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Published: 17 January 2008

Kwame Kwei-Armah: ‘I’d been hearing from ethnic minorities about foreigners coming into our country and taking jobs’

A whole new migrant experience

Kwame Kwei-Armah tells Ashioinye Ogene his new play examines relationships between different generations of UK immigrants

KWAME Kwei-Armah’s Polish cleaner inspired his latest play.
Hot on the heels of Statement of Regret, the playwright and actor famed for his powerful social commentaries on Britain’s black communities has written Let There Be Love, a topical account of Britain’s unease with its growing immigrant population.
“Let There Be Love is a play about transformation,” says Kwei-Armah. “Elminas’s Kitchen, Fix Up, and Statement of Regret were a political statement on the black British habitat. This is my quieter play. After the hugeness of Statement, I deliberately wanted to write a small play.”
A four-year trilogy of groundbreaking plays at the National Theatre between 2003 and 2007 earned him acclaim and accolades, most notably for Elmina’s Kitchen, which was the first black British play to be performed at the National Theatre.
So how did his cleaner inspire the latest work? “We started having a relationship where I was like a surrogate instructor in Britishness. Through listening to him, I found the Polish migrant experience is a very different one to that of my West Indian parents and members of the Windrush generation who came many years before.
“I’d been hearing from ethnic minorities about foreigners coming into our country and taking jobs. I found it quite interesting – people who were yesterday’s immigrants talking in this way and also how easy it was for them to forget the pain of when they were seen as the alien and invader.”
The play is set in the front room of a cantankerous old West Indian man from the Windrush generation. Through his relationship with his Polish cleaner the story enacts how one immigrant generation hands the baton of that status onto the next, training the new generation into Britishness.
“I’m a political writer and I feel it is important that we do not forget the costs and price paid by our parents for making this country a warmer place for us,” says Kwei-Armah. “I try to ask questions of my society: Are we treasuring the memories, efforts and the gains of the Windrush generation?
“I want to be able to celebrate the community that I come from and ask difficult questions of them and difficult questions of society as well. I have a responsibility first and foremost to my art form but secondly to tell a story through my cultural lens that is both illuminating and dramatic but also a story that in 10 or 20 years’ time somebody can say, ‘That was Britain’.'

* Let There Be Love opens tonight (January 17) at the Tricycle Theatre and runs until February 16.
020 7328 1000

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