The National Theatre symbolizes the debate over whether lawful reform or radical change is the best path to achieving social justice. The National Theatre represents the historically white-supremacist, patriarchal foundation and culture of English society. For years, women like Amma and Dominique were shut out from that world. When the pair were first getting their start in the arts, the mainstream theater world typecast them into demeaning and stereotypical roles. These injustices forced them to the margins where they formed their Bush Women Theater Company, which centered the stories and voices of women of color and therefore was the antithesis of the National Theater. As outsiders of the mainstream theater world, Amma and Dominique stormed the balcony of the National to protest the institution and the white, patriarchal society it represents. By middle age, however, Amma and her formerly radical friends shift their approach, opting to reform the system from within rather than disrupt the system as outsiders. Amma’s latest play shatters the glass ceiling that kept women of color off the National Theatre’s esteemed stage and reveals a National Theatre that is slowly starting to diversify and become less exclusionary. In her new relationship to the National Theatre, Amma is straddling the middle ground. While premiering her play at the National Theatre makes Amma a lawful reformer, bringing subversive ideas to the National Theatre allows her to sustain her role as a radical.
Each of the novel’s main characters falls in their own place along the spectrum of radical versus reform. The National is the bridge that connects these wildly different characters and their different approaches to creating systemic change and, as such, it symbolizes how reformers and radicals play equally vital roles in inspiring change and seeking social justice. Amma and Dominique’s work from outside the mainstream theater world, which generated buzz and asserted a place for women of color in English culture and society, helps make possible the monumental moment of reform that is Amma’s premiere at the National Theatre. At the same time, characters like Roland and Carole make change from within existing institutions, ascending the ranks and infiltrating historically white, male institutions. Throughout the novel, the radicals and the reformers criticize and dismiss one another, but through their final convergence at the National (to witness the premiere of Amma’s play), the novel highlights that both sides have their role to play in social change, and that neither path is more noble or worthy than the other.
The National Theatre Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
Amma then spent decades on the fringe, a renegade lobbing hand grenades at the establishment that excluded her
until the mainstream began to absorb what was once radical and she found herself hopeful of enjoying it
which only happened when the first female artistic director assumed the helm of the National three years ago
after so long hearing a polite no from her predecessors,
they decided they needed to start their own theatre company to have careers as actors, because neither was prepared to betray their politics to find jobs
or shut up to keep them
it seemed the obvious way forward
they scribbled ideas for names on hard toilet paper snaffled from the loo
Bush Women Theatre Company best captured their intentions
they would be a voice in theatre where there was silence
black and Asian women’s stories would get out there
they would create theatre on their own terms
it became the company’s motto
On Our Own Terms
or Not At All.
it was so odd seeing a stage full of black women tonight, all of them as dark or darker than her, a first, although rather than feel validated, she felt slightly embarrassed
if only the play was about the first black woman prime minister of Britain, or a Nobel prize-winner for science, or a self-made billionaire, someone who represented legitimate success at the highest levels, instead of lesbian warriors strutting around and falling for each other
during the interval at the bar she noticed a few members of the white audience looking at her different from when they’d all arrived in the lobby earlier, much more friendly, as if she was somehow reflected in the play they were watching and because they approved of the play, they approved of her
there were also more black women in the audience than she’d seen at any other play at the National
at the interval she studied them with their extravagant head-ties, chunky earrings the size of African sculptures, voodoo-type necklaces of beads, bones, leather pouches containing spells (probably), metal bangles as thick as wrist weights, silver rings so large their wingspan spread over several fingers
she kept getting the black sisterhood nod, as if the play somehow connected them together
The National Theatre Symbol Timeline in Girl, Woman, Other
