Analysis Of Fanon's 'The Little Black Boy'

SCENE ONE

The Girl’s bedroom in East London. She sits at a desk, surrounded by crumpled paper and journals.

MACBOOK: The MacBook of the London writer lying on her parted knees speaks of her art, speaks of her misery, between studies of journals in black ink the persistent interruption of scattered thoughts… on every margin where she compiled class notes her thoughts and anxiety intrude the obsession along with the assignment….

THE GIRL:

The beginning. Week one?

No.

Week Zero.

Start with the pre-class notes.

Picks up a notebook and inspects the first page

(reading) Plays: Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill, Three Birds Alighting on a Field by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Welcome to Thebes by Moira Buffini and Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker.

It shows Joshua’s internalization of colonial values.

It led me to seek out Frantz Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Masks’. In this book Fanon illustrates how colonialism only worked through domination and dehumanisation. The themes of acceptance, domination and socialisation were thought provoking and helped some mental groundwork for my exhibition project.

Three Birds Alighting on a field disappointed me, in that it didn’t really resonate with me as much as the other plays. I once played the character of duckling in a production of ‘Our Country’s Good’ at the Courtyard Theatre. Perhaps it was my nostalgic fondness for that and comparisons to that text that made me find it hard to love this play. Yoyo did remind me slightly of my father, in his anglophilic ways and desire to become part of old class system and an identity which you cannot BUY yourself into.

We did not discuss Welcome to Thebes in class as it’s inclusion on the list was accidental but I am very glad I read it because I found it to be amazing. Thematically, it really helped me with my play ‘Guerrilla Girls’ about female bodyguards of a dictator during a North African civil

Look at him.

(pause.)

Skin as the night tide. It speaks of human migration, paths twisted and turned off course.

Sometimes to bright clear waters, sometimes to muddy depths.

That hat, woolly red like the blood of the sheep who yielded it. They bleed not for the wool but later the slaughterhouse comes. I cannot forget that and perhaps he cannot either as he eats his vegan soup.

A suit, that crisp, that fresh!

And a watch so mammoth on his raw-boned wrists, he wants you to know he can pay the extortionate fee. The shoes pointed and shined to perfection.

But the socks! The socks! OY THE SOCKS! Bright green, declaring their presence to anyone with colour vision in a mile radius.

A great specimen.

I have fulfilled my assignment to find a worthy subject for a monologue. I thank you Clifford, for that is the name I have given you, and I wish you the best as you carry on your day in the life I have imagined for you.

SCENE FIVE

The Girl’s Bedroom. The Girl holds Howard Barker 's Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe

MACBOOK: Writing the Missing Scene

THE GIRL:

I am as Galactia was.

So many choices but there can only be one.

Galactia and Carpeta.

What a love