Today's British theatre is more conservative than in the 1970s, not more open
The director of Cloud Nine admits that British new plays today are far more restrained than in the 1970s; in this revival, the second half is deliberately shaped as a period piece because that level of frank staging has become impossible.
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This play wasn't designed—it grew from the rehearsal room
Dominic Cook explains that Carol Churchill didn't set out to write a play about colonial legacy. Joint Stock's method was to put a group of actors—straight, gay, and bisexual—in the rehearsal room to explore gender and sexuality, then the writer would take those discoveries and shape them into a script. Churchill was simultaneously reading Frantz Fanon on colonial self-estrangement, and these two threads combined produced a two-act play spanning colonised territory and 1970s North London counterculture.
— Dominic CookWhen the same line moves from white actor to Black actor, its meaning deepens
In the original, the enslaved ‘servant’ in the colonial section was played by a white actor—not in blackface, but deliberately using a white body to embody an internalised Black identity. In Cook's version, a Black actor took the role; when that line—‘but I have the insides of a white man’—lands on a Black actor, the double bind of internalised colonisation becomes starkly visible. In the 1970s section, the same actor plays a highly sexualised Black male character, and the director preserved the original's correspondence between roles because the parent-child and identity echoes still hold.
— Dominic CookNew theatre has grown polite; old wounds open deeper in revival
Dominic Cook argues that contemporary British theatre overall has grown more conservative and more polite than the 1970s-90s. The frank depiction of incest, child abuse, and sexual exploration in Cloud Nine would be hard to find in new plays today. Revivals of Sarah Kane illustrate the point—scenes depicting violence and extreme events were commonplace then, but shock audiences now, showing it's not that audiences have grown more tolerant, but that creators themselves have narrowed their scope.
— Dominic CookEven its director can't settle what this play truly means
Inua Ellams, as audience member, historian and performer, couldn't pin down what Carol Churchill ultimately means to say: he repeatedly asks whether he himself is implicated in this colonial absurdist play. If first, second, and third-generation Black British spectators fill the house, do they see themselves in this farce? How many layers of self-awareness must one traverse before laughing? Director Dominic Cook's answer: he can't prescribe how audiences receive the work, only describe what he wanted to present—an absurd effort to maintain an impossible ‘balance’.
— Inua EllamsBoko Haram literally means: this alphabet is forbidden
When Inua Ellams first wanted to write a play about Boko Haram, research revealed the term's origin: Boko is the Romanised alphabet system colonisers imposed on Northern Nigerian society; Haram, in Arabic, means ‘forbidden’; together, ‘this alphabet is forbidden’. This force had tried multiple times to kill his father and drove his entire family from Nigeria. He wrote this play to understand the source of the power that ‘dehumanised’ his own family.
— Inua EllamsColonial powers deliberately flooded Nigeria's economy with imported shells
The play shows how economy became a tool for colonial power transfer: shells shipped from Australia into Northern Nigeria in huge quantities directly collapsed the local currency and social structures, equivalent to ‘inundating an entire economic zone’. Ellams can't believe this was accidental—shipping tons of shells across half the globe; colonial forces knew exactly what they were doing. He compares this tactic to the right-wing politics rising today from cost-of-living crises: capitalism uses the same tools to destroy communities, and has for generations.
— Inua EllamsTheatre succeeds when audiences stop being passive and co-create
The play employs Nigerian oral traditions, densely designed with audience response and choral interaction. At a preview in Northampton—the city where the production premiered—20 to 30 Nigerian audience members spent the whole show responding to the actors' provocations, and at certain plot points spontaneously hummed the opening theme of EastEnders as the play's live soundtrack; the whole room was activated, and the actors laughed out of character at the audience's involvement. Ellams says this was exactly the effect he wanted—he hopes the play gets translated into Hausa and taken to resource-constrained theatres in Northern Nigeria, ready to perform with just the actors standing.
— Inua EllamsHistory survives even in places we overlook as mere commerce
Loxton's book features Lowry's Going to the Match, depicting Bolton Park (Bolton Wanderers' stadium), demolished in the 1990s. When she visited the site, only a vast Asda supermarket remained; yet people who work there remember the stadium, saw the players back then, and some can point to the pie shop in the painting that still stands today. Her conclusion: even in the most overlooked place—a supermarket—the traces of history can still be found.
— Alice LoxtonIn their own words · checked verbatim
I actually think in some ways we've become more conservative in our theater culture. So so the frankness of the play, there's far less of that now. I think theater is more polite now than it was in the 1970s.
Dominic Cook12:26
what I kept on wondering was who is included in in the farce here. Am I included in the farce?
Inua Ellams14:34
the first time the phrase may have been conceived of was when Boko, this alphabetical system, was being imposed on the Northern Nigerian society and community. And within the Islamic context, the word Haram in Arabic also means forbidden.
Inua Ellams18:37
we brought them mathematics, we brought them peace, philosophy, trade and Islam.
Inua Ellams21:42
And I think it was shocking to me to understanding how capitalism has used the same tools for generations and generations to undermine and destroy communities.
Inua Ellams22:47
it's the elephant in the room is that they're going, they appear to be setting out on this epic journey. They're actually only crossing the Channel, which is not very far at all.
Alice Loxton35:31
So it's an enormous kind of supermarket. And you might think this is not a very hopeful place to go and see amazing kind of historic gems. But actually there were these ghosts of the past there.
Alice Loxton37:31
Figures
| Nigerian languages | 500 | 23:55 |
| Saint Augustine's Gospel date | approximately 1,400 years ago | 31:18 |
| Welsh medieval mural rediscovery year | 2008 | 35:31 |
| Nigerian audience at Northampton preview | 20 to 30 | 28:12 |
Glossary
- Joint Stock
- An experimental British theatre company of the 1970s that held ensemble workshops to explore themes before the playwright wrote the script.
- corpsing
- When a performer on stage breaks character and laughs involuntarily.
- Boko Haram
- Literally ‘the (Roman) alphabet is forbidden’; derives from the colonial imposition of Latin-script education.
How to listen
Creators interested in drama about colonial history and identity politics, or history enthusiasts wanting to understand how painting can be read as historical evidence.
Segments on pineapple craze, Tudor paintings and other English art trivia (32:25-34:30) have lower information density; skip if time is limited.