{"id":58739,"date":"2019-08-25T02:02:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-25T02:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58739"},"modified":"2022-12-16T21:34:56","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T21:34:56","slug":"jackie-kay-on-putting-her-adoption-on-stage-and-getting-a-pay-rise-for-her-successor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58739","title":{"rendered":"Jackie Kay on putting her adoption on stage \u2013 and getting a pay rise for her successor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jackie Kay on putting her adoption on stage \u2013 and getting a pay rise for her successor<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2019-08-07<\/p>\n

Peter Ross<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\n\u2018I think it\u2019s really scandalous to pay your national poet five grand\u2019 \u2026 Kay<\/a> in Glasgow<\/a>. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

When Scotland\u2019s national poet<\/a> travelled to Nigeria to ask her birth father if he ever thought of her, he said no. Does it hurt to put this on stage? And should the next \u2018makar<\/a>\u2019 be on \u00a330,000?<\/em><\/p>\n

Before Jackie Kay<\/a> was a writer, she was a character. \u201cWhen you\u2019re adopted,\u201d she explains over lunch in a Glasgow<\/a> cafe, \u201cyou come with a story.\u201d Her adoptive mother Helen \u2013 fascinated by her possible origins \u2013 encouraged young Kay to speculate about her birth parents. It was known that her father was Nigerian, her mother a white woman from the Scottish Highlands<\/a>. Were they, perhaps, torn apart by racial prejudice in 1960s Scotland<\/a>?<\/p>\n

There was tragic romance to that idea, and a fairytale quality in the notion that Kay, offspring of forbidden love, should come to live with John and Helen, two people who had plenty of love \u2013 not to mention songs and stories \u2013 to share. Little wonder that Kay has come to think of herself as a creature not only of genetics but of the imagination. As Scotland\u2019s national poet writes in her beautiful memoir Red Dust Road<\/em><\/a>, she is \u201cpart fable, part porridge\u201d.<\/p>\n

Red Dust Road<\/em>, adapted for the stage by Tanika Gupta<\/a>, is to be presented at the Edinburgh international festival<\/a>. I catch some scenes in a National Theatre of Scotland<\/a> rehearsal room: Stefan Adegbola<\/a> and Sasha Frost<\/a> are running through the moment when Kay, visiting Nigeria, meets her birth father Jonathan. \u201cDid you ever think of me in all those years?\u201d Frost asks. \u201cNo, of course not,\u201d Adegbola replies. \u201cWhy would I? It was a long time ago.\u201d This exchange feels brutal, but Kay looks on impassive. She lived it…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Scotland\u2019s national poet travelled to Nigeria to ask her birth father if he ever thought of her, he said no. Does it hurt to put this on stage? And should the next \u2018makar\u2019 be on \u00a330,000?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,395,13743,8,10],"tags":[1587,30152,153,2103],"class_list":["post-58739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-autobiography","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-jackie-kay","tag-peter-ross","tag-scotland","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64075,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58739\/revisions\/64075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}