From
SOMETHING DARK
by Lemn Sissay MBE
Lemn Sissay MBE was commissioned by Apples and Snakes, Contact Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre in 2003 to write his first full-length play, Something Dark. The play premiered at Contact Theatre, Manchester, in England on February 12 2004, followed by an international tour. It was directed by John E. McGrath, the former Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, and performed by Lemn Sissay.
Something Dark was also broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in September 2003, and received the Race in the Media Award (RIMA) from the UK Commission for Racial Equality in 2006.
Something Dark is an autobiographical story, mapping Sissay’s journey from 1960s Lancashire as his Ethiopian mother puts her baby Sissay into care. Throughout his years in foster care Sissay is moved around to different abusive foster homes and renamed Norman Greenwood and nicknamed Chalky White. The story ends with Sissay finding his birth mother in Gambia, twenty-one years later. This is a true story about a fostered child’s pursuit for his true identity, family and heritage.
This monologue is written as a piece of performance poetry, and categorises different chapters of his life. This play demands a sense of compassion, integrity and conviction. Throughout the play, Lemn uses the metaphor of light and dark to suggest truth and lies. He also uses this metaphor to imply the feeling of being visible and invisible.
About the Playwright
Award-winning poet and playwright Lemn Sissay MBE was born in Lancashire of Ethiopian and Eritrean heritage. He began his career as a published poet releasing his first book of poetry Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist in 1988 aged 21, followed by Rebel without Applause, Morning Breaks in the Elevator (1999), The Emperor’s Watchmaker (2000) and Listener (2008). Sissay has performed travelled internationally, and some of his poetry can also be seen inscribed on landmarks around London and Manchester.
As a playwright, Sissay has been associated with the Contact Theatre in Manchester, Battersea Arts Centre and he is currently the Associate Artist at London’s Southbank Centre.
Published stage plays include Why I Don’t Hate White People and Refugee Boy.
Summary (Extract)
The following extract is taken from the chapter entitled ‘Barefoot Dread Lock’. LEMN recalls his transition from a ‘child of the state’ to becoming an adult at age 18 and a freeman. After years of living life in the care system, Lemn is finally given the keys to his one-bedroom apartment and access to his file, containing birth records and letters from his biological mother revealing his true identity.
After coming back from holiday, Bognor Regis, with the children’s home, I stopped wearing shoes. I stopped wearing shoes. Without reason I just stopped wearing shoes. Without thinking I am going to stop wearing shoes – I just stopped. I go barefoot and treat it as normal as pie. Proudly I learned to walk on glass and to stub out a cigarette with my little toe. It was a silent rebellion an implosion. You may take my identity but you will never take my feet – if you like. I was barefoot and I was barefoot for a full twelve months. In Lancashire.
If ever we had six senses the feet would be the sixth. There is nothing more gratifying than walking on short soft dew-filled grass. Not many things are as sensual as warm pavement stone. My feet became like hands gripping all the different textures of our world. I was becoming to know the difference between tarmacs and the gentleness of soil or peat or heather. Point being, I was searching my senses. Barefoot dreadlocked.
‘Bet you can’t do that in the snow’ was the most common thing people would say, ‘Bet you can’t do that in the snow.’ Of all the things to say. I could have been told ‘get some help’. I could have been asked ‘what’s wrong’. I could have been pulled over the coals and told ‘You cannot do this any more you foolish boy’. Who cared enough! Who cared enough.
‘Bet you can’t do that in the snow.’
It was dark. It was night time and I watched thousands and thousands of snowflakes sloping from the sky. Little pieces of light peppered the darkness. As a child once said to me in a workshop once ‘Night time is like a shoal of black fishes sprinkled with sea salt’. Come morning I put on my scarf and walked outward around the housing estate walking through the virgin snow leaving barefoot prints as I walked. I had to leave this town when I left care, because all this town can offer me is ‘I bet you can’t do that in the snow’. I’ll bet I can...
This blackboy who had been called snowflake more time than he cares to remember. This blackboy, commonly known as chocolate drop and widely known as Chalky otherwise known as Norman Greenwood… When I got back to the children’s home I put on my shoes. The footprints had melted and the snow had disappeared leaving bits of road salt, the scattered seasoning of winter’s coldest dish. It was as if I had never been there!
I’m 18 I am in the flat that I signed on for. I am alone. Nobody but nobody is responsible for me, on my birthdays, at Christmas, when ill, on weekends, on Saturdays and Sundays. No cousins no sisters no brother no aunts no uncles.
‘You’re lucky’ says a loose friend as he passes me a spliff – families are a pain. And how much would I want that pain, at least if I felt pain I would know, I was alive. Dark.
After moving in my social worker sat me down for our final meeting. My whole life had been punctuated by ‘case conferences’.
‘Norman’
He said
‘Your name isn’t Norman.’
See, legally the government was no longer my parent and therefore had to pass over one incredible document and that document was my birth certificate. It had two pieces of information – my name Lemn Sissay and my mother’s name Etsegenet Amare. It was a dark afternoon mid-winter. But there was so much light in that front room – I was someone! This was a truth: a clear undeniable documented recorded hand written witnessed signed piece of incredible undeniable and absolute TRUTH. And there was more, he passed me letters dated July 1968. She said:
‘I want him to be with his own colour, his own people – I don’t want him to face discrimination.’
The reply letter:
‘Many thanks for your letter. Lemn is doing well with his foster parents and in good health.
Yours Faithfully Norman.’
Letters from my mother pleading for me back, writing to a social worker whose name was Norman Goldthorpe. He had named me after himself.
From that point I reverted to the only truth I knew, my name Lemn Sissay. Immediately I lost all my remainding friends in that small town.
Who the bloody hell do I think I was, Lemn?
I had to leave everything I knew, not because of what I didn’t want to be, but because of what was to become – most of all, and behind it all, I just wanted to find my family. I had no qualifications. I had no experience. I had a birth certificate and a fist full of poems and I was going to Manchester and there would be no going back…