I had a great evening today hanging out with my daughter Ewa at the National Museum Wales.
We went to the New Heights: Caribbean Contributions event. The main reason for our presence was to see the fragment of work in progress play by Anthony Wright. I have known Anthony since 2009 when we attended a Black History Course together. A year later I saw Anthony’s play Rude A Ska Musical that was performed in Rockin Chair Bar & Grill in Cardiff. I remember being under a huge impression of it. It was the first time I realised Cardiff was my home (it was 5 years after I arrived there from Poland). Ever since, whenever I can, I make sure I go to see Anthony’s new stuff!
The new play is personal on the level of community (what always is the case with Tony’s work) and family (the work is based on the life of Tony’s father). The 30-minute excerpt played out on stage was a test of an experiment. The creators are trying to figure out a way to mix the on-stage acting with pre-recorded radio performance. It’s quite brave to openly ask for feedback while still on stage. I applaud that, it shows that what matters to the creators is the final outcome and not a short-lived admiration.
But what about the play? As always with Tony - he is a master of dialogue. It feels natural. It feels authentic. This is Tony, these are the conversations he heard, the conversations that surrounded him and are now amazingly played out on stage by his long time collaborator Robert Marrable (Vernon - a Jamaican coal miner), Aled Herbert (Sean - a young Welsh/Irish lad) and Krystal Campbell (Daughter of Vernon). The performance displayed racism that black miners had to face in the Welsh mines and how it was lived with underground, during shifts on which men had to rely on each other for safety and simply for completing the job.
One of the main themes of the event was the word ‘banter’. Where are its limits? When does it become something different? When does it start to offend? When does it become an excuse?
These questions were present not only in the performance, but also in the conversation between John Patel and Ceri Thompson and were raised in the short documentary ‘Wales’s Black Miners’ by Nathan Blake. Nathan ends the film by answering the question (forgive me, I paraphrase it from memory): ‘If you say something to me and then ask me how I feel about it, and if I say I don’t like it. Don’t say it.’ Well, that’s spot on if you ask me.
The event included a presentation by a historian and a PhD candidate Myya Helm about similarities and differences between the experiences of black miners in Wales and West Virginia, where she comes from, and a way too-short performance by Welsh artist Niques.
Ps. When I asked Ewa for her favourite part of the evening, she pointed at the play.
To było niezwykłe. Mam nadzieję, że było zainteresowanie publiczności. Gratulacje dla twórców, a także dla Ciebie za recenzję