Festival hit about race heads for town theatre
Aplay about racial identity by breakthrough GhanaianEnglish writer Nana-Kofi Kufuor comes to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre next month after a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival. My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored was inspired by Kufuor’s experiences growing up in Stockport and working in education with young people from a range of backgrounds.
Fifteen-year-old Reece is accosted by the police outside M&S. His teacher Gillian watches as his face is pressed into the wet gravel with a policeman's knee in his back, frozen out of fear for her own safety. The next day, Reece locks them both in her classroom, refusing to relinquish the key.
He wants her to pay – and to fully understand the pain of the irreversible breakdown of trust her inaction has caused.
Nana-Kofi Kufuor said: “Working at a Pupil Referral Unit, I once had a student try to take a knife to stab another student. Once I’d calmed him down, we sat in the canteen and he explained to me he wasn’t going to go quietly. The police were outside and they took him. I saw him a few weeks later, and he asked why I didn’t help him?
“That rush of guilt changed to anger and quickly to sympathy as he saw me as his protector. But I knew I couldn’t do anything. The crux of this play is how two people react to the same situation: they go on a journey; a journey a lot of people of colour go on – a realisation that where you are now isn’t necessarily where you come from."
Originally supported by Leeds Playhouse and Oldham Coliseum, artistic director Rod Dixon, producer Chris Lloyd and the team at Leeds-based Red Ladder Theatre Company are thrilled to be bringing the play and the questions it raises about racial identity and Black British experience to Scarborough.
The original cast reprise their roles with Misha Duncan-Barry as Gillian and Jelani D’Aguilar as Reece, directed by Leeds-based actor, director and filmmaker Dermot Daly.
My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored was originally developed as part of a year-long writing commission for Box Of Tricks and staged as a rehearsed reading at HOME Manchester in January 2020, where it was commissioned for further development by Rod Dixon.
With a commitment to amplifying unheard voices spanning over five decades, Red Ladder is thrilled to be taking this important and thoughtprovoking play on tour, following a four-week run at the first full Edinburgh Fringe Festival post-pandemic.
Dermot said: “This is a play about identity, about love, and how both of those things intersect with race.
"The play investigates what race can feel like; how it touches everything, including a tangible sense of self. Given the recent past that we’ve experienced, there’s a sense of wanting to be ‘together’ so as to better understand where we’re individually coming from.”
My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored can be seen at the Stephen Joseph at 7.45 pm on Thursday September 15 and Friday September 16. Tickets from the box office on 01723 370541 and online at www.sjt.uk.com