New Exhibition Celebrating Black And Asian Theatre Will Open Next Month

Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of writer Naseem Khan's groundbreaking report The Arts Britain Ignores, the new archival exhibition and events programme from Unfinished Histories, hosted by London Performance Studios, explores the trailblazing companies and individuals who defined the early years of Black and Asian theatre in the UK. The exhibition, Radical Rediscovery III: What Survives? 50 Years Since The Arts Britain Ignores, brings together original archival materials from the 1960s to 2000 including photography by Sheila Burnett, filmed oral history interviews, and historic carnival costumes that trace the enduring legacy and relevance of Khan's work. It shines a light on the networks and campaigns that challenged the status quo, celebrating community activism, grassroots venues, young people's theatre and the importance of carnival, and reveals how, despite a lack of support from the arts establishment, Black and Asian movements transformed British theatre forever.

A symposium on 27-28 November will bring together talks, panel discussions and a long table to explore the legacy of the report and ask what has changed, what has endured and where cultural power sits today. Speakers include Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo and Shreela Ghosh, an actor and creative leader with over four decades of experience in the arts, best known for playing Naima, the first South Asian character in BBC's EastEnders, and for her leadership roles in cultural organisations. She worked closely with Naseem Khan throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, including at Aditi, a pioneering organisation supporting South Asian dance, and is now the founder and co-director of Culture In Flux. On 27 November, actor, playwright and theatre director Sudha Bhuchar, who co-founded the pioneering Tamasha Theatre Company in 1989, serving as Co-Artistic Director until 2015 before establishing Bhuchar Boulevard to develop and produce new creative work, will direct a special evening The Woman, the Writer, the Legacy which will feature a selection of readings and performances celebrating Naseem's life and work.

The season culminates on 11-12 December with a triple bill of intimate staged readings of forgotten or unpublished one-person plays written between the 1970s and 1990s. Slipping Into Darkness by Jamal Ali is a monologue about a Black Londoner, Madhuri, I Love You by Parminder Sekhon follows 13-year-old Amarjit as she escapes the reality of daily life in Preston into a dream world with Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit, and One of Us, written by Jacqui Shapiro from a series of 1983 improvisations by BAFTA-winning actress Meera Syal, focuses on Nishi, a young Asian woman trying to fulfil her dream of becoming an actress while navigating the realities of working in her family's shop as a roller-skating waitress. Casting will be confirmed in the coming weeks.

Suman Bhuchar, Guest Curator said 'It is an honour to be part of the Unfinished Histories FYFFI3 Programme as its values align completely with Bhuchar Boulevard's Retracing Our Footsteps strand of work. I have huge admiration for the tenacity and passion of Susan Croft and her team and see her as a fellow traveller in what can be a lonely road to make archives visible and accessible to a wider community. The programme provides a unique opportunity to trace the rich history of British South Asian and Black Theatre performance work, the practitioners and the stories. As intergenerational global majority creatives, we continue to fight for representation, equality and decolonising the theatre space. It is also timely to remember the contribution and legacy of Naseem Khan, a cultural trailblazer on the fight for inclusion, through her seminal report, The Arts Britain Ignores; as well as her work as a journalist, consultant and arts administrator. I was lucky enough to be part of her ALAAP (Asian Leisure & Arts Planners) group – South Asian women from the creative industries who undertook consultancies and wrote reports on the creative sector. I am passionate to share my lived experience alongside my peers and open the doors to the collective knowledge and physical artefacts and memorabilia that we all have so that we can continue to co-create a cohesive and multi-layered history (albeit unfinished).'

Tyrone Huggins, Guest Curator said ''It is important that we bring to the surface the range and depth of work created by Black and Asian artists and practitioners, in order for British culture to understand itself and how its changed and develop a new canon of works that tell us of our past and informs our journeys into the future. It is an important privilege and responsibility to me to work with Unfinished Histories in that enterprise.”

Lucy Cowling, Director (Maternity Cover), London Performance Studios said 'Unfinished Histories is doing vital work. This exhibition is a living, growing archive of Black and Asian British theatre — fifty years deep, but rooted in our current moment. Visitors won't just witness this history; they are invited to become its custodians. It's a moment to celebrate how far we've come, and to be honest about the work still to do. In the current political climate, an exhibition like this has never mattered more.'

Journalist, activist, cultural historian and educator Naseem Khan (1939-2017) wrote The Arts Britain Ignores in 1976. Commissioned by the Community Relations Commission, the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, it was the first major study to document grassroots arts and cultural practices within Black and Asian communities and other immigrant groups in the UK. It also questioned how and why institutions, funding bodies and critics had ignored them and called on these organisations to confront the exclusion and marginalisation of such communities. Earlier this month, Dawn Airey, the new chair of Arts Council England, gave her inaugural speech at a conference celebrating Khan's work and legacy at the Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage in Leicester.

Unfinished Histories was founded in 2006 by Susan Croft and Jessica Higgs and later became established as an independent organisation in 2012. It is dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history of Alternative Theatre in Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s. Through extensive interviews and archival work, Unfinished Histories highlights the pioneering contributions of marginalised communities including Black, Asian, disabled and LGBTQ+ communities, women and other politically engaged theatre groups and key experimental work, ensuring their transformative legacy is recognised and remembered. They champion this vision through extensive interviews and archival work producing exhibitions, symposiums, workshops, walking tours and Staged readings throughout the year, foregrounding the pioneering contributions of marginalised communities. Fifty Years of the Fight for Inclusion III: Black & Asian Theatre in Britain marks the concluding year of the company's three-year research and presentation project hosted at London Performance Studios initiated to celebrate the fifty-year anniversaries of three key moments in theatre history. The other anniversaries celebrated were the first Women's Theatre in Britain (2024) and the first Gay Theatre Festival in Britain (2025).

London Performance Studios is a queer container for the research, generation, and promotion of artistic voices that meet in the space between the white cube of the gallery and the black box of the theatre. LPS seeks to queer artistic process, championing the politics of making a scene, whether on stage or out in the world.