Entries Tagged 'Theatre' ↓

No Mean Street Reviewed

October 30th, 2007 — Theatre

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Arlington is a macho, womanising, gun welding, drug dealer, shirking his paternal responsibilities and dreaming of a life of plenty. Stagger is a comic, never serious, would-be Yardie, whose homophobia knows no bounds. Jean is, in effect, a single parent, struggling to raise herself and her son in the best way possible. And, as for young Marcus, will he grow up to follow in his father’s footsteps?

No Mean Street is a piece about today. Everything today. Like the industrial wasteland of our inner cities, the stage is minimal, filled with the remnants of consumer durables, sharp glass edges and metal. Characters dart across the stage and around each other, responding to incidents and crises as and when they occur. Lives have events falling across each other, incidents clashing into each other, occurrences crawling over each other, and the whole comes together as a realistic reflection of life.

Paul Boakye’s physical drama is a vehicle from which to develop further the many topics that arise from the storyline. A character is labeled a “batty-bwoy” and beaten up by drug dealing Arlington and Stagger because he is different. A possible follow-up workshop on homophobia and stereotyping. A woman prostitutes herself to get the drugs on which she has become dependent. Follow-up: drugs and their relation (if any) to unsafe sex practices. The list could go on. “But the play could just as easily work on BBC television. It really is that good. It’s just so important that we listen. – BLGC News.

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Brothers on the Down Low

August 13th, 2007 — Theatre

On a set appropriately dominated by a double-bed, the turbulent and downright erotic encounters of Karl, a black, gay, well-adjusted, well-to-do photographer and “down low” (closeted) homeboy, Donovan, gradually unravel some of the existing issues and attitudes encountered by and between black gay men.

After a series of unfulfilling relationships with white guys, Karl longs for the solidarity of an ‘African Prince’, but from his first disastrous date with mixed-up Donovan, he unwittingly takes on a range of new complications - from Donovan’s bad attitude and immature posturing to his pregnant girlfriend, Susan, and exposure to HIV. (”I wasn’t having any luck with men”, he tries to explain, and the drama has only just begun).

Staged several time in London, and in New York, Boy with Beer tackles the parts other plays cannot reach - racial, class and other social divisions, preconceptions about AIDS, machismo and black attitudes towards homosexuality in particular and sexuality in general. Championed by strong characterisation and convincing performances, Boy with Beer is a timeless play which remains absorbing and accessible more than sixteen years after its London stage début.

To produce, perform or publish Boy with Beer, please get in touch.



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Afterword, Boy with Beer

July 20th, 2007 — Theatre

Boy with Beer is a love story that tells of the relationship between two black men. Though certain of that, however, some theatre-goers have been inclined to assume the obvious: that the theme is the conflicts/contradictions involved in being both black and gay.

Confronted by racism in society, and heterosexism in their own communities, black gay men do face formidable challenges, but in fact the theme is much broader than that, and concerns itself with issues of black self love and the power dynamics at the heart of human relationships.

Boy with Beer, Man in the Moon Theatre, London

As a play about power, prejudice and the pressures of machismo, about an odd love affair and an extraordinary ‘rite of passage’, the struggle of strength in Boy with Beer is not just a conflict of men, or of male same-sex relationships, but is a conflict at the centre of any black love. Particularly in the Diaspora where black men and women have had to be strong, black love is almost automatically a competitive dance of strength between strong individuals who must find some level on which to communicate and operate as equals. So often what we find in our heterosexual community, for example, is the black man who needs a weaker partner, who is not going to confront him on the level of an equal, going for a spouse of another race, where perhaps the women have been taught to be meeker, more subservient, through their history.

As a story about two black men from different backgrounds, Boy with Beer also throws into relief some aspects of the love-hate relationship between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans, and between the working class and the upwardly mobile professional class living in Britain today. It investigates some of the social, emotional, political and historical baggage that black people carry as individuals and collectively. Because Karl is more emotionally and mentally developed than Donovan, we follow his attempts to raise Donovan’s consciousness, and how he has to resolve himself in order to share love and understanding with the younger man.

Bar the threat of HIV infection, the ending is ostensibly upbeat- `and they lived happily ever after’ - yet we know in our heart of hearts that there is still more work to be done; for `Mr Right’, our ideal mental construct, does not exist except in our own mind’s eye, and we must open our hearts to allow him to emerge in the best approximation that destiny has to offer. In this instance, history has conspired to make black men hate themselves. Yet despite this, black gay men love each other, can protect, comfort and care for each other in a society that despises `blackness’, and a black community that condemns their love. If there is purity in a love that is as essential as the loving of oneself, then when black men love each other in an environment that negates them, it is not a sign of sickness - it is a sign of health.

Then, on the other hand, and these are crucial questions for the reader and audience, can Donovan really love Karl and put him at risk of HIV infection? Does Karl really love himself when he foregoes the use of condoms? Is this simply a slice of real life? Or is there some deeper spiritual significance, a reunion of souls after ‘two thousand seasons past’, and a quest for unconditional love that transcends the physical here and now? Is it better for a brother to be prepared to die for a brother or to shoot him in the back with a gun?

Perhaps these musings are purely subjective and find no common ground at all with your own thoughts on the subject. Yet if Boy with Beer is nothing more than a simple tale of ‘black gay love’ and a call for respect, understanding and dialogue, then I believe it benefits every black man or woman who sees or reads it, some of whom I hope may see themselves reflected in the characters.

  • Watch the original (abridged) Boy with Beer
  • This Afterword first appeared in Black Plays: Vol 3 (New Theatrescripts) published by Methuen Drama (1995).

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