Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling.

Barber Shop Chronicles, which was partly inspired by verbatim recordings, is a heart-warming, hilarious and insightful play that leaps from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.

It was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and is here publishedas a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Oladipo Agboluaje.

Table of Contents

CHRONOLOGY

COMMENTARY

PLAYWRIGHT

CONTEXT

Black British drama (including work of practitioners such as Roy Williams, debbie tucker green and Mojisola Adebayo)

THEMES

Masculinity (including sport and sexuality) and how it shapes characters and subverts universal and specifically black and African notions of masculinity

GENRE

Verbatim theatre (use of transcripts to create a work of fiction); comparing to other verbatim plays such as London Road and The Permanent Way

SETTING

Barbershop as a ’safe space’ for black men

Diasporic movements - how the play’s transnational locations construct a ’black’ identity

PLAY TEXT

FURTHER READING