IMAGINING FROM THE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

Bookshop owner Brother Kiyi says in “Fix Up," “You can't replace history with hair gel.” But progress in many different incarnations is afoot in Tottenham and indeed London-at-large that may be tantamount to the history/hair gel substitution. The play addresses the tensions between the black intellectual and the black activist-cum-entrepreneur. But the play also examines the notions of race. The obvious examination is that of black versus the white establishment, but there are more complicated racial tensions illuminated in the play. Alice, the beautiful multiethnic visitor, shows up. Her biracial identity adds another layer of sociopolitical intricacy to racial issues. She has come to survey her history, a history that she seems to know little about having been raised in predominantly white English environs. The relationship between Alice and Kiyi, and the various racial identity and gender-related questions it raises are intriguing. Is Kiyi’s commitment to the blackness that he hails weakened by his history with a white woman and his procreating of a biracial daughter? Is he less a man because he abandoned his daughter and abused his ex? Is Alice tragic because she is biracial or because she is disconnected from her past? What of Alice’s actions with regard to Kwesi? Do they make sense or are they a reflection of her gender/racial ignorance? Please discuss these characters as well as any others that you found illuminating or, as the case may be, frustrating.

THE QUESTION OF CONSENT

David Harrower’s “Blackbird” is, in its dramatic heart, a two-person play even though other voices/characters make their mark on the journeys of Una and Ray. The foundation of the conflict between the two has to do with underage sex, an affair that occurred when Una was only twelve and Ray wasw forty. The morality of pedophilia is complicated by what sometimes seems to be genuine need and desire so that the spectator cannot easily come to decisions about right and wrong, historically or in the characters’ present-day lives.

Was Ray a child molester? A predator? Morally wrong? Should he have known better to have an affair with a twelve-year-old? Has he been more successful in absorbing and processing their shared history than she has? How? Why?

What about Una? Is she bitter and vengeful, or is she curious? Was she innocent in the events of their past or as culpable as Ray? Like the song, Una seems to have been waiting for this day to come face-to-face with her former lover. What do you think that she believes she can gain from this encounter? Should she have let sleeping dogs lie or…?

The question of consent is on the table in this play. Informed consent… uninformed consent… no meaning no… yes truly meaning yes, etc. Questions such as what is love, when is love possible, what is child abuse, etc., become central to investigating the beautiful constructions of character that are Ray and Una – like them or not.