Black by Design

by Pauline Black

  For any black programme maker to refuse the ethnic programmes would only mean the likelihood of not being offered anything else. The mainstream channels identified skin colour as the only criterion for minority programmes, making it impossible to define black culture in any meaningful way. Instead of building on the success of what Black on Black had achieved and fighting to have it moved to an earlier timeslot, Dhondy threw the baby out with the bathwater, and yet still never managed to make black TV programming cross over into the mainstream, although he did write the truly awful, but fortunately forgettable, Channel 4 sitcom Tandoori Nights.

  My life had reached a crossroads and I had run out of energy and ideas. After a particularly odious interview in the now defunct Widow Applebaum’s Café on South Molton Street, with a less than sympathetic music journo, for a feature article, ‘Where are They Now’, about what members of the bands from the 2-Tone era were doing now, I was so angry and miserable that I stood on Bond Street tube platform seriously considering the prospect of throwing myself in front of a train. It sounds rather dramatic now, but I remember the episode very clearly. It was early afternoon and there were only a few people on the platform, none anywhere near me. It was one of those hot humid days when the underground air takes on a solid physicality and weighs heavy on the body, like water on a drowning man. As a train approached, the welcoming breeze offered by the movement of air from the tunnel cooled my anger. It felt as though it was blowing away the huge burden of disappointment and failure that I had been carrying for so long. A single thought flashed into my head: ‘Do it now.’

  All I had to do was take a few steps and it would be over. The shocking ease with which I could do the unthinkable must have been enough to jolt me out of my suicidal reverie. I knew it was time to abandon all thoughts of a future pop career. My time had passed. It felt as though there had been a party and I was the last to leave.

  TWELVE

  DARK MATTER

  When I was fifteen, I stayed overnight with my oldest adoptive brother, Trevor and his wife, Barbara. They would have been in their mid-thirties at the time, but largely lived their lives like two fifty-year-olds. That meant that it was lights out at 9 p.m. sharp. To be fair, on this particular night we had to be up at dawn for an early coach ride to Folkestone.

  Trevor was a coach driver for a local firm and took his job very seriously. He was every elderly person’s friend. Invariably, the little old ladies that planned summer trips to the seaside always asked for him when they approached the coach company he worked for. Indeed there was often a fight between the over-sixties club at the Salvation Army and the over-sixties at the local Rotary club for his services on any given day. Trevor was ‘old-school’ in style without being an annoying jobsworth. He genuinely had a gene for service, which in these more modern times has been successfully excised from most people’s DNA. Often I would accompany him and Barbara on these senior citizen awaydays. The Folkestone trip was with elderly Baptist church ladies, who mainly sang hymns all the way there and all the way back. I sulkily joined in, after much coercion from Barbara, not caring whether Jesus wanted me for a bloody sunbeam or not.

  I have never had much of a religious sensibility. Notions of a loving God seem misplaced in the cruel world we live in. However, when I was in my teens, I was quite happy to believe in the existence of the Devil or vampires. People often remark, ‘You’ve got the Devil in you’, but never say ‘You’ve got the God in you’. It seems that the definite article is only required for old Beelzebub, but not for the omnipotent one, thus lending Old Nick and his evil cohorts a seductive allure. My fertile imagination was a hotbed for the supernatural to roll in. I guess this is how things are for many young people as they adjust to the onslaught of the hormonal rush that overtakes the body and renders the brain redundant for those difficult adolescent years.

  The previous night I had seen a Dracula movie for the first time in ITV’s ‘Mystery and Imagination’ series. I mainly watched it because Nina Baden Semper (later of sitcom Love Thy Neighbour fame), a British/Caribbean actress, played a vampire in the story and I hardly ever saw a black person on television in those days. Denholm Elliott was Dracula and Susan George was Lucy. It had been so scary that I had to sleep with my bedroom door ajar and my bedside light on that night. Vampires always seem to have a profound effect on the psyches of suggestible young people. All those sharp, pointy teeth biting soft, smooth-skinned, pulsing necks, releasing warm life-blood, disturbs an excitable youthful subconscious.

  At my brother’s house, I was not allowed to leave the bedroom door open and there was no bedside light. Fortunately I was tired, so I fell asleep quickly, not expecting to wake again until I heard Barbara’s knock on my bedroom door eight hours later at 5 a.m. She always brought a cup of tea that would be carefully deposited on a crocheted lace doily that protected the surface of the highly polished walnut bedside table.

  I awoke to hear the handle turning on the bedroom door, so I thought that it was Barbara. I played my usual trick and pretended to be asleep, but even though I had my eyes tightly closed, I wondered why the light hadn’t been switched on. I was just about to open my eyes when a crushing weight pinned me to the bed, as if I was being forcibly held down. I struggled against the weight, but found that I couldn’t move a muscle. It was as though my entire body was paralyzed, even my eyelids. The pressure on my chest was so heavy that I could hardly draw breath. I thought I was going to die. It was as though a malevolent energy had entered the room, causing the air to thicken until it was impossible to breathe. After what seemed an age, but was probably only about twenty seconds, the weight lessened and the oppressive atmosphere in the room lightened. I leapt out of bed and switched on the light. The room was empty and the house was quiet. I bolted from the room, turning on lights as I fled down the hallway into the kitchen. I was glad that Trevor lived in a bungalow because I’m sure I would have fallen down any stairs that impeded my path. The hands of the electric clock in the kitchen stood at a perfect right angle, 3 a.m. It was a full two hours before I needed to get up, but here I was fully awake, with jelly knees and my feverish mind racing with macabre possibilities. My hands checked my neck for any tell-tale bites. Finding none, I searched for other plausible explanations. Had I been visited by the Devil, like in that new movie that had just come out, Rosemary’s Baby? A schoolfriend who looked considerably older than her years had seen it with her boyfriend and afterwards had been off school for a week suffering with her ‘nerves’. When I phoned her to ask how she was, she couldn’t stop talking about the film. Her explanation was so detailed that I thought I’d seen it too by the end of our conversation. Now these richly remembered imaginings ignited my over-heated fantasies like the fires of Hell. The existence of the Devil had never seemed more real.

  I never discussed this nocturnal happening with anybody. It was quite a few years before I experienced the phenomenon again and by that time I knew that it was not a demonic visitation, but a brief catatonia that strikes me, usually at times of stress or unease.

  There is a current theory in science that suggests that a substance, dark matter, exists in the universe, but it is invisible. Scientists only know of its existence because they recently discovered that the universe weighs more than it should. This dark matter can pass through us, seemingly without our knowledge. Is it possible that some of us are more sensitive to it than others? Perhaps my supernatural fright was just a few lumps of dark matter weighing me down as they passed on through? Perhaps my disturbing experience on Bond Street tube station was a similar brush with dark matter as I felt its momentary passage weigh heavy on my already freighted soul? Who knows? But I did know that the constant struggle to get my songs heard, or fighting for the scarce black roles in mainstream theatre and TV was wearing me down and often I felt as helpless as when that imaginary force pinned me to the bed so many years ago.

  In 1986, in an effort to shrug off my melancholy, I formed a new band, the Supernatrals, which even did a support to
ur for the Communards, but try as I might I could not get a record company interested in our new material. Eventually I admitted defeat and answered an ad in The Stage for a new play that was casting, Frederick Avery Visits. It was a profit share, which meant no money, but I didn’t care. I had become sick of the auditions that my agent sent me up for in the West End. It had been assumed that musical theatre was my obvious artistic home, given my singing background, but the conservatism of most musicals made me shudder. Brechtian musical theatre I could handle, but not full-on extravaganzas where people burst into insincere song at every opportunity and were constantly hoofing it across the stage with broad cheesy grins on their over-made-up faces. The whole thing was anathema to me, much to the chagrin of my agent.

  Backstage at a Supernatrals gig, 1985

  Frederick Avery Visits was written by Ray Shell, an American actor resident in Britain, whose main claim to fame was as ‘Rusty the Engine’ in the original cast of Starlight Express. The play provided me with a no-pressure outlet for my stymied creative juices and opened to pleasant reviews at the Man in the Moon theatre at the bottom of the King’s Road, ironically known as ‘World’s End’. I consoled myself with the fact that from here on, the only way was up as far as my career was concerned.

  During rehearsals for Frederick Avery, Ray told me about an open audition for a new play about maverick jazz singer Billie Holiday that the esteemed black writer Caryl Phillips had written, entitled All or Nothing at All. In those days, I was unsure how to conduct myself at auditions. Nobody had told me that you were supposed to turn up with a specially prepared song and that you might be asked to learn a dance routine or two. On arrival I queued with other hopefuls, most of whom were clutching sheet music for the song they had prepared. When it was my turn, I apologized for having no sheet music and then promptly launched acappella into the famous Holiday song ‘Strange Fruit’. My dramatic rendition was full of passion, but probably way over the top, although I must have impressed somebody, because I was invited to improvise on the melody of ‘All of Me’ by the musical director, Terry Mortimer. He handed me the sheet music and I followed the top-line melody as accurately as I could, while the piano player banged out the tune with cheery gusto. He prompted me, occasionally suggesting rhythmic patterns that would aid the melodic structure, and I politely complied. I wondered why a black writer had written the piece, but a white musical director was in charge of the music. London was awash with black jazz musicians, surely there was an MD among them.

  A few days later I was given a recall. At the next audition I had to improvise some more and read for the part. Then weeks went by before I got a call asking me to prepare the exceedingly difficult Duke Ellington tune, ‘Sophisticated Lady’. My agent told me that the recall list had been whittled down to only a few. I approached the audition with a great deal of trepidation. I knew I could act the part, and even look the part very successfully, but I was not sure in those days that I could sing the part effectively enough. A lot was riding on the ability to phrase and sound like Billie Holiday. Because her technique was unique, I could only suggest her timing and phrasing, I could not do a copy of her inimitable and highly personal style.

  The final audition was a solemn affair and I could not gauge how well I had done. The following day, Nick Kent, the artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre, rang to tell me that they had decided to offer me the part, mostly because they thought I could act. It was not a unanimous decision, he explained; apparently the musical director’s objection had been overruled. They wanted somebody who could embody Billie Holiday’s essence rather than somebody who could copy her jazz singing. I remain eternally grateful to Nick Kent and Caryl Phillips for the opportunity to offer my styling of Ms Holiday on stage. I never did warm to the musical director, but I did my best to overcome his obvious prejudice to the school of music from which I came. In retrospect, I think he could have been so much more helpful, instead of so purist. The person I owe the most to for getting my jazz phrasing on track was the actor who played Lester Young in the play, Alan Cooke. He generously gave me singing and phrasing tuition in his spare time and soon I had the tools to attempt the mammoth task ahead of me. But I’m getting ahead of my story, because the very next day after I accepted the job, the Tricycle Theatre caught fire and burned to the ground. The gods had spoken. It was a very dark matter indeed!

  Thus began a two-year wait while money was raised to rebuild the theatre. It was intended that All or Nothing at All would reopen the theatre. All I could do in the interim was hope that nobody had a change of heart about offering me the role. It would have seemed so cruel to have come through all the angst and anguish of the auditions to have my brief moment of triumph snatched away so completely. I applied myself to making my acting and singing better in the ensuing period.

  Fortunately, I was immediately offered two interesting theatre projects, both Chekhov adaptations, Foco Novo Theatre’s production of The Cape Orchard – which was basically The Cherry Orchard transposed to South Africa, with the larger-than-life personality Norman Beaton in the lead role – and Trinidad Sisters, an adaptation by black playwright Mustapha Matura of The Three Sisters, directed by Nick Kent, with an all-black cast and produced in collaboration with the Donmar Warehouse.

  In The Cape Orchard I played Valma, the mixed-race, adopted daughter of her white liberal, land-owning mother. My performance was distinguished by being allowed to roam the stage with a Kalashnikov rifle threatening to kill people. I was brilliant in the role!

  The late, great black actor Norman Beaton was the star of the play. He was a total trip to work with. On one particular occasion at Basildon Towngate theatre, the only night that my elderly adoptive mother ever saw me perform on the stage, it was Norman’s birthday and he had obviously spent his afternoon having ‘a few’ in his local before arriving at the theatre just a short time before we went on stage. Norman was often prone to impromptu dialogue improvisation if the mood took him, which was a nightmare for fellow actors, but awe-inspiring to watch as long as you weren’t in the scene. The cast was small, so it wasn’t too difficult to deal with Norman’s ad hoc soliloquies. The play opened with a scene in which Norman depicted a Khoi San bushman in the veldt. The playwright Michael Picardie’s deft use of imagery and language allowed Norman to weave his magic spell over the audience, while delivering a long speech about what had been historically lost to the black man in South Africa. Norman took to the stage and gave his soliloquy mostly off script, but turned in a spell-binding performance. Those of us waiting in the wings for our first entrance knew we were in for a bumpy ride that night. Suffice to say, Norman rarely got back on script for the rest of the performance. Those of us in scenes with him attempted to fit our scripted dialogue around his interpretation, which was no mean feat given the intellectual complexity of the text. That night he received a standing ovation for his performance.

  Norman had the kind of stature among black actors that meant that, despite his worst excesses, his sheer electric presence and tenacious longevity ensured forgiveness. By the time I was fortunate enough to share a stage with him, his theatrical triumphs were largely behind him. His breakthrough turn as the barber in hit TV sitcom Desmond’s was fortunately in the future. I was so pleased when his comedy series turned out so well, but I still think it was disgraceful that British theatre so resolutely neglected his talent, that he mostly languished in black adaptations of major theatrical roles. The so-called ‘ghettoization’ of black theatre in this country was at its height in the ’70s and ’80s. There was no career ladder for black actors. A black actor could do good work, as did Cathy Tyson in the Oscar winning Mona Lisa (albeit as the ubiquitous black prostitute), but that did not mean that other good film roles would follow. No black actors outside the black American Hollywood stable were box-office draws in those days. Norman Beaton was like a British version of the ‘voice of CNN’ American actor, James Earl Jones, but hardly anybody offered him work that matched his talent.

 
No one was sadder than I when the play came to the Young Vic in London after a lengthy tour around the country, often playing to full houses on the strength of Norman’s name alone, only to find that one night there were more people in the cast of five than in the audience. The performance was cancelled. I had never been in a play where such a thing had happened before. For Norman it was the end. He raged in his dressing room, drinking, cursing and smashing furniture. His wife had to be called to take him home. His tearful, rheumy eyes swam with such a bitterly deep disappointment that I wondered whether he would ever surface from such depths of misery. To his credit, he was back the next day to a much fuller house giving yet another outstanding performance. I learned a valuable lesson that day about weathering career storms and setbacks. As the title of his autobiography suggested, he was always Unbeaten and Unbowed. He was a true legend of British theatre.

  The best part of the play was at the end when everybody in the company stepped forward, fists raised above our heads in a black power salute, and exhorted the audience to join us in singing the unofficial South African anthem, ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica.’ At that time it was the symbol of independence and resistance to apartheid, sung by the majority of the South African population at all anti-apartheid rallies and gatherings. Every night the feeling of solidarity with Black Africa was palpable in the auditorium. It’s worth noting that the play asked all the right questions three years before Nelson Mandela eventually walked free from prison. An historical dark matter!

  Trinidad Sisters opened on 11 February 1988 and boasted a large, energetic, nearly all-black cast, immaculately dressed in a 1940s wardrobe hired in at considerable expense. The play was transposed from a Russian backwater to Port-au-Prince in Trinidad, just as war had broken out in Europe. The text was spoken with a Trinidadian accent, the musicality of which was hard to negotiate for a non-native speaker like me, but once mastered, added to the beauty of the words. It was a brilliantly conceived West Indian comedy of manners. Patrick Drury (one half of the warring married couple who own the hardware shop in Father Ted) was the only white person in the cast and played a British Army major, like the idealistic Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin in the original.