“What they know about a black woman soul?”
1984, Easter Monday and not many buses are running, yet God-fearing and hymn-singing Enid drags her two teenage daughters across town to Deptford for a séance with obeah woman Mai. This unleashes many souls searching, uncomfortable truths, secrets being revealed, and a long overdue interrogation of the past. With humour, compassion, and urgency, Leave Taking examines inter-generational conflict, mother-daughter relationships and the plight of first-and-second-generation immigrants, navigating the dichotomy of dislocation from their origins and not belonging in their own future.
Though focusing on a family of Jamaican heritage, Leave Taking is a play that resonates cross-culturally.
Perhaps to the consternation of its award-winning playwright, Winsome Pinnock, ‘Godmother of Black British playwrights, the themes and issues explored almost 40 years ago in Leave Taking are as relevant today in the wake of the Windrush Scandal and the so-called “compliant environment”.
Winsome Pinnock has recently been awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama. More details about that are here.
