Advertisement

Tales from the Front Line: How this London theatre company set out to tell the stories of Black key workers

 (The Masons)
(The Masons)

As people became increasingly glued to the news during the pandemic, Michael Buffong noticed something troubling. “I had a sense that a lot of Black workers, who were making a substantial contribution to keeping this country going, weren’t being represented.”

Buffong is the Artistic Director of Talawa, the UK’s primary Black-led touring theatre company. Today, Talawa will release two short films as the first instalment of Tales from the Front Line, a project seeking to share the stories of Black key workers.

Asked about the impetus behind the project, Buffong describes the urgent need he felt to address these gaps in representation. “It was a very strong impulse to have these stories recorded. I really wanted to help record our contribution to this scenario, so that it’s not erased or forgotten or undocumented. I thought that was very, very important.”

Each film will focus on a different person and their experience of the pandemic, Buffong explains. “These are the words of the teacher, the health worker, the train dispatch worker, the woman who works in the supermarket warehouse. It was great that we found some lovely people who were very generous with their experiences. And we thank them for that.”

He is quick to emphasise that no part of the project was scripted. Instead, verbatim interviews are relayed by actors, often in situ in each place of work. The first film, for instance, sees a teacher move around different rooms of a school. Thoughtful details are slotted neatly into each scene, such as a Black Lives Matter slogan written on a blackboard in the background. “These are their words, we just found a way to enable the words to come alive more powerfully,” Buffong explains.

The work of other artists is also an integral part of each film. A performance by Black dance company FUBUNATION is woven into the first instalment, playing out in intriguing parallel to the speaker’s story. “It’s a physical kind of representation,” says Buffong. “One of the things about Tales from the Front Line was also other artists’ responses towards the film, or towards the verbatim pieces. This was what FUBUNATION came up with, and we just spliced it at relevant points. So that's what that is - it’s almost like when your words aren’t enough.”

A series of linocuts also feature in the first episode, which Buffong explains were created by the teacher who gave the interview. “The teacher, that’s her expression. That’s how she finds peace: it’s an outlet. A way of dealing with all the things that she was having to deal with.

“I think mental health, especially within the black communities, is a major issue at the moment," he continues, noting that all proceeds from the project will be donated to Black Minds Matter. “So I think the project was able to do quite a few things, as well as enabling us to be artists and to be creative at this time.”

Like many theatre companies, Talawa have also had to be creative in their approach to work during the pandemic. “We’ve been forced into the digital realm. Very quickly we're thinking, how do we tell our stories, how do we get stories out at this moment in time?”

This felt especially crucial because of the Black Lives Matter movement, Buffong explains. “I think Black Lives Matter has been absolutely seismic globally, there's absolutely no doubt. And for us at Talawa it’s just reinforced everything we stand for and everything we do. It's just doubled down on our message and made us increasingly champion what we stand for.”

He’s optimistic about what this will mean for theatre and specifically Black theatre going forward. “What I can see is there is an appetite for our stories. I think I'm desperately hoping that we have a reset moment - that black creativity, black stories, and black art - become more central in this country's cultural output. That’s what I'm betting on, because I think that's the change that needs to happen.”

Watch Tales from the Front Line here.

Read More

David Lammy on unemployment, Boris Johnson and Black Lives Matter

Selma director aims to ‘change minds’ with BLM art exhibition

Dina Asher Smith didn't want to talk in public about racism after BLM