Deirdre osborne: Not 'in-yer-face' but what lies beneath: experiential and aesthetic inroads in the drama of debbie tucker green and Dona Daley

Chapter.III “The State of the Nation: Contemporary Black British Theatre and the Staging of the UK” in Dimple Godiwala ed. Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatre Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006. 82-100

In the new millennium where white men still clearly dominate the theatrical terrain, the staging of Black British women’s drama still remains at best, rare. debbie tucker green and Dona Daley distinctively dramatise articulations of the experientially uncharacteristic in British theatre. They produce sustained experimentation with form, style and subject matter to assert black experience as universal. Whilst Daley employs unqualified naturalism in her dramatisation of the mundane intimacies that weave lives together (using patois throughout), tucker green blows this apart with a blitz on the comfort zones of theatrical realism both in terms of linguistic creativity, verbal freefall and taboo topics. Adding to the established legacy of Winsome Pinnock, Trish Cooke and Zindika, Daley and tucker green provide further evidence to the key ways in which women dramatists articulate sensibilities and perspectives arising from their positions within culture and theatre that are distinct from those of their male contemporaries.