Exploring identity, family relationships and universal struggles, This is Black will premiere theatre productions by four new and exciting Black writers across an alternating double-bill.
The festival, taking place at The Bunker in London, will showcase All the Shit I Can’t Say to My Dad by Abraham Adeyemi and Blue Beneath My Skin by Macadie Amoroso, with PYNEAPPLE by Chantelle Alle and Melissa Saint and Teleportation by Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo.
Abraham Adeyemi’s All the Shit I Can’t Say to My Dad is a musical exploration of unresolved conflicts within a strained parent relationship, from differences of faith to absent fatherhood. Through music, the relationships are analysed and unspoken truths surface.
Macadie Amoroso will both write and star in her one-woman debut, Blue Beneath my Skin. Using her own experiences and poetic prose to capture the mixed race experience of identity and knowing your heritage, Macadie explores the universal struggles of humanity: we can all feel blue regardless of race, gender or ethnicity.
A debut from the SPYCE collective, PYNEAPPLE by writers Chantelle Elle and Melissa Saint, is a vibrant and humorous play grappling with the stereotypes surrounding young black women. Set in a London hair salon, shampoo and social conditioning get the theatre treatment as a group of women come together with difference voices but the same shared experiences.
Differing cultures collide in the debut play Teleportation, by actress Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo (Doctor Who, BBC; The Mountaintop, Young Vic), when a carer meets her new disabled companion. Teleportation explores how two polar-opposites can share a single spirit, question their prejudices and discover themselves through one another.
The festival will also feature a visual art exhibition, curated by Sophia Tassew, an art director and creative who has curated a number of sell-out exhibitions with brands such as ASOS and Converse. The exhibition will run every Sunday, highlighting the work of artists Amaal Mohamed, Sharon Adebisi and Taja Boodie in response to the stimulus, ‘What does it mean to be Black in the UK? Past, present and future’.
Friday and Saturday nights will also include a DJ set until late from Ashleigh Simone.
When: 5th – 25th August 2019
Where: The Bunker, 53A Southwark Street London SE1 1RU
£: Double bill tickets cost £12 or £10 for concessions
More info: www.bunkertheatre.com/whats-on/this-is-black
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