About eight years ago I was in New York and I saw a production of a brilliant play called Yellowman at the Manhattan theatre club written and performed by a black writer, Dael Orlandersmith. It's a play about racism, but not in the obvious way. It's set in the 80s in South Carolina and is basically a love story between a young black woman who is dark skinned and her childhood friend who is of black parentage but very light skinned, hence the title "Yellowman", a phrase often aimed at mixed-race people.
I'd never heard of Orlandersmith before and was utterly blown away. The style of the writing was very surreal and poetic; it just jumped out at me. But the acting was absolutely brilliant. There was only Orlandersmith and another actor, Howard W Overshown, playing all the roles. The play was written very tight, so if one actor had screwed up then the other would fall apart. It was a joy to see them trusting each other and finding all of the play's nuances. Obviously it's a piece of fiction, but I felt a lot of Orlandersmith's life was in that play and that she was not only incredibly brave to write about it, but also to perform in the piece herself. That really made it more intense and more believable. It was one of the few times in theatre where I instinctively gave a standing ovation, I didn't even wait to see what everyone else was doing, and that's never happened to me before.
Roy Williams's latest play, Sucker Punch, is at the Royal Court, London SW1 until 31 July
