Playtime for a new generation

IS it me, or is something important happening to black British theatre this year? Over a period of six months, four of London's major theatres will have staged new black British work.

Kwame Kwei-Armah's Elmina's Kitchen, set on the streets of Hackney, opened to great reviews two weeks ago at the National Theatre.

It is a moving tale of a father desperately trying to save his son from the allure of gun crime.

My new play, Fallout, about a black copper returning to his old neighbourhood to investigate a boy's death and coming up against a wall of silence, opened last night at the Royal Court. At the same theatre, DeObia Oparei's Crazyblackmuthaf***in'self, a wild, over- the-top portrait of a black gay man and a brave subject to tackle, played to packed houses earlier this year.

Debbie Tucker Green has had two plays produced recently: Dirty Butterfly, at the Soho Theatre, and Born Bad, at Hampstead, a tale of dysfunction in a West Indian family, with disturbing echoes of abuse.

We have all written about family relationships, gender, sex and death, masculinity, peer pressure, a search for belonging, a need for respect, universal themes that every person on the planet can relate to.

Our stories are all different in style and narrative, but all are seen through the eyes of black people, all are contemporary: we are all addressing what it means to be black for our generation today.

Does this signal a new evolution of black theatre? I bloody well hope so.

But why now? A sign of the times?

Let me come at it from a West Indian perspective. My generation (the black kids who were born here) are getting older now, having kids ourselves. Our mums and dads were the Windrush generation, who came to Britain in the Forties and Fifties.

Now they are dying away - in 10-15 years, they may be all gone.

I feel there is a real compulsion among my peers to analyse our black culture, as the torch is passed on, to define our place in British history.

Who are we now? Where are we going? Britain is more multiracial than ever now, right? We are getting along much better now, right? Or are we fighting the same fights our parents did?

I also think there is a growing appetite among whites for more interpretation of black culture in the media, as it grows more influential.

Especially when you notice that most of today's youth are talking "black".

What I haven't noticed, though, is support from the black press. For the past few weeks, I have been telling anyone who would listen about all this new black theatre - but there weren't any takers.

The black press seems intent on saving its columns for any little news on black Hollywood movie stars or rappers. Maybe they feel that theatre is not of interest to their readership. Perhaps it isn't.

Maybe if more theatres put on black work, black people would become more interested.

Until then, the black newspapers have a responsibility to encourage black British talent whenever they can. I love Halle Berry; I am Samuel * Jackson's number-one fan; I like rap - but not every black person does. Black people are more than just music and sport. We must do more to inspire ourselves.

When I was 12, in 1980, I was doing badly at Henry Compton boys school in Fulham and so my mum arranged - at huge cost to herself - to have a private tutor, whom I would visit every Saturday. Don Kinch was also a director of a theatre company called Staunch Poets & Plays, and sometimes, instead of our usual lessons, I would watch him rehearse with his company.

That was where I fell in love with theatre and with writing. It was an all-black company, and that was of huge significance to me, but what really seduced me was the work, the written word. Black plays performed by black actors inspired me.

MY next projects are commissions from the Royal Court and the National Theatre. I'm looking forward to seeing what Debs, Kwame, DeObia write next.

There are lots of others out there writing for theatre: Sheila White, Sheenagh Cameron, Neil De Souza, Gurpreet Bhatti, Tanika Gupta, Troy Andrew Fairclough, Grant Buchanan Marshall, Wayne Buchanan, Courttia Newland, Penny Saunders, Linda Brogan, Trevor Williams and plenty more.

If black British theatre writing was silent before, it certainly isn't now.

Let's keep blazing the trail, people. Nuff said.

. Fallout is reviewed on Page 44.

Alastair

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