Light and shadow

Today I went to a reading of Jackie Kay's 1987 play Chiaroscuro which blew me away. I went on my own, after being invited by my tutor at Goldsmiths, Natasha Bonnelame, who was hosting the event. I sat apart from everyone else, as my anxiety was sky-rocketing after being directed by three different people and then almost not finding the right room. I thought I was going to be late and was freaking out - luckily, I wasn't late and the event was running behind time, which gave my heart a moment to return to a normal rate.

I took this photo after the reading, on a high of loving life
and seeing the beauty in it. Happy Spring, guys.

The play consisted of four black female friends in conversation with each other, bringing up themes of racism, identity, history, homophobia, belonging, and many more. The four actors who performed the reading (Radhika Aggarwal as Aisha, Jade Anouka as Opal, Lorna Brown as Yomi, and Jessica Murrain as Beth) each did a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life in a way that wasn't merely a reading, but more of a journey.

I was touched by the issues raised in Chiaroscuro: of being rooted to the history of your family through your name, of not knowing where you belong, of questioning whether you should be yourself fully - if that was okay.

I cried twice during the reading, but very subtly; so was it really crying at all, or were my contact lenses just misting up? Who knows, who knows.

What seemed to be at the core of the story - or at least to me, anyway - was whether or not we as black women (the audience was mostly made up of black women) could make the choice to change our lives. Whether we should be ourselves fully, or was that a luxury we could not afford because we had to deal with so many other burdens of race, family ties, societal perceptions of decency. Was being yourself a luxury or a necessity for survival?

When the reading was over, my tutor came over to me and asked what I thought. I swallowed quite a bit, trying not to show that I had been subtly crying blinking my contact lenses back into place, and managed to blurt out "it was SO good". Recovering a bit more, I told her honestly that I had never seen myself represented so fully in a play before this. She went off after that, to mingle with the other members in the audience, but I kept thinking about how changed I was after seeing Chiaroscuro.

I'd seen bits of myself in other theatrical performances. Joanne in Rent-

Actually, that might be it for theatre. But in other media, I've seen me in that one episode of Black Mirror (the only one that isn't terrifying, SE3 Ep4 - 'San Junipero'): I am aspects of both Yorkie and Kelly, for various reasons. I am part sweet Therese in Carol, I am-

Again, I'm coming up short here. But you get the idea. (If you don't, the idea is queer.)

In Chiaroscuro, I found that I identified strongly with Beth, the mixed race lesbian who gets into an argument with Yomi about her self-identifying as black. I'm not mixed race, but I'm pale enough that for almost 15 years of my life I thought I was, and the kids at school didn't help much either. They called me white, because I liked to read books and listen to rock music (there's so much wrong with that, but we won't get into that now). Also I'm not a lesbian, but my sexuality does involve Sapphism, so I understood the anxieties Beth experiences about her feelings for Opal.

And Opal. Oh, Opal. Afraid of being alone, of not having a family, of loving Beth, of being herself. I could understand her desire for people not to treat her differently once they find out she's with Beth, and when Yomi implies she can no longer see Yomi's daughter because she's queer, that struck a personal fear of mine. Yomi's stiff ignorance towards both Opal and Beth were like echoes of real conversations I've had with people (and may or may not be one of the reasons why I may or may not have cried).

Aisha was the only character out of the four that I had a hard time engaging with, most likely because she spends most of the performance dithering over being her true self. She's shown to be incredibly guarded about who she is to the point of not acknowledging it and, while I might be guarded about who I am, I did not feel a kinship with her character.

But then, in the discussion we had after the reading, it was pointed out that we do not necessarily have to see ourselves represented in the characters in order to understand the value of them. And the value of Chiaroscuro? Inexplicable.