‘Death never used to be for the young’: Grieving Teenage Murder in debbie tucker green's random

Abstract

debbie tucker green is the most high-profile Black British woman playwright of the first decade of the twenty-first century, with productions of her plays seen at mainstream London venues including Hampstead Theatre, Royal Court, Soho Theatre and Young Vic. Her innovative voice moves away from the explicit concerns with identity and diaspora of predecessors from the 1980s and 1990s, to address issues of global significance in the world today. These include poverty, child soldiers and the Aids crisis in Africa, female sex tourism, domestic violence, sexual abuse and incest. This article explores how random (Royal Court, 2008) stages a poignant response to the epidemic of teenage knife murders in London in 2007 and 2008. Using analysis of the text, the production and theatre critics’ reactions, I demonstrate how tucker green's focus on the grief of a family affected by the murder of a child provides a unique perspective distinct from representations of similar themes in plays by Black British male playwrights. random is narrated primarily through the perspectives of the black female characters, epitomising tucker green's tendency to place (black) women at the centre of plays that deal with urgent themes in the contemporary world. I argue that, whilst women's perspectives are paramount, the narratives also incorporate strategies that imply a broad collective social responsibility for eradicating violence and abuse, and show how her unique writing style foregrounds her successful presence in mainstream contemporary British theatre.

Keywords:

• black women
• family
• the Front Room
• grief
• solo performance
• trauma
• violence

Notes

¹Cited on the publicity flyer for debbie tucker green's random (Royal Court 2008).

²During the writing of this article in summer 2008, the tally of teenage murders was rising on an almost weekly basis. See http://www.capitalradio.co.uk/news-travel/london/2008s-teen-murder-victims/ and http://www.capitalradio.co.uk/news-travel/london/londons-teenage-murder-victims-2007/.

³See Kristy Walker, ‘Face the facts on knife crime, Blair tells black families’, 12 April 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-447925/Face-facts-knife-crime-Blair-tells-black-families.

⁴See Patrick Wintour and Vikram Dodd, ‘Blair blames spate of murders on black culture’, 12 April 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/apr/12/ukcrime.race.

⁵See Adam Fresco, ‘Teenage knife crime “is one of biggest threats to London”, 29 March 2008, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3640626.ece (accessed 26 June 2008).

⁶See, for example, http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/talkaboutknives/getsupport.html and www.itdoesnthavetohappen.co.uk.

⁷Eighteen-year-old Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially motivated attack whilst waiting at a bus stop in Eltham on 22 April 1993. The Metropolitan Police were criticised for mishandling the investigation into his death and Sir William Macpherson's report concluded that ‘institutional racism’ was a key factor in their handling of the case. See The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny (Norwich: The Stationery Office, 1999).

⁸Ten-year-old Damilola Taylor was stabbed with a shard of glass on his way home from an after-school class at the library and found bleeding to death in the stairwell of a Peckham council-housing estate on 27 November 2000. Mishandling of the investigation led to evidence from a 12-year-old girl being deemed unreliable by the trial judge; all four suspects of the original trial were acquitted.

⁹Claire Allfree, Metro, 12 March 2008. All review citations are taken from reprints of random reviews, Theatre Record XXVIII: 6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

¹⁰The murder of Brother echoes the real-life case of 16-year-old Kodjo Yenga, who was chased through the streets of Hammersmith by youths in school uniform before being brutally stabbed and beaten to death on 14 March 2007.

¹¹Michael McMillan curated ‘The West Indian Front Room: Memories and Impressions of Black British Homes’ at The Geffrye Museum, 2006. McMillan's article on the aesthetics of the West Indian Front Room was first delivered as a conference paper at the “Black” British Aesthetics Today’ symposium, Howard University, on 8 April 2006.

¹²Antony Walker was murdered in a racially motivated attack with an ice axe in McGoldrick Park, Huyton, Merseyside on 29 July 2005.

¹³Jimmy Mizen was murdered on 9 May 2008 at a bakery in Lee, southeast London, whilst walking home from buying his first lottery ticket on the day after his sixteenth birthday. Robert Knox was killed in a petty row over a mobile phone on 24 May 2008 and Ben Kinsella was murdered during a night out to celebrate the end of his GCSE exams on 29 June 2008. Publicity surrounding the killings of Knox and Kinsella was even more prominent because they were, respectively, an actor who had recently completed filming in the latest Harry Potter film, and the sister of former Eastenders actress Brooke Kinsella and friend of the son of Birds of Feather actress Linda Robson.

¹⁴The shooting of 11-year old Rhys Jones in a pub car park in Liverpool on 22 August 2007 also received substantial press coverage, in a further indication of the greater press attention given to the murders of white boys.

¹⁵See, for example, Trish Cooke's Running Dream (1993), Winsome Pinnock's Leave Taking (1987) and Talking in Tongues (1991), Jackie Kay's Chiaroscuro (1985) and Zindika's Leonora's Dance (1993).

¹⁶For a discussion of this fixation upon brevity, see Deirdre Osborne (2007: 235).

¹⁷Published 16 March 2008, reprinted in Theatre Record XXVIII:6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

¹⁸ Tribune, 21 March 2008, reprinted in Theatre Record XXVIII:6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

¹⁹ Daily Telegraph, 12 March 2008, reprinted in Theatre Record XXVIII:6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

²⁰Wares also directed generations (Young Vic 2007) and trade (Royal Shakespeare Company at the Soho Theatre 2007).

²¹Marshall also acted in born bad (Hampstead Theatre 2003) and trade.

²²Post-show discussion, Royal Court Theatre, 20 March 2008. tucker green is reluctant to explain her work and did not attend the discussion, which was facilitated by Sacha Wares (Director), Gbolahan Obisesan (Assistant Director) and Nadine Marshall (Actress).

²³ Independent, 12 March 2008, reprinted in Theatre Record XXVIII:6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

²⁴Quentin Letts, Daily Mail, 11 March, 2008, reprinted in Theatre Record XXVIII:6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

²⁵Aleks Sierz, 21 March 2008, reprinted in Theatre Record XXVIII:6, 10–23 March 2008, pp. 284–7.

²⁶Other black male playwrights of note include Oladipo Agboluaje, Courttia Newland, Lennie James and Levi David Addai. Plays by black women produced during the first decade of the twenty-first century include Dona Daley's Blest Be the Tie (Royal Court 2004), Winsome Pinnock's Water (Tricycle Theatre 2000) and One Under (Tricycle Theatre 2005), and Bola Agbaje's Gone too Far (Royal Court 2007 and 2008).