Small Island Exploring the Play at Home If you’re watching Small Island at home and would like to find out more about the production, there are resources that you can explore. The version of the play that is currently available to watch on YouTube was originally broadcast to cinemas around the world by National Theatre Live. About the Production This production of Small Island adapted by Helen Edmundson based on the novel by Andrea Levy, was first performed at the National Theatre in May 2019. You can find full details of the cast and production team here: Cast Mrs Ryder: Amy Forrest Hortense: Leah Harvey Miss Jewel: Sandra James-Young Little Hortense: Keira Chansa Mr Philip / GI / Kenneth: Trevor Laird Miss Ma: Jacqueline Boatswain Little Michael: Shaquahn Crowe Michael: CJ Beckford Policeman / GI: Natey Jones Woman in Hurricane: Chereen Buckley Bernard: Andrew Rothney Queenie: Aisling Loftus Aunt Dorothy / Woman with Baby: Beatie Edney Mrs Buxton / Miss Todd / Woman in Cinema: Stephanie Jacob Mr Buxton / Ginger / Sergeant Thwaites / Railway Worker: Adam Ewan Young Man In Sweet Shop / Kip / GI / Railway Worker: Cavan Clarke Arthur: David Fielder Franny: Phoebe Frances Brown, Rebecca Lee Gilbert: Gershwyn Eustache Jnr Recruiting Officer One / Soames / Railway Worker / Military Policeman: Paul Bentall Elwood: Johann Myers Recruiting Officer Two / GI / Foreman: John Hastings Usherette: CJ Johnson GI: Daniel Norford Celia: Shiloh Coke Production team Director: Rufus Norris Set & Costume Designer: Katrina Lindsay Lighting Designer: Paul Anderson Sound Designer: Ian Dickinson Composer and Rehearsal Music Director: Benjamin Kwasi Burrell Projection Designer: Jon Driscoll Movement Director: Coral Messam Fight Director: Kate Waters Music Consultant: Gary Crosby Supernumeries Jamie Ankrah, Aimee Louise Bevan, Thea Day, Victoria Denard, Alma Eno, Alvin Ikenwe, Luther King Osei, Alice Langrish, Roberta Livingston, Fatima Niemogha, Anselm Onyenani, Mary Tillett, Joseph Vaiana, Tricia Wey, Christopher Williams, Joylon Young You might like to use the internet to research some of these artists to find out more about their careers. If you would like to find out about careers in the theatre, there’s lots of useful information on the Discover Creative Careers website. Exploring the Production in More Depth You can read the rehearsal diary written by the staff director of Small Island, which gives an insight into the process of creating, rehearsing and staging this play. You can go behind the scenes with the composer, Benjamin Kwasi Burrell and discover how the music in the production was created. Exploring the Historical Context Excerpts from the Small Island programme: Back to My Own Country Timeline 71 Years On BACK TO MY OWN COUNTRY Abridged from Andrea Levy’s 2014 essay NTGDS_JD_Small Island_Programme_235x156mm_060618_REPRINT.indd 8 07/06/2019 10:26 I remember a journey I took on a London bus when I was a young girl. It was in the ‘MY PARENTS early 1960s. The bus was full of people and BELIEVED THAT one of them was a black man. That was not a common sight in those days. I could IN ORDER TO GET ON tell from his accent that, like my parents, he was from somewhere in the Caribbean. IN THIS COUNTRY He was talkative, smiling politely at people and trying to engage them in chat. Nobody THEY SHOULD LIVE would be drawn into conversation; they clearly wanted nothing to do with him. But he carried QUIETLY AND NOT on trying anyway. MAKE A FUSS.’ I was embarrassed by him, but also overcome with pity for his hopeless attempt to be friendly I ate a lot of sweets. Watched a lot of television: on a London bus. He somehow became my Coronation Street, Emergency Ward 10. mum and dad, my sisters, my brother, me. I felt Loved the Arsenal. Hated Tottenham Hotspur. a longing to make some introductions. I could I lived the life of an ordinary London working- sense the misunderstandings that were taking class girl. place, but I didn’t know why, or what I could do. The man was different. He looked different But my parents had come to this country from and he sounded different. But how come Jamaica. We were immigrants. Outsiders. people in England did not know him? Why was My dad had been a passenger on the Empire he, and all the black people from Britain’s old Windrush ship when it famously sailed into empire, so completely alien to them? Tilbury in June 1948 and, according to many, changed the face of Britain for ever. My mum The same thing would not happen today in came to England on a Jamaica Producer’s quite that way. Everyone is used to a mix banana boat. It sailed into West India dock of cultures and London buses are full of on Guy Fawkes Night in the same year, under Londoners from all over the world. But still a shower of fireworks that my mum believed there are silences and gaps in our knowledge were to welcome her. and understanding. What are the links that made Britain a natural destination for that My dad was an accounting clerk in Jamaica Caribbean man on the bus, 50 years ago? for, among other companies, Tate & Lyle. How and why did Britain forge those links in My mum was a teacher. They were middle the first place? These are questions that have class. They grew up in large houses. come to fascinate me, because they reveal They even had servants. They came to Britain what amounts to a lost history for many of us. on British Empire passports in order to find It was certainly lost to me for much of my more opportunities for work and advancement. early life, and it was a loss that caused me But once here they struggled to find good some problems. housing. They had to live in one room for many years. They had a period of being homeless At the time of my bus ride I lived on a council and of living in half-way housing where my dad estate in north London. I went to a local was not allowed to stay with his wife and his school. Spoke like a good cockney. I played three children. Eventually they were housed out with all the white kids who lived around my in a council flat in Highbury where I was born, way – rounders, skipping and hide and seek. and where I grew up. My dad did not have trouble finding work. He Postcard of Mandeville, Jamaica. Image: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo was employed by the Post Office. But my mum NTGDS_JD_Small Island_Programme_235x156mm_060618_REPRINT.indd 9 07/06/2019 10:26 was not allowed to use her Jamaican teaching me that the colour of your skin was one of the qualification to teach in England. She needed most important things about you. White people to re-train. So she took in sewing throughout of course never had to think about it. But if you my childhood. But she still nursed her dream of were not white, well then, how black were you? becoming a teacher again. Light-skinned or not, still we were asked, In England, the fabled Mother Country that ‘When are you going back to your own they had learned so much about at school country?’, ‘Why are you here?’, ‘Why is your in Jamaica, my parents were poor and food so funny?’, ‘Why does your hair stick up?’, working class. ‘Why do you smell?’ When a member of the far-right group, the National Front, waved one They believed that in order to get on in this of their leaflets in my face and started laughing, country they should live quietly and not make I felt I owed them some sort of apology. I a fuss. They should assimilate and be as wanted them to like me. It would be years respectable as they possibly could. Clean before I realised I could be angry with them. the front step every week. Go to church on Sundays. Keep their children well dressed and At art college, I encountered middle class scrubbed behind the ears. people for the first time. Keeping those origins of mine a secret became paramount. Few My parents believed that with no real people at my college knew I lived on a council entitlement to anything, they must accept what estate. Once, when given a lift home, I got this country was willing to give. My mum was my friends to drop me at the gate of a proper desperate for my dad to lose his accent house. I walked up the path waving them off. and stop saying ‘nah man’ and ‘cha’ in every Then as soon as they were out of view I walked sentence. They never discussed Jamaica back to my flat. with anyone. My mum would get embarrassed if she saw a black person drawing attention I got a degree in textile design and worked as a to themselves. It drew attention to her as well, designer for about ten minutes before I realised and she hated that. it was not for me. After that I worked for a brief while as a shop assistant, a dresser at the BBC My family is fair-skinned. In Jamaica, this had and the Royal Opera House, and a receptionist a big effect on my parents’ upbringing because at a family-planning clinic. the class system, inherited from British colonial times, people took the colour of your skin Then something happened. I was working very seriously. My parents grew up to believe part-time for a sex-education project for young themselves to be of a higher class than any people in Islington.