Race and Identity at the heart of new play heading to Pocklington Arts Centre

My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored has been produced by Red Ladder Theatre Company with support from Oldham Coliseum Theatre and Leeds Playhouse where it opens later this week as part of its world premiere UK tour.

The play will be performed at PAC on Thursday, November 25.

PAC director Janet Farmer said: “We are delighted to be welcoming Red Ladder Theatre Company back to PAC with this gripping and thought provoking new production.

“Red Ladder are a highly reputable and radical national touring company producing top quality plays, so to have them return to PAC as part of their world premiere UK tour is just wonderful.”

The stage debut of writer Nana-Kofi Kufuor is an interrogation of black identity for which he has drawn on his own experience of growing up in Stockport with Ghanaian parents and working in education with young people from a range of backgrounds.

“The crux of this play is how two people react to the same situation. They go on a journey, a journey a lot of people of colour go on, a realisation that where you are now isn’t necessarily where you come from,” Kofi said.

“When working at a Pupil Referral Unit, I once had a student take a knife to stab another student. Once I’d calmed him down, we sat in the canteen, and he explained to me he wasn’t going to go quietly.

“The police were outside, and they took him. I saw him a few weeks later, and he asked why I didn’t help him? That rush of guilt changed to anger and quickly to sympathy as he saw me as his protector. But I knew I couldn’t do anything.”

Visit www.pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk or call the Box Office on 01759 301547 for more information or to bbook tickets.