Welcome to the theatre of the absurd

Iam on the horns of a dilemma, I am in a moral quandary. I had intended to spend this morning reporting a hate crime to the Metropolitan Police regarding the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the forthcoming appearance by a duo called Tambo & Bones. According to the blurb, this performance invites the audience to ‘join their journey from comedy double-act, to hip-hop superstars, to activists in an America at the epicentre of the global Black Lives Matter movement’. And therein lies my problem, because – if I am being honest – I would rather have my wisdom teeth extracted without anaesthetic by Helen Keller than join Tambo & Bones on their remarkable journey. As a
consequence, my complaint to the Old Bill might be considered hypocritical and I would be another one of those tiresome people getting offended at something which I had no real intention of witnessing. A meddlesome busybody, in other words.

That a hate crime has been committed is beyond all reasonable doubt. The theatre is scheduling a ‘black out’ production by the Americans, which is a viewing from which white people are dissuaded from attending. Hedging its bets a little, the theatre says that while nobody is actually officially excluded from the performance, they hope for an evening where an ‘all black-identifying’ audience can enjoy and discuss the performance ‘free from the white gaze’. The director Matthew Xia explained: ‘I felt that with a play like Tambo & Bones, which unpicks the complexity of Black performance in relation to the white gaze, it was imperative that we created such a space.’

Now, if I were to put on a play – perhaps my adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead – and said that I only wanted white people to see it, I would be in big trouble and probably out of a job and facing a charge.