Kiln Theatre announces the full cast for the world première of Zodwa Nyoni’s The Darkest Part of the Night.
Nancy Medina directs Brianna Douglas, Andrew French, James Clyde, Hannah Morrish, Lee Phillips and Nadia Williams. The production opens at Kiln Theatre on 21 July, with previews from 14 July, and runs until 13 August.
Zodwa Nyoni on The Darkest Part Of The Night:
When we were growing up, my siblings and I didn’t know that we were child carers. We had a sister with learning disabilities and we showed up in our routines, gave love and did our best everyday.
As I got older, I began to unpack what it meant to care and be a carer. I thought about my sister’s experiences within our family and whether she’d felt seen and heard. I thought about the difficult interactions we’d had with public services from education, health care, policing and social services; and how they’d impacted on us. I thought about what happens to the things that go unsaid, but are still felt decades later.
Our experiences are intersectional. I can’t speak about disability without mentioning race, class, ethnicity, culture, gender, religion and so on. Meeting with other Black and Asian families, I found shared worries and hopes for the future.
The play spans generations from the 1980s to present day because I wanted to examine what each family member understands of love from childhood to adulthood. To see how community, in this play Chapeltown (Leeds) shapes a family; and that marginalisation appears in new guises in ever-changing societies.
