BlackLivesMatter: Remembering Mark Duggan and David Oluwale in Contemporary British Plays
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Lynette Goddard
Lynette Goddard is Reader in Black Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. Their research focuses on representations of race, gender and sexuality in contemporary black British playwriting, and publications include Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance (2007), Contemporary Black British Playwrights: Margins to Mainstream (2015); a short book about Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (2018), one of the first plays by a Caribbean writer to be produced in the UK; and the co-edited Modern and Contemporary Black British Drama (2015). Their current main research project is exploring plays about race relations that have been staged in Britain as understood through such topical themes and issues as black men and the police, race and mental health, race and immigration, race and education, race and sport, race and religion and race and far right politics.
Abstract
This paper examines two British plays that respond to cases in which the police have been implicated in the deaths of black men. Gillian Slovo’s The Riots (Tricycle Theatre, 2011) uses interviews from witnesses and politicians to dissect the events leading up to and during the Tottenham riots that followed in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011 and spread to other inner cities in England over the following five nights. I examine how the first half portrays the local community’s concerns and locates the breakout of riots within a longer history of tense police-community relations in Tottenham, whereas the second half focuses on the political rhetoric surrounding the spread of rioting throughout England, which means that Mark Duggan disappears from the narrative. Oladipo Agboluaje’s adaptation of Kester Aspden’s The Hounding of David Oluwale (Eclipse Theatre, 2009) effectively uses dramatic strategies to remember the life of 38-year old Nigerian David Oluwale whose body was retrieved from the River Aire in Leeds on 4 May 1969 after allegedly last seen being chased towards the river by two police officers two weeks earlier. I explore the effectiveness of both plays as memorializations of black lives and consider how they contribute to ongoing debates about the relationship between black men and the police in Britain. BlackLivesMatter BlackPlaysMatter
This article is dedicated to the memories of Mark Duggan, David Oluwale, Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner, Shiji Lapite, Brian Douglas, Wayne Douglas, Roger Sylvester, Azelle Rodney, Sean Rigg, Smiley Culture, Edir (Edson) Da Costa, Rashan Charles and the many other black people who have prematurely lost their lives during or soon after being in custody or contact with the police.
About the author
Lynette Goddard is Reader in Black Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. Their research focuses on representations of race, gender and sexuality in contemporary black British playwriting, and publications include Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance (2007), Contemporary Black British Playwrights: Margins to Mainstream (2015); a short book about Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (2018), one of the first plays by a Caribbean writer to be produced in the UK; and the co-edited Modern and Contemporary Black British Drama (2015). Their current main research project is exploring plays about race relations that have been staged in Britain as understood through such topical themes and issues as black men and the police, race and mental health, race and immigration, race and education, race and sport, race and religion and race and far right politics.
Works Cited
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction
- Nation and Negation (Terrible Rage)
- “Can I Tell You about It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical Optimism” in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten
- Theatricalizing the National Housing Crisis in Mike Bartlett’s Game and Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin
- BlackLivesMatter: Remembering Mark Duggan and David Oluwale in Contemporary British Plays
- Fake News and Drama: Nationalism, Immigration and the Media in Recent British Plays
- Experiencing Nationlessness: Staging the Migrant Condition in Some Recent British Theatre
- Multiculturalism, (Im)Migration, Theatre: The National Arts Centre, Ottawa, a Case of Staging Canadian Nationalism
- ‘For We Are American’: Postmodern Pastiche and National Identity in Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
- ‘The State of Us’: Challenging State-Led Narratives through Performance during Ireland’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’
- The State We’re in: Violence and Working-Class Women on and off the Contemporary Irish Stage
- Before the Fall: Looking Back on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “This Other Eden” Season (2001)
- From Chimera to Reality: Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica or ‘What State Are We in?’
- Does Verbatim Theatre Still Talk the Nation Talk?
- “What I’m Aspiring to Be Is a Good Dramatist”: Alecky Blythe in Conversation with Chris Megson
- A Victory for Real People: Dangers in the Discourse of Democratisation
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction
- Nation and Negation (Terrible Rage)
- “Can I Tell You about It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical Optimism” in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten
- Theatricalizing the National Housing Crisis in Mike Bartlett’s Game and Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin
- BlackLivesMatter: Remembering Mark Duggan and David Oluwale in Contemporary British Plays
- Fake News and Drama: Nationalism, Immigration and the Media in Recent British Plays
- Experiencing Nationlessness: Staging the Migrant Condition in Some Recent British Theatre
- Multiculturalism, (Im)Migration, Theatre: The National Arts Centre, Ottawa, a Case of Staging Canadian Nationalism
- ‘For We Are American’: Postmodern Pastiche and National Identity in Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
- ‘The State of Us’: Challenging State-Led Narratives through Performance during Ireland’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’
- The State We’re in: Violence and Working-Class Women on and off the Contemporary Irish Stage
- Before the Fall: Looking Back on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “This Other Eden” Season (2001)
- From Chimera to Reality: Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica or ‘What State Are We in?’
- Does Verbatim Theatre Still Talk the Nation Talk?
- “What I’m Aspiring to Be Is a Good Dramatist”: Alecky Blythe in Conversation with Chris Megson
- A Victory for Real People: Dangers in the Discourse of Democratisation
