Raising The Bar - 100 Years Of Black British Theatre And Screen

Title

First
Broadcast

Comments

A Long, Hard Road

20151110

In the second of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry focuses on the evolving depiction of African Caribbean society on popular television across fifty years.

He charts the journey from the overt racism of TV sit-coms like Love Thy Neighbour (which nonetheless was a great hit amongst black Britons, simply because it was one of the few places in the 1970s where black Britain was regularly depicted on the nation's TV screens) to more sympathetic programmes like Empire Road. By the time Desmond's hair salon opened on Channel 4, with Norman Beaton and Carmen Munroe in the leading roles, a much more realistic picture of African Caribbean Britain was taking shape on British television.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry examines the evolving depiction of Afro-Caribbeans on TV.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

African Accents

20151119

Lenny Henry investigates the sudden blossoming of new black British theatrical voices whose roots are not in the Caribbean but in Africa. From Nigeria via Peckham and Hastings comes the energetic talent of Bola Agbaje whose play Gone Too Far triumphed at London's Royal Court Theatre, winning an Olivier award in 2008 before being filmed for the big screen, with a slew of new work since. 'Writing is easy' she tells Lenny Henry ...and, she says, it all came about only because she managed to squeeze a place on a Royal Court writers' scheme on the day applications closed.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry on the blossoming of new black British theatrical voices with roots in Africa.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Caribbean Voices

20151112

In the fourth of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry, himself the son of Jamaican immigrants who settled in the west Midlands, tells the story of Caribbean migration as reflected in the work of such playwrights as Errol John, and the poet Una Marson who first came to Britain from Jamaica in 1932.

With Michael Buffong, artistic director of Talawa Theatre Company, whose production of John's 1958 play, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, at the National Theatre was an acclaimed revival.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry focuses on how Caribbean migration has been reflected on stage and screen.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Good Company

20151116

Lenny Henry investigates the sudden blossoming of black theatre groups in Britain in the late 1970s and 80s as new, second generation black Britons found their voices and created stages to express themselves. Most famous is Talawa, a theatre company founded by four renowned creative spirits, including Yvonne Brewster and Carmen Munroe, who applied for and were granted from the public purse £80,000 to stage The Black Jacobins, a play about Caribbean history, by the legendary writer CLR James.

Series consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry focuses on the burgeoning black theatre companies of the 1970s and 80s.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Last Taboos

20151118

Lenny Henry talks to black British film director Isaac Julien about his work as an out-gay film-maker who has from the beginning of his career confronted issues of discrimination, police brutality, and homophobia within the African Caribbean community. With his film Young Soul Rebels, which he made in 1991, but which was set in 1977 against the backdrop of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, Julien depicted head-on the violence and hatred of homosexuals within British black society. How, today, have attitudes changed?

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry focuses on attitudes towards homosexuality, with film-maker Isaac Julien.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Mainstream And Multicultural

20151117

Lenny Henry charts the breakthrough of a suite of powerful new voices in the 1990s.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Omnibus: Part 1

20151113

In April 1833, at the height of the anti-slavery debate, a young African-American named Ira Aldridge took to the stage of the Covent Garden theatre in London as the star of the latest production of Shakespeare's Othello. Two days later, the production closed, ostensibly as the result of illness, but amid howling reviews that decried, in deeply racist language, the elevation of a black actor to the role of Shakespeare's tragic hero. Yet Aldridge was a superstar, feted across Europe who settled in Britain and married a British woman.

In this first of two programmes, Lenny Henry traces the long and painful road that black British performers, playwrights and film-makers have travelled, from the overt racial discrimination of the 19th century, via the thinly veiled slurs that persisted through the first 70 years of the 20th, to today's more equal society. This week, Lenny talks to playwrights Mustapha Matura, Roy Williams, Lolita Chakrabarti and Kwame Kwei-Armah and actors and directors Carmen Munroe, Yvonne Brewster and Paulette Randall. As well as Aldridge's Othello, he hears how racial issues were reflected on TV from the Black and White Minstrel Show to Love Thy Neighbour and Desmond's, and in films like Horace Ov退's Pressure.

Consultant: Dr Michael Pearce

Producer: Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry on 100 years of black British theatre and screen.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Omnibus: Part 2

20151120

The 1980s were a time of political upheaval and deep changes to the way the state engaged with British society, but for black theatre, perhaps paradoxically, it was a time of a great explosion of talent and opportunity. As Brixton and Toxteth burned, a host of new and brilliant young theatre groups burst into life, some benefiting from the final largesse of the dying Greater London Council, wound up by act of Parliament in 1986. Thus Talawa was born with an £80,000 GLC grant to stage its first, landmark production which required a cast of 23 - but there were many others too.

On television, Channel 4 brought new specialist magazine programming for black viewers, quickly emulated by the BBC, and series like Empire Road found ready and growing popularity, while the films of Isaac Julien addressed issues of race and sexuality for both niche and mainstream audiences. By the 1990s and early 2000s, new black writing talent like Roy Williams and Winsome Pinnock were reflecting sharp social divisions, and the problems faced by black youth in Britain's inner cities. This, too, was the world that young British-Nigerian writer Bola Agbaje grew up in, and powerfully wrote about in her groundbreaking new plays.

Consultant: Dr Michael Pearce

Producer: Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry on 100 years of black British theatre and screen.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Othello Across The Ages

20151111

In the third of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry uses Shakespeare's character of Othello to tell the story of how the Moor of the play has for nearly 200 years offered black actors a part to savour - and also provoked debates about who can play the role.

In 2009, Lenny himself took the role in a production by Northern Broadsides at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, and subsequently in London. It won him the Evening Standard newspaper's Newcomer of the Year award, and was generally acknowledged a triumph.

Yet nearly 200 years ago, in 1833, the black American-British actor Ira Aldridge (known as 'the negro tragedian') played Othello with the Covent Garden players for just two nights until deplorable racist reviews, objecting to 'this wretched upstart', forced the management to close the production.

Even well into the twentieth century, those 19th century newspapers' complaints about Desdemona being 'pawed' by a black actor were echoed when the great Paul Robeson took the role, and white actors in blackface have regularly played Othello right up to the modern era.

Featuring an interview with Lolita Chakrabarti, whose award-winning play Red Velvet, depicted Aldridge's Othello.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry on the complex stage history of the role of Othello, Shakespeare's 'Moor'.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Post-black

20151120

In the last of his programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry explores the prospects for black British theatre and screen. He talks to black British film-director and creative artist Steve McQueen, who was the first ever black director to win an Academy Award for Best Picture - and who's also a proud winner of the Turner Prize for art. Lenny hears about Steve's new project for BBC television, a grand sweeping story of an African Caribbean family growing up across three decades from the late 1960s.

Also taking part in this assessment of the future shape of their art are director and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, theatre director Michael Buffong and writer Roy Williams.

Series consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry talks to Steve McQueen, the first black director to win a Best Picture Oscar.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Pressure, Conflict And Creativity

20151113

To end the first week of Raising the Bar, in the fifth of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry takes a journey back to the 1960s and 70s to catch the spirit of protest and violent anger that welled up as the result of years of overt or thinly-veiled racism.

With the advent of the Black Power movement, British African Caribbeans found a new and angry voice - it expressed itself on stage and on screen, notably in Horace Ov退's film Pressure, that tells the story of a young black British boy growing up under powerful influences: his old parents' rectitude, his own desire to make his way in the society he's been born into, and the angry, uncompromising voices of his Black Power advocate brother.

Horace Ov退 talks to Lenny Henry about the world that inspired this famous first British feature film by a black director.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry on how anger and protest found their way to stage and screen in the 1970s.

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

The Big Time

20151109

In the first of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry begins with the breakthrough moment when Kwame Kwei-Armah's celebrated tragedy Elmina's Kitchen, set on so-called Murder Mile in Hackney, was staged first at the National Theatre to great acclaim in 2003, and then - a first for a black British play - received a major West End transfer to the Garrick Theatre in 2005.

In this programme, Lenny talks to the actor, singer, playwright and now theatre artistic director, Kwame Kwei-Armah about that key moment in his career, and in the history of the black British stage; a moment described at the time by the Daily Telegraph as 'boom-time for black theatre'.

Elmina's Kitchen features an all-black cast of characters and is set in a Caribbean caf退 in London,

where family ties, gang violence, inter-generational conflict, tenderness and seething anger all mix in a classic story of jealousy, loyalty, masculinity and betrayal.

Series Consultant Michael Pearce

Producer Simon Elmes.

Lenny Henry explores the breakthrough arrival of the play Elmina's Kitchen in the West End

Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen

Episodes

Title	First Broadcast	Comments
A Long, Hard Road	20151110	In the second of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry focuses on the evolving depiction of African Caribbean society on popular television across fifty years. He charts the journey from the overt racism of TV sit-coms like Love Thy Neighbour (which nonetheless was a great hit amongst black Britons, simply because it was one of the few places in the 1970s where black Britain was regularly depicted on the nation's TV screens) to more sympathetic programmes like Empire Road. By the time Desmond's hair salon opened on Channel 4, with Norman Beaton and Carmen Munroe in the leading roles, a much more realistic picture of African Caribbean Britain was taking shape on British television. Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry examines the evolving depiction of Afro-Caribbeans on TV. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
African Accents	20151119	Lenny Henry investigates the sudden blossoming of new black British theatrical voices whose roots are not in the Caribbean but in Africa. From Nigeria via Peckham and Hastings comes the energetic talent of Bola Agbaje whose play Gone Too Far triumphed at London's Royal Court Theatre, winning an Olivier award in 2008 before being filmed for the big screen, with a slew of new work since. 'Writing is easy' she tells Lenny Henry ...and, she says, it all came about only because she managed to squeeze a place on a Royal Court writers' scheme on the day applications closed. Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry on the blossoming of new black British theatrical voices with roots in Africa. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Caribbean Voices	20151112	In the fourth of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry, himself the son of Jamaican immigrants who settled in the west Midlands, tells the story of Caribbean migration as reflected in the work of such playwrights as Errol John, and the poet Una Marson who first came to Britain from Jamaica in 1932. With Michael Buffong, artistic director of Talawa Theatre Company, whose production of John's 1958 play, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, at the National Theatre was an acclaimed revival. Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry focuses on how Caribbean migration has been reflected on stage and screen. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Good Company	20151116	Lenny Henry investigates the sudden blossoming of black theatre groups in Britain in the late 1970s and 80s as new, second generation black Britons found their voices and created stages to express themselves. Most famous is Talawa, a theatre company founded by four renowned creative spirits, including Yvonne Brewster and Carmen Munroe, who applied for and were granted from the public purse £80,000 to stage The Black Jacobins, a play about Caribbean history, by the legendary writer CLR James. Series consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry focuses on the burgeoning black theatre companies of the 1970s and 80s. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Last Taboos	20151118	Lenny Henry talks to black British film director Isaac Julien about his work as an out-gay film-maker who has from the beginning of his career confronted issues of discrimination, police brutality, and homophobia within the African Caribbean community. With his film Young Soul Rebels, which he made in 1991, but which was set in 1977 against the backdrop of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, Julien depicted head-on the violence and hatred of homosexuals within British black society. How, today, have attitudes changed? Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry focuses on attitudes towards homosexuality, with film-maker Isaac Julien. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Mainstream And Multicultural	20151117	Lenny Henry charts the breakthrough of a suite of powerful new voices in the 1990s. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Omnibus: Part 1	20151113	In April 1833, at the height of the anti-slavery debate, a young African-American named Ira Aldridge took to the stage of the Covent Garden theatre in London as the star of the latest production of Shakespeare's Othello. Two days later, the production closed, ostensibly as the result of illness, but amid howling reviews that decried, in deeply racist language, the elevation of a black actor to the role of Shakespeare's tragic hero. Yet Aldridge was a superstar, feted across Europe who settled in Britain and married a British woman. In this first of two programmes, Lenny Henry traces the long and painful road that black British performers, playwrights and film-makers have travelled, from the overt racial discrimination of the 19th century, via the thinly veiled slurs that persisted through the first 70 years of the 20th, to today's more equal society. This week, Lenny talks to playwrights Mustapha Matura, Roy Williams, Lolita Chakrabarti and Kwame Kwei-Armah and actors and directors Carmen Munroe, Yvonne Brewster and Paulette Randall. As well as Aldridge's Othello, he hears how racial issues were reflected on TV from the Black and White Minstrel Show to Love Thy Neighbour and Desmond's, and in films like Horace Ov退's Pressure. Consultant: Dr Michael Pearce Producer: Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry on 100 years of black British theatre and screen. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Omnibus: Part 2	20151120	The 1980s were a time of political upheaval and deep changes to the way the state engaged with British society, but for black theatre, perhaps paradoxically, it was a time of a great explosion of talent and opportunity. As Brixton and Toxteth burned, a host of new and brilliant young theatre groups burst into life, some benefiting from the final largesse of the dying Greater London Council, wound up by act of Parliament in 1986. Thus Talawa was born with an £80,000 GLC grant to stage its first, landmark production which required a cast of 23 - but there were many others too. On television, Channel 4 brought new specialist magazine programming for black viewers, quickly emulated by the BBC, and series like Empire Road found ready and growing popularity, while the films of Isaac Julien addressed issues of race and sexuality for both niche and mainstream audiences. By the 1990s and early 2000s, new black writing talent like Roy Williams and Winsome Pinnock were reflecting sharp social divisions, and the problems faced by black youth in Britain's inner cities. This, too, was the world that young British-Nigerian writer Bola Agbaje grew up in, and powerfully wrote about in her groundbreaking new plays. Consultant: Dr Michael Pearce Producer: Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry on 100 years of black British theatre and screen. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Othello Across The Ages	20151111	In the third of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry uses Shakespeare's character of Othello to tell the story of how the Moor of the play has for nearly 200 years offered black actors a part to savour - and also provoked debates about who can play the role. In 2009, Lenny himself took the role in a production by Northern Broadsides at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, and subsequently in London. It won him the Evening Standard newspaper's Newcomer of the Year award, and was generally acknowledged a triumph. Yet nearly 200 years ago, in 1833, the black American-British actor Ira Aldridge (known as 'the negro tragedian') played Othello with the Covent Garden players for just two nights until deplorable racist reviews, objecting to 'this wretched upstart', forced the management to close the production. Even well into the twentieth century, those 19th century newspapers' complaints about Desdemona being 'pawed' by a black actor were echoed when the great Paul Robeson took the role, and white actors in blackface have regularly played Othello right up to the modern era. Featuring an interview with Lolita Chakrabarti, whose award-winning play Red Velvet, depicted Aldridge's Othello. Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry on the complex stage history of the role of Othello, Shakespeare's 'Moor'. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Post-black	20151120	In the last of his programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry explores the prospects for black British theatre and screen. He talks to black British film-director and creative artist Steve McQueen, who was the first ever black director to win an Academy Award for Best Picture - and who's also a proud winner of the Turner Prize for art. Lenny hears about Steve's new project for BBC television, a grand sweeping story of an African Caribbean family growing up across three decades from the late 1960s. Also taking part in this assessment of the future shape of their art are director and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, theatre director Michael Buffong and writer Roy Williams. Series consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry talks to Steve McQueen, the first black director to win a Best Picture Oscar. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
Pressure, Conflict And Creativity	20151113	To end the first week of Raising the Bar, in the fifth of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry takes a journey back to the 1960s and 70s to catch the spirit of protest and violent anger that welled up as the result of years of overt or thinly-veiled racism. With the advent of the Black Power movement, British African Caribbeans found a new and angry voice - it expressed itself on stage and on screen, notably in Horace Ov退's film Pressure, that tells the story of a young black British boy growing up under powerful influences: his old parents' rectitude, his own desire to make his way in the society he's been born into, and the angry, uncompromising voices of his Black Power advocate brother. Horace Ov退 talks to Lenny Henry about the world that inspired this famous first British feature film by a black director. Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry on how anger and protest found their way to stage and screen in the 1970s. Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen
The Big Time	20151109	In the first of ten programmes tracing a century of black British theatre and screen, Lenny Henry begins with the breakthrough moment when Kwame Kwei-Armah's celebrated tragedy Elmina's Kitchen, set on so-called Murder Mile in Hackney, was staged first at the National Theatre to great acclaim in 2003, and then - a first for a black British play - received a major West End transfer to the Garrick Theatre in 2005. In this programme, Lenny talks to the actor, singer, playwright and now theatre artistic director, Kwame Kwei-Armah about that key moment in his career, and in the history of the black British stage; a moment described at the time by the Daily Telegraph as 'boom-time for black theatre'. Elmina's Kitchen features an all-black cast of characters and is set in a Caribbean caf退 in London, where family ties, gang violence, inter-generational conflict, tenderness and seething anger all mix in a classic story of jealousy, loyalty, masculinity and betrayal. Series Consultant Michael Pearce Producer Simon Elmes. Lenny Henry explores the breakthrough arrival of the play Elmina's Kitchen in the West End Lenny Henry presents a series tracing a century of black British theatre and screen