‘Welcome. Welcome to Bristol in 1963. Welcome to Waterloo Bridge in 2016. Welcome to a house in May 2017. Welcome to three couples and what might be, what once was and what could have been in 2017. Welcome to a West Indian household in 2018. Welcome to London in 2018. Welcome to the past, present and – crucially – the future.’
This anthology brings together six plays, all written or performed since 2017, by six brilliant Black British writers – Travis Alabanza, Firdos Ali, Natasha Gordon, Arinzé Kene, Chinonyerem Odimba and debbie tucker green.
The plays demonstrate a rich range of settings, forms, styles, locations, scales, contents and concerns – and explore themes including politics and protest, grief and colonisation, relationships and gender.
They have been seen on stages including the National Theatre, the Royal Court, the Bush and Bristol Old Vic, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in the West End, and on tour of the UK.
Selected and introduced by leading theatre director Natalie Ibu, Contemporary Plays by Black British Writers celebrates a multiplicity of stories authored by Black playwrights in the UK over the last decade.
‘A must… includes lots of things to work with for classes in KS3, 4 and 5… as Natalie Ibu says in her Introduction, it’s impossible to create a collection of six plays that fully covers what Black British writers have to offer, but this is an excellent place to begin’
— Drama & Theatre
