The White Card: ‘This is about making the unseen, seen’

Estella Daniels in The White Card (Pic: supplied)

IN TRIBECA, New York a black artist is approached by a white, affluent couple to buy her work before she’s invited to join them for dinner one evening. Their unlikely meeting of two different worlds in the same city is what sets the scene for some uncomfortable truths to unfold about race, representation and the meaning of whiteness. 

The White Card was written by Claudia Rankin – a Jamaican-American, award-winning author that builds on the themes explored in her previous international bestseller, Citizen: An American Lyric work that delved into the complexities, and nuisances of racism.

COMPLEXITY: Natalie Ibu says play addresses true conversations about racism

Beginning it’s run at the Northern Stage in Newcastle, the play is to tour some of the UK’s biggest cities including the HOME theatre in Manchester and Birmingham Rep in the West Midlands.

In a scenario acted on stage, yet so readily reflective in the lives of black people, Claudia says that bringing the narrative to an audience was an invitation to have the “difficult and necessary” conversations about race relations almost two years on since the Black Lives Matter resurgence. 

“The goal is not to get rid of  the discomfort, but to increase the possibility for intimacy inside new narrative frameworks,” she explains.

“On the heels of Steve McQueen’s amazing series Small Axe, which documents the history of racism in London, it’s prime time to think about how conversations around class struggle can often erase or occlude necessary dialogues that acknowledge how anti-blackness is inextricable from the history of the United Kingdom,” she said.

The White Card stages the discussions that we have privately about the roles of art, race, suffering, discrimination, and patronage—out loud and beyond what is  comfortable to say and hear. It understands that true conversations about race and racism can feel like a crisis to those committed to silence and disavowal.”

Natalie Ibu, the director behind the play, told The Voice that bringing Claudia’s emotive work around racism to be acted out on stage has been a “tough” process, turning the tables on the consumption of black trauma as an art form.

“It’s required us to engage with really difficult histories. Really difficult events. For me, I have purposely not watched that footage of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 at the time and afterwards,” she said.

Claudia Rankine, 2016 MacArthur Fellow, New York, New York, September 7, 2016

“But I needed to watch it for this play. So some of the self-care and coping mechanisms that I’ve learnt to engage with like being on Twitter and not having autoplay on video, for example, that for this work I’ve had to look at that stuff.

“We’ve been working with a black drama therapist to support everyone in the process of making this and understanding that it costs a lot of everyone, but particularly the people of colour in this production. It’s overall a privilege but not without its complexity and personal challenges.”

The play is set in New York, one of America’s most diverse and vibrant cities, where the daily occurrences of racism still shape the black experience. 

As a story centred around the racial experiences of black people because of whiteness seeks to roll-out to UK audiences, Natalie believes the stories of the diaspora on both sides, where racism can look very different, can still speak to audiences here in the UK just the same.

I would argue that the privilege of whiteness is the same everywhere and really this is a play about whiteness for white people,” she says. “I think ultimately that Claudia has written this piece of work and there’s an amazing quote where she says, ‘I put white bodies on stage so that they know I’m talking to them’ and so that’s I think importance that absolutely if this had centred on the kind of black experience, I think there there absolutely are nuances in terms of their experience. But you know, I think that the UK has been telling itself a lie about its role in racism and its role in upholding white supremacy.

Whilst black men and women and children are not murdered on the streets by police every month in the way that it feels like that in the US, we still have extraordinary examples of racism.

The strip-searching of a 15-year-old black girl while she was menstruating or the incident of a black man being stopped by the police for wearing a coat in hot weather are what Natalie echoes as just another reason for people in Britain to also be having the hard conversations around racism almost two years on. 

But there is also the everyday racism, the “micro-racism,” a spanner in the works of the racial imagination that questions where and when black people should belong. 

Natalie adds: “The surprise met in our play the black character can speak fluent French and it’s a surprise or the assumption that as an upper class black woman, that she wouldn’t play tennis at the same tennis club as the white couple or the mistaking her for some for some other black artist that we’ve met – it’s an exploration in the world of these microaggressions.”

The White Card coming to the stage is only a reflection of how boundaries are also being pushed around the play’s production as a global majority cast are behind running the operations.

The lead role of Charlotte (played by Estella Daniels) for the first half of the run, before handing over to Christine Gomes is also in a move to remove barriers when it comes to balancing careers and family life.

“Recent research by Parents and Carers in Performing Arts showed that one in four  women are doing 90% or more of the childcare and struggling to work or seek work, and 72% are  considering abandoning their career in the performing arts,” explained Natalie. 

“If you overlay that with Kimberlé  Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality, I bet those stats are even worse for black female pregnant actors. As a sector we must act now to support working mums or mums-to-be or continue to lose  incredible talent from our stages, as well as setting our equality goals back decades.” 

She adds: “The White Card is about making the unseen, seen. Embracing the politics of the play and bringing together an incredible team of creatives who are all from the global majority was absolutely vital on  this project.

“We’re also committing to engaging as many black makers, brands and retailers as possible – for example, sourcing costumes from black owned companies. I’m proud that, at Northern Stage, we take diversity seriously, both on and off our stages.” 

The perspectives of black women, with both Claudia and Natalie spearheading its showcasing, shine throughout, in which she says black people can still find a sense of community that they arenot the only one anymore,” despite the reflective trauma on display. 

The White Card is still a play is for white people who “agree that the murder of black men and women is outrageous,” and to also ignite a conversation with those that say they’re not racist because of it. 

The White Card the UK and European premiere will begin at Northern Stage in Newcastle (29 April – 14  May).

HOME Manchester (18-21 May), Leeds Playhouse (24  May – 4 June), Birmingham Rep (7-18 June) and Soho Theatre (21 June – 16 July).

Comments Form

1 Comment

  1. | Linda Moore

    I have just bought my tickets for what looks like will be a very very interesting play based on real issues and the issue of white privilege which still prevails. I look forward to attending

    Reply

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