Playwright Charlene James: We must stop saying FGM is a cultural thing: it’s child abuse

A new play seeks to confront the horrors of female genital mutilation in England, as writer Charlene James tells Rosamund Urwin
Knowledge is power: playwright Charlene James wanted to get inside the minds of those who practise FGM
Matt Writtle
Rosamund Urwin18 May 2016

When the playwright Charlene James decided to write about female genital mutilation, her aim was to avoid demonising both those who want it for their daughters and those who actually perform it. “Automatically, you feel ‘these people are barbaric’ and... it’s easy to go ‘the cutter is a monster’,” she says. “But a play couldn’t just be that. You have to understand that a lot of it comes from love and protection of their daughters.”

The 33-year-old wanted to get inside these people’s heads: “It’s the psyche of ‘why would I, as a mother, do that to my child?’ You find they often know it’s horrific but it’s out of duty: ‘My child is going to be ostracised without it.’ The resistance comes where people who’ve practised it think the Western world is demonising them.”

Her play Cuttin’ It — a joint production between the Young Vic and the Royal Court — is about two teenagers living in England, both originally from Somalia, with different attitudes to FGM. The idea came to James after watching a Leyla Hussein documentary. When she researched FGM she found articles saying it was happening in Britain: “That was my starting point.”

‘For the parent, there comes a point where it’s “I’m losing my child to the Western world”. They cling to tradition’

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Though she hasn’t been to Somalia, she was working as a teaching assistant in Tower Hamlets (she left in January as her writing was taking off), where she met women from the diaspora community. She saw a split between the generations: “The older generation, maybe their English isn’t great, but their children are fluent and they’re thriving. For the parent, there comes a point where it’s ‘I’m losing my child to the Western world’, so they cling to traditions.”

However, the play also makes the case that we shouldn’t allow our concerns about cultural sensitivities to prevent us confronting FGM: “It’s the same as honour killings — [we act as though it’s] their problem not ours. But we must stop saying it’s a cultural thing: it’s child abuse.”

Increasingly now FGM is being “medicalised”. James says we should be aiming for eradication of FGM, not medicalisation. I note that some campaigners feel there’s a link with the growth in genital surgery in the West. James stops me: “Which is out of choice. If you’re a woman and you consent to that, that’s great.”

Did she worry about writing this, as someone outside the community it affects? “I saw footage of the cuttings and things like that don’t leave your head. When it affects you that much, I don’t think it matters that I’ve not been cut. As a writer, I want to make unheard voices heard.”

James, who grew up in Birmingham but now lives in Lewisham with her older sister, trained as an actress. She didn’t come from a thespian dynasty — her father worked in a factory and is now a care worker, while her mother is a superannuation officer — but her parents were supportive. It was her mother who signed James up for Stage2, a Birmingham youth theatre. “She was probably sick of me saying, ‘I’m going to be an actress’.”

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In her second year of drama school she began to write monologues to perform in class. That developed into writing plays and, after leaving drama school, James got a place on the young writers’ programme at the Royal Court.

She feels there is a long way to go on diversity in the arts: “As a black woman I feel the brunt of that. Sometimes my voice isn’t heard enough and I don’t see myself represented.”

The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, James hates the term BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic). “It puts you in a box and says: ‘This is what you are’. Because I’ve written about [a race-related] issue, I become this black female writer who can only write about these issues. I want these issues to be heard but I’m not just black. I’m not just a woman. There’s so much more to me.”

Black actors, she feels, get typecast as “drug dealers or someone getting stabbed” and recalls being made to play as a nurse repeatedly. So she is also writing a play for a group of ethnic minority Rada students, Bricks and Pieces: “It’s about having black characters who aren’t stereotypes — there’s a geek and an airy-fairy girl.”

She feels these students are experiencing the same problems she did 10 years ago. Being typecast? She shakes her head. “Sometimes it’s the opposite: you’re in there playing parts that when you leave you won’t be offered. There’s no acknowledgement of who you are and what you bring to a role. So if we did Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, there’s never that conversation of ‘What would happen if Nora were black?’”

‘Recently I went to a play where it was £90 for the stalls. If we want a diverse audience, how do we do that if it’s not accessible?’

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James actually auditioned three times for Rada but didn’t get in. She feels drama schools need to do more to ensure their intake is more diverse. “They’ll say: ‘We only had five people of colour audition’. So what are you going to do about it? Do you do outreach work? [The students] will ultimately be our actors of the future.” When she was acting she’d often find herself the only black woman in an audition: “I’d think ‘Am I just here to tick a box?’”

It isn’t just about race, though. She worries that acting and directing will become the preserve of the wealthy. “University fees are extortionate. I can’t imagine sitting down and saying to my mum, ‘Can you help me pay £9,000 a year to go to drama school?’”

James spends many evenings watching plays and likes to scan the audience. “There’s no diversity at all. I always go, ‘How many non-white people under 60 are there?’” Ticket prices are part of the problem. “Recently I went to a play where it was £90 for the stalls. If we want a diverse audience, how do we do that if it’s not accessible?”

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She feels lucky that she had a teacher who encouraged her to go to the theatre. “Friends I grew up with have never been. We need more dialogue between theatres and schools so it doesn’t become ‘We went to see that boring Hamlet, now I hate the theatre’. It needs to be more than Shakespeare, or set texts.”

James appreciates playwrights who keep it tight. Cuttin’ It is just over an hour with no interval. “I look at an audience and think: ‘They’ve had enough’,” she laughs. “Rarely does a play need to be three hours.”

Cuttin’ It is at the Young Vic (020 7922 2922, youngvic.org), May 20-June 11; the Royal Court, SW1 (020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com), June 23-July 13, and The Yard, E9 (020 7100 1975, theyardtheatre.co.uk), July 26-30

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