Short Political Theatre • 1

A 15-minute new play directed and presented at Southwark Playhouse in April 2019 part of Directors’ Cut showcase.

The [political] WHAT:

• Coming Home by Sara Reimers performed by Rachelle Grubb and Tim Renouf

The play took its cue from the Windrush deportations of British individuals of Jamaican extraction who lived in the UK for most of their lives yet this accounted for nothing in the inhuman eyes of the Home Office. The dramatic focus was on a ‘self-help’ booklet produced by the Home Office called ‘Coming Home to Jamaica’, handed out or offered online to the deportees.

The [political] WHY:

The directorial approach found ‘the political’ not as much in the enormity of the situation between the young web editor and the Home Office manager but in how our participation as individuals is roped in by institutions by means of pressure and bullying on the job. That we felt conveyed better the scale of the ‘political’ unscrupulousness of the Home Office and their ‘elevated’ mentality, as migrants we had first-hand experience of.

Placing the play in the uncertain territory of post-Brexit was part of the intention to state what was tested on British Jamaicans, could become standard procedure for other minorities that find themselves undesirable. The soundtrack aimed to create a sense of detachment and strangeness in relation to the dramatic situation and force the audience to question what is happening, not to identify with the ‘naturalism’ of one side or the other.

The play aimed to put this question to the mixed audience: what institution is the Home Office (and the British political establishment) if it can ‘fail’ – probably on purpose – to recognise a generation of Jamaicans and their descendants, after a lifetime of service and struggle, as British?

Soundtrack