BR’ER COTTON
Written by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, Winner: Best Play, Off-West End Awards, shortlisted for both the Theatre503 Playwriting Award 2016 and the Relentless Award
Venue: Theatre 503
Directed by Roy Alexander Weise
Set and Costume design by Jemima Robinson
*Nominated for Best Set Design: Offie Awards*
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Amy Mae
SOUND AND ORIGINAL MUSIC DESIGNER: Harry Johnson
VIDEO DESIGNER: Louise Rhoades-Brown
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Ed Borgnis
COSTUME SUPERVISOR: Hanne Talbot
PRODUCER: Jake Orr
CAST
RUFFRINO: Michael Ajao
NADINE: Kiza Deen
MATTHEW: Trevor A Toussaint
POLICE OFFICER: Alexander Campbell
CAGED_BIRD99: Ellie Turner
Photographs by Helen Murray
“We talkin’ about life. We talkin’ about being treated as equals. We talkin’ about not being shot down in the streets and motherfuckers gettin’ off scot-free.”
Lynburg, Virginia, on the former site of a cotton mill. Fourteen year old Ruffrino is struggling to make sense of his place in an impoverished world filled with seemingly random killings of young black men. As his anger towards reality grows, he moves further away from his family. Losing himself online, Ruffrino’s world sinks around him while he battles to wake up the zombies and prove by any means necessary that Black Lives Matter.
**** The Guardian 'Jemima's simple stage design is arresting...'
Link below to a piece I wrote for ‘Whats on Stage’ about designing ‘Br’er Cotton’.
A play born of anger: designing Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm's urgent piece about young black men killed in the US
http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/br-er-cotton-young-black-theatre503-set-piece_45979.html
Whats on STAGE ****
Extract of Matt Truman’s review.
‘White words on black walls: a ring of names, places and dates run around the room like a watermark, like limescale. They're not all familiar, but you know exactly what they represent: Trevon Johnson, 17, Miami; Sandra Bland, 28, Texas; Freddie Gray, 25, Baltimore. These are America's dead, the young black men and women killed by police over decades. The most recent are stark, others have faded to grey. The number of them is astounding. It turns the theatre into a crypt.
It's fitting. Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm's family drama asks us to reflect on the right response to the realities of racism in America today: police shootings, alt-right trolls and all manner of ingrained structural inequalities. It pits rage against resignation, rising up against getting on, and Chisholm's all too aware that there's no single right answer. The issue's intractable; the play's almost unbearable.’
Post scriptum from Jemima, July 2020:
I remember writing out all the names, ages and places of black men and women who had been shot and killed by the police in America in the past decade. Their names filled the theatre and auditorium. I remembering needing to add two more names during the few weeks of the show; Stephon Clark, 22, Sacramento shot down by police on 18th March 2018 and Saheed Vassell, 34 shot 10 times by four officers in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on 5th April 2018. The black men were unarmed and the police were never charged. The coverage this year of George Floyd’s killing has raised the awareness of police brutality in America. I have written out the names of the black men and women who have been shot since our production of Br’er Cotton in April 2018. Their names are in black along with my production images. Say their names. Black lives matter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47430090
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/new-york-police-fatally-shoot-black-man-holding-metal-pipe