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 centr
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 o
less entrenched sort of assumptions about who you are in the united states. yes and no. without a shadow of a doubt, there s more opportunity. that s numerics, that s demographics, and it s 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, i m going to run at it. and sometimes i find in our country that it s notjust about the quality of the idea, it s about who you re connected to. and yet i m 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
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 that s what i feel as kwame, and it s 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 typhoon khanun hits the 0kinawa islands injapan. we speak to a storm chaser. it s seven in the morning in singapore, and seven pm in washington, dc where former president donald trump is due in court later on thursday. it follows his indictment on four charges relating to alleged attempts to overturn his presidential election defeat in 2020. his campaign team has described the allegations as a witch hunt. 0ur north america editor sarah smith reports. die hard trump supporters were anything but distraught as they learnt of the latest charges against him. these people do believe he s being unfairly persecuted,