Description
Book SynopsisA landmark collection of plays for stage, screen and radio. 'My Sister-Wife' by Meera Syal - a taut thriller about two women who discover they are both married to the same man.~ 'Running Dream' by Trish Cooke - tells the story of three generations of West Indian women with warmth and humour. ~'Song for a Sanctuary' by Rukhsana Ahmad - explores the painful dilemma of an Asian woman forced to seek help from a women's refuge. ~'Leonora's Dance' by Zindika - four women share the house of a ballet dancer, whose contact with the supernatural lays the ghosts of the past to rest. ~'Monsoon' by Maya Chowdhry - this is a poetic account of a young woman's sexual awakening.~ 'A Hero's Welcome' by Winsome Pinnock - a tale of misplaced loyalty, longing for escape and early love. '
Trade Review"The essence of theatre, according to Stuart Griffiths, lies not in the word so much as its ability to affect us, touch us so that we feel pleasure or pain, force us to identify with it by reflecting something which has significance to our life... Black theatre in Britain is surviving. Though few plays have made it to West End stages, productions on the fringe have had continuing success. These plays attract a predominantly Black audience and contain all the elements of the greatest drama: symbolism, language, conflict, rhythm. This is popular theatre at its best using every means necessary to awaken residues of oral traditions buried in the depths of the race memory." Valerie Small, The Importance Of Oral Tradition To Black Theatre (1993) "The new writing initiatives of the late 20th century grew out of a need to haul white elitist (male-dominated) theatre into a multi-cultural world wherein the plays staged were more accurately reflective of surrounding society, demographically and culturally... After the funding decimation of many Black and Asian theatre groups in the late 1980s, the cultivation of writers from marginalised social groups comprised an aspect of dismantling institutional racism... As May Joseph has pointed out, it was not until the late 20th century that 'the absence of Black women as subjects with agency' was challenged and countered by the work of black women playwrights. The importance of including and perpetuating indigenous Black British drama in the mainstream theatrescape can be neither underestimated nor over-emphasised. It provides a key cultural site wherein ethnicities and experiences who may not otherwise meet are directly exposed to each other's cultural practices... Black drama exposes mainstream (predominantly white) theatre-goers to aspects of Black British cultural input that is as indigenous to contemporary British cultural identity as that provided by white playwrights. It provides Black audiences with authentically rendered cultural representations which have not as yet been able to develop a flourishing continuum in Britain's cultural psyche." Deirdre Osborne, A Recent Look At Black Women Playwrights (2005)
Table of ContentsIntroduction 5 Kadija George The Importance Of Oral Tradition To Black Theatre 10 Valerie Small A Recent Look At Black Women Playwrights 15 Deirdre Osborne The Plays A Hero's Welcome 23 Winsome Pinnock Monsoon 70 Maya Chowdhry Leonora's Dance 95 Zindika My Sister-Wife 143 Meera Syal Song For A Sanctuary 204 Rukhsana Ahmad Running Dream 242 Trish Cooke
