Part of the creative team behind a new play about the impact of dementia on a Black British family hope it can provoke a conversation about the disease, which disproportionately affects Black Britons.
Miss Myrtle’s Garden is part of Lynette Linton’s final season at the Bush Theatre in London, and the artistic director said the “beautiful and heart-wrenching” production was an important opportunity to discuss the havoc dementia causes.
A report released in 2022 found that Black people had a 22% higher incidence of dementia recorded than white people in the UK.
The play will be directed by Linton’s successor Taio Lawson and is written by Danny James King. “Dementia, particularly in the Black community and in the Caribbean community, is a conversation that we need to talk about more,” Linton said. “It’s affecting so many people … let’s talk about it now and let’s give people the support they need.”
Linton’s final season will also feature Superwoman Schema, which stars Golda Rosheuvel and Letitia Wright as two women struggling to come to terms with the death of their family’s matriarch. It’s about “what that brings out for them and their relationship as they go on this journey to to work out what her death means,” Linton said.
Several of the plays in Linton’s final season focus on older characters and those in middle age. As well as Superwoman Schema and Miss Myrtle’s Garden, Sweetmeats looks at forbidden love between two middle-aged South Asian characters.
Linton recently directed Alterations at the National Theatre, which was a revival of a play by Michael Abbensetts, the ground-breaking British-Guyanese playwright who became established in the 1970s.
She said there wasn’t a conscious effort to include stories about older people in the season, but she did feel more stories that revolve around middle-aged Black and Asian leads need to be created.
“What’s so beautiful about Sweetmeats is it’s a love story between these two elders: how often do we see a love story between characters of a certain age?
“I think that’s happened because there’s something about us honouring our elders at this point as well. I feel very passionate about that. I’ve always felt passionate about that, but Alterations has really opened that up for me.”
Other plays in Linton’s final season including After Sunday, which is set in a cooking class that takes place in a prison psychiatric unit; Heart Wall, Kit Withington’s play about the challenges of returning home as an adult, and House of Jenin, written and performed by Alaa Shehada.
Linton is taking a break after she finishes at the Bush in two weeks before returning to direct Superwoman Schema. She has been a vocal advocate for creating a more diverse theatre landscape in the UK and for “disrupting” the established canon with new work and rediscovered pieces that go beyond the likes of Ibsen, Pinter and Miller.
She said: “It was about really looking at the canon and making a decision to tell specifically British and Irish stories with a specific focus on Black and Asian voices, so that we could go: ‘Look, we are here, and our stories are deserved to be in the West End.’”
Her six-year run as artistic director alongside associate director Daniel Bailey who is also leaving, has seen more than 50 plays performed that were written by British and Irish playwrights, with a particular focus on writers of colour.
During the pair’s tenure they won four consecutive Olivier awards for productions and earned West End runs for original work, including Red Pitch and Shifters.
They also founded the Bush Young Company during the Covid lockdown, and produced Lenny Henry’s debut play, August in England.
Did Linton have any advice for new boss Lawson? “Follow your instincts … and remember the people that are around you are the heartbeat of that building,” she said.
