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Black Love

Cast
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Poster for Black Love at Kiln Theatre in co production with Tiata Fahodzi and Paines Plough. A woman singing into a microphone in fron to a patterened pink, yellow and orange background, with a motif of piano keys.
 

Kiln Theatre, Paines Plough and tiata fahodzi

 

Book and Lyrics by Chinonyerem Odimba
Music by Ben and Max Ringham
Directed by Chinonyerem Odimba

 

Following a five-star, critically acclaimed national tour and winner of the 2022 Writers’ Guild Award for Best Musical Theatre Bookwriting, Black Love comes to Kiln Theatre, London for a strictly limited run.

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Meet Aurora and Orion. Sister and brother. Constellations in time. More than blood. More than just fam.

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Inside their small London flat, memories of their parents’ Black love surrounds them. When that love is threatened, they must first find understanding and connection before they can begin to find a way back to one another.

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An explosion of form-busting storytelling, Black Love celebrates and investigates the Black experience through music, real-life stories and imagined worlds. This ‘beautiful ode to black society and home’ (The Guardian) is not to be missed.

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★★★★★
‘Beautiful and essential’
The Stage

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★★★★
‘Glorious ode to black culture’
The Guardian

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Age guidance 14+

Nicholle Cherrie's hearshot. She has dark, curly hair and wears a dark top.

Nicholle Cherrie

Roo

Beth Elliott's Headshot. She wears silver looped earrings, and looks over her shoulder to the camera.

Beth Elliott

Lois

Nathan Queeley-Dennis' headshot. He wears two earrings in his right ear, a mustard top and looks a little downward towards the camera.

Nathan Queeley-Dennis

Orion

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Letters to Fellow Writers

Bruntwood Prize & tiata fahodzi Letters Project

In partnership with Bruntwood Playwriting Prize, tiata fahodzi invited 4 writers to reflect on what they would like to say to fellow writers if given the space to do so.

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Following our 2 events around Dramaturgy instigated by a Letter to Eurocentric Dramaturgs sent by over 150 Global Majority playwrights in 2021, tiata fahodzi has been talking with many organisations about dramaturgical practice across the industry. 

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Manchester Royal Exchange and Bruntwood Prize were particularly interested in how to ensure that readers for the prize have as much opportunity to look at their own bias in work that is selected. As a part of these conversations, we wanted to invite writers to write A Letter to my Fellow Writers. The letters range in style from Lorna French’s brilliant advice to make your own rules, to more nuanced reflections in Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Letter to Exiled Theatre Makers, to how we hold ourselves and be brave in our writing from Dipo Agboluaje,  or how we support ourselves and each other through this time from Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini. These letters shine a light on the care we must take when we handle another’s words, experiences, pains and joys. Hope they bring you something wonderful as you read.

Gillian Burke from tiata fahodzi's Compound Conversations. She is sitting in a grass field with a greay blanket around her and a headscarf. She has a silver bracelet and looks down towards the camera, a grass seedhead just in the forecround.

Compound Conversations

 

A series of events, conversations, craft sessions and industry skills workshops that we hope will move us towards a fairer, more just, more joyful theatre industry putting wellbeing at the heart of what we do. 

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Built on the idea of a ‘compound’ - a space very typical in West African cultures - being a place where people come together to eat, laugh, cry, share stories, and learn collectively, these open invitation online conversations are for those that want to come to a space to informally discuss the bigger issues facing the theatre industry. 

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They have so far included a Dramaturgy Townhall; Craft Sessions on a range of topics lead by artists for artists, featuring some of the most skilled British African artists and creatives including Yero Timi-Bui, Dipo Agboluaje and Anastasia Osei- Kuffour; Industry skills workshops to support artists with funding advice, information about how governance in theatre works, specific roles, how we fill gaps of British Black leadership in the arts; plus future forward conversations on Climate Change and Global Majority artists by creative facilitators such as Gillian Burke and Selina Nwulu. 

Terrace Sessions

Launching in May 2021 across our social channels, this series showcased British-African musicians through music sessions which opened a window on where the artists work, what their ‘home’ language means to their art, whilst bringing the joy of aural discovery to our audience.

Listen now
 

Previous Productions

 
a previous poster for Black Love by Chinonyerem Odimba - Part of Paines Plough's 2021 season. A woman with a headband and black, flowery dress looks scornfully at a man who looks at the camera. He has sunglasses on his head and a short beard.

Black Love 

Roundabout 2021

A Paines Plough and Belgrade Theatre production in Association with tiata fahodzi
 

Part of Belgrade Theatre’s Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 programme
Book and Lyrics by Chinonyerem Odimba
Music by Ben and Max Ringham
Directed by Katie Posner and Chinonyerem Odimba
 
BLACK LOVE was Roundabout’s first ever musical and was written by tiata fahodzi Artistic AD/CEO Chinonyerem Odimba who also co-directed with Paines Plough Joint AD Katie Posner with music by Ben and Max Ringham.

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Love freely. Love freedom. Love.  
 

Meet Aurora and Orion: Sister and Brother. Constellations in time. More than blood. More than just fam. They look after each other in their small London flat, filled with the memories of their parents’ Black Love. When that love is threatened, they have to find their way back to each other and to what it means to love whilst Black. Using real-life stories, imagined worlds and new songs inspired by an R&B heritage, they begin a journey to confronting their own worst fears.  

BLACK LOVE is an explosion of form busting storytelling, an ode to Black music, and those real stories we rarely hear. 
 

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★★★★★
“Beautiful and Essential”
The Stage
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★★★★
“Singing siblings’ glorious ode to Black culture.”
The Guardian
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Brixton Blog
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“Immense, magical and simply breathtaking!!!”
Manchester Theatres
A shot from tiata fahodzi's production of Good Dog. A boy sits in a pool of light in the darkness, one leg dangling over the edge. He holds two fingers up as if he is saying "two".

Good Dog

SPRING 2019

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Mum’s promised him that bike so even when school or homelife bites, he knows to keep his chin up, his head down and his shirt clean. Because in the end, everyone who’s good gets what they deserve. Don’t they?

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good dog – set during the early noughties – tells the story of growing up in a multi-cultural community, and the everyday injustices that drive people to take back control. Delicately observed and fearlessly told by writer Arinzé Kene (Netflix’s Crazyhead, Eastenders, Channel 4’s Youngers, West End smash Girl From the North Country, and Misty at Bush Theatre and West End), good dog embarks on its second national tour following its acclaimed world premiere in spring 2017.

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good dog is a treat for everyone – whether you’re looking for a night out with friends, loved ones or want to broaden your horizons alone, this is the play for you. The show opened at Watford Palace Theatre on 31 January 2019 before embarking on a national tour of 15 venues.

A shot from a tiata fahodzi's production "Seeds". A woman has her arms wide. She look like she might be asking a question, part smiling, part exasperated. She wears a white vest and a leopard print coat is draped on the back of her chair.

Seeds

tiata fahodzi and Wrested Veil in association with Leeds Playhouse, Soho Theatre and Tara Finney Productions present seeds by Mel Pennant.
 

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“What would you do to save your son? Everything? Anything? Lie?”

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On Michael Thomas’ birthday, his cake sits in his mother’s living room, its candles burning undisturbed. Jackie wants to clear her conscience, whilst Evelyn’s got a big speech to deliver on the 15th anniversary of Michael’s fatal stabbing. Are some things better left unsaid?

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Sensitively written by Mel Pennant and shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award, seeds tells the story of two mothers united in sorrow, sharing the hardship of protecting their sons – one in life, and one in death.

Brought to you by the producers of the critically-acclaimed production of good dog by Olivier Award nominated Arinzé Kene, led by a female creative team, seeds explores the human story behind a tragedy through the eyes of those left behind.

From tiata fahodzi and Paines Plough's production "Mixed Brain". Credit The Other RIchard. A man with curly hair smiles gleefully. He is pointing and has a checked shirt with a green and yellow flag around his shoulders. The audience behind him are laughing.

Mixed Brain

A tiata fahodzi and Paines Plough production.

 

August 2017

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Jack wanted to get into teams real quick so he said, why don’t we do blacks VS white? I was confused, what does he mean? People with black shoes vs people with white trainers? Jack, Tom, Rob, George and Myles went to one side of the pitch and I was left stood in the middle as Christopher Rose went to the other. I was thinking what side do I go on? Now, before I get a chance to decide my 7-year old racial identity, Jack shouts out “you can be the referee Nathan because you’re mixed race”

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Star of Benidorm, writer for Rastamouse, 50% Jamaican, 50% British, 100% reppin’ Shepherd’s Bush. Nathan Bryon is many things. Mixed. 

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Welcome to his world. Part story, part stand-up, a show fusing Afro-Caribbean flair and British awkwardness in a searing, searching exploration of what it means to be mixed-race and mixed-experience today.

If you live in the middle does anywhere feel like home?

 

Get in the mix. Learn a little, live a little, laugh a lot.

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An image from tiata fahodzi's Bricks and Pieces. Two young people sit next to each other. The woman on the left is trying to hold back her tears, and the man on the right loks down. He is raising his eyebrow.

Bricks and Pieces

Summer 2016

“Are black people often playing petty criminals? Are women always playing the love interest or talking about men? Are gay people always stereotyped? Are disabled people hardly ever seen…I don’t think of myself as just a ‘black actor’. I’m an actor, not a number”

– Idris Elba, The House of Commons, January 2016.

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Working in collaboration with the world-leading Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), we produced brand new commission bricks and pieces from award-winning writer Charlene James developed with – and for – an exceptional cast of black RADA students. 

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bricks and pieces was presented at RADA from Tuesday 24 May – Saturday 4 June, before it met a festival audience at Latitude on Friday 15 July.

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Lovers, Tobi and Gabe are building a life together.  When Tobi’s cousin Mya crashes into his home, she brings along both her dreams and her baggage. While Tobi tries to hold on to Gabe, he struggles to support Mya when he can’t seem to support himself.

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tiata fahodzi and RADA’s co-commission – by award-winning writer of Cuttin’ It Charlene James – was a story about the places we escape into, the other worlds we build and the icons we cling to.

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RADA offers world-leading vocational training for actors, stage managers, directors, designers and technical stage craft specialists. Celebrated graduates include Richard Attenborough, Ralph Fiennes, David Harewood, Omar Sharif, Anthony Hopkins and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

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Charlene James was previously awarded the Alfred Fagon Award and the George Devine Award 2015 for Cuttin’ It, a play focusing on Female Genital Mutilation. She is a Jerwood New Playwright 2016.