When Soho Rep Brough Ola

When I worked at Soho Rep, the off-Broadway theatre, one of my nicest memories was working on two plays by the Black-British playwright Debbie Tucker Green – certainly one of the greatest contemporary playwrights. She is a writer who has in essence created her own style. Her dialogue is staccato, sharp, poetic, repetitious and tightly controlled.

Soho Rep produced “Born Bad'' about a Caribbean-British family grappling with a hidden secret. A number of years later Soho Rep next produced the choric masterpiece generations about a family in South Africa and the ghostly after-effects of AIDS. For both productions I was in charge of ancillary humanities projects surrounding the plays.

We flew over my great friend, mentor, and playwriting guru Ola Animashawun. Ola is the Director of the National Theatre Connections programme these days, but for decades he ran the Royal Court’s Young Writers Programme. For born bad my offering was a quartet of Black-British play readings. Ola gave the most sensitive and precise pre-show chats about each play putting them in cultural and socio-political context.

It was so satisfying to see a New York audience gain exposure to four contemporary-canonical plays from the British repertoire they might not know if not for these readings. And Ola framing clicked everything into place. For generations Ola came back to New York and ran a writing workshop for playwrights which weaved in the history of contemporary British playwriting. He put Debbie Tucker Green's work into a wider context; particularly how Debbie’s work responds to Caryl Churchill’s and others. Such wonderful experiences!