Abstract
This chapter records the history of Munirah Theatre Company, a choreopoetry troupe formed in 1983 whose members included Maureen ‘Talibah’ Hawkins, Michelle Matherson, Sherma Springer, A-dZiko Simba, Hazel Williams, and administrator Marjorie James. In the process of telling their story, this chapter also remembers the lively wider networks of Black arts in twentieth-century Britain, including the Organisation for Black Art Advancement and Leisure/Learning Activities (OBAALA) and The Black-Art Gallery.
Analysis is offered of component poems from Munirah’s three main productions: On the Inside (1986), thinkofariver (1987), and Our Bodies Are Our Maps (1990). The chapter draws on a recent interview with the company members, and manuscripts and ephemera generously shared from their private collections, as well as promotional materials from performance poetry organisation Apples and Snakes.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The performance poetry organisation Apples and Snakes was founded in 1982 by Mandy Williams, Pete Murry, and Jane Addison.
- 3.
I conducted an interview with Maureen ‘Talibah’ Hawkins (performer), Marjorie James (administrator), Michelle Matherson (performer), June Reid (board member), A-dZiko Simba (performer), and Hazel Williams (performer) via Skype on 26 November 2017. This chapter has also been enriched by email, telephone, and in person communications with various members since.
- 4.
See my chapter (Abram 2020) in The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing for a fuller account of arts collectives in twentieth-century Britain.
- 5.
The Minority Arts Advisory Service was formed in 1976 by Naseem Khan, author of The Arts Britain Ignores (1976), and was in operation until 1995.
- 6.
Founded by Alan Springer in 1980, Images Theatre Group produced the plays Images in Black (1980), Amazulus (1981), and Who We Are (1982).
- 7.
Cobham and Collins 1987, p. 157; Anon 1985, p. 2. The Greater London Council (GLC) Literature Competition received over 700 entries across its various categories. Jacqueline Rudet came second in the C.L.R. James prize for unpublished plays, with Basin (Anon 1985, p. 2). Competition organiser Prabhu Guptara commented in his reflections that the event pioneered in the UK what is now known as positive action: it ‘made some sort of legal history in exploring the use of the Race Relations Act 1976 to enable sections of the Competition to be limited to black people’ (Guptara 1985, p. 4). The GLC itself was formed in 1965 to take over local administration from the London County Council, conceiving of London as a much larger area than that earlier body had. During its last period of Labour Party leadership, from 1981, the GLC bolstered arts funding in the capital. In 1986 the responsibility for local government was passed to London boroughs. Zadie Smith memorialises the importance of GLC funding in her novel White Teeth, in which the character Poppy Burt-Jones, a white music teacher working at a London school in the mid-1980s, comments that cuts to education budgets had been so damaging that ‘If it wasn’t for the GLC, there wouldn’t even be a desk’ (Smith 2000, p. 157).
- 8.
Akira Press was founded by Desmond Johnson, who migrated from Jamaica in 1980 (Habekost 1993, p. 31).
- 9.
Anum Iyapo (now Anum Abeng) served as Chairman of the OBAALA committee for a period. He provided the cover illustration for Maud Sulter’s award-winning poetry collection As a Black Woman, published by Akira Press in 1985, and worked on Menelik Shabazz’s 1981 film Burning an Illusion. He was also involved in the design for Our Story: A Handbook of African History and Contemporary Issues, a book of lectures edited by Akyaaba Addai-Sebo and Ansel Wong for the London Strategic Policy Unit and published by Hansib in 1988 as an outcome of the first UK Black History Month—sadly, now out of print. See: https://www.crer.scot/single-post/2017/09/28/How-did-Black-History-Month-come-to-the-UK.
- 10.
- 11.
James 1990, p. 10. Haringey Arts Council was an arts development agency, now named Collage Arts.
- 12.
The title of A-dZiko Simba’s poem ‘Afrikan Woman Talk’ echoes the name of the writing collective Black Womantalk, established in 1983 to publish anthologies of black women’s writing. Their outputs included the collection Don’t Ask Me Why, which featured Simba’s short stories ‘A Piece of Furniture’ and ‘The Communion (Choong et al. eds, 1991, pp. 5–6, 75–82).
- 13.
Elizabeth Clarke organised ‘Opportunities: The Afro-Asian Contemporary British Theatre Conference’, which took place at the Young Vic Studio on 31 January 1987. This led to an Arts Council commission to report on black theatre to its Drama Council in autumn 1987. As Lynette Goddard notes, the draft report is held at the Arts Council Library (Goddard 2007, pp. 23, 212).
- 14.
The Camden Black Theatre Seasons should not be mistaken for the 1983–1990 Black Theatre Seasons: see Terracciano 2006.
- 15.
See ‘Leaflet for Camden Black Theatre Season’ (image 15 of 15) at http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/theatre-of-black-women/ [accessed 27 November 2017]. This statement is repeated in Osborne 2006, p. 77.
- 16.
The film Polishing Black Diamonds is preserved in the Arts Council England Film Collection (ACE431) and is currently available to view for a small fee through the feminist film distributor Cinenova (http://cinenova.org/database/filmdetail.php?&filmId=348), and—to members of UK institutions of Higher and Further Education—through the online Arts on Film Archive hosted by Westminster University (http://artsonfilm.wmin.ac.uk/filmsuk.php?a=view&recid=0).
- 17.
Creation for Liberation was founded in 1975 and existed until 1987. Its activities were inclusive of Asian as well as African and Caribbean populations.
- 18.
The Dark and Light Theatre Company was founded by Frank Cousins in the early 1970s to showcase black actors and new black writing. Cousins stepped aside in 1975, reportedly in response to some pressure from the Arts Council, and the company became the Black Theatre of Brixton under Jamal Ali, Norman Beaton, and Rufus Collins (King-Dorset 2014, pp. 168–169). Cousins went on to serve in local government (King-Dorset, p. 158). The Black Theatre of Brixton closed in 1977.
- 19.
Ken McCalla maintains a website of his artistic activities at http://www.yahwarts.co.uk/.
- 20.
‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ has, since 1997, formed a portion of the South African national anthem. The song also appeared in the 2005 and 2007 productions of debbie tucker green’s play generations at the National Theatre and Young Vic, respectively, sung by the African Voices choir.
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Abram, N. (2020). Munirah Theatre Company. In: Black British Women's Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51459-4_3
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