Researching Race, Black British Theatre Histories, Plays and Performances PROFESSOR LYNETTE GODDARD ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Introduction
. My journey into an academic career - only Black womxn in UK Drama University Teaching; now only Black Womxn (non-binary) Professor
. Progressing Career through publishing - Main single-authored book projects on Black identity and Theatre
. Current projects on race and theatre and Black theatre history of directors
. Navigating career challenges My Journey into an academic career
. Leaving comprehensive school in Brent - few qualifications, few CSEs and CEE grade 1 English, got two O Levels at college; really came from no qualifications, no idea about career prospects; drama at school not very involved.
. Supermarket job – Safeways - 80s television starting to show showing good prospects for Black actors – e.g. Black family Tony and Kelvin Carpenter Eastenders, British working class and second generation accents, Desmond’s at the end of the 80s. Acting seemed like a job in which good money could be earned. Decided randomly on a career in Drama
. Civil Service, British Telecom (BT), while starting drama short courses and joined youth theatres – Royal Court, Tricycle . Professional Career as Stage Manager for a few years – Backstage work for Black theatre touring companies – Black Mime, Black Theatre Coop and on Black plays with the Royal Court Youth Theatre and at Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn.
. Return to Education to Study Undergraduate Degree in Drama
. Second year of course realization of doing a PhD – director’s course lack of study of Black work, all white directors, no Black plays; started to put race and gender into everything that I was writing about as an UG. Black Womxn Directors Almost fell into my career, but found an area that I particularly wanted to highlight and was important to me to highlight. PhD on Black British Womxn’s playwriting and identity politics of race, gender and sexuality; Black British women hardly researched and documented – some African-American Womxn – novelists and playwrights but Black British Womxn Filling Gaps in knowledge – show people the rich and fantastic history of Black plays that weren’t given as much accolade as they could have been when they came out because theatre history focuses on British (read white) plays. My main single-authored book projects . Development of my PhD . Reflects interest in the politics of performance and identity politics . Determined to write Black womxn into history of contemporary British theatre. . Big question of feminist theatre and what makes Black feminist play and are there differences between plays by womxn that are not feminist and those that are . Based on plays, productions, reports/interviews with the playwrights, reviews and sociological analysis of the themes. . Themes, included: migration/ reverse migration, Black lesbian sexuality, and different forms of making Black theatre performance poetry and Black Mime Womxn’s Theatre Troop Each book leading to the next – second book started where first book ended - 2003 Black plays greater prominence in mainstream in early 2000s following Macpherson Report - institutional racism. Interest in how certain kinds of plays become prominent and stories that were being programmed. Reflects interest in connections between representation and the social issues that they represent Idea of the ‘urban’ play important –representations of experiences of working class young Black people Critiqued as stereotypical and yet also tuning into important issues. Themes: ‘urban’ plays, youth and masculinity, legacies of slavery plays, development of identity politics into politics of sports plays, race and nation, black human rights plays, Black plays at the Tricycle Theatre, Roy Williams’s Fallout, National Theatre 2003 Short accessible book – 25, 000 words compared to 90,000 for other books. Written for general readership 1958 play, classic play, revived most times out of any Black British play Wrote about it as a Migration play and how it tells the story of the Windrush generation and what lay behind the decisions to emigrate to the UK in the late 1940s. Play themes, character analysis and wrote production history that looked at different performances 1950s, 80s (Maya Angelou), 2000s (Paulette Randall), National Theatre Play set in 1947 – maps a character, Ephraim who is a trolley bus driver in Trinidad and feels prospects are limited Trinidad in the backyard in which he and several others live and he and several others aspiring to leave. Shows the difficulty of that decision to leave, the question of leaving behind all that you’ve known and starting a new elsewhere. Should they stay behind and rebuild up Trinidad after the war or should they leave. Migration stories prominent in Black British playwriting, but the cramped yard play setting shows the poverty of the characters’ lives and what’s at stake in emigrating. At the time of first production and since is a play from which there’s much to learn about Black Caribbean experiences in the post war period. Treated it like a history play tapping into a particular moment in time and thought about why its continued popularity is because of coming to terms with immigration. Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, National Theatre, 2012 Current research
Since end of second book; interests developed in politics of representation and power of representation – questions led to Moon book and current work
Interest in Black plays and social issues and relationship between plays and current issues that we face as Black people in Britain
Interest in plays that document and interrogate our lives, plays to learn from that reflect on issues and remain as documents when the news moves on. Let’s Talk About Race
Project been working on since 2017 Interested in plays for talking about race and racism. How plays can open up important conversations that make it easier to talk about race through looking at representations. Race and casting – Black actors and actresses in adaptations of Shakespeare and Black productions of Shakespeare. Race, Black communities and the police - #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives, Black Words, The Hounding of David Oluwale, The Riots (2011), institutional racism in the police Race immigration and asylum - Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy and plays that explore immigration from Windrush to present, Race and religion – Islamophobia Race and the rise of right wing politicians – Enoch Powell, BNP in Barking, race and nation. Race and legacies of slavery in contemporary plays Race and Legacies of Slavery in Contemporary Black Womxn’s Plays
Five plays since 2017 three this year prior to lockdown
Selina Thompson’s salt. (2017) retraces the transatlantic slave route in a cargo ship and comes back to tell the story from a Black womxn’s perspective.
Debbie tucker green’s ear for eye (2018) looks at how contemporary police brutality against Black bodies is a legacy of slavery, how enslaved people brutalized. Parts one and 3: police to slave codes.
Janice Okoh’s The Gift (2020) about Queen Victoria’s adopted Black godchild – Sarah Bonnetta
Juliet Gilkes Romero’s The Whip (2020) about the compensation paid to owners of enslaved peoples on abolition and debt not paid off until 2015 with tax payer’s money, hence paid in part by descendants of enslaved peoples.
Winsome Pinnock’s Rockets and Blue Lights (2020) – Turner’s artwork The Slave Ship, about the Zong massacre and about race and the politics of representing these stories in present day films and theatre.
Play brought knowledge of this situation and plays interesting in terms of link between past and present looking at continues legacies of slavery. Selina Thompson, salt. 2017 (c.Bryony Jackson) debbie tucker green ear for eye, Part 1(Royal Court Theatre, 2018) Janice Okoh, The Gift (Sarah Forbes Bonetta) (Eclipse Theatre, 2020) The Whip, Royal Shakespeare Company (Photo: Steve Tanner) Winsome Pinnock, Rockets and Blue Lights (Manchester Royal Exchange, 2020) Black British Theatre Directors
Pattern of Black Artistic Directors – Kwame Kwei-Armah, Young Vic, Lynette Linton, Bush Theatre Increased Visibility – interest in historical moments and questions of access and inclusion Full circle to a project about Paulette Randall with whom I worked at the Tricycle; important Black British Womxn director – freelance, high profile, first Black British Womxn director to have a play on in the West End etc. In 1982 formed the first Black Womxn’s theatre company in Britain – Theatre of Black Women with Bernadine Evaristo (Booker Prize). Useful to document how she carved her career across the past 38 years, across shifts of policy around ‘cultural diversity’ and Black people’s careers in the arts. If Paulette Randall was white could be sure that she would be more well known with the amount of achievements she’s had in her career. Navigating my career
Return to education 1993
Professional job and PhD start 1997
Promoted to Professor of Black Theatre and Performance 2019 – 26 years - important to have Black in my title.
26th Black Womxn (non-binary) Professor; now 28 or 29 out of 20, 000 professors in UK
Phenomenal Women Exhibition – Southbank outside/ free – launch all photos of all Black Womxn professors in UK fits into one room – lots of fields often the only one. Nicola Rollock Research, Staying Power, the Career Experiences and Strategies of UK Black Female Professors, 2019 Adele Jones, Lynette Goddard, Marcia Wilson (Photos by Bill Knight) Gloria Agyemang, Engobo Emesh, Bernardine Evaristo Tracey Reynolds, Claudia Bernard, Joan Anim-Addo Diamond Ashiagbor, Toni Williams, Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent Dorothy Monekosso, Ijeoma F. Uchegbu, Donna Chambers Florence Ayisi, Ann Phoenix, Sonia Boyce Nelarine Cornelius, Funmi Olonisakin, Patricia Daley Uduak Archibong, Laura Serrant, Iyiola Solanke (Black Womxn Professors Network) Career challenges
Academia mostly white/ male - See White men do much less and get further quicker
Determined to make own contribution and leave a legacy for up and coming generations of young Black theatre students so they’re not in a position of not being taught or being able to see own plays.
Talking about race and representation in all white spaces - how to maintain own voice and challenging voice
Challenging languages of race and complicity in racism –e.g. through liberal silence
Challenges of getting published when idea felt to the “too narrow” – publishing gatekeepers
Make a case for study of Black British theatre – partly shaped why my projects tend to focus on significant moments and/or people
Sticking to my principles about what’s important to research and teach and not being swayed from that. ‘(”You make everything about race - Othello”; “There’s no such thing as white theatre”)
Outline has been of research career and teaching career maps that with courses on race, representation, Black British theatre and particular playwrights like debbie tucker green. As a Black scholar I believe that I can bring unique perspectives to analyzing these plays and documenting Black theatre history that white scholars don’t have. Plays reflecting my experiences and I can talk to that While white scholars can analyse Black plays, texts and performances, it’s a distanced, intellectual view and often doesn’t have the experiential understanding and investment that I’ve got in these stories and how they represent our lives. My career is interwoven with me and is part of me and it’s that which drives me Social, political emotional, not only intellectual. Resources
Goddard, Lynette. Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781138678873?gC=5a105e8b&gclid=CjwKC AjwiaX8BRBZEiwAQQxGx2i8MSg- XWrU79aYTNj7WARvUq3QK8XHUkEWYE2j5JfPqLISC3wwABoCkEIQAvD_BwE
Rollock, Nicola. Staying Power: The Career Experiences and Strategies of UK Black Female Professors, 2019 https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10075/Staying- Power/pdf/UCU_Rollock_February_2019.pdf
Phenomenal Women https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2020/mar/09/portraits-of-uk-black- female-professors-in-pictures
Phenomenal Women. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-51800467