Tanya Moodie, Joseph Marcell

Wiletta Mayer is a talented African-American actress who has spent a lifetime building a career in the theatre. Now she is on Broadway, rehearsing Chaos in Belleville, an anti-lynching play with a white director. As rehearsals progress, Wiletta finds it increasingly difficult to relate to the part she is playing. Will she be able to overcome her misgivings and let the show go on?

Peppered with knowing humour and richly drawn characters, this vivid depiction of backstage life smartly satirises the white dominated theatre scene of the fifties.

Tanya Moodie reunites with director Laurence Boswell following the Ustinov Studio’s phenomenal production of Intimate Apparel, for which she was nominated in 2014 for Olivier and Evening Standard Awards. The same year she was nominated for a WhatsonStage Best Actress Award for Fences in which she starred with Lenny Henry. She is currently playing Gertrude in the RSC’s Hamlet.

Alice Childress was an extraordinary trailblazer in the history of American Theatre, the first African- American woman to win an OBIE award (for her production of Trouble in Mind in1956), to direct off Broadway and to have a play professionally produced in New York.

Distinguished RSC actor Joseph Marcell is best known for his role in the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He starred in Breakfast with Mugabe in the Ustinov Studio in 2008 and recently played the title role in King Lear for Shakespeare’s Globe.