About me
2005
My first play What’s in the Cat is at the Royal Court. To my left, floor-to-ceiling, is a poster of my mum, dad and me. I can’t afford a £15 sausage dinner. To my right is a middle-class, middle-aged, woman with expensive blonde hair. Men are in attendance. I fucking hate them. I want to walk over and throw over their fucking abundant table — If I do that the blonde’s male guardian will beat me up.
2010
Saturday. My last play's first week of rehearsal ends. I write an email suggesting the secondary, white characters are being asked what they think, the primary, black characters are being told what to think.
Sunday. The mistress rings. Hysterical. I’m supposed to take it back. I’ll hang first. A posher mistress gets on the phone. ‘At least you are not being aggressive.’ Dog-whistle racism.
Monday. I am told do not talk in rehearsal. Lunchtime, I can talk for 20 minutes, once I am sure the mistress has eaten. And for 20 minutes at the end of the day so the mistress can get home to her family. “You do realise this play is called Speechless.’
6pm. ‘Do not come back to rehearsal or the police will remove you.’ I am sure blonde, white, and middle-class the last bit would never be added.
2015 —2020
I want to stage my 2005 imagined action on unsuspecting diners. Though they love the title, Why I Want to Stab a Blonde White Woman in the Royal Court Bar, Health & Safety stops them. Instead, I write my story: alcoholic mum; murdered boyfriend; alcoholic husband. One chapter acted by a white actress; one by a black actress. The play will happen inside the audience as they accord different empathy. It also shows both sides of me: my mum is white. No one will believe me. I am black. Except in the Reno’s wall-to-wall half-caste. I collect Reno memoirs. Excavate it. Exhibit our artefacts. Get gaslit. Repeatedly. I stab this mistress to death in a public blog. https://thereno.live/linda-brogan/2019/05/24/the-battle-for-%C2%A311,000/
2024.
Factory International. In the Ruins of the Big House, I descend Bette Davis stairs in a £2000 bespoke denim ball gown, using my white mum’s status to declare myself the mistress of the Jamaican plantation my enslaved dad descends from to join my 12 guests at my decadent candlelit table.
Each project developed by and developing 4-dimensions 8-stations 12-words.
I love that the universe follows irrefutable laws. Made of maths. Sterile. And we are flesh. That sunflower heads and snail shells, spirals, obey the Fibonacci sequence. The wonderful thing about maths is there is no guess work. A spiral is the combination of the new and previous number. 0+1= 1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, 8+5=13, 13+8=21, 21+13= 34.
I love that the universe begins in all directions. No plan. Only laws. And maths. Maybe the laws come out of the maths. God, or the designer, does not give a fuck about the hero’s journey. The universe does not have to do certain things at certain times. Or maybe it does? It has taken billions of years to make us. Microbe; dividing cell; fish; mud flapper; mammal; primate; missing link; and me, who visited her in her vault in South Africa.
Inspired by the universe, I’ve built a creativity blueprint. Particularly sensational at generating memoir. 3 laws: 4-dimensions; 8-stations; 12-words. Maths. That also acts as a checklist. Replacing worry with certainty. Evolving a complex world. In which we stare into our pond at our ghosts. Pull our sword from the stone. Walk forward armed.
