Black Rage: Diasporic Empathy and Ritual in debbie tucker green’s hang

Abstract

In hang (2015), debbie tucker green presents the audience with an uncomfortably familiar ritual of racial injustice. The first half of the play speaks to the history and persistence of institutional racism in the British criminal justice system. However, it is only in the play’s final moments that tucker green’s intentions to explore themes of racial violence within a broader historical and geographical context become clear. This chapter argues that through her employment of the emotional energy of rage and her trademark ‘liminal dramaturgy’ (Balme 1999) tucker green presents a transatlantic and transhistorical meditation on racism, gender and criminal (in)justice in hang. In doing so, the chapter reveals how the play empathetically speaks to African American political and dramatic traditions while affirming black women’s experiences and, to quote the political slogan, emphasizing that ‘Black Lives Matter’.