Bashment

Rikki Beadle-Blair

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786821959
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Britisches Drama

"Was it the music that made you do it? Did you chant lyrics while you beat his brains out? Did the preacher inspire you to despise people who fall in love without your permission? Where does the rage begin?" "He was white. And he was queer. And he was there. In our club. In our music. In our face. What's he expect? A kiss and a cuddle?" An electrifying new play - hard-hitting, tender and painfully funny. About love, about hate - Bashment is a play for our times.

Cast in order of speaking

JJ Joel Dommett

Orlando Anthony Newell

MC Eggy Jason Steed

White Fang Davie Fairbanks

(originally played by Joe Marshall)

MC Venom Ludvig Bonin

MC KKK Nathan Clough

Karisma Jennifer Daley

Sam Arnie Hewitt

Daniel Elliott James-Fisher

(originally played by Luke Toulson)

Kevan Duncan MacInnes

Bashment Compere Arnie Hewitt

Arresting Officer, Judge, Prison Officer Elliott James-Fisher

Musician Joni Levinson

Creative Team

Written & Directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair

Set & Lighting Design Giuseppe di Iorio

Sound Design Gareth Owen

Music composed by Rikki Beadle-Blair

‘How do you love me’ performed by Rikki, Joni Levinson & Antoine Stone

Bashment music performed by Antoine Stone & Rikki

Engineered and co-produced by Antoine Stone

Costume Design Fola Solanke

Graffiti Art by John Gordon

Assistant Manager on the book Altan Reyman

Performing at Theatre Royal Stratford East

20 May – 18 June 2005

restaged 29 September – 22 October 2005

During the rehearsals of the first production Rikki Beadle-Blair (right) spoke about Bashment with Theatre Royal Press Officer Michael Siva and some members of the original cast.

MICHAEL: What is this play about?

RBB: It’s about love for music, love for humanity, and the flip side of that, which is hate and self-hatred, fear of music, and fear of humanity.

MICHAEL: What made you write Bashment?

RBB: Being involved in this on-going and growing debate about racism among black people, racism in music, racism in Britain, and homophobia in music and Britain, in everyone. It’s not just the obvious thing, which is homophobia, but it’s also the racism that informs our opinions about these things. It wasn’t just a simple thing of, ‘Oh, there’s a group of people and they don’t like gay people’. The debate was so clouded by the way those groups of people were seen by society, the way that society saw itself. It was like the Russian babushka dolls – there was always something else inside the box inside the box inside the box. It was such a complex thing, and I wanted to start opening the boxes inside myself and understanding what I felt about the issue. So, it’s a kind of internal debate between these fragments of me. Three years ago, I made a documentary for BBC Radio 4, Roots of Homophobia, in which I attempted to trace the homophobia that has recently become rampant in Reggae music back to its source in Jamaica. It turned out to be a painful and complex journey, one that took me through the recording studios and churches of the Caribbean and brought me right back here to the British Isles. Where the laws and religious teachings that informed Jamaican attitudes came from. I debated the issues with my interviewees and even the most vehemently anti-gay told me I’d made them think. The documentary aired. It did well. I got amazing letters, I got awards. People said I’d got them thinking. But nothing really changed – the gay-baiting records multiplied – the ‘kill the Battyman’ sentiments becoming even more casually confident even as they became more vicious. And then last spring, Brian Williamson, the prominent gay Jamaican activist, was murdered in his own home. And last summer Peter Tatchell’s ‘Outrage’ asked me to join them in an campaign against Ragga music. I admire ‘Outrage’ – they are the only ones doing something – and something must be done. But still I was conflicted and hesitant about where we would be going or where we were coming from, and was I so ambivalent? Was it because I was black? Was that reining in my gayness? As the press got wind of the issue and the column inches proliferated, I felt my uneasiness increase. I wanted to have a conversation with ‘Outrage’. But we were all so busy. Still I wanted to do something. So I wrote this play – to look for the truth to examine the complexity – and to try to do justice to our humanity – all of us – the queerest and the most homophobic (not necessarily mutually exclusive qualities), our humour, our honesty, our hatreds and our hopes. This is not my final word on this subject, but it draws on what I know so far and asks the question that nags at me every day about so many aspects of our lives: What on earth is going on?

MICHAEL: What are your personal views about the use of anti-gay lyrics in dance-hall music?

RBB: They are unnecessary and painful and hurtful, and dangerous, but there are so many things that are painful, hurtful and dangerous in society and yet they exist. Really, my journey has been to try and get past my knee-jerk reaction to those things. I need to get to: how can a record like this be selling so much? Why do people have these feelings? And that takes me to the bigger question. Why do people have these feelings about race, or about women, or about any group in society? Why do people think it’s all right to withhold rights, or withhold their own acknowledgement of anybody else’s humanity? It makes no sense and yet it can be so widespread. It’s not just in Jamaica. It’s in America, where they’re trying to put anti-gay laws in place right now. Over here, we’re just reaching the stage where gay people have equal partnership rights. The idea where somebody can even debate the equality of another human being is shocking to me. I keep thinking about that whole picture, rather than saying, ‘Homophobic lyrics – we must stop them’. I want to know where the feelings are coming from and understand that and hopefully, somehow, ease the pain that’s causing that.

LUDVIG: As a gay, black man, how did you feel, writing this play?

RBB: I found it hard to understand why people beat each other up. I found it hard to confront, but it was good for me. I found the anger and the hatred really hard. Trying to get all my feelings about it, and the debates that I have, all into a play, that was har...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Pre-show – audience arrives to find…
• ORLANDO & JJ’s flat
• Petrol station / EGGY & VENOM’s flat
• Petrol station
• Bashment basement stage
• Bashment basement – Competitors’ area
• SAM’s place
• Bashment basement stage
• Bashment basement / Halls of residence
• Petrol station / EGGY & VENOM’s flat
• Police station / holding cell
• Interview room
• Courtroom
• ORLANDO & JJ’s flat
• Prison block
• ORLANDO & JJ’s flat
• Prison interview room
• ORLANDO & JJ’s flat
• Prison hallway
• Exercise studio
• Prison visiting room
• Interview room
• Visiting room
• ORLANDO & JJ’s flat
• The Crossbar
• Outside the Click Club
• KKK’s flat