Category Archives: Kwame Kwei-Armah

‘Once in a lifetime’: Ruth Wilson to star in 24-hour show The Second Woman at Young Vic

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Wilson to enact single, seven-minute scene on loop with 100 men to explore gender roles

Ruth Wilson has called a new stage role in which she will perform the same scene repeatedly for 24 hours straight an “extraordinary, once in a lifetime experience”.

The Golden Globe and Olivier award winner will star in the UK premiere of the internationally acclaimed epic The Second Woman at the Young Vic this spring. Playing Virginia, Wilson will enact a single, seven-minute scene on loop, with 100 different men performing opposite her as her lover Marty, one after the other. Most of the men are non-actors who have volunteered for the role.

The Second Woman, a Young Vic & Lift co-production, produced in association with Ruth Wilson, is at the Young Vic, London, 19-20 May.

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What does Archie tell us about mixed-race Britain?

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The new royal baby is part of the UK’s fastest growing ethnic group. So what does it now mean to be black?

The arrival of the new royal baby reminds us that not only are mixed-race people the UK’s fastest-growing ethnic group; it also underlines that what it means to be mixed race is changing. Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor will join the ranks of those second-generation mixed-race people who challenge our very perceptions of ethnicity and black identity.

In fact, the changing face of mixed-race Britain is something we barely notice even as we are looking directly at it. Perhaps that is the point. Back in the early 2000s we were vaguely aware that young celebrities, such as the late reality TV star Jade Goody or footballer Ryan Giggs, had a black grandparent. But they rarely discussed it or talked of how they perceived themselves.

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