Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)
    Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)
    Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)

    By Arinzé Kene

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Estate Walls is the story of Obi, a young writer who dreams of leaving his estate. But with bad boys Myles and Cain for best friends, there are bound to be setbacks…
    Arinzé Kene's play premiered at Ovalhouse Theatre in south London in September 2010, directed by Ché Walker, winning Arinzé the Most Promising Playwright at the Offies (Off West End Theatre Awards) in 2011.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Hern Books
    Release dateFeb 1, 2020
    ISBN9781788503037
    Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)
    Author

    Arinzé Kene

    Arinzé Kene is a playwright and actor. His plays include Misty (Bush Theatre, London, and West End, 2018); good dog (Tiata Fahodzi, 2017); God’s Property (Soho Theatre, 2013); Estate Walls (Ovalhouse Theatre, 2011); and Little Baby Jesus (Ovalhouse, 2011). He was awarded an MBE in 2020.

    Read more from Arinzé Kene

    Related to Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)

    Related ebooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      My 21st-century Touchstone Play: Theatre Stars Share The Shows That Shook Them To The Core

      Feb 19, 2021

      Here at the Evening Standard, we recently tried to pull together the 21st-century’s greatest plays (read our list and see if you agree). But what about those plays that impact us more personally, that seem to speak to us directly and leave us getting

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      It’s Time To Act!

      Mar 21, 2020

      It’s Time To Act!
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      “Where Did You Laugh?”

      Dec 14, 2019

      “Where Did You Laugh?”
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      RSC and Representation

      Jun 17, 2023

      RSC and Representation
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Broadway’s Dirty Secret

      Nov 6, 2019

      Broadway’s Dirty Secret
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Broadway’s Golden New Age?

      Mar 25, 2019

      Broadway’s Golden New Age?
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Theatre’s Sober Reality

      Dec 25, 2019

      Theatre’s Sober Reality
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cathedrals Made of Bricks

      Nov 25, 2019

      Cathedrals Made of Bricks
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On Stage

      Apr 14, 2020

      On Stage
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Theatrical Seekers and True Believers

      Dec 25, 2019

      A MOMENT ON THE CLOCK OF THE WORLD Edited by Melanie Joseph and David Bruin. Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2019. 220 pp., $50 hardcover, $20 paper. MOMENT WORK: TECTONIC THEATER PROJECT’S PROCESS OF DEVISING THEATER Edited by Moisés Kaufman and Barbara P

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Primary Trust EBONI BOOTH

      May 24, 2024

      Primary Trust EBONI BOOTH
      44 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Refugees

      Mar 1, 2019

      Refugees
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Benedict Cumberbatch

      Jul 26, 2019

      Benedict Cumberbatch
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mfa Or The Highway?

      Dec 25, 2019

      FOR YEARS, I IDENTIFIED AS A PLAY ‑ wright who wanted an MFA. I had seen those coveted three letters in almost every playwright’s bio, often attached to an illustrious university—an Ivy, or maybe a West Coast equivalent. I spent three autumns writing

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mark Rylance

      Jun 26, 2020

      Mark Rylance
      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Estate Walls (NHB Modern Plays) - Arinzé Kene

      Arinzé Kene

      ESTATE WALLS

      art

      NICK HERN BOOKS

      London

      www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

      Contents

      Original Production

      Foreword

      Characters

      Estate Walls

      About the Author

      Copyright and Performing Rights Information

      Estate Walls was first performed at Oval House Theatre, London, on 21 September 2010, with the following cast:

      Sophie Benjamin

      Daniel Greene

      Garbiya Huss

      Ricci McLeod

      Daniel Norford

      Directed by Ché Walker

      Real Talk

      Foreword by Tobi Kyeremateng

      Dem man would say dem man are mandem and us man are dem man

      But then my mandem would say us man are mandem and dem man are dem man.

      Kareem Parkins-Brown, Sunny D or The Purple Stuff?

      Optional reading soundtrack: ‘Sittin’ Here’ or ‘Do It’ by Dizzee Rascal (Boy In Da Corner, 2003)

      Since the early 2000s, I have seen the language of my ends archived in the mouths of the teenaged youth of the third millennium and evolved through cultures, shifted by the latter end of Generation Z. In my school, mandem recited ‘P’s and Q’s’ like a Sunday prayer with not a single syllable missed, and some of South London’s most loyal playground ambassadors would later join in reciting ‘Talkin’ Da Hardest’ with the same religious inflection, honouring the joining of North, South, East and West through this National Anthem of the ends. In a new decade, the mandem of the 2010s would forge their own worship here. The language of my ends has always sat between an electric poem backed against the pacey riddim of an old-school grime track, and the war-cry that escapes when the first noticeable seconds of our favourite tune drops in a dance. So much of the beauty of theatre exists in the subtexts we give language to; the private jokes only specific cultures could dictate, the space between the beat and the silence which speaks emotions ‘proper’ English doesn’t have words for, and the fact that ‘fam’ has approximately 10 different meanings depending on how we say it.

      This language allows us to preserve our own histories in our personal archives, and this oral tradition has historically given communities that have been oppressed permission to keep these histories relevant and authentic. The stories I grew up hearing Kano and Dizzee Rascal spit through the speakers of a Sony Ericsson Walkman W810 sit comfortably in my archive alongside the stories the likes of Arinzé Kene, Bola Agbaje and debbie tucker green have dedicated to our stages. The stories we tell ourselves about the cultures we consume can help us question the presentation of the theatrical self, and characters like Kehinde, Joanne and Rugrat in Little Baby Jesus not only taught me about the compelling and complex personalities I was raised around, but emphasised the power of language moulded by inner-city ecosystems. The friendship between Obi, Myles and Cain in Estate Walls is reminiscent of the boyhood-to-manhood I witnessed with my peers in similar settings. Watching a show and being able to say, ‘I know that character personally’, ‘that character right there is my aunty-who-isn’t-actually-my-aunty’, ‘boy, that used to be me once upon a time’ is a privilege not everyone has, and when it comes around, it is glorious.

      ‘Come like Cyclops Polyphemus the way he be watching me.’ (Joanne, Little Baby Jesus) – The beginning of a sentence starting with ‘Come like’ already lets you know a madness is about to follow, and it’ll most likely be all types of funny, extra yet true. Young people from ends have always had a knack for pulling from the wildest references to deliver a very specific yet subtle description of feeling, and in this case, it’s the glare from an infamous Greek monster.

      ‘You make me happy like when the Oyster machine on the bus ain’t working.’ (Chelsea, Estate Walls) – Only a few of us will be able to relate to the pleasure of a free bus ride once adulthood punched us square in the face in the form of having to part with our money and hand it over to TfL. The wave from the bus driver moving you along to the seats as the Oyster machine rang red felt like an ‘I got you’ directly from God, saving you that extra coin you’d later spend on something frivolous and joyful.

      There’s a sophistication to the way we speak that hasn’t always been welcome in our theatres and our society despite Black, working-class cultures being a key synergist of homegrown British entertainment, and for some this rejection is internalised in the politics behind ‘speaking proper English’ and dubbing this syntax as ‘Ghetto Grammar’ to dismiss the validity of building communityled languages in a society that teaches us that expression is only valid through the gaze of white acceptance. Poor young people and those adjacent to them are consistently villainised by what they wear, what they eat and how they speak by people that believe culture and/or Blackness is monolithic.

      Performing respectability is a much-loved theatrical piece of the colonial gaze which has pockets of communities that have been oppressed running away from our salvation, but respectability can never be our saving grace when its very birth is symptomatic of white supremacy, and art cannot operate

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1