As a black writer and director myself, I couldn’t shake what I’d read from my mind: “I think of looking out
into a white audience, and feeling horribly, horrifically alone, feeling like doing the show is going into
battle,’’ Thompson wrote.
In the same year, only a couple of days later, Matthew Xia, theatre director, wrote a similar article for The
Stage: “Invisible in Edinburgh – why are Bame people ignored at the Fringe?” also highlighting a similar
feeling of isolation and invisibility.
Conversations about the exclusion and unease experienced by black artists at the Fringe pop up every year.
Black artists decry the lack of inclusion at the Edinburgh Fringe; one or two high-profile artists claim to take
an interest. However, it’s hard to imagine what it would take to make real, lasting change at the annual
festival. Relatively few black artists go to the Edinburgh Fringe, both because it’s insanely expensive for
most to go (a financial reality that disproportionately affects black artists) and because they know that if they
do find a way to go, they may well feel alone, and ignored.
Last year, Jessica Brough, the founder of Fringe of Colour started to list Bame performers at the fringe in to
draw attention to their work, and this year she’s campaigning for venues to provide free tickets to young
black people in an attempt to diversify venues and audiences. While I applaud efforts like these, I still
wonder whether it makes sense for myself and other black artists to focus on the Edinburgh Fringe at all.
Shouldn’t we instead focus on creating new platforms that serve us better?
This August, that’s exactly the leap I took. I curated a theatre festival that is specifically for and by black
artists, running over the same time period as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. If Edinburgh wasn’t going to
be a viable option for me and other artists like me, I wanted to create a space that was, and I named it
appropriately: This is Black, which is running from 5-25 August at The Bunker Theatre in Southwark.
The notion that ‘anyone can tell any story’ is a narrative peddled by, for the
most part, the people that narrative most suits: white people
Bringing together four new plays and four teams of black theatremakers to perform for three weeks has
been electrifying, and we have also worked with visual artists to create an exhibition that will run alongside
the festival. But that doesn’t mean it has come without challenges. During a promotional radio interview, I
brought up the importance of black writers being given a platform to tell their own stories.
The presenter’s response was disappointing. “Why can’t a white person write a story about being black?” he
asked. I was shocked. The fact that it came from a black man with the same skin complexion as me threw
me off further. I had not come to this interview to chat about why a white person (normally a white man)
cannot and should not write a story about being black. I wanted to talk about the space I had created for
black writers to tell whatever stories they chose. But there I was, forced to confront a laughably shortsighted
question.
In my view, no white person is qualified to authentically write a story about my black life or other black
lives. The notion that “anyone can tell any story” is a narrative peddled by, for the most part, the people
that narrative most suits: white people. History has shown us as much. In fact, the last few years alone
provide enough examples of such ignorance.
Take the stage adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Small Island for example. When I heard that task would be
undertaken by a white woman, Helen Edmundson, I asked myself: how could a white woman understand
the nuances to be able to adapt this story for the stage? I wondered whether any black British-Caribbean