About me
2019, That is a timelapse of the Reno being wallpapered on the Whitworth Art Gallery walls to begin the hard opening of The Reno at the Whitworth.
2015, I am writing a duologue for 2 actresses, for the Royal Court — yes, name dropping. A black actress, and a white actress, will enact my story as monologues. The play will happen inside the audience because I know the audience will afford different empathy to the actresses even though it is different chapters of the same story. Then I write the classic line: it will also show both sides of me — my mum is white. I sit still. But no one will believe me. I sit still. To the world I am black. Except in the Reno where it is a badge of honour to be half-caste. The Reno, our Moss Side cellar club, closes in 1986. 96, 2006, 2016.
2017, 30 years later I dig the Reno up. I plan it that night in 2015. There is a crack in the wall. A magical cave entrance. Like my favourite Mandy character: Valda, I pass through the crack. We party beside the excavated Reno, looking like Rome.
Artist's Statement
I am a playwright. Who becomes a performer. Factory International. 2024. In the Ruins of the Big House. I descend a Bette Davis candlelit staircase in a bespoke £2000 denim ball gown using my white mum’s status to declare myself the mistress of the Jamaican plantation my dad descends from.
Mission
My immune system fights the caste poison. To immunise others and affect change, I become a visual artist.
The first 8 mixed-race cultural practitioners I choose are ambitious, upwardly mobile. In our powerful careers we are excellent at speaking whiteface. Whiteface is not race, though it is definitely embedded in race. It’s institutions. Institutions have a certain language. Born and grown in the enlightenment. Paid for, sorry to say it, sometimes I get sick of my own one trick pony answer to everything, but it’s true, paid for by the stolen labour in the transatlantic slave trade.
Think about it. Science. Art. Philosophy. (Don’t make me laugh.) All get a head start. They’ve got time to think about this shit. Plus create the beautiful architecture to house it. The architecture we still visit today to be trained in the glamour of whiteface.
Portfolio
My portfolio houses images of projects that led me here. Poster. Date. Name. Producer. Speechless is particularly poignant. I am exiled from rehearsal by Polly for suggesting she is asking the secondary, white character what they think. And is telling the primary, black characters what to think. This leads me to begin the Royal Court duologue, I never finish. Excavate the Reno. Wallpaper it huge on the Whitworth walls. Inhabit my own plantation in my beautiful dress.
Destination
I want to rediscover placing my hand in the ocean — feeling the currents. The current telling me how far I am from land. A TED Talk Filipino spoke of this phenomenon. Lost, romantic, indigenous superpowers always wow me. We are excellent at whiteface. What about our shelved black traits. They have to be there.
Courses
One day I will run courses on my website.
For the minute I am trying to understand what they will be, as I enter my fantastical project in HOME 21.08.25 — 21.09.25. MY MUM IS WHITE: Exorcising Half-Caste Ghosts.
https://homemcr.org/whats-on/linda-brogan-my-mum-is-white-exorcising-half-caste-ghosts-8n1s