Persuasive rather than polarising . Kwame kwei armah, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me. It is a great pleasure to have you. Now, youve been in the Theatre Business as an actor, a writer and a director for the best part of three decades. Ijust used that phrase, some would call it a cliche, about the culture wars. Does it feel to you that today there is a somewhat toxic culture war . I think youve framed it beautifully. It is toxic, but most importantly, its disingenuous. In my humble opinion. Its used to kind of create political fear. And ourjob as artists is, i think, fundamentally to take away that fear, to take away the binaries that i think this farce of the culture wars are. You know, i often hear politicians and im not one to diss politicians, but i also often hear politicians use race or class or immigration or use history as a Battering Ram to get themselves into the hearts of the populist. But those issues youve just outlined race, immigration they are central to your work, because theyre central to your own life story. Yeah, totally and utterly. But. And have you been frightened off entering this territory at times . Again, i think its framed brilliantly. Fortunately for me, or unfortunately, when im afraid of something, i have to run towards it. Stephen chuckles i dont call that a virtue, but it is fact for me. Without a shadow of a doubt, even producing the play thats on at the young vic now, beneathas place, i was worried for a while. I was worried that those of the right or even those of the left might come after me for some of the statements or some of the debates that the play wishes to catalyse. But im an artist. Were here to do nothing but catalyse. I cant run in fearfrom people trying to counsel you or use. Use your work as an agenda for theirs. I want to talk more about beneathas place, because i was lucky enough to see it just a night or two ago. So i do want to talk about it and the issues it raises. But before we get to that, just a more general point about your writing, because youve been at it for a long time. Yeah. Do you see yourself as something of a provocateur . I describe myself as a political playwright, that art is my tool for change incremental change. All you can do as an artist is catalyse the debate. And i dont see the point of me using my art if its not to incrementally try and make the world just a little bit better. Yeah, but theres a difference between catalysing a debate and putting across a very clear Point Of View. Do you have a clear Point Of View on some of these issues that you just outlined, like race, justice, immigration, inequality . I absolutely do. I think as a playwright, however, myjob is to love every character that i put in any of my plays. And in order to create something dramatic, i have to make sure that all viewpoints are covered. And so whether someone sits in the far right, which is a different position to me, i still have to understand what it is i think they are saying, or what i think the land that they stand upon, what validity does it have . So, yes, kwame does have sorry to speak about himself in the third person does have his own political views. As a playwright, i have a point that i wish to catalyse, but it has to be fair and almost democratic. Kwame, you call yourself. I know. And of course you are kwame. But you were, as a kid, raised as ian ian roberts in west london, in southall a racially, ethnically very mixed part of london, which at the time, in the � 70s and � 80s, was the scene of racist violence. Yes. Of real racial tension. To what extent has that shaped you . Very much so. It hasnt defined me, i hope, but it has shaped me. I remember my father taking me to the top of our street at the time i think it was in 1979 and a pub called the Hamborough Tavern was aflame. And it was because the skinheads, or a skinhead group, had performed and then they had attacked the black and brown people close to it. And as my father took me to the top of the street and as i saw the pub burning and i would have been about 12 he said, this is your country, remember that. And i watched the police chase us down the street that i lived. And i saw skinheads armed with truncheons and shields. I didnt read this i saw this. That completely and utterly shaped the way that i saw the world. You said earlier that when you are frightened, you tend to run to what frightens you rather than away from it. Did you run toward trouble in those days . No. Did you fight back . 0h. I mean, it depends on how you define fighting, right . Ive never been a really physically strong guy. So the physicalfight was not my thing. Did i have to run rather quickly when white Skinhead Culture at the time threatened the lives of everyone that i knew . Yes. Did i have to be able to defend myself to some degree . Yes. But i think what happened to me, and this was kind of shaped by my mother, is that she wanted me to be a lawyerfor socialjustice. Of course, we didnt call it that then, but she wanted me to be able to fight for the community from which i came from. And when i discovered that my way of fighting was art and that my way of fighting was thinking, i went into deep training. Interesting that you say you wanted to fight for your community. One thing you did, in a way, was, by changing your name, identify with a community that was your ancestral Community Back in ghana, rather than your immediate sort of family connection, which was to grenada in what was then the british caribbean. Yes. Why did you do that . Was it fuelled by an anger, in a way, an anger at all that you knew your ancestors had suffered and a determination to be seen to reclaim that history . Yes and no. I like to frame it that i did it for me, that i did it for my children. My parents travelled 4,000 miles to raise me in the first world, to have the benefits of the first world. And i wanted to do the same for my children. I didnt want my children to inherit the name of someone who once owned someone in their family. And yet it was your parents name. Yeah. Did it sadden them . Yes, of course it did. But my mother understood. In particular, my mother understood, because at 12 she was there when i was watching roots and i saw kunta kinte being whipped until he would call himself toby. And i said, mum, im going to trace our ancestry and im going to take us back to the tribe that we came from. And so, in a way, when i did it, maybe ten years later, my mother could at least root it in a truth as opposed to a kind of newfangled politic. Hmm. And you say that you rejected your mums advice to enter the law and become a sort of civil rights, human rights lawyer. You thought you could best represent your community by going into the arts, by going into the theatre. Yes. But i would guess that, back in the � 80s and � 90s, when you were trying to make your name, it was kind of tough to be a young black man trying to persuade theatres notjust to hire you as an actor, but also a director as well. Yeah, it was. I like to describe britain as being a colder land than it is now, but i was Still Standing on the shoulders of giants. There were actors of a previous generation to me who had kind of broken through. Norman beaton, for example, was on tv very often, and in theatre, people were working. They were not being given the chances or the opportunities that i or many others receive today. But, you know, if youd have asked me at 25, did i think id ever be the Artistic Director of the young vic, did i even think it was even possible . I would have said absolutely not, because i didnt see anybody in that arena. Were you told that. . And i know youve talked about it and its somewhat difficult to talk about, but you were told that you didnt look right, that you were kind of too black in a way, that your voice wasnt right . All sorts of reasons why you would never make it in the theatre. Yes. Yeah. And, you know. Does that still make you angry today . No. Why . Well, because. Its outrageous. Yeah, it is outrageous. But i was taught to hate the sin and not the sinner. That it felt really important. That sounds very zen and very sort of detached and at peace with life, but can you really, honestly say that, deep down, there isnt still a burning rage at things you have experienced . I think that when i. Once i traced my ancestry and once i gave myself a name that was not of someone who once owned me, ifound a peace, an inner peace, that said, what is myjob . myjob now is to make sure that i reap the benefits of a land myjob now is to make sure that i reap the benefits of a land that once enslaved me, of a country that still, to some degree, discriminates against me and those who look like me. So what do i do . Do i carry that anger . Do i hold that in my heart . Thatjust makes you heavier. What i try to do is pour that into my art and try and find avenues by which to make others look at themselves. Thats what theatre is. Theatre is the most magnificent mirror. You put it up to people and you say, look at yourself. Im not going to tell you about yourself, im just going to reflect you. Mmm. And if, by chance, you see something that you dont like, then its up to you to change it. There was a time when it looked like you were really going to make your name in the United States cos you broke a really quite a dramatic Glass Ceiling in the us by becoming the first black director, Artistic Director, of a big us theatre. It was the theatre in baltimore, maryland. Yes. You were there for quite a number of years. You talked about the joy you experienced when you arrived to a barack 0bama presidency, a feeling that america was really moving to perhaps a post racial moment, as some put it. It didnt quite work out that way, did it . No, and i dont think i ever believed it was going to be post racial. What i thought was that i was living in a country that actually allowed someone, unlike our country at the time, that allowed someone to negotiate the vagaries of racism, the vagaries of oppression. And that was really powerful and invigorating. You felt there was more . Cos other actors have talked about this david harewood, for one, a very distinguished Black British british actor, whos described how he found it easier to work in the United States. And im just interested, now that youve reflected on both the culture in the us and the uk, whether you really feel that there is more opportunity, less entrenched sort of assumptions about who you are in the United States. Yes and no. Without a shadow of a doubt, theres more opportunity. Thats numerics, thats demographics, and its also the Enterprise Culture that is the United States. And i found myself very comfortable in the United States. I like to create and i like to have ideas and i like to try and execute on those ideas. And so the culture of the United States says if the idea is good enough, im going to run at it. And sometimes i find in our country that its notjust about the quality of the idea, its about who youre connected to. And yet im going to add an and yet and yet during your time there, we saw the beginnings of the black lives matter movement, we saw the killing of a whole sort of series of young, black, unarmed men by the police in the United States in various different circumstances. We saw barack 0bama succeeded by donald trump and the rise of a very White Conservative movement addressing social issues, particularly in schools and universities, in a way which many Black Americans found to be deeply worrying, deeply racist. So, conclusion, for you is america a more difficult place for you, for a black man, to thrive now than the United Kingdom . Again, the question is framed brilliantly, and i think that each land has its own travails. In britain, were magnificent at the microaggression, were magnificent at the kind of slight avoidance that race isnt as bad here as it is in the United States. And, yes, it is. Yes, it is . Yes, it is. Absolutely. We just have to look at the statistics around the prison population, around mental health, around housing or on unemployment. We just have to look at the disproportionate number of young black men under 25 who are unemployed. We can see structural inequality in exactly the same way as in the us. Although im going to quote to you the words of tomiwa 0wolade, a young, talented Black British writer whos just written a book, This Is Not America Why Black Lives Matter in britain, where the argument is precisely that we shouldnt transport assumptions about the entrenched, racist post slavery systems in the United States and think they translate to the uk. The uk, he says, is fundamentally different. And what i love is that were living in a time where there can be diverse thoughts within the black community. I happen to fundamentally disagree with that. I think its flawed in its analysis. But im overjoyed that hes able to find an audience for that kind of propagation. So, when he says, for example, that Critical Race Theory, which is taught on campuses in the United States. Which on the whole most people actually didnt know about until the right started talking about it. Right, but his argument is that it doesnt really have a place in the culture, the University Culture or otherwise in culture in the United Kingdom, because we didnt have slavery, at least not on our home shores, we didnt have official segregation as they did in the United States, and that burdening, for example, young people in the United Kingdom with notions of white privilege, of white guilt is a mistake. Again, i have to respectfully say that i fundamentally disagree with that. We had a colour bar in this country, and thats why we had things set up like the racial equality units that were set up from the � 70s and the � 80s. We absolutely have that. There is very little difference, in my humble opinion. And just because we didnt have slavery in this country which, actually, technically isnt true, because that was up to a certain date it doesnt mean that certainly up until recently, that the overwhelming majority of black people in this country were descendants of those who were enslaved. And just because it happened offshore, in the gardens of europe, doesnt mean that notions of superiority were not exported from those gardens of enterprise back into the motherland. And ive experienced it in my own life. As you referenced right at the beginning, when i was at school a private school, by the way my head teacher said to me, black people cannot speak english properly, because your jaws are structured in a way that doesnt allow proper pronunciation. I was 11 years old, and if you say that to an 11 year old, you are burying inferiority into their minds and you are asserting your superiority. That is exactly the same thing that Critical Race Theory is trying to frame. So, again, i say i respectfully disagree with the analysis. And yet, having just seen beneathas place, this revival of a play you wrote actually a decade ago, which is on at the young vic at the moment here in london, you also clearly have some scepticism, some doubts about elements of the ultra progressive, some would say woke, mindset that we see in some liberal circles on campuses, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. You create this imagined debate about African American studies on campus. And you wrestle with the notion that white professors are now dominant in this department. Youre kind of mocking it. Youre almost mocking an ultra woke agenda. Well, i slightly rebuke the term woke, and my generation was slightly before the woke generation. We used to call ourselves conscious, which literally means the same thing. Thats been hijacked by the culture wars. And as far as im concerned, myjob as a playwright is to look at everything in totality and then pour it into the pot and put some flames on it. And what i would say is that we progressives and i define myself as a progressive sometimes we forget that there is a need for conservatism. Conservatism sometimes is just a really good Braking Mechanism so that human beings can adjust to change. And i think thats what i feel as kwame, and its certainly what i put in the play, that there are conservative notions that we should Pay Attention to or we progressives or the next generation will pay the cost, Ie A Donald Trump after a barack 0bama. What does being a progressive mean in terms of running a theatre . Does it mean you believe in race quotas, in Race Equality across casting, you know, whatever the play, whatever the actual subject matter, that you insist on 50 50 casting, for example . No. Let me frame it this way. I describe myself as a black postmodernist. Thatjust means that i can just do anything and everything and it doesnt matter. I dont define myself through my blackness. My blackness is just part of who i am. So as a leader, i believe that a Theatre Space is there to be the hub of a community. And a community in london is as diverse as it gets. So it means i want my theatre, from my staff to whos on my stage to who directs to who writes, i want it to reflect the london of now, the britain of now and possibly. Right, but this isntjust about kwame kwei armah, is it . Its about systems and its about equality across the piece. So, ive spoken in the past to greg doran at the rsc, ive spoken to actors like rupert everett. Rupert everett has a strong feeling that we are getting far too hung up on