With a running time of just over an hour, My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored is a dense and intense exploration of the Black British experience. The premise of an innocent young man being roughly stopped by the police speaks to Black Lives Matter, yet the central confrontation, between the young man and his teacher who failed to protect him, ranges across a series of power dynamics.

^{Pictures: Ant Robling}

While the anger of both characters is sometimes overwhelming, Nana-Kofi Kufuor’s script skilfully shifts between complex ideas. Echoing the structure of the classical Athenian tragic agon, or central debate, the balance of authority is constantly in flux. Touching on gender conflict, the battle between assimilation and retaining cultural identity, even challenging the myths of Afro-Caribbean cultural continuity, the arguments twist and curl as the two characters try to understand, or condemn, each other.

Brutal and ferocious, My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored challenges liberal pieties and, through two restless and forceful performances, conjures a violence of language that captures a racial turmoil that is ultimately a reflection of an oppressive racist society. No easy conclusions, no answers, only passion and its crafted articulation: this is a show that matches the urgency of its story with a blistering dramaturgy. 

Reviewed at Summerhall as part of Edinburgh Fringe.