Persuasive rather than polarising . Kwame kwei armah, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me. It is a great pleasure to have you. Now, youve been in the Theatre Business as an actor, a writer and a director for the best part of three decades. Ijust used that phrase, some would call it a cliche, about the culture wars. Does it feel to you that today there is a somewhat toxic culture war . I think youve framed it beautifully. It is toxic, but most importantly, its disingenuous. In my humble opinion. Its used to kind of create political fear. And ourjob as artists is, i think, fundamentally to take away that fear, to take away the binaries that i think this farce of the culture wars are. You know, i often hear politicians and im not one to diss politicians, but i also often hear politicians use race or class or immigration or use history as a Battering Ram to get themselves into the hearts of the populist. But those issues youve just outlined race, immigration they are centr
Hardtalk. Kwame kweiarmah, welcome to hardtalk. , ~ , c, kwame kweiarmah, welcome to hardtalk. , ~ a kwame kweiarmah, welcome to hardtalk. , a c, hardtalk. Thank you so much for havin hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me it hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me. It is hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me. It is a hardtalk. Thank you so much for having me. It is a great having me. It is a Great Pleasure having me. It is a Great Pleasure to having me. It is a Great Pleasure to have having me. It is a Great Pleasure to have you. | having me. It is a great i pleasure to have you. You having me. It is a Great Pleasure to have you. You have beenin pleasure to have you. You have been in the Theatre Business as an actor, writer and director for best part of three decades. Ijust for best part of three decades. I just used that for best part of three decades. Ijust used that phrase, some would use and call it a cliche about the culture wars
Ijust used that phrase, some would call it a cliche, about the culture wars. Does it feel to you that today there is a somewhat toxic culture war . I think youve framed it beautifully. It is toxic, but most importantly, its disingenuous. In my humble opinion. Its used to kind of create political fear. And ourjob as artists is, i think, fundamentally to take away that fear, to take away the binaries that i think this farce of the culture wars are. You know, i often hear politicians and im not one to diss politicians, but i also often hear politicians use race or class or immigration or use history as a Battering Ram to get themselves into the hearts of the populist. But those issues youve just outlined race, immigration they are central to your work, because theyre central to your own life story. Yeah, totally and utterly. But. And have you been frightened off entering this territory at times . Again, i think its framed brilliantly. Fortunately for me, or unfortunately, when im afraid o
he said, this is your country, remember that. and i watched the police chase us down the street that i lived. and i saw skinheads armed with truncheons and shields. i didn t read this i saw this. that completely and utterly shaped the way that i saw the world. you said earlier that when you are frightened, you tend to run to what frightens you rather than away from it. did you run toward trouble in those days? no. did you fight back? 0h. i mean, it depends on how you define fighting, right? i ve never been a really physically strong guy. so the physicalfight was not my thing. did i have to run rather quickly when white skinhead culture at the time threatened the lives of everyone that i knew? yes. did i have to be able to defend myself to some degree? yes. but i think what happened to me,
you define fighting, right? i ve never been a really physically strong guy. so the physicalfight was not my thing. did i have to run rather quickly when white skinhead culture at the time threatened the lives of everyone that i knew? yes. did i have to be able to defend myself to some degree? yes. but i think what happened to me, and this was kind of shaped by my mother, is that she wanted me to be a lawyerfor socialjustice. of course, we didn t call it that then, but she wanted me to be able to fight for the community from which i came from. and when i discovered that my way of fighting was art and that my way of fighting was thinking, i went into deep training. interesting that you say you wanted to fight for your community. one thing you did, in a way, was, by changing your name, identify with a community that was your ancestral community back in ghana, rather than your immediate sort of family connection, which was to grenada in what was then