Rikki Beadle-Blair answers Naima Khan's questions on writing about race relations in the theatre.
“Prejudice is a dinosaur” writes Rikki Beadle-Blair, “it will pass.” But dinosaurs took thousands of years to pass, and didn't it take a comet or an ice-age to kill them?
Rikki writes in response to my questions about his new play, Shalom Baby, which looks at the relationship between a Jewish woman and a black man in 1930s Berlin. It also explores the prejudice experienced by the same family in modern day New York City.
He's chosen two cities that have both suffered political and social tragedy on a global scale but it's their reputation for being broad-minded places that he wants us to think about. “I went for Berlin because it was the most liberal city in the world” he says, “until it suddenly became the epicentre of the build-up to the Holocaust” - a demonstration of the power of narrow thinking. “New York,” he continues “was for similar reasons. It’s America’s largest and most liberal city.” And what's more pertinent to this play is “its large and varied Jewish population which has a complex relationship with its black community.” Those complexities came to a head brutally and publicly in the Crown Heights Riots of 1991, which began after the death of black seven-year-old, Gavin Cato, who was accidentally run over by a Jewish driver. Other than the vague and obvious notion that the riots were the result of exacerbated tensions between the two groups, the motives that kept the riots raging for three days are still unclear. But the memory of those tensions haven't been forgotten twenties years on.
Shalom Baby takes in more than eighty years, ample time for prejudice to evolve if not disappear. In particular, its in the language of prejudice that we've seen the biggest change. Rikki notes the humour we now celebrate in excessively political correct characters as well as the more frank characters we're presented with. Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm being one of the best offenders (“is it fair to assume that a black guy in a bow tie is a Muslim?”).
“Personally,” writes Rikki “in the day to day, I am all for polite language. People who moan about political correctness limiting their expression should rise to the opportunity to expand their vocabulary and encourage the long-awaited return of good manners and sensitivity.” Whether there's a place for good manners and sensitivity in Shalom Baby remains to be seen.
So does the place of clichés, which surprisingly, Rikki embraces. “They don’t have to be avoided if you’re putting a fresh spin on them” he says, “it’s all fair game if you can avoid repeating what’s already been said.” He has a point. One that was demonstrated excellently by Muslim-Jewish theatre group, MUJU in their fresh, clever, highly observant sketch show Extreme Prevention which brilliantly highlighted the rise of the ex-fundamentalist a la Ed Hussain.
As Rikki states, “prejudice is sadly still alive and kicking. One glance of online comments on YouTube or newspaper websites and the evidence is overwhelming.” Theatre rarely addresses such prejudice with the mix of humour, and insight required to create something that is both effective and grounded in the everyday experience. One of the more recent plays to artfully highlight the way we skirt around the issues Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, which like Rikki's play, has an awareness of both language and history.
As Clybourne Park demonstrated, good theatre is often down to a good pairing of contrasting characters, and often it's our differences that make us want to get to know each other at all. That dinosaur of prejudice sticks around when we don't acknowledge the differences that stare us in the face. The question that Rikki explores is how?
Shalom Baby runs at Theatre Royal Stratford East from 20th October until 19th November.
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