THE DEATH OF A BLACK MAN
The Death of a Black Man was Alfred Fagon’s second play, produced by Foco Novo and Hampstead Theatre, London, in 1975. This production was directed by Roland Rees. The cast of the original production included Mona Hammond (Jackie), Gregory Munro (Shakie) and Anton Phillips (Stumpie).
It could be argued that The Death of a Black Man was inspired by the controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech by Enoch Powell in 1968, in particular the following line ‘…In this country in fifteen or twenty years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’. Alfred Fagon not only quotes from the speech but he also creates a powerful response highlighting Britain’s profit from immigration and the exploitation of black people which still continues today.
The Death of a Black Man tells the story of a young savvy black entrepreneur Shakie and the lengths he will go to to maintain his extravagant middle-class lifestyle in Chelsea, one of London’s most prestigious areas. Shakie has recently sold his water business to a white American tourist and is now on the hunt for another lucrative deal, which he hopes will involve selling African art and crafts to American tourists. Shakie’s unemployed flatmate Stumpie has radical ideas to revolutionise black political power in Britain and tries to encourage him to invest in a black music festival but ex-girlfriend and mother of his child Jackie is more interested in Shakie’s commitment to his family. After hearing the news of his estranged famous father’s death in the Melody Makers newspaper (the oldest weekly music newspaper), Jackie begs Shakie to go to Manchester and pay his respects to his father aka Shakie King the famous flute musician who was found dead in front of a betting shop in Piccadilly, Manchester. Shakie refuses and instead, under Stumpie’s influence, decides to burn the tapes of his father’s music to avoid white antique dealers profiting from it. Things quickly take a turn for the worse when Shakie’s latest business idea to sell black African arts and crafts to white American tourists falls through; suddenly Stumpie’s perilous proposals become more attractive. As the play unravels it’s clear that it goes beyond race and delves into our social conditioning and man-made desire for wealth, class and power.
About the Playwright
Alfred Fagon was born in Clarendon, Jamaica on 24 June 1937. He came over to Britain in 1955 and the first job he landed was for the British Rail in Nottingham. Alfred worked in many different jobs before settling in Bristol for several years to pursue his dream of a writing and acting career. He became one of the most notable Black British playwrights of the 1970s and 1980s. At the peak of his writing career, Fagon died from a heart attack in 1986 at the age of forty-nine. The Alfred Fagon Award was set up in his memory in 1996 for playwrights of African and Caribbean descent. The award is supported by the Peggy Ramsay Foundation, Talawa Theatre Company and the Royal Court Theatre.
Other published plays by Alfred Fagon include 11 Josephine House and Lonely Cowboy.
Summary (Extract)
All of the action takes place in Shakie’s house in Chelsea.
Black middle-class JACKIE left Chelsea two years ago to escape the public humiliation caused when she discovered through the press that her boyfriend Shakie was only fifteen years old when she fell pregnant with their daughter Pricilla, at the age of twenty-eight. Now, two years later, Jackie returns to Chelsea to confront the estranged father of her baby. She finds it hard to hide her resentment when she is faced with the reformed Shakie, a successful and savvy entrepreneur who has been living extravagantly in the heart of Chelsea on the respectable Kings Road. With a fridge filled with champagne and his water business sold to an American businessman, it becomes far too much for Jackie to swallow.
What am I supposed to do? Thank you? Oh my God, I should be crying, tears running down my eyes! Me, a big 30-year-old woman allowing a 15-year-old boy to screw me in the middle of England and give me a baby. I remember quite clearly when you drive the last nail into my heart to kill me. Before I screws you you told me you told me you were twenty-one. So in my final humiliation to my family, I sue you for maintenance. It was headlines in all the newspapers! ‘Twenty-eight year-old woman sues 15-year-old boy for maintenance.’ How was I to know you were only 15?
…
Look at you. Eighteen, and you look a grey wreck old man of 35. I don’t care how many times you sell the continent of Africa to the American tourists. You will never have a penny for yourself, you’re too stupid, thief and wicked! Boy, I have to laugh! You at 16 open the first water bar, selling London stinking water to poor American tourists! You are heartless, fatherless and motherless.