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Skin-deep significance
MARY CONWAY recommends an important play on the racism experienced by black people
Bearing witness: ear for eye [Stephen Cumminskey]

ear for eye
Royal Court Theatre, London

BLACK is so much more than a colour. It’s a brutal truth that, if your skin is black, the world responds to you with hostility.

And in her new play, ear for eye's writer and director debbie tucker green, in brilliant rainbow hues, shares what it’s like to live within a black skin and to daily face entrenched assumptions that go way beyond prejudice from time immemorial.  

A superbly acted ensemble piece, it has all the verbal pyrotechnics and structural precision of a long and vivid poem. Its three-part narrative, more telling in its abandonment of chronological progression, reveals the depth of experience in the moment.

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