From
B IS FOR BLACK
by Courttia Newland
B is for Black by Courttia Newland was produced by The Post Office Theatre and first staged at the Oval House Theatre in London on 1 October 2003. This production was directed by Riggs O’Hara with the following cast: Joe Trill (Ben Nelson), Emma Rand (Kate Nelson), Carol Moses (Imani Shaw), Ronald Markham (Raymond Armitage), Dominik Golding (Michael Cerwin), Akpome Macaulay (Don Kenworthy), Daniel Booth (Jones), Leon Barr (Lamming) and Veronica Isabel (Spencer).
Courttia Newland’s fifth play B is for Black completes the success of the Chamberlayne play trilogy, which included The Far Side and Mother’s Day. B is For Black explores the cultural and class divides between the gatekeepers and the community within the arts industry. Courttia Newland controversially chooses to place the focus of his play on lead character Ben, a black Oxford graduate, who lives in a white middle-class suburban area with his white wife. Ben is appointed as the first black senior manager for West Chamberlayne Arts. Disconnected from his own family members, Ben is now given the challenge of building relationships with the black working-class community of the Greenside estate.
About the Playwright
Courttia Newland is an acclaimed British author, playwright, and screenwriter of Jamaican and Bajan heritage. He began his professional writing career as an author in 1997, with the critically acclaimed novel Scholar. The success of his first novel encouraged Courttia to write the novels Society Within and Snakeskin. Riggs O’Hara, theatre director and founder of The Post Office Theatre, and Black British actress Carol Moses encouraged Newland to write for theatre. In 1998, Courttia Newland took their advice and collaborated with Carol Moses to produce his first stage production, Estate of Mind in 1998. The success of his first production led to Courttia Newland’s appointment as the permanent writer for The Post Office Theatre.
Other published plays by Courttia Newland includes The Far Side.
Summary (Extract)
Ben, whose new-found reconnection to the black community and his identity, grows distant from his middle-class white wife. Unable to find a way to balance his fight for black power and racial equality in the arts, whilst having a loving relationship with a white woman, Ben is forced to make a heart-breaking decision.
(Snaps.) Kate, you’re being preposterous and you know it! Maybe you never thought you’d married a culture as well as myself, but I did! I’ve never been allowed to forget it. Eat these foods, talk about these books and plays, discuss only your politics. And if I’m seen to stray across any perceived cultural boundaries then I’m liable to be warned – by Arts Funding bodies, or Paul Tompkins; even by your own father. Yes Kate, you married a culture as well as a man. What bothers me at this point is my realisation that you expected something else.
…
Don’t feel bad darling, it’s not just you. It seems like everybody thought that because I was kind, good-natured and honest, that somehow translated into me being different from the rest of my race. Almost as though those traits were abnormal for us. That I’d be able to pretend the things that happened thousands of years ago and continue right to this day weren’t happening at all because they didn’t happen to me. That I could carry my schooling and white wife like a free pass into the world of turn a blind eye, I’m alright Jack, we don’t give a fuck. Didn’t they? (Shouts when she doesn’t answer.) Didn’t they?
…
(Still shouting.) …Maybe it’s about time you knew what it felt like to be scared, to have your heart pump and feel the blood running in your veins! Maybe you should learn to feel as alive as the real world does, outside your ivory towers of wine bars, opera and members-only restaurants –
…
(Still shouting.) Maybe you’ll get it then; what it feels like to have someone chastise who you are and what you do! Maybe you’ll start to look around and see all the Black people cast as gun criminals in the news, sex objects or idiots in soaps, mad men or drug addicts in documentaries while our singers and songwriters are reduced to puppets who only get the limelight as long as they pretend it’s not happening! Maybe when you see that you’ll understand that the way you feel when you read that book is the way most of us feel every day of our lives. That disposing of the feeling by fighting against its root cause is the only way the rest of us can live.
…
(Sighs and smiles.) I don’t hate any of you. In fact, I love you all a great deal. It’s the reason I could live as I did for so long and the reason why I can’t take it any more. I’m not prepared to settle for less from any of you Kate. Especially not you.
BEN picks up his speech and book then walks to the door and stops.
You say that you’re not a racist Kate, but you are. Wait, don’t say a word – you are. We see your father every week without fail, but months could go past without us seeing anyone from my family and you don’t even notice. You said it yourself, we’ve never had any Black friends in all the time we’ve known each other and up until recently, you didn’t notice that either. Worst of all though Kate, was the way you reacted to Imani when you finally got close to a real black woman. Like the wife of a plantation owner, scared her husband might seek favour from his slave. I was the whitest Black man you’d ever met, wasn’t I Kate? Your father wouldn’t have it any other way.
…
I love you. I’ll never stop loving you.
He leaves.