. 11. See Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s Mixed Feelings: The Complex Lives of Mixed-Race Britons (2001) for a discussion of how mixed race identity is perceived in contemporary discourse. 12. The character of Trace was renamed Pietro for the first production because she was played by a Mediterranean actress. 13. Chaps are a type of leather trouser where the buttocks are cut out; they are worn over or without underclothes and have been linked with fetish or SM identification. 14. Grace Barnes’ stage adaptation of Kay’s Trumpet was produced by The Skeklers Theatre Company, including dates at the Drill Hall, London, in 2006. Barnes’ adaptation captured key themes that resonate throughout Kay’s work, such as adoption, romance, sexuality and unfolding secrets, in a form that evokes Kay’s experimentation through interweaving past and present and breaking down realism through direct audience address.
6
Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop 1. Men’s Troupe productions had looked at the seven stages of man (Mantrail, 1986), migration and return (Goin Home, 1988), black people, mental health and institutions (Rainbow, 1989) and traditions of comic and film superheroes (Superheroes, 1990). 2. BMT were committed to developing the training of black women in the field of mime and physical theatre. The ongoing training of company members, employed on open-ended contracts, was supported by sessions with trainers with backgrounds in various arts, movement and therapy-based
208 Notes
3.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
7
performance practices including Sarah Brignall, John Wright, Nigel Charnock, Paul Allain, and Philippe Gaullier. The annual Black Women’s Training Project, set up in 1990, gave a group of 12–16 black women the opportunity to attend an annual two-week programme of workshops in BMT’s devising method. The BMT Ensemble shows included Heart (1992) looking at male/female communication and heterosexual relationships, E.D.R: Earliest Date of Release (1993) about black people criminality and the prison system, Forgotten Heroes (1994) exploring black masculinity and Dirty Reality (1994) and Dirty Reality 2 (1995), which were both about mixed race identity and inter-racial relationships. There is no published performance script of Mothers. All citations are taken from my transcript of the production video as viewed at The Theatre Museum. There is no published performance script of Total Rethink. All citations are taken from my transcript of the production video as viewed at The Theatre Museum. See also, Charlie’s Angels (2000), Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle (2003), Kill Bill 2 (2004) and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003). There is no published performance script of Drowning. Citations are taken from my stage manager’s prompt book of the production and my transcripts of the production video as viewed at The Theatre Museum. There is no published performance script of Mourning Song. All citations are taken from my transcript of the production video as viewed at The Theatre Museum.
Solo voices: Performance art, dance and poetry
1. SuAndi also curates visual art exhibitions, provides consultancies for various arts organisations and regional arts boards and sets up and leads educational workshops and community-based initiatives such as the 1994 ArtBlackLive conference in Manchester. She wrote the libretto for Mary Seacole: The Opera (Royal Opera House, 2000), wrote and performed in a further libretto, The Calling (BBC Philharmonic, 2005), and her poetry is published in several anthologies and collections. See, SuAndi, Nearly Forty (1992), Style in Performance (1990) and There Will Be No Tears (1995). 2. First performed at the ICA in October 1993. 3. There is no published performance script of This is All I’ve Got to Say. Citations are taken from my transcript of the 13 October 1993 ICA production video viewed at the Live Art Development Agency, except where the individual poems recited are published elsewhere. 4. The ICA Live Arts commission first performed at the ICA in September 1994 and subsequently at a range of festivals, conferences, schools and community arts venues. See, SuAndi (ed.) 4 For More (Manchester: ArtBlackLive, 2002) for the full published text and images; a video of the ICA production is held at the Live Art Development Agency. 5. SuAndi, interview with Lynette Goddard, 02 March 2005, London.
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6. Aston’s Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights 1990–2000 (2003) presents further analysis of how M is racially marked and abused as the white mother of black children. 7. See Ugwu, Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance (London: ICA, 1995), ICA and Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire (London: ICA and inIVA, 1995) and Marie-Anne Mancio, ‘Maps for Wayward Performers: Feminist Readings and Contemporary Live Art Practice in Britain’ (University of Sussex, 1996) for further analysis of Lewis’s performance work. 8. Lewis’s work as a dancer, choreographer and director includes choreography for Black Mime Theatre, directing Blue (Oval House Theatre, 1999) and her solo performance piece The Minnesota Code (NOW Festival, Nottingham, 1998). 9. Subassa Imani Lewis, interview with Lynette Goddard, 19 September 2005, London. 10. See Kobena Mercer’s genealogy of ‘Black Hair/Style Politics’ (Mercer, 1994, p. 97), which explores how assumptions of an oppositional politics of natural black hair are problematised by styles such as dreadlocks or afros being recuperated for stylistic rather than purely political purposes. 11. There is no published performance script of Walking Tall. Citations are taken from my transcript of the production videos viewed at the Live Art Development Agency. 12. There is no published performance script of Ladies Falling. Citations are taken from my transcript of the production videos viewed at the Live Art Development Agency. 13. See Paul Gilroy’s ‘The Sugar You Stir ’ in Paul Gilroy, Lawrence Grossberg and Angela McRobbie (eds) Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall (London: Verso, 2000) for a comment on the brutalising effects of the slave labour required to produce these commodities. 14. Initially conceived as a short 20-minute piece, Sweep it Under the Carpet, which was performed at Jackson’s Lane Community Theatre in 1996 and developed and produced as a short performance as part of Talawa Theatre Company’s ‘Zebra Crossing 2’ season at the Lyric Studio in 1998. The piece was renamed Brown Girl in the Ring and expanded for a full-length production at the Oval House Theatre Upstairs in 1999 and national tour including The Drill Hall; directed by Paul Everitt. See Dimple Godiwala (ed.) Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres (2006) and Savitri Hensman, ‘Presentation of Self as Performance: The Birth of Queenie aka Valerie Mason-John, in Nina Rapi and Maya Chowdhry (eds) Acts of Passion: Sexuality, Gender and Performance (London: The Haworth Press, 1998) for further analysis. 15. As Queenie, Mason-John has compèred a range of events, including the main stage at Lesbian and Gay Pride in 1996 and the Annual Alternative Lesbian Beauty Contest in 1998. 16. Sauda was a monthly black-women-only performance event at The Women’s Centre, London, in the early 1990s. 17. For example, Litpop (Channel 4, 1998), The Other Side (Channel 4, 1999), Culture Fix (BBC Knowledge, 1999) and The Essential Guide to the 21st Century (BBC World Service, 2000). 18. See Patience Agbabi R.A.W. (1995) and Transformatrix (2000).
210 Notes 19. First presented at Sauda on 5 October 1991 and subsequently performed nationally and internationally, including Apples and Snakes (1992), Oval House Women’s Post Pride Serenade (1992), Gay Sweatshop One Night Stand (1993), The ICA More Respect Season (1994), as well as various school and community centre appearances. Published in Dorothea Smartt Connecting Medium (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2001). 20. See, Lizbeth Goodman ‘Who’s Looking at Who(m)?: Re-viewing Medusa’ in Modern Drama Vol. 39, No. 1., Spring 1996c and Mythic Women/ Real Women: Plays and Performance Pieces by Women (London: Faber & Faber, 2000) for further detailed analysis. 21. First performed at the ICA on 2 November 1994. 22. There is no published performance script of From Me to You to Me. Citations are taken from my transcripts of the production videos viewed at the Live Art Development Agency, except where the individual poems recited are published elsewhere. 23. First performed at the ICA’s Ripple Effect in May 1996 and later revived for a one-off International Women’s Day performance at The Africa Centre in March 1998; directed by Jillian Tipene.
8
Black feminist futures?
1. Produced at the Hampstead Theatre in April 2003; directed by Kathy Burke. 2. Produced at the Soho Theatre in February 2003; directed by Rufus Norris. 3. tucker green’s Two Women (2000) was produced at the Soho Theatre in October 2000, where it was shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award for playwrights of Caribbean descent; directed by Rufus Norris. Originally seen as a rehearsed reading of Stratford in Paines Plough ‘Wild Lunch IV – Jubilee – Plays from the Underground’. Three radio plays, Freefall (BBC Radio 3, 2002), To Swallow (BBC Radio 4, 2003) and Handprint (BBC Radio 3, 2006), have been broadcast and shortlisted for a number of awards. 4. Produced at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs in April 2005 and transferred to the Drum Theatre Plymouth; directed by Marianne Elliott. 5. First produced by the RSC at The Other Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, in October 2004 and as a rehearsed reading at the Soho Theatre in March 2005. Updated and revived by the RSC at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, in October 2005 and transferred to Soho Theatre in March 2006; directed by Sacha Wares. 6. Produced as part of the National Theatre’s ‘G8 plays’ in June 2005; directed by Sacha Wares. 7. Produced at The Tricycle Theatre in October 2000 and revived in February 2001; directed by Surian Fletcher-Jones. Pinnock’s own adaptation of the play was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2002. 8. Produced at The Tricycle Theatre in February 2005; directed by Jennie Darnell. 9. Produced by Talawa Theatre Company at The Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in April 2004; directed by Paulette Randall. 10. Produced by Arawak Moon Productions at Theatre Royal Stratford East in February 2002, followed by a national tour; directed by Paulette Randall.
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220 Bibliography Wambu, Onyekachi (ed.). Empire Windrush: Fifty Years of Writing about Black Britain. London: Phoenix, 1999. Wandor, Michelene. Carry on Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. ——. Look Back in Gender: Sexuality and the Family in Post-War British Drama. London: Methuen, 1987. Wardle, Irving. ‘At Odds and A Long Way From Home.’ The Independent on Sunday. 8 January 1995, p. 25. Williams, Linda Ruth. ‘Sisters Under the Skin: Video and Blockbuster Erotic Thrillers.’ In Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader, Pam Cook and Philip Dodd (eds). London: Scarlet Press, 1993, pp. 105–14. Williams, Mance. Black Theatre in the 1960s and 1970s: A Historical-Critical Analysis of the Movement. London: Greenwood Press, 1985. Wilson, Anne. Mixed Race Children: A Study of Identity. London: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Wittig, Monique. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Woddis, Carole. ‘Mothers review.’ City Limits. No. 487. 31 January–7 February 1991, p. 61. ——. ‘Feminism and the Theatre Critic.’ Women: A Cultural Review: Gender and Performance – Women on the British Stage. Vol. 5, No. 2. Oxford: OUP, Autumn 1994, pp. 192–97. Wright, Beth-Sarah. ‘Dub Poet Lekka Mi: An Exploration of Performance Poetry, Power and Identity Politics in Black Britain.’ In Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader, Kwesi Owusu (ed.). London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 271–88. Zindika. Paper and Stone. Unpublished Manuscript. London: Black Theatre Cooperative, 1989. ——. Leonora’s Dance. Six Plays by Black and Asian Women Writers. Kadija George (ed.). London: Aurora Metro Press, 1993, pp. 76–110.
Select websites www.artscouncil.org.uk (visited 3 July 2005) www.britishtheatreguide.info/news/talawa.htm (visited 12 January 2005) www.casbah.co.uk (visited 15 April 2003) www.cleanbreak.org.uk (visited 4 July 2006) www.dailytelegraph.co.uk (visited 10 July 2003) www.decibel-db.org (visited 12 January 2004) www.guardian.co.uk (visited 19 January 2006) www.independent.co.uk (visited 31 May 2003) www.observer.co.uk (visited 10 July 2003) www.sbu.ac.uk/∼stafflag/gaysweatshop.html (visited 29 November 2001) www.talawa.com (visited 6 December 2003)
Index
Abbensetts, Michael, 18 abuse, 146, 182, 192 alcohol, 148 domestic, 137, 138, 140, 182, 186, 188 racial, 159, 160 sexual, 47, 65, 85, 123, 149 actors Equity union, see Equity actresses, see black actresses adoption, 105, 160, 193, 207 see also fostering Affleck, Cindy, 136, 138, 140, 141 African American playwrights, 13, 18, 22, 30, 37, 185, 200 Agbabi, Patience, 8, 12, 50, 53, 168–72, 175, 176, 177 Raw, 172 Transformatrix, 209 Agbebiyi, Adeola, 12 Fo(u)r Women, 13, 175–6 Agboluaje, Oladipo Mother Courage and Her Children, 36 agit-prop, 33, 39, 202 Albany Empire, 22 Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin, 207 Allain, Paul, 133, 208 alternative theatre, 17 see also fringe American images, 18 American performers, 18 Anderson, Tracey, 146 Angelou, Maya, 200 Anna Lucasta Understudy Company, 19, 200 Arden, John, 199 Armitstead, Claire, 59, 77 Arts Council of England, 20, 21, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 35, 135, 178, 200 see also funding Arts Theatre, 22, 199
Aston, Elaine, 3, 12, 28, 32, 42, 89, 159 Feminist Views on the English Stage, 2, 198, 209 An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre, 2, 198, 201 audience address, 8, 53, 79, 106, 107, 109, 124, 125, 158, 160 audiences, 2, 3, 34, 35, 43, 44, 45, 52, 72, 77, 78, 88, 90, 94, 120, 121, 122–7
backlash theory, 32 Baden-Semper, Nina, 18 Baker, Walter V., 21, 26 Baldwin, James, 37, 200 Baraka, Amiri, 44 Barber, John, 94, 95 Bardsley, Barney, 97, 111 Bassnett-McGuire, Susan, 41 Bayley, Claire, 143, 144, 145 Beckett, Samuel, 46, 184, 199 Belgrade Theatre, 22, 205 Bemmarro Sisters, 26 Benedict, Claire, 27 Benston, Kimberley, 44 Berkoff, Steven, 133 Berman, Ed, 200 Binglish theatre, 43–6, 50, 69 Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 36 black actresses, 37, 61, 79, 183, 186 casting and stereotype, 18–19 conditions for, 18–20, 27 black aesthetics, 10, 43–6, 69, 195 black feminist aesthetics, 4, 10, 34, 43, 196 and stereotyping, 79–81 black feminist theatre defining of, 39–43 black feminist theory, 4, 7, 48 221
222 Index black lesbians, 25–6, 27, 37, 50, 52, 83–5, 91–6, 106, 109–10, 166, 167, 173–4, 175–6 playwrights, 105–6, 107 representations of, 6–7, 8, 11, 97, 99–103 and sadomasochism, 37, 108, 116, 119–22 see also lesbians; zamis black managed theatre buildings, 23–4 Black Mime Theatre Company, 20, 23 Black Women’s Training Project, 208 Drowning, 11, 49, 133, 134, 135, 146–9, 152, 153 The Ensemble, 135 The Men’s Troupe, 134 Mothers, 11, 49, 134, 136–42 Mourning Song, 12, 135, 149–52, 201 Total Rethink, 11–12, 134, 142–5, 152, 153 The Women’s Troop, 4, 11, 49, 133–52 black theatre boom, 20, 28, 30, 37 Black Theatre Co-operative, 19, 23, 25, 34, 88, 205 see also Nitro Black Theatre of Brixton, see Dark and Light Theatre Company Black Theatre Seasons, 25, 201 black women’s theatre settings of, 47 themes of, 47–50 bourgeois feminism, 32 Bourne, Stephen Black in the British Frame, 18 Boyce Davies, Carole Black Women, Writing and Identity, 63 Brecht, Bertolt, 199 Mother Courage and Her Children, 36 Brenton, Howard, 199 Brewer, Mary F., 62, 117, 119 Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Women’s Theatre, 2, 198 Brewster, Yvonne, 3, 24, 40, 42, 43, 200 see also Talawa Theatre Company Brignall, Sarah, 208 British National Party, The, 155
Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth, 47, 90 Brown, Janet, 46, 48 Bull, John, 28, 30 Bullins, Ed, 44, 204 Bushell-Mingo, Josette, 27 butch/femme, 116–19, 175 Butler, Judith, 8 Carib Theatre Company, 25, 202 Caribbean, 3, 4, 9, 12, 30, 39, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63–74, 93, 147, 163–5, 173–4, 183 see also West Indies Carlson, Susan, 84, 95, 103 Carne, Rosalind, 96 Case, Gordon, 88, 94, 206 Case, Sue-Ellen, 42, 51, 117 casting, 31, 35, 193 see also integrated casting; multi-racial casting Cattouse, Nadia, 18 Cave, The, 23 Censorship, 33, 44 Charnock, Nigel, 133, 208 Chekhov, Anton, 200 Three Sisters, 36 Childress, Alice Trouble in Mind, 200 Wine in the Wilderness, 192, 200–1, 204 chorality, 12–13, 151, 174, 175, 183, 202 choreopoem, 52, 122–5 Christian, Barbara, 8, 199 Christopher, James, 72 Churchill, Caryl, 13, 46, 184 Civil Rights, 43, 44 Cixous, Helene, 67 Clarke, Elizabeth B., 26 class, 2, 6, 7, 12, 17, 29, 32, 34, 39, 40, 41, 48, 83, 127, 133, 159, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 177, 183, 190, 193, 195, 202 Clean Break Theatre Company, 26, 61, 79, 202 Cochrane Theatre, 23, 204 Cockpit Theatre, 22, 207 Collins, Merle, 169
Index Collins, Patricia Hill, 6, 46–7, 62, 86, 137, 140, 198 colour blind casting, see integrated casting; multi-racial casting Combahee River Collective, The, 41 comedy, 34, 52, 72, 106, 108, 109, 122–3, 125, 126, 128, 135 commercial viability, 30, 34, 37, 81 Commission for Racial Equality, 21 compulsory heterosexuality, 7, 8, 91, 114 Connor, Edric, 19–20 Connor, Pearl, 18, 19–20, 200 consciousness raising, 40, 44 Conservative Party Government, 20, 202 impact on black theatre, 28–32 constructionism, 2, 198 Cooke, Trish, 27 Back Street Mammy, 25, 47, 49 Running Dream, 49, 50 Cork, Kenneth, 26 The Cork Report, 21–2 Costa, Maddy, 109 Coward, Rosalind, 41 Crabbe, Harry, 79 CRE, see Commission for Racial Equality Croft, Susan, 198 Cross, Felix, 34 Croydon Warehouse Theatre, 22 cult of true womanhood, 5–6 cultural diversity, 21, 28, 31, 34, 37 cultural identity, 1, 4–9, 48, 63–6, 163, 174, 196 Curb, Rosemary, 41 Curtis, Nick, 73 Dahl, Mary Karen, 124, 198 Daley, Doña Blest Be the Tie, 13, 36, 46, 50, 194–5 Daley, Tracey Shoot to Win, 13, 195–6 dance as content, 48, 74, 85, 88–9, 118, 142, 147, 168 as form, 11, 12, 34, 53, 109, 123, 125, 128, 134, 135, 161–5 Daniels, Sarah, 13, 206
223
Head Rot Holiday, 206 Dark and Light Theatre Company, 19, 200 Dayley, Grace Rose’s Story, 47, 49 de Jongh, Nicholas, 8, 79, 95 deviancy, 8, 11, 50, 82, 83, 84–90, 91, 92, 199 devised theatre, 3, 11, 134, 135–6, 149 Dhondy, Farrukh, 25 diaspora, 3, 9, 42, 195, 204 Dickerson, Glenda, 5–6 didactic theatre, 12, 33, 44, 90, 123, 128, 156, 203 Dierdrick, Arosemaya, 146 director role of, 43 displacement, 57, 59, 61, 65, 154 Dodgson, Elyse Motherland, 205 Dolan, Jill, 41, 100, 109, 114, 123 The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 1–2 domestic violence, 138, 156, 170, 182 see also abuse Double Edge Theatre Company, 20, 23, 202 double marginalisation, 3, 6, 39, 65, 144 see also marginalisation Drill Hall Theatre, 22, 204, 207, 209 du Gay, Paul, 202 Dubey, Madhu, 6 Dunlap, Ruth, 25 DV8 Theatre Company, 133, 152, 153 Eclipse Report, 35–6 Eclipse Theatre Company, 36 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 133 Edric Connor Agency, 19–20 Eliot, T. S., 184 emergent black woman, see evolving black woman employment, 26, 35, 85–6, 97, 203 empowerment, 44, 46, 49, 83, 147, 154, 156, 168, 173, 174, 178 equal opportunities, 20, 29, 30, 35–6 Equity, 20, 200 essentialism, 2, 5–6, 47, 103–4 and stereotyping, 8
224 Index Evaristo, Bernadine, 12, 26, 34, 42–3, 134, 135, 154 evolving black woman, 46–7, 48, 90–1 Faludi, Susan Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, 32 Fanon, Frantz, 74 Farmer, Jennifer Compact Failure, 202 Farwell, Marilyn, 109 feminist aesthetics, 4, 10, 34, 41, 43, 79, 90, 153, 174, 196 feminist form, 50, 51 feminist impulse, 46, 48, 50 feminist spectator, 1–2 Findlater, Richard, 199 first generation migrants, 27–8, 42, 48, 58–9, 60, 64, 69, 79, 174, 206 Forte, Jeanie, 51, 53 fostering, 12, 105, 127, 169, 170, 176 see also adoption Freeman, Sandra Putting Your Daughters on the Stage, 198 fringe theatre, 17, 22 see also alternative theatre Frumin, Sue, 27 funding, 10, 20–2, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 135, 149, 200, 202 see also Arts Council of England Fuss, Diana, 198 Gardiner, Caroline What Share of the Cake?, 26, 203 Gardner, Lyn, 96, 97, 151–2 Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, 98 Gaullier, Phillipe, 133, 208 Gay Sweatshop, 27, 105, 106, 125, 207 Genet, Jean, 184 The Blacks, 18 The Maids, 27 Gideon, Killian England is De Place for Me, 48 Gilroy, Paul, 202, 209 GLC, see Greater London Council
Godiwala, Dimple, 168 Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres, 198, 209 Goodman, Lizbeth, 3, 39–40, 42, 139, 152, 174, 210 Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own, 2, 198 Greater London Arts, 26, 33 Greater London Council, 25, 30 abolition of, 30 Griffin, Farah Jasmine, 59 Griffin, Gabriele, 2, 59, 65 Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain, 3, 198, 204 hair, 12, 75, 112, 118, 159, 162–3, 167, 173, 174, 175–6, 177, 184, 194 Hall, Stuart, 5, 9, 209 Hammond, Mona, 18 Hampstead Theatre, 36, 202, 205, 210 Hansberry, Lorraine, 200 A Raisin in the Sun, 25, 37, 202, 204 Hare, David, 199 Harlem Renaissance, 43 Hart, Lynda, 199 Hay, Samuel A., 44, 203 Hedley, Philip, 30, 202 see also Theatre Royal Stratford East Henriques, Pauline, 18, 19, 200 heterosexism, 1, 6–7, 8, 11, 13, 34, 99, 101, 102–3, 109–10, 114, 117, 166, 198 Hilaire, Patricia, 26 Hiley, Jim, 115 homophobia, 29, 52, 105, 106, 114, 115, 116, 129, 169 hooks, bell, 5, 151, 178 Ain’t I a Woman, 198 Hooley, Joan, 18 Hoyle, Martin, 95, 96, 97 Hudson, Christopher, 97 Hughes, Langston Simply Heavenly, 37 Hulme, Alan, 77 Hunt, Sky, 136, 138, 140, 142 Hurston, Zora Neale, 61–2
Index Their Eyes Were Watching God, 204 hybridity, 46, 57, 59 Ibsen, Henrik, 27, 184, 199 ICA, see Institute of Contemporary Arts identity politics, 4–9, 47, 48, 63–9, 109–14, 119–22 and representation, 5 see also cultural identity Imani-Faith Theatre Company, 32, 82, 201 individualism, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33–4, 48, 62, 86, 188, 194, 202 Institute of Contemporary Arts, 12, 154, 161, 172, 199, 200, 208, 210 institutional racism, 24, 25, 29, 35, 37, 38, 155, 159, 193 definition of, 35 integrated casting, 27, 30, 35, 45, 200 see also multi-racial casting inter-generational conflicts, 47, 49, 60 inter-racial relationships, 60–1, 75, 120, 177, 208 in-yer-face theatre, 13, 108, 181, 184, 186 Itzin, Catherine, 87 Jamaica, 34, 48, 52, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 76, 77, 78, 194, 195, 205 James, Lennie, 203 Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre, see Cochrane Theatre Jellicoe, Ann, 199 John, Errol Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, 18, 19, 36, 199 Joseph, May, 198 Judd, Yazmine, 27 Unfinished Business, 25, 49 Kane, Sarah, 13, 46, 186 Blasted, 184 Kay, Jackie, 4, 8, 53, 203, 207 The Adoption Papers, 206 Chiaroscuro, 11, 47, 48, 50, 52, 105, 109–13, 118, 123–5, 128 Twice Over, 11, 27, 52, 105, 114–16, 125–6
225
Kaye, Nick, 53 Kennedy, Adrienne, 199 Keskidee Centre, 22, 23, 201 Kgostile, K. Williams, 44, 204 Khan, Naseem, 20, 26, 27, 141, 153 The Arts Britain Ignores, 21 Kingston, Jeremy, 72, 77 Kumar, Syreeta, 142 Kwei-Armah, Kwame Elmina’s Kitchen, 36, 37, 202 Fix Up, 36 Labour Party Government, 29, 31, 202 Lacan, 66, 117 Langridge, Natasha, 57 language, 13, 45, 50, 57, 61, 66–9, 98, 133, 150, 172, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 196 Lawrence, Stephen, 34–5, 203 Le Roi Jones, see Baraka, Amiri Lecoq, Jacques, 133 Leicester Haymarket Theatre, 22 Lepage, Robert, 133 lesbians narratives, 106–9, 114–16 stereotypes of, 7–8, 115–16, 118 theatre, 1, 27, 37, 117–18, 122–7, 128 see also black lesbians; zamis Lester, Neal A., 123 Lewis, Susan, 8, 53, 161 Ladies Falling, 12, 161–5 Walking Tall, 12, 163–5 live art, 11, 12, 34, 39, 53, 154, 177–8 see also performance art Liverpool Playhouse, 22, 205 London International Mime Festival, 133 Lorde, Audre, 6, 109–10, 129, 198 Lori-Parks, Suzan, 13 Topdog/Underdog, 202 Lyric Theatre, 22, 204, 205, 209 MAAS, see Minority Arts Advisory Service Macdonald, Hettie, 26, 72, 205 McFerran, Ann, 95, 96 McLeod, Jenny, 27, 31 McMillan, Michael, 19, 202–3
226 Index Macpherson, Sir William Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report, 34–5 male gaze, 1, 11, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 117, 143, 144, 162 Mamet, David, 184 Mancio, Marie-Anne, 163–4, 165, 209 marginalisation, 17, 25, 30, 42 see also double marginalisation Marriott, R. B., 89, 100 Martin, Jo Shoot to Win, 13, 195–6 Martin, Mick, 57–8, 192 Mason-John, Valerie (aka Queenie), 4, 8, 38, 47, 53 Brown Girl in the Ring, 12, 165–8 Sin Dykes, 11, 37, 50, 52, 106, 108–9, 116–22, 123, 126, 127–8 Materic, Mladen, 133 Matura, Mustapha, 18, 25, 69, 200 As Time Goes By, 200 Meetings, 205 Three Sisters, 36 Welcome Home Jacko, 205 Maynard, Joan-Ann, 59–60, 201 Medusa, 12, 172–3 Melville, Josephine Shoot to Win, 13, 195–6 Mercer, Kobena, 209 migration, 57, 58–62, 63–6, 71, 150, 156, 164, 174, 194–5, 206 Miller, Arthur, 58, 199 After the Fall, 27 Miller, Kara Hyacinth Blue, 202, 206 Milner, Ronald, 44, 203 mime, 133–4, 135, 136, 152 Minority Arts Advisory Service, 21 Mitchell, Sherlee, 173, 174 mixed race identity, 7, 12, 52, 105, 106, 111, 113–14, 127, 128, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164, 177, 196 Monstrous Regiment, 26 Mother Country, 58, 59, 63, 206 mothering, 49, 91, 137–42 othermothering, 62–3 see also welfare mother mothers and daughters, 11, 49, 80, 93–4, 136, 138, 140, 158–61
Moving Picture Mime Show, 133 multi-racial casting, 26, 27, 31, 61, 193 see also integrated casting Munroe, Carmen, 18, 19, 200 musicals, 30 Nagy, Phylis, 184 National Theatre, The, 18, 27, 36, 57, 72, 182, 202 Naturalism, see realism Negro Theatre Workshop, 20, 200 New Feminism, 32, 190 New Labour, 31 New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, 29, 31 Nia Centre, 23 Nichols, Peter The National Health, 18 Nightingale, Benedict, 71, 72–3 Nitro, 19, 34, 202, 205 see also Black Theatre Co-operative Norfolk, Mark, 36 Nottingham Playhouse, 22, 35, 36, 209 nudity, 86, 89, 162–3 Obeah, 49, 60, 62, 64, 69–73 Oddey, Alison Devising Theatre, 136 O’Neill, Eugene All God’s Chillun Got Wings, 18 Orton, Joe, 199 Osborne, Deirdre, 195 Osborne, John, 199 Oshodi, Maria Blood Sweat and Fears, 27 Osment, Philip, 125 othermothering, see mothering Otiv, Shewta, 23 Oval House Theatre, 22, 108, 121, 205, 207, 209 Owusu, Kwesi, 21 patois, 50, 67, 69, 120, 195 Paton, Maureen, 72 Peacock, D. Keith, 17–18, 20, 28 Thatcher’s Theatre, 199 performance art, 9, 53, 106 see also live art
Index performance poetry, 9, 11, 12, 34, 39, 50, 53, 154, 168–72, 175, 177 Philips, Caryl, 18 physical theatre, 11, 79, 109, 133–5, 152 Pines, Jim, 19 Black and White in Colour, 18 Pinnock, Winsome, 4, 22, 27, 31, 36, 46, 57–8 A Hero’s Welcome, 11, 47, 49, 50, 59, 62, 64, 69, 70, 77, 79 Leave Taking, 11, 26, 47, 48, 49, 59–60, 62–3, 64–5, 67, 69–74, 77, 80 Mules, 11, 26, 47, 52, 61–2, 65–6, 76–7, 78–9, 80 One Under, 13, 193–4 A Rock in Water, 204 Talking in Tongues, 11, 26, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 58, 60–1, 65, 67–9, 70, 74–6, 77–8 Water, 13, 47, 192–3 Pinter, Harold, 46, 58, 184, 199 police and brutality, 159–60, 170–1 and institutional racism, 35 Ponnuswami, Meenakshi, 19, 198, 199 Pool, Cassi, 146 pornography, 83–8 post-war British theatre, 17 Powell, Enoch, 29 pregnancy, 49, 60, 80, 85, 107 Prichard, Rebecca Yard Gal, 206 Queenie, see Mason-John, Valerie queer politics, 7, 8, 12, 116–19 race relations, 35 Randall, Paulette, 72, 202, 205, 206, 211 Fishing, 25, 201 24%, 26 Rapi, Nina, 101 realism, 11 and black feminist approaches, 13, 50–2, 77–9, 99–103, 109, 122–7, 185 Reckord, Barry, 199
227
Skyvers, 18 Redondo, M. Susana, 92, 99, 103 Rees, Roland, 200 regional theatres, 22, 35 Remnant, Mary, 32 reverse migration, 59, 65 reviewing, see theatre reviewing Rhone, Trevor, 25, 201 Rich, Adrienne, 7 riots, 20, 164 ritual, 44 Riverside Studios, 22 role doubling, 77–8 Rose, Helen, 72, 115 Roundhouse, The, 18, 21–2 failed bid, 23, 24 Royal Court Theatre, 17, 18, 22, 36, 57, 98, 182, 185, 195, 199–200, 201, 202 playwrights, 199 Royal National Theatre, see National Theatre, The Royal Opera House, 23, 34 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), 27, 36, 182 Rudet, Jacqueline, 4, 27, 46, 95–9, 104 Basin, 11, 25, 47, 48, 49–50, 82, 83–6, 91–5, 99–103 God’s Second in Command, 47 Money to Live, 11, 47, 48, 49, 82, 83–90, 99 Sadler’s Wells, 23 sadomasochism, 37, 50, 52, 108, 116, 119–21, 207 second generation migrants, 20, 27–8, 42, 46, 59, 69–71 separatism, 24, 31, 32, 44, 68, 75, 95, 114 Shah, Shaila, 116 Shange, Ntozake, 13, 85 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, 123, 204 The Love Space Demands, 25, 202 Sharadha, Y. S., 4 Shulman, Milton, 58, 59, 76, 79 sickle cell anaemia, 47 Sierz, Aleks, 13, 184
228 Index Signifyin(g), 98, 99, 125 Simon, Josette, 27 Sirett, Paul The Big Life, 37 Skinner-Carter, Corinne, 18 Smartt, Dorothea, 8, 53, 172–4 From Me To You To Me, 173–4 Medusa, 12, 50, 172–3 Smith, Anna Marie, 29 Smith, Barbara, 6–7, 199 Soho Theatre, 22, 36 Soyinka, Wole, 18 Sphinx Theatre Company, The, 26, 201 spirituality, 49, 70 stand up comedy, 34 see also comedy Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, 34–5 Stephenson, Heidi, 57 stereotyping, 6, 8, 34, 49 and black feminist aesthetics, 79–80 and black women, 5 and cultural identity, 5 Stone, Judy S., 48, 59, 80 storytelling, 12, 109 stripping, 85–9, 96, 100 SuAndi, 8, 9, 12, 19, 42, 48, 49, 53, 177, 202 The Story of M, 12, 48, 49, 158–61 This is All I’ve Got to Say, 155–7 subsidy, see funding Sudbury, Julia, 6 Sylvestre, Cleo, 18 Talawa Theatre Company, 3, 20, 23–4, 36, 37, 40, 201 Tara Arts, 204 Taylor, Paul, 73, 77 Temba Theatre Company, 19, 25, 200, 202, 204 Thatcher, Margaret, 20, 38 Thatcherism, 10, 28–33 discourse and rhetoric, 29 motifs and legacies, 28 Théâtre de Complicité, 133, 152, 153 Theatre of Black Women, 26, 32, 33, 42, 105, 106, 201 theatre programming, 31, 35, 37
theatre reviewing, 33, 38, 46, 72, 95–9, 103, 184 Theatre Royal Stratford East, 22, 195, 199 theatre venues, 10, 22–4, 25, 31, 35, 38, 57, 69, 98, 133, 155, 168, 200, 202, 208 Tong, Rosemarie, 87 tradaptation, 45 transracial adoption, 167, 177 Trestle Theatre Company, 133, 152 Tricycle Theatre, 22 tucker green, debbie, 27, 46, 181–2, 191–2 Born Bad, 13, 36, 49, 50, 52, 181, 182, 185 Dirty Butterfly, 13, 36, 52, 185, 186–7, 188 Generations, 13, 52, 183 Stoning Mary, 13, 36, 52, 182–3, 185, 187, 188–90 Trade, 13, 36, 49, 52, 183–4, 185, 190 Turpin, Adrian, 151 Ugwu, Catherine, 12, 154, 158, 177, 178, 209 Umoja Theatre Company, 23, 202 Venues, see theatre venues Verma, Jatinder, 17, 20, 45–6, 69, 199, 204 Volcano Theatre Company, 133 Walcott, Derek, 18, 25, 201, 205 Walker, Alice, 42, 203 The Color Purple, 204 Wandor, Michelene Carry on Understudies, 202 Look Back in Gender, 199 Wardle, Irving, 77 Welch, Elisabeth, 18 welfare mother, 49, 62, 80, 82, 91, 127, 137 see also mothering well-made play, 46 Wesker, Arnold, 46, 199 West End transfers, 30, 37, 202 West Indian Student’s Centre, The, 22
Index West Indies, 48, 49 see also Caribbean white male theatre institution, 9–10 white supremacy, 5, 66, 152, 161, 191 White, Edgar, 18, 25, 201, 205 Williams, Roy, 205 Little Sweet Thing, 36 Windrush, 37, 58, 174, 205 Wittig, Monique, 7, 94–5, 128 Woddis, Carole, 97, 137, 206 womanism, 42, 203 Women’s Playhouse Trust, 27, 72, 77, 79 Women’s Theatre Group, see Sphinx Theatre Company, The women’s theatre vs feminist theatre, 11, 40–3
229
Wong, Denise, 3–4, 133, 134, 135, 139–40, 152–3, 201 see also Black Mime Theatre Wright, Beth-Sarah, 53, 154–5 Wright, John, 208 Yaa Asantewa centre, 23 yard play, 48, 59, 79–80 zamis, 11, 48, 83, 91–5, 97, 103, 118 see also black lesbians; lesbians Zindika, 4, 27 Leonora’s Dance, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 201 Paper and Stone, 47
