Tiata Fahodzi presents
good dog
by Arinzé Kene (Crazyhead,
Eastenders and Youngers)
Hexham Queen’s
Hall Arts Centre
Tuesday 21st February 2017
Delicately
observed and fearlessly told, good
dog chronicles
Britain’s multicultural communities and the everyday injustices
that drive people to take back control.
In this
vivid, high-energy monologue, Arinzé Kene
tells of community, growing up in a diverse area unified by class and survival,
and what happens when you lose faith in being good.
When
prejudiced voices are amplified, the arts must remind us of the humans obscured
within the propaganda storm. good
dog is a clear human voice which tells those important intimate
stories in a troubled landscape.
good dog is
a true epic – spanning multiple characters, families and years. This richly
imagined, political and personal piece of theatre introduces an overlapping
network of rich characters and stories that explore significant issues for
today such as social decay, institutional racism, drug abuse and bullying.
Kene’s
initial inspiration for good dog stemmed
from a desire to imagine what drove his friends and community to riot in the
summer of 2011 – in London and beyond – but it has become a chronicle of a
community struggling to survive and fighting back.
Directed
by tiata fahodzi’s Artistic Director Natalie Ibu, starring Anton Cross as boy
and featuring a banging noughties
urban soundtrack and a stylish conceptual design, this
bold, funny and well-observed work opens at Watford Palace Theatre in February
and plays at Queen’s Hall Arts Centre, Hexham on Tuesday 21 February.
Natalie Ibu says “Arinzé’s
play is an astonishing love letter to the people and places that leave their
mark on your life and a troubling thesis about what happens when you are unseen
and unheard. At tiata fahodzi we pride ourselves in seeking out stories that
see those who sit outside the singular narrative. We refuse to oversimplify the
African diaspora and, instead, relish the complexity. We want to multiply the
narratives – about ourselves and each other – and debate the mixed experience
of Britain today and tomorrow.”
tiata
fahodzi creates inclusive theatre that illuminates the mixed and multiple
experience of the African diaspora in Britain today. Their work starts with the contemporary
British African experience but reaches beyond to ask everyone, what does it
mean to be a contemporary Briton, now?
Arinzé Kene is
a British Nigerian stage writer and actor. Credits include Misty (Bush
Theatre), God’s Property (Soho Theatre), Little Baby Jesus and Estate
Walls (Ovalhouse Theatre), and screen feature films Seekers and Cure.
Here is an interview with
director Natalie Ibu
Can you
begin by telling us what the play is about and why you decided to produce it?
For
me, good dog is about the people and places who make you who you are. I first
encountered the play in 2014, just after Arinzé Kene had powered out the first
draft - written whilst on attachment at the National Theatre Studio and started
with a desire to imagine what drove his friends and his community to riot – in London and beyond. What struck
me about the play was it felt like a chronicle of a multicultural community and
the people and geography that leave their fingerprints on your life. good dog
is an astonishingly written monologue following a 13 year old boy – our
narrator – over many years. It’s about community, about growing up in a
multicultural borough, about trauma and about what happens when you lose faith
in being good. I think, ultimately, it’s a celebration of the resilience of
people.
We
at tiata fahodzi are in the business of multiplying the singular narratives
that exist about so many of us and championing stories we don’t normally get to
see. I felt that we didn’t often get to see the multicultural characters that
Arinzé writes in the way he imagines them - as fully realised, living and
breathing honest characters who are more than a stereotype, more than a
shortcut. This play goes back in time to the early noughties but rather than feel
nostalgic, it feels vital as we face similarly difficult times - when the UK's ethnic and class
divides have rarely felt as wide. It feels to me that we - all of us - have a
job to do to promote empathy, compassion and humanity and Arinzé’s play is a
real gift.
What themes
does the show explore?
good
dog is a true epic - spanning multiple streets, characters, families and years.
The narrator is a little black boy who slips through the cracks but this
ability to go unnoticed, gives him a privileged panoramic point of view. Boys
like this - neither excellent and extraordinary nor dangerous – are often a
victim of quiet neglect; they don’t have a voice, don’t get attention but not
in good dog. It’s about faith, about growing up, about being a boy and being a
man, about survival and resilience, about estates and about rebellion and
protest.
How do you
prepare to direct a play like that?
Researching
the play is one of my favourite bits of the job as you spend time immersing
yourself in the world of the play and becoming an expert of a very
idiosyncratic world – the themes of the play seem to be everywhere you turn
when you’re working on a new show. I’m reading a brilliant book Out of the
Ashes: Britain after the Riots by David
Lammy. I also read Between the World and Me, Ta- Nehisi Coates which is a
brilliant memoir-cum-poetry-cum-letter-cum-essay on being a black boy and man
in America. I start with the themes
and always end up somewhere thrilling and, sometimes, random but it’s about
exploring all the different angles and textures of the play. I’m watching a lot
of TV - Fleabag and Chewing Gum have elements of monologue structure (and both
started as theatre monologues), Channel 4’s award-winning Run, Eastenders
(which Arinzé was also in) for its localness, This is England for its nostalgia
and web series like #HoodDocumentary. Each rehearsal process is bespoke and
particular but this one will be even more unique because it’s just one actor
and me (plus a great team including a stage manager and assistant director) so
I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how to keep us all healthy and
resilient because it’s a big play despite the size of the cast. It’ll be like
training for a marathon - I can’t wait.
You're the
Artistic Director of tiata fahodzi. Can you tell us a bit about the company?
tiata
fahodzi is a national touring theatre company – so we’ll come to you – and was
founded in 1997, committed to telling stories about the African diaspora in Britain. I took over the company
at the end of 2014 and was particularly interested in exploring the developing
diaspora because it felt like the diaspora was changing but the stories
weren’t. What it means to be African
and/or British is different now to 1997 and different for different people in
different places. We refuse to oversimplify the African diaspora - limiting us
to being foreign, different and other – and, instead, relish in the
complexities and all the different versions of being a British African. We’re particularly interested in exploring
the mixed experience because Britain is full of people –
whether African heritage or not – who feel in the middle, a bit of everything
and yet somehow nothing at all. I like to think of us as being champions of
multicultural Britain because, for an African
heritage person in Britain, the experience is multi
– rather than mono – cultured.
good dog is a great example of a tiata fahodzi play because it places the
African heritage person at the heart of the story but is actually about really
complex identity politics that we all share – no matter your particular
combination of experience and heritage. In good dog , we meet an Indian middle
aged shopkeeper, a Caribbean father and son, gangs of multicultural boys and
girls, Jamaican hairdresser, a Ghanian uncle, a Nigerian single mother, a mixed
race girl and yet they share so much - they share place and are all part of
each other’s experience of being British.
Tickets:
good dog is at the Queen’s Hall
Arts Centre, Hexham on Tuesday 21 February at 7.30pm.
Tickets are £6.50 - £13.50 and are available from the Queen’s Hall Box Office
01434 652477 or online at www.queenshall.co.uk
Website: good dog at QHA
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