The Darkest Part of the Night

Description

You've got to learn how to keep it inside. We have to. The world doesn't like us acting out. They'll put you down any chance they get. You can't be doing all this screaming. As siblings Shirley and Dwight bury their mother, they remember their upbringing in 1980s Chapeltown Leeds differently. In the height of racial discrimination, police brutality and poverty, the struggle for survival ripped through their family. Now as adults, they need to bring together the fractured pieces of their past in order to move forward. Zodwa Nyoni's gripping and heartfelt drama explores the complexities and beauty of what it really means to care for one another.

Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born playwright and poet based in Leeds, UK. As winner of the Channel 4 Playwright's Scheme, she was Writer-in-Residence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2014. Her first full-length play, Boi Boi is Dead, was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2014/15. Other theatre credits include: Tangled Roots (2014), Nine Lives (2014), Come To Where I'm From (2013), The Market (2013), Di Daakes' Part A Di Night (2013), Home Has Died (2012), Why The Drought Returns (2012), The Night Shift (2011) and The Povo Die Till Freedom Comes (2010). She has been the recipient of the following awards: Award for the Arts 2011 (Leeds Black Awards) and the Young Black and Asian Writers Award (The Big Issue in the North's Short Story Competition 2011).