Hello!

I’m Rhianna, writer of Samuel Takes A Break… in Male Dungeon No. 5 After a Long but Generally Successful Day of Tours. I’m feeling emotional because there is only one week left of the run, and I will miss this show so much. The ephemeral nature of theatre is the reason why I love the form, why I write for it, and why I feel near-total sadness as the end draws closer.

I will miss hearing the words “England. We went there.” by Jerri, the older Jamaican woman who is partly inspired by my late Grandmother Gwen. I will miss seeing Orange get all up in Samuel’s personal space, as she mimics his eleventh tour to Letty and Trev. I will miss the opening: the laughs of the audience as Samuel gets to know us, his guests; the sounds of the intrusive cameras flashing behind us, the t-shirts. “Ghana called.” Etc.

This is technically my debut full-length play, and I’ve been writing it for 5 years. I wrote the first pages immediately after visiting Cape Coast Castle, where I was a member of a tour group at the start of the Year of Return. A lot of scenes in the first-half of the play stem from things people said or did on that tour.

The creation of this production has been like a fever dream for me. Much of this play was written in true introversion mode, steered from above expertly by critical-friends and incisive dramaturgs over the years (not least, my director Anthony Simpson-Pike - ah, Anthony, we’ve gone down so many weird and different avenues for this play before we got to this version).

The cast - Fode, Bola, Tori and Stefan - are just incredible. Top class. Unmissable. The way they play with each line, taking us from pure comedy to devastation to horror in a matter of minutes, is more than I could’ve hoped for. I used to make music before I wrote plays, I often describe playwriting as more akin to musical composition than other forms of writing, and I could not have asked for better actors to make this script sound as rhythmic and surreal and haunting as I hoped.

Increasingly, the concept of sleep, breaks and rest infiltrated the whole play. Became the title of the play. What does it mean to take a break? Who gets to stop and breathe? Taiwo Ava Oyebola, Samuel’s brilliant assistant director, created a research pack to support us in rehearsals. Reading the section entitled “Black people’s complicated history with rest” shook me somewhere deep.

For me - being English, Nigerian, Jamaican - standing in the castle felt like a terrible portal, a place where different parts of my heritage and identities felt so present and so violently split across the site. I am horrified by that place. It makes me sick. What happened there. Is happening still. And yet these historical sites, and memorial/tourism initiatives like the Year of Return, are not neutral in how they are presented to the public. To locals and diaspora alike. There are many different ways to remember, to honour, to move in a place like that. It’s not clear what we should do there.

I couldn’t have made it without the art I encountered and was responding to over the past years. I thought it might be nice to share those, to refer to before or after you watch the play, and see if you can connect the dots.

Plays: The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter; Ain’t No Mo' by Jordan Cooper; Primary Trust by Eboni Booth; The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney; The America Play by Suzan-Lori Parks; The Flick by Annie Baker; Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu; We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 - 1915 by Jackie Sibblies-Drury.

Books: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro; Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman; In The Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe; Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi; Trumpet by Jackie Kay; The Long Song by Andrea Levy.

Music: I Put A Spell On You by Alice Smith; Afro blue by John Coltrane; My Favourite Things by John Coltrane; Einstein on the Beach: Knee Play 2 by Phillip Glass; When The Saints Go Marching In performed by Howard Gospel Choir; Never Catch Me by Flying Lotus & Kendrick Lamar; 15 Step by Radiohead; mourning song by serpentwithfeet. // Playlist here.

Films: The Last Black Man in San Francisco by Joe Talbot; The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer; Your Father was Born 100 Years Old, and So Was The Nakba by Razan AlSalah.

If you've managed to catch Samuel… I hope you found something that moved you within it. I hope you enjoyed spending time with these characters that have dominated my mind for so long. I really love them. I’m going to miss them. And now I am also ready to rest… and enjoy whatever is next.

Rhianna