laywright Winsome Pinnock, born in 1961, was the first black British woman to stage a play at the National Theatre, in 1994. She speaks to Jasmine Lee-Jones, 21, whose first full-length play, Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, won several awards last year. She is also a stage actor. How did you get started? Winsome Pinnock: I wrote in secret while studying drama and English at Goldsmiths University in London. I sent a short piece called Saturday Night to the Royal Court young writers’ group, then run by Stephen Wakelam and Hanif Kureishi. Stephen wrote back and said: “Come and join our group.” Hanif said: “I think you’re talented,” and pushed me. A Hero’s Welcome was produced a few years afterwards. Jasmine Lee-Jones: There have been allies who weren’t of my experience or my race. Jane Fallowfield, now literary manager at the Royal Court, put me in this BBC London Voices group, and Hamish Pirie, an associate director at the Royal Court, kept implying that I was going to write a play. He would email me to say: “What have you written?” It kept me active and gave me confidence. What difficulties have you met in your careers that may have been due to your skin colour? WP: The two of us are obviously exceptions, because we’ve broken through. So our success isn’t representative, necessarily. Look at the number of plays by black playwrights in any institution at any given time and that will tell you about institutional racism. How many plays by black British female playwrights have been produced by the National Theatre? You had one, Leave Taking, in 1994. WP: A very long time ago. And between me and the next one, which was by debbie tucker green, there was a long span of time. I was part of a generation who were all firsts. But one of the main issues for me is financial. It’s hard to make a living from theatre. What used to happen is that young white men would have a play on – a first play – then they’d be picked up by film and television. Black writers never got that same opportunity. We had to be resourceful and find a way to live. I went into academia and I was an associate professor until last year at Kingston University. JLJ: Drama school was very white. It wasn’t just blackness but all the other aspects of identity that marked me as odd. I felt the frustration of this implicit invisibility. In my year, there were three people of colour out of 26 so it was very striking, visually. WP: I was the only black woman in my year at Goldsmiths and I was one of two working-class people. JLJ: We did a lot of classical texts and I was moved by them. But it’s not said that the characters are white because that’s just the default. I had done work experience at the Black Cultural Archives and worked in a fringe theatre so I discovered all these plays I instinctively knew existed but weren’t being done at drama school. It’s not just about people like me feeling less invisible. It’s a service to the white students as well, because when they come into the industry those are the plays they might be cast in. WP: What’s been really interesting is colourblind casting, which is great because it gives black actors work and opportunity. But what it also does is suppress our own stories. What you’re saying is that the black body can be inserted into playing this part and that means you can cut the black body from its own history. The theatre space will not accommodate the black British story. Do you think British theatre still doesn’t accommodate that story? WP: No, it doesn’t. We see a lot of black plays but very few of them are British. The American story is a really important intervention into our theatrical space but it isn’t necessarily our specific story. There are theatres in this country that have never produced a play by a black British playwright. Another indication of the health of an institution would be the number of playwrights they have of all ages. When I speak to middle-aged artists I know, every one says that when they were in their 20s, the door was opened for them. But as they got older and started to use the very strong voice they had developed, their careers changed. I think this is what sexism and racism have in common. Blackness has often been associated with the “edgy”, the “new”, but it’s really important to realise that this is part of institutional racism, that we are told we didn’t exist until yesterday. JLJ: I thought once my play came on last year, it would be about the actors and I’d be in the background. But what I found – and it shocked me – was how gendered [the attention] was [around me]. I remember reading an article about Lucy Prebble where she was described as a “pretty Pinter”. If we’re compacting that kind of sexism with race, because there’s a scarcity of black female playwrights, that meant I got a particular kind of attention. How did the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests affect you? JLJ: I had been reading a lot of bell hooks’ theories about shifting the gaze. I’m interested in seeing how it will permeate the very tenets of storytelling – who we are looking at. If things are going to radically change, it means pulling up the roots and turning things on their head. So what would The Crucible be like from the perspective of Tituba [Rev Parris’s black slave]? There is still a commercial concern rooted in white supremacy: the question of: “What would the audience be comfortable with?” WP: You know, I have written a short play called Tituba, and I got an email today asking me to develop it. It’s a monologue telling her story. Another play I did, The Principles of Cartography, which is about police brutality and a young child witnessing it, was done as part of the Black Lives Matter theatre movement. As a black person, this issue has never left my life. This is a moment for people who aren’t black, basically. The thing that people seem to be saying is: “How can I really help, because I thought I was helping and changing things, but obviously I haven’t?” So we’ll see what happens as a result of this. How did you feel when you saw Edward Colston’s statue being hauled off its plinth in Bristol? JLJ: It took my breath away. I was at the protest in London on that Sunday [7 June]. We walked from Vauxhall to Charing Cross and I saw the footage and thought: “Whoa”. That was the moment I thought: “Something’s different this time.” My next question is: what comes after the statue? There are institutions founded on slavery, so what does it mean to deconstruct those? Who or what should stand in Colston’s place? WP: Maybe a monument to the enslaved. This is what my most recent play, Rockets and Blue Lights, is about: the legacy of enslavement. JLJ: Yes, what I would really like to see is a monument to the forgotten; to all the unrecorded lives.