Multicultual theatre in Britain

Keeping your Multiple Cultural Perspectives alive whilst on exchange in Britain.

The Hampshire College Theatre faculty and staff believe that keeping the multiple cultural perspectives requirement of your Division Two at the front of your mind during your time in Britain will enrich your studies, your experiences in Britain and the relevance to your work back at Hampshire. You are entering a country rich in diversity, whose struggles with race relations sometimes mirror our own, but also stem from a different history and set of experiences. You will see these reflected on the British stage.

If you are going to be spending time in Britain, it is therefore recommended that one of the plays that you report on as part of your Division Two portfolio be a play by a Black or Asian British playwright. We have listed several well-known contemporary playwrights below (along with the names of a couple of their noted plays):

Tariq Ali (Iranian Nights, Collateral Damage, Snogging Ken) Ayub Khan-Din (East is East, Last Dance at Dum Dum) Kwame Kwei-Armah (Statement of Regret, Emlina’s Kitchen, Casualty) Hanif Kureishi (London Kills Me, My Beautiful Launderette) Mustapha Matura (Rum an’ Coca Cola, Playboy of the West Indies, The Coup) Sol River (To Rahtid, Unbroken, Making Waves, Walk Against Fear) Debbie Tucker Green (Stoning Mary, Trade, Born Bad) Roy Williams (Fallout)

(A more comprehensive list of published plays by Black and Asian British Playwrights in available at: http://www.susan.croft.btinternet.co.uk/Supplements/Blackplays.htm ) We recommend that you look for these (and other) playwrights’ works when deciding what to see at the theatre.

Suggested questions to think about:


 * How does the ethnic breakdown of the cast of a play effect the story that it is telling and its relationship to the audience? (This question can be just as relevant for a Shakespeare play and you’ll notice that Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank in London has a stated international perspective as part of their mission).
 * The impact of Bollywood on British Theatre (look at the West End musical Bombay Dreams and Bollywood Jane) There are many cinemas in Britain solely devoted to Bollywood films and it might be interesting to see how that form is adapted for a British stage audience.
 * Unlike America, Britain is officially a Christian country (the Queen as head of state is also head of the Church of England), and it might be interesting to examine how minority religions are portrayed on the contemporary British stage. For example, to examine the controversy, protests and closure of Behzti (Dishonor) by young British, Sikh playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti (Birmingham Repertory Company, 2004) and the subsequent presentation, by the same theatre, of Yasmin Whittaker-Kahn’s play Bells (about the alleged “honor killing” of her mother).
 * Multiple Cultural Perspectives play a large part in the popularity of Documentary Drama in Britain. If you are interested in this, you may want to look at The Color of Justice by Richard Norton-Taylor (1999) as an example. It is a tremendously popular play that depicted the inquiry into the death of West Indian teenager Stephen Lawrence and the neglect of the British police force famously declared as institutionally racist.

Some background reading : (all the following books are available in Five College libraries) Brewster, Yvonne ed. Black Plays and Black Plays Two (1987: Methuen) Griffin, Gabriele. Contemporary Black and Asian women playwrights in Britain. (2003: Cambridge University Press) Inners, C.L. A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain, 1700-2000. (2008: Cambridge University Press) Newland, Courttia and Kadija Sesay IC3 The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000: Hamish Hamilton) Procter, James ed. Writing Black Britain 1948-1998: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (2000: Manchester University Press) Sandhu, Sukhdev. London Calling: How Black and Asian writers imagined a city. (2003: Harper Collins, London)

Notable theatres to check out whilst in Britain :

TARA 356 Garratt Lane, London, SW18 4ES tel: +44 (0)20 8333 4457 web-site (for current &amp; upcoming shows): http://tara-arts.com/HTML/whatson.htm

Named “The most culturally open-minded troupe in Britain” by the Independent on Sunday newspaper, Tara’s own web-site states: “Positioned between East and West, Tara champions creative diversity through the production, promotion and development of world class, cross-cultural theatre. No passports for the stories we tell No passports for the artists we work with No passports for our audiences The creative health of modern diverse humanity demands no passports. Founded in 1977, the company tours vibrant adaptations of European and Asian classics, develops new writing and brings the great stories of the world to children in junior schools. Tara's distinctive, 'Binglish' style of theatre, has resulted in co-productions with the National Theatre of Tartuffe (1990), The Little Clay Cart (1991) and Cyrano (1995). It has also staged an epic trilogy of plays on modern migration - Journey to the West (2002).”

TALAWA THEATRE COMPANY Talawa Theatre Company, 53 - 55 East Road, London N1 6AH Tel: +44 (0) 20 7251 6644 Web-site (for current &amp; upcoming shows): http://www.talawa.com/productions/index.html

“Talawa Theatre Company celebrated its twenty first anniversary in February of this year and is the UK's foremost Black theatre company. We've produced more than forty plays, including African, Caribbean and British classics alongside exciting new writing. Through our weekly Noticeboard, monthly salons, and annual summer school we contribute to the development of theatre practitioners in all areas of the theatre. We are passionate about making and documenting our contribution to British theatre.”

(Note: this company also produces TYA.)