Girl, Woman, Other. Bernardine Evaristo

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СКАЧАТЬ what was the great National thinking allowing this rubbishy impostor into the building?

      of course she knows she’s not an impostor, she’s written fifteen plays and directed over forty, and as a critic once wrote, Amma Bonsu is a safe pair of hands who’s known to pull off risks

      what if the preview audiences who gave standing ovations were just being kind?

      oh shut up, Amma, you’re a veteran battle-axe, remember?

      look

      she’s got a fantastic cast: six older actresses (seen-it-all vets), six mid-careerists (survivors-so-far) and three fresh faces (naïve hopefuls), one of whom, the talented Simone, will wander in bleary-eyed to rehearsals, having forgotten to unplug the iron, turn off the stove or close her bedroom window and will waste precious rehearsal time phoning her flatmates in a panic

      a couple of months ago she’d have sold her grandmother into slavery to get this job, now she’s a spoilt little prima donna who ordered her director to pop out and fetch her a caramel latte a couple of weeks ago when it was just the two of them in a rehearsal room

      I’m so exhausted, Simone whinged, implying it was all Amma’s fault for making her work so hard

      needless to say, she dealt with Little Miss Simone Stevenson in the moment

      Little Miss Stevenson – who thinks that because she’s landed at the National straight out of drama school, she’s one step away from conquering Hollywood

      she’ll find out

      soon enough

      at times like these Amma misses Dominique, who long ago absconded to America

      they should be sharing her breakthrough career moment together

      they met in the eighties at an audition for a feature film set in a women’s prison (what else?)

      both were disillusioned at being put up for parts such as a slave, servant, prostitute, nanny or crim

      and still not getting the job

      they railed against their lot in a grotty Soho caff while devouring fried egg and bacon slathered between two slabs of soggy white bread washed down with builder’s tea alongside the sex workers who plied their trade on the streets outside

      long before Soho became a trendy gay colony

      look at me? Dominique said, and Amma did, there was nothing subservient, maternal or criminal about her

      she was über-cool, totally gorgeous, taller than most women, thinner than most women, with cut-glass cheekbones and smoky eyes with thick black lashes that literally cast a shadow on her face

      she wore leathers, kept her hair short except for a black fringe swept to one side, and rode about town on a battered old butcher’s bike chained up outside

      can’t they see I’m a living goddess? Dominique shouted with a flamboyant gesture, flicking her fringe, adopting a sultry pose as heads turned

      Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs

      perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation

      whereupon she walked right back out again

      in turn a casting director told Dominique she was wasting his time when she turned up for a Victorian drama when there weren’t any black people in Britain then

      she said there were, called him ignorant before also leaving the room

      and in her case, slamming the door

      Amma realized she’d found a kindred spirit in Dominique who would kick arse with her

      and they’d both be pretty unemployable once news got around

      they went on to a local pub where the conversation continued and wine flowed

      Dominique was born in the St Pauls area of Bristol to an Afro-Guyanese mother, Cecilia, who tracked her lineage back to slavery, and an Indo-Guyanese father, Wintley, whose ancestors were indentured labourers from Calcutta

      the oldest of ten children who all looked more black than Asian and identified as such, especially as their father could relate to the Afro-Caribbean people he’d grown up with, but not to Indians fresh over from India

      Dominique guessed her own sexual preferences from puberty, wisely kept them to herself, unsure how her friends or family would react, not wanting to be a social outcast

      she tried boys a couple of times

      they enjoyed it

      she endured it

      aged sixteen, aspiring to become an actress, she headed for London where people proudly proclaimed their outsider identities on badges

      she slept rough under the Embankment arches and in shop doorways along the Strand, was interviewed by a black housing association where she lied and cried about escaping a father who’d beaten her

      the Jamaican housing officer wasn’t impressed, so you got beats, is it?

      Dominique escalated her complaint to one of paternal sexual abuse, was given an emergency room in a hostel; eighteen months later, after tearful weekly calls to the housing office, she landed a one-bedroom housing association flat in a small fifties block in Bloomsbury

      I did what I had to find a home, she told Amma, not my finest moment, I admit, still, no harm done, as my father will never know

      she went on a mission to educate herself in black history, culture, politics, feminism, discovered London’s alternative bookshops

      she walked into Sisterwrite in Islington where every single author of every single book was female and browsed for hours; she couldn’t afford to buy anything, and read the whole of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology in weekly instalments, standing up, as well as anything by Audre Lorde she could get her hands on

      the booksellers didn’t seem to mind

      when I was accepted into a very orthodox drama school, I was already politicized and challenged them on everything, Amma

      the only person of colour in the whole school

      she demanded to know why the male parts in Shakespeare couldn’t be played by women and don’t even get me started on cross-racial casting, she shouted at the course director while everyone else, including the female students, stayed silent

      I realized I was on my own

      the next day I was taken aside by the school principal

      you’re here to become an actor not a politician

      you’ll be asked to leave if you keep causing trouble

      you have been warned, Dominique

      tell СКАЧАТЬ