From
STATEMENT OF REGRET
by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Statement of Regret by Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE premiered at the Cottesloe Theatre at the National Theatre, London on 14 November 2007. Directed by Jeremy Herrin, it included the following cast: Javone Prince (Kwaku Mackenzie Junior), Don Warrington (Kwaku Mackenzie), Colin McFarlane (Michael Akinbola), Chu Omambala (Idrissa Adebayo), Angel Coulby (Issi), Ellen Thomas (Lola Mackenzie), Trevor Laird (Val), Clifford Samuel (Adrian Mackenzie), and Oscar James (Soby).
Statement of Regret was broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s The Saturday Play programme. The television version won a BAFTA in 2005.
Kwame was inspired to name his play Statement of Regret and explore the theme of reparation for the slave trade, after reading an article with the headline Tony Blair’s ‘STATEMENT OF REGRET’ in The New Nation newspaper in 2006.
Statement of Regret centres on the relationship between the Black Caribbean and African to explore the subject of reparation for slavery. Set in London at the Institute of Black Policy Research (IBPR) think-tank, founder of the company Kwaku Mackenzie, of West Indian origin, struggles to hold the business together after the death of his father. Consumed with grief, guilt and alcohol, Kwaku becomes forgetful and disorganised, causing the company’s finance to suffer, hardly able to afford paying the staff members. To make matters worse he has become obsessed about the idea of fighting for reparation for the slave trade and creates a racial divide within the IBPR office and the wider society when he announces on television that reparation should be given to the West Indians, and not Africans. Despite pleas from family members and work colleagues, Kwaku has no intention of backing down, putting the reputation of the think-tank and staff members at risk. His children are forced to make the heart-breaking decision of whether to admit him to a mental home.
About the Playwright
Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE was born in London to Grenadian parents. Kwame Kwei-Armah is an award-winning playwright, actor, and broadcaster, who has made a significant contribution to the Black British Play canon throughout the 1990s and 2000s. His writing breakthrough came with his most notable play Elmina’s Kitchen, which enabled him to become the first Black Briton to have a play produced in London’s West End. Elimina’s Kitchen won the Evening Standard Award for most promising play and was also nominated for an Olivier Award for best new play. Since then, Kwame Kwei-Armah has continued to write plays which tackle issues relating to the Black African Caribbean community, and which are constantly revived across the globe. In 2011, Kwame was appointed the Artistic Director of Center Stage Theatre in Baltimore, USA.
Published plays by Kwame Kwei-Armah include: Let There Be Love, Fix Up, A Bitter Herb, Seize the Day and Big Nose.
Summary (Extract)
JUNIOR, 26-year-old son of West-Indian Kwaku and African Lola, works as the Events Manager at the Institute of Black Policy Research. He immediately feels intimidated by the newly appointed intern, Oxford-educated West-Indian Adrian. Unlike Adrian, Junior did not attend university and is not as well-spoken as Adrian or the other staff members at the think-tank. When his father Kwaku chooses to work with Adrian instead of Junior (his own son), he begins to question Adrian’s true identity. The relationship between Adrian and Junior becomes turbulent when Junior realises that Adrian is his half-brother. But when their father’s mental health rapidly deteriorates, and his father refuses to listen to Africans, Junior desperately needs his half-brother’s help.
What do you know, Adrian? That he screamed like an animal being skinned alive when he found his father had been laying dead for three days at the bottom of his stairs? That his father left everything he had to his thirty-year-old girlfriend of two years and the rest of us nothing? That he didn’t say a word to us but went to the grave every day for eighteen months crying, asking for forgiveness? What do you know? Tell me what you know, O favoured one? I tell you what I know – that if we don’t help him he will fall and die. And any legacy that the man’s had will lay at the bottom of the gutter that they pick him up from. Gloved and masked. You think we’re wounded now? Wait till we have to visit him in Rampton.
[Beat. The boys stare at each other.]
I may not be as bright as you, know all this slave history stuff, but I do know that this is how they got us to sell each other in the first place…told one tribe they were better than the other – while arming and saying the same to the neighbouring tribe. I want to kill you right now. If we get caught up in our own shit – no one wins. I paraphrase but I’m sure I quote a great work.
…
It was there to be read. I also read your conclusion. One needs to say sorry. Even when you are unsure of the harm you have caused…unsure of how one has personally benefited. So… sorry, Adrian…
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For all you’ve had to go through…
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I am sorry…