Transcript useful quotations and bibliography File

Whereas during the 1980s plays were
dominated by inter-generational conflicts
as expressive of the difference between
the adult subject who migrated and the
child who, so to speak was migrated, and
their different accommodations to that
situation, by the 1990s plays tended to
focus much more on how to live in Britain
now, beyond the experience of the
moment of migration, as part of a
generation that had grown up in the
UK.(Griffin, 25)
‘a multiple identity, one which
combines national and racial
subjectivities and, in doing so,
contests the dualistic world
order which deems blackness
and British-ness to be
mutually exclusive.’ (Mama,
114)
• The aesthetic is emancipatory because access
to the change of categories is possible in many
ways and in many different areas of our
culture and its productions. Categorical
experiment—new kinds of knowledge—
breaks down the binary of high and low
culture because it is produced incessantly.
(Armstrong 42)
• Women’s first object must be to disband the
gender-neutral language round the classless
society built on privilege, with its free choice
predicated on an underclass, and to ask where
women function in this structure – poor
women, Black and Asian women. We will not
do this if we lose one of our strengths, a
politicized aesthetic. The aesthetic is not
political, but it may make the political
possible. (Armstrong 43)
• Identity is fluid … Today complex identifiers
such as ‘black English’ or ‘Brummie Punjabi
British’ or ‘British Sikh’ speak both of a new
ease and pleasure in difference, and of a
political demand that racism become history.
(Stephen and Hilary Rose, 2005: 21)
• Think of the ways in which we are asked to
define our “race or ethnicity” in the census
return […] when skin colour, geographical
ancestry and nationality are offered as
options. […] In the US, such forms make clear
that these categories are social constructs, not
as here where they are assumed to be selfevident bio-social identities. (21)
• Defining oneself as ‘black’ was associated with a more
politicised set of attitudes towards racism, for example,
defining it as discriminatory behaviour by white people
towards black people. […] 60 percent of the sample
had a positive racial identity. […]
• [N]early three-quarters thought of themselves as
‘mixed’ rather than black. They were proud of their
mixed parentage. […] [P]articularly in their ability to
feel comfortable with both black and white people, and
to see both points of view. (Tizard, Phoenix 1993: 161)
Thus, looking into society, they see no reflection or
validation of themselves. […] For those who
regarded themselves as black this was a disturbing
experience, which in some ways parallels the
rejection in the last century of mixed-parentage
people who tried to ‘pass’ as white. Further, opting
for a black identity entails discounting the white
part of one’s inheritance. Most (but not all) of the
young people’s closest attachments were to their
mothers, who were generally white. [my italics]
(Tizard,Phoenix 1993: 164)
• Rose […] I learnt my lesson there and then. Never again
would I rely on anythin’ from black fucking bastard
men.
• Trevor (pause) I’m a black bastard, Mum.
• Rose No you’re not, you’re half white…
• Trevor I’m black. Black. D’you understand?
• Rose You’re not. I’m your mother and I’m telling you…
• Trevor You can’t tell me what I am. I know what I am
and I’m proud of it.
• (Ikoli 1995: 167f.)
Kwesi It affects you, you know? Being around too much white folk. I seen the
bluest of blackest men get too much exposure, bam, they lose their rhythm…
Alice (acidic) Isn’t there an ointment you can get to mitigate against that?
[…]
Kwesi …I say the word white folk and you get all arms! […] It’s half your
people, innit, that I’m cussing, innit?! […] If you were ‘fuller’ I could quite like
you.
Alice Is that of body or of race?
[…]
Kwesi I don’t do your type!
Alice My…And what is my type exactly? […] Yanks, West Indians, mixed. And
here was I thinking it was because I’m from Somerset. (42-44)
Kiyi There’s a difference between being mixed and
mixed race.
Alice You fascist bastard. I AM YOUR CHILD […] Why
would she even lay with a beast like you? […]
Kiyi What the fuck are you talking about? […] You
don’t know what she took to be with me, what shit
I took just walking down the street, just fucking
being with her […] I− killed – her! There! I’ve said it.
(75f.)
• (i) the relationship between diasporic and socio-cultural
inheritances, and aesthetic and theatrical heritages,
• (ii) advocacy of a lexicon and inter-referential analytical
methodology by which to engage with tucker green’s
genre-crossing, dramatic-poetics
• (iii) the criteria for aesthetic judgement employed by
important sites of critical reception -- theatre reviewing
coteries, the academy -- in encountering her work,
• (iv) the degree to which such processes, in tandem with
archiving and publishing, still detrimentally affect longevity
and canonical recognition of a black dramatist’s work.
‘Not another young black male dying of wounds centre stage’(Osborne 2011)
Plays with this motif (2003-12):
Fallout by Roy Williams (Royal Court Theatre),
Elmina’s Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-Armah (Royal National Theatre),
Frontline by Che Walker, (The Globe Theatre),
Gone Too Far by Bola Agbaje, (Royal Court Theatre),
• film of Roy Williams’s Fallout (aired on Channel 4 as part of the Disarming Britain
season on gun and knife crime),
debbie tucker green’s random (Royal Court Theatre),
• film of random directed by tucker green, aired on Channel 4, 2011)
Category B by Roy Williams (Tricycle Theatre)
Desert Boy by Mojisola Adebayo (The Albany)
Belong by Bola Agbaje (Royal Court Theatre)
• I feel that gang violence is only a symptom of
a much deeper malaise. Young black people
are growing up in a society where they are
frequently stereotyped and alienated. They
respond in many creative and dynamic ways –
but we don’t hear much about that. What
makes it into the newspapers and on to the
stage is dysfunction, criminality and violence.
(Cumper 2009)
• (i) language, form and genre; crucially the
page performativity of her text as a distinct
entity from its performance as a play,
• (ii)subverting of public (pre)conceptions about
black people on the British stage; through
casting specifications,
• (iii) refusal to engage with critical frameworks
by withholding personal biographical
information and avoiding interviews.
Close back his
drawer
close back his
door –
keep his stink in.
Step down the – too quiet stairs
past the stank Dad still sittin in
from the kitchen.
Pass the socked Supporting Officer
struggling –
in the best room
with our…
my
destroyed Mum. (50)
on my clean carpet
in my good room –
in my front room –
my visitor room –
my room fe best –
fe formal –
not even fe family
I saw a play called The Gods
are Not to Blame by a
playwright called Ola Rotimi…
I was blown away by the
performance and by the fact
that my culture was
represented on stage and it
wasn’t watered down and
there were no excuses, I just
couldn’t believe it… and when
I watched that play I realised I
wanted to celebrate my
culture. (Bola Agbaje in Fisher
2012)
Armstrong, Isobel. The Radical Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
Billington, Michael. Review of stoning mary. The Guardian, 21 March 2006:38.
Churchill, Caryl. Cloud Nine London: Pluto Press, 1979.
Cumper, Patricia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/mar/03dead-youngblack-man-stage posted Wed. 4 March, 2009. 09.48 GMT
Edgar, David. The Guardian 18 September, (2009): 30.
Fisher, G. (2012) 'Agbaje, Bola-Belong'
http://www.afridiziak.com/theatrenews/interviews/april2012/bola-agbaje-belong.html
Fragkou, Marissia. “Intercultural Encounters in debbie tucker green’s random.” in Huber,
Werner., Rubik, Margarete., and Novak, Julia. eds Staging Interculturality: Papers given on
the Occasion of the Eighteenth Annual conference of the “German Society for contemporary
Theatre and Drama in English.”. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2010. pp.75-87.
Goddard, Lynette. “‘Death never used to be for the young’”. Contemporary Black British
Women’s Writing. Ed. Deirdre Osborne. Special Issue for Women: A Cultural Review 20.3
(2009), 299-309.
Newland, Courttia. The Far Side in Osborne ed. (2012)
Osborne, Deirdre. “ How Do We Get the Whole Story?: Contra-dictions and Counternarratives in debbie tucker green’s dramatic poetics” Tönnies, Merle and Christina Flotmann,
eds. Narrative in Drama. Contemporary Drama in English 18. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher
Verlag Trier, 2011.pp.181-206.
-----. ed. Hidden Gems Vol. II, London: Oberon Books, 2012.
Parks, Suzan-Lori. “An Equation for Black People Onstage.” The America Play. New York:
Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
Pinnock, Winsome. ‘Laying Ghosts to Rest’ in Osborne ed. (2012)
Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4, Saturday 15 March, 2008.
Waters, Steve. “Pinter’s Influence on Contemporary Playwriting” in Peter Raby ed. The
Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter 2nd edition; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009. 297-309.
A Selection of Useful Websites – operative at the time of writing
http://www.applesandsnakes.org England’s leading organisation for performance poetry.
http://www.bcaheritage.org.uk Britain’s foremost Black History archive.
http://www.nbaa.org.uk The site for the longest running black arts organisation in the UK,
that continues the work of the Black Arts Alliance
http://www.blacknet.co.uk A cultural events website
http://www.futurehistories.org.uk National repository of African, Asian and Caribbean
Performing Arts in the UK (Nitro, Black Theatre Forum and Moti Roti archives)
http://www.nationaltheatre.org/archive/blackplays Comprehensive digitised collection of all
production data for plays by Black writers in Britain to date.
http://www.nitro.co.uk Leading black music theatre
http://www.talawa.com/about/archive.html Britain’s leading black theatre company
http://www.theatremuseum.vam.ac.uk Victoria and Albert Museum – Black Theatre History
archive
compiled by Deirdre Osborne
(Goldsmiths, University of London)