Kwei-Armah Kwame - Not Black and White: Category B, Seize the Day, Detaining Justice

Not Black and WhiteNot Black and WhiteCategory B
Roy Williams Seize the Day
Kwame Kwei-Armah Detaining Justice
Bola Agbaje
Methuen Drama This collection first published in Great Britain in 2009 by Methuen Drama 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Methuen Drama
A & C Black Publishers Limited
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www.methuendrama.com Category B copyright Roy Williams 2009
Seize the Day copyright Kwame Kwei-Armah 2009
Detaining Justice copyright Bola Agbaje 2009 Introduction copyright Nicolas Kent 2009 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as authors of these works A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library eISBN: 978-1-40813-341-5 Typeset by Country Setting, Kingsdown, Kent
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Caution All rights whatsoever in these plays are strictly reserved and application
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United Agents, 1226 Lexicon Street, London W1F 0LE. No performance
may be given unless a licence has been obtained. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
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of the country of origin. Contents Three years ago the Tricycle launched a four-month season with a black ensemble company premiering three plays chronicling the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The season drew large audiences and was a critical success. As we approached the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and across London black and Asian children outnumber white British children by about six to four, I thought it important and challenging to look at the society in which we live from the perspective of black writers. The Tricycle already had a strong relationship with Roy Williams and Kwame Kwei-Armah, having premiered plays by both writers as well as both of them being members of our Bloomberg Playwrights Group so it seemed natural to approach them first.

They were very enthusiastic about the idea, and at our first meeting we agreed the areas of British life each would choose as subjects. We also all felt it was essential to have a womans voice, and all three of us had been very impressed by Bola Agbajes first play, Gone Too Far!, so I was delegated to approach her with a commission to make up the trilogy. Late last year the four of us had a meeting to define the subject of each play, and the size, gender and racial composition of the company. As the commissions were delivered in the spring and summer of this year, and each went through various different drafts I started to think of a collective title for the season. Not Black and White seemed to encapsulate the ambition of the season: not just because of the ambiguities and complexities that a culturally diverse twenty-first-century London and the plays represented, but also because these views by black playwrights refreshingly did not reference white Londoners and the white establishment instead they focused primarily on black relationships, as well as black and Asian relationships. My hope, and that of the playwrights, is that these plays are for London now, and that they reflect the excitement, the complexities and difficulties that a diverse city and society face as we end the first decade of this new millennium.

Nicolas Kent
5 September 2009 The Tricycle Theatre has established a unique reputation for presenting plays that reflect the cultural diversity of its community; in particular plays by Black, Irish, Jewish, Asian and South African writers, as well as for responding to contemporary issues and events with its ground-breaking tribunal plays. In 1994 the Tricycle produced Half the Picture by Richard Norton-Taylor and John McGrath (a dramatisation of the Scott Arms to Iraq Inquiry), which was the first play ever to be performed in the Houses of Parliament. The next, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1946 War Crimes Tribunal, was Nuremberg, which was followed by Srebrenica the UN Rule 61 Hearings, which later transferred to the National Theatre and the Belfast Festival. In 1999, the Tricycles reconstruction of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, The Colour of Justice, transferred to the West End. It completed a national tour which included Belfast and the Royal National Theatre in 1999. In 2003 Justifying War Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry opened at the Tricycle.

All five of these plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and have together reached audiences of over twenty-five million people worldwide. In 2004 the Tricycle produced the critically acclaimed Guantanamo Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, written by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo from spoken evidence, which transferred to the West End and New York (where Archbishop Tutu appeared in the production). In 2006 the Tricycle presented a performance of the play at the Houses of Parliament and on Washingtons Capitol Hill. It has since been performed around the world and in the US through the Guantanamo Reading Project, which developed community productions of readings of the play. Twenty-five have already been held in cities across America. Bloody Sunday Scenes from the Saville Inquiry opened at the Tricycle in 2005 to critical acclaim and was also performed in Belfast and Derry, and was later broadcast by the BBC.

It also received an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement. Notable theatre productions staged at the Tricycle have included the British premiere of The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler (later re-staged for the Royal Shakespeare Company), The Amen Corner by James Baldwin (which later transferred to the Lyric Theatre), the world premiere of Playboy of the WestIndies by Mustapha Matura, which has subsequently received more than twenty productions all over the world, has been televised for BBC Television and has returned for tenth and twentieth anniversary productions; the original Tricycle production of the Fats Waller musical Aint Misbehavin transferred to the Lyric Theatre in the West End. The South African musical Kat and the Kings transferred from the Tricycle Theatre to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End and won two 1999 Olivier Awards for Best New Musical and Best Actor awarded to the entire cast. It later transferred to Broadway. At the beginning of the new millennium highlights included the premiere of Harold Pinters The Dwarfs; and two world premieres of plays about the political situation in Northern Ireland: As the Beast Sleeps by Gary Mitchell and Ten Rounds by Carlo Gebler (nominated for the Ewart-Biggs prize). The 2002 production of Arthur Millers The Price returned to the Tricycle in 2003 before a successful run at the Apollo Theatre in the West End, and a national tour in 2004.

In 2005/6 the Tricycle pioneered a black ensemble company in three British premieres of African-American plays chronicling the black experience of the last hundred years: