Casting Announced for My White Best Friend (and Other Letters Left Unsaid)

Adelayo Adedayo, Inès De Clercq, Anne-Marie Duff, Paapa Essiedu, Martina Laird, Alex Lawther, Neil Maskell, Sinead Matthews, Lucian Msamati, Rosamund Pike and Danielle Vitalis have been cast in the online festival My White Best Friend (and Other Letters Left Unsaid), which runs every evening Monday 13 July – Friday 17 July 2020 at 6.30pm.

The performers reading letters that say the unsaid will be announced at noon on the day of each performance and will see the letters for the first time in front of a live online audience that evening. With two letters read live each night, audiences will only discover which of the actors is reading which letters during the live event. The recipients of the letters will remain anonymous.

Writer Rachel De-Lahay and director Milli Bhatia commissioned Amma Asante, Elliot Barnes-Worrell, Ryan Calais Cameron, Clint Dyer, Afua Hirsch, Yasmin Joseph, Tife Kusoro, Lettie Precious, Campbell X and Rachael Young to write for this new version of the My White Best Friend (and Other Letters Left Unsaid) series.

Produced by Tobi Kyeremateng with support from the Royal Court Theatre the online festival runs for one week with a pre-recorded letter written by Rachel De-Lahay, performed by an actor, which begins each night before the other two letters are read live.

Alongside the readings, there will be pre-recorded music from DJ DLK every night.

De-Lahay’s provocative act of letter writing, which sparked the festival, engages with racial tensions, microaggressions and emotional labour, asking the privileged to step back to allow the rest of the room to take up space.

Originally featured as part of Black Lives Black Words at the Bush Theatre, and after two runs at The Bunker Theatre, My White Best Friend (and Other Letters Left Unsaid) is moving online for the first time in collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre.

Like every incarnation of the festival My White Best Friend (and Other Letters Left Unsaid), everyone will be part of the live experience and bear witness to the highs, the lows and the uncomfortable truths.

Tickets are limited https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/mywhitebestfriend/

Half of the tickets for every performance are available for free through the Black Ticket Project https://twitter.com/BTProject_?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

For the full press release, click here.