'I wrote this out of the pain I've been through'

Ryan Calais Cameron talks to Nick Clark about his West End debut and wanting to do black men justice on stage

- Nick Clark

RYAN Calais Cameron was eating lunch in a Chinese restaurant last month when he found out that his play had been nominated for an Olivier award. “I was like, ‘No!’ in the middle of the restaurant. Everyone was looking at me and I was like, ‘Oliviers! Oliviers!’ They didn’t know what I was talking about.”

For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy was shaping up to be one of the hot tickets in the West End even before it was nominated for Best Play for its run at the Royal Court Theatre last year. “Now,” the writer told his cast, who had broken rehearsals to celebrate the news, “there’s a premium on the show. Back to work…”

For Black Boys features six young black men who meet in a group therapy session. Over the course of the play, they discuss and argue about the familial and societal problems they face. It is beautifully written and as well as exploring dark issues, at times it is joyous.

When we meet in a performance space in Commercial Road, Calais Cameron tells me the play has been with him for more than a decade. And it has its roots in Catford, south-east London, where he grew up, the eldest of six.

“To me it was more than an area, it was a culture, a community. So, I have a particular connection to a certain walk of life: lower, disenfranchised working-class people,” he says. After returning from university, he could take a “bird’s-eye view” on the area and realised there were huge mental health issues he hadn’t considered before.

“You just think, ‘Oh that guy’s a little bit loopy.’ Actually, this person is going through psychosis, he’s going through depression, or is going through anxiety.”