In Hairspray, set in 1963 Baltimore, the young, plump heroine Tracy Turnblad goes on a mission to fulfil her wish that the local TV talent show she aspires to be on be racially integrated more regularly than a once-a-month “Negro Day” special, and says, “I wish every day was Negro Day!” And one of the black characters Seaweed replies, “At our house, it is!”
Tracy could have been talking about the London stage, too, where – though colour blind casting may have been embraced in the casting departments – plays by black playwrights, and/or ones that revolve around the black experience, are still typically few and far between. And in turn, audiences are predominantly white, too. Until now: to use Tracy’s phrase, several days have been Negro day for me over the last week.
On Friday, I saw Roy Williams’ Joe Guy at Soho Theatre; on Saturday, I caught the last night of Stratford East’s re-interpretation of Genet’s The Blacks (which, in a rather wonderful racial coup d’theatre, has black actors “whiting up” for a change to play characters that include the Queen, hilariously embodied by Tameka Empson; and last night I saw the opening of Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Statement of Regret, his third play for the National (while he has another premiere due in January at the Tricycle). I could have made it four if I’d gone the night before to the opening of the Young Vic’s production of young black American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size, but will see it next Monday; instead, I was at Aida at English National Opera on Tuesday night (where, though the title character is an Ethiopian princess, she’s played by a very white Claire Rutter; I suppose its colour-blind casting in reverse, but where’s Audra McDonald when you need her?)
Though Asian work is also chronically under-represented in the mainstream, the National recently offered an Asian adaptation of an old English comedy in Rafta, Rafta…, and the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs opened Anupama Chandrasekhar’s Free Outgoing on Monday that I’ve also not caught.
It may be a happy coincidence that this much black and Asian work has suddenly been around (though, in the scheme of things, it’s still not very much). But the first and most obvious thing to say is how instantly it changes the typical audience demographic. For years it used to be trumpeted that the “problem” with doing black work in the West End is that there isn’t enough of a black audience for it there; yet this was directly contradicted when Stratford East’s production of The Big Life transferred to the Apollo, or Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen played at the Garrick. And – without racially profiling the audience too closely — at Soho on Friday and Stratford on Saturday, it was good to find packed houses where white audience members may well have been outnumbered. (There was no such chance at the National last night, where – by the time the all-white national critical and largely white media fraternity are accommodated – there probably aren’t enough seats left over to get a more integrated audience; it will be interesting to see who it plays to on a more regular night). Kerry Michael, artistic director at Stratford East, commented [in a Guardian feature about The Blacks], “”London is over 30% non-white. But how many theatres do you walk into that have that kind of demographic in their audience? And there are no more non-white creative leaders in British theatre now than there were 15 years ago. Everyone who works in the arts has to take responsibility for that.”
I’ve previously commented here about the apparent lack of diversity amongst the rank-and-file administrative staff at the National Theatre itself, and the interesting fact – which occurred again last night – that even when a play written by a black British playwright is done there, it is directed by a white director (in this case, Jeremy Herrin). I’ve been privately told that, given how rarely they are given the stage, black playwrights don’t necessarily want their work to be done by an inexperienced black director; but surely the answer to that is that black and Asian playwrights need to be brought through the ranks by directing more white work, so that they’re ready when a play by black playwright comes along they are ready for it.
But more than the practicalities of artistic negotiation, what Williams and Kwei-Armah powerfully demonstrate is a new maturity when it comes to cultural negotiations, with both plays coincidentally casting a critical eye on tensions between Britain’s Caribbean and African originated black communities. It makes both plays resonate powerfully within them; but also makes them essential viewing for the rest of us, too.
