This has been a banner year, in many ways, for black theatre in London: remarkably, both the transfers of Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen (to the Garrick) and Stratford East’s production of The Big Life (to the Apollo) marked the first time that a living black British-born playwright and an indigenously created black musical about local people respectively appeared in the West End. The Big Life also marked the first time that a black British director had ever directed a show in the West End, too: as Clint Dyer remarked to me at the time, “The wonderful thing about being black in this country, and how backward Britain is, is that as a black person you have an amazing opportunity to be the first at a lot of things”.
Plans for London’s first dedicated full-time black theatre, to be set up by Talawa on the site of the former Westminster Theatre, may have run aground earlier this year when the Arts Council withdrew its £4m capital funding of the £7m project to build the theatre, but the company’s revenue grant that was also under threat has at least been reinstated to 2007, so that the organisation can start “a positive new chapter” in its life.
But it’s not the only game in town. Tonight, Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre – which has never shirked its commitment to black theatre – continues to break new ground, by launching a three-play season of black plays that between them chart 101 years of black history and are also being performed by the same resident company of actors who will appear in all three productions over a six-month period. Partly, it was driven by financial necessity – according to artistic director Nicolas Kent, there wasn’t enough money to do it, until “I realised that if we held a company together over three plays, we could cut down considerably on expenses.” But, he adds, “it’s also very exciting – it’s never happened to black actors, being in one place and doing three plays about their own history.”
But though the next two plays will be directed by Paulette Randall and Indhu Rubasingham respectively, Kent himself directs tonight’s first play, Walk Hard, and defends the fact that he is doing so despite being white by commenting: “On the whole, I am sympathetic to the idea of black plays being directed by black directors.” He adds, “Of course, I’d never say I know what it’s like to be black, but I know as much about black history in the thirties and forties as most of the cast.” But ultimately, too, he’s in charge of the theatre, and found the play, too, so he admits, “there’s an elmeent of me exercising my droit de seigneur as artistic director.”
