1Some ten years ago Davis spent time away from his base in Aachen and Fuchs from Nice to prepare Theatre and Change in South Africa (1996). Now they are back together again contributing number nineteen to Marc Maufort’s series Dramaturgies, Texts, Cultures and Performances. Once again their book is marked by a lively approach in which the freshness of the editorial eye is much appreciated. The editors are travellers whose careers have enabled them to share some of the qualities of the marginal, and who enquire about developments ‘at home’ with humility and genuine curiosity. Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre Practice is marked by their distance from their subject and, while they wear their theoretical learning lightly, they clearly reap benefits from their position. This book offers the reader varied material, and asks basic questions without the crushing weight that comes from constantly being involved in ‘the struggle.’ The editors ensure an ‘outsider-oriented discourse’.

2The Introduction to Staging New Britain is followed by ten articles, eight interviews and two appendices. There is, unfortunately, no cumulative bibliography but there is an index. The first of the articles, ‘I Could Have Been a Playwright’, is by Caryl Phillips and is informed, personal, and authoritative. It ‘touches many bases,’ raising several basic issues, indicating some of the boundaries, and containing the only reference in the volume to Alfred Fagon and two of the just three references to Winsom Pinnock. The article was first published in The Guardian and shows how much academics who are concerned with the present can learn from the serious press. It is a pity that notice was not taken of my letter that appeared the week after ‘I could have been…’ and that pointed out the incorrect date of The Lion and the Jewel at the Royal Court Theatre.

3Other articles include an account of Talawa Theatre Company 1985-2002 by the founding mother of that innovative group, Yvonne Brewster, and Vayu Naidu writing on the directions her own company has taken in narrative performance. While these are insider accounts that by Brian Crow on Birmingham Rep is the work of an academic, albeit one who has worked abroad. The benefits of the informed outsider is also apparent in the essay by Aleks Sierz, who has his finger firmly on the pulse of theatrical trends and writes on that major ‘New British’ figure, Roy Williams.

4The struggle to establish a ‘London home for Black theatre’ has absorbed much energy. Here the story is partly told in Brewster’s article, and partly in an Editors’ Note that appropriately concludes by referring the reader to Talawa’s website. While London is important, the provinces, where the mathematics of race is different, show significantly different developments and receive deserved attention in this book. Crow’s article on Birmingham Rep is set beside an interview with Kully Thiarai, who, as artistic director at the Leicester Haymarket, is one the ‘gate-keepers’ in the arts, and beside an essay by Suhail Khan, Consultant Co-ordinator for Cultural Diversity in Greater Manchester. He writes boldly of the way the first and second generation performance artists there have ‘relocated the City of Manchester’ on the world stage (161).

5The interviews, all conducted by Fuchs and / or Davis except for that with Jatinder Verrmer, give creative artists a chance to speak. Appropriately, the first is with SuAndi, whose ‘pioneering enthusiasm’ played an important role in starting the publishing project and whose Acts of Achievement conference in Manchester provided the setting for the conception of this book. Other interviewees are Felix Cross, Kwame Kwei-Armah, John McGrath, Courttia Newland, Jan Ryan and Kully Thiarai. Some of their responses might have been edited but there are many advantages in putting ‘raw material’ into the hands of readers and researchers. The second appendix is given over to the reactions to the staging of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Behzti in Birmingham, and consists of press comments and a statement, again first published in The Guardian, by Bhatti. This format provides a sense of the direct presentation of sensitive issues that characterises the book and makes it a particularly welcome addition to the shelves of all those anxious to keep in touch with what is happening in the theatre in ‘New Britain’ - whether insiders or outsiders.