
What are the themes of your play?
Little Angela Davis is a play about activism and it’s a play about identity, the personal and the political and what happens when the two feel like they might be the same thing. It’s about being an opinionated Black girl and not really knowing where to direct the energy pent up from existing in a marginalised body. It’s a play about the nature of responsibility, mental health, and wanting to make change in one place when it all feels a bit hopeless.
Why did you write it and why now?
Starting as a writing challenge to myself, and an extended poem of sorts, I wrote Little Angela Davis following my first term at university, as a response to the culture of activism and social justice that really intensified after 2020 and the way that it had made me, and my peers start to internalise injustice.
As a History and Politics student, I have always been fascinated with the question of what motivates political action, and what that action looks like. Having been involved in various activist spaces, I’ve had the opportunity to answer this on both an individual and personal level. Social activism and its expressions of collective unity and hope have really shaped the way that I participate in politics but these spaces, online and in-person, were also dampened by feelings of anxiety, exhaustion, and desensitisation. I think that now, more than ever, and especially for marginalised groups, it’s so easy to feel like you’re always fighting against something, especially when we’re so exposed to global tragedy, when so much seems to call us to protest, and sometimes we are. Little Angela Davis was my way of reckoning with that.
Which playwrights are you influenced by and in what way?
Michaela Coel, debbie tucker green, Ryan Calais Cameron, Jasmine Lee Jones, and Arinze Kene to name just a few. I have been influenced and inspired by the way that they have completely changed the landscape of theatre, challenging the very idea of what a play can look like, and who it can represent; by the way that they experiment with style and form, for their poetry and their lyricism, and for their use of rhythm and music; by the way that they are able to celebrate and shed light on the spectrums of the Black British experience.
What do you want to achieve as a playwright?
As a playwright, I want to keep challenging myself to tell stories that matter to me in new and engaging ways. I want to create work that connects to and centres people who look like me, sound like me, and dream like me. Lastly, I want to have creative audacity, and keep taking up space, so that I can make a lasting contribution to the growing catalogue of Black British Theatre and beyond.