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Tooting-born, Catford-bred playwright Ryan Calais Cameron is a massive rising star. That’s not a subjective assessment: just take a look at the man’s diary.
‘People used to call my agent and she’d say: Ryan isn’t free for 18 months,’ he says. ‘And that was a deterrent. Now they’re like: cool, can we get him signed up now for next year? So now we have to have deeper conversations about what I take on, because there are whole chunks of the next four, five years that are no longer my own.’
As writer of two hit West End plays, under commission to create three TV shows, he’s not saying this to boast – in fact, it takes me the best part of our 45 minute chat to get him to explain how mad his life has become. But the truth is, things have gotten so serious that he has to leave London and its temptations to get on top of all the writing he’s agreed to.
‘I have a place at an apartment in Rotterdam overlooking the harbour,’ he explains. ‘Downstairs you've got the spa, you've got the sauna, you've got really good food around the town. But it's also really, really boring. It means I can immerse myself in my writing. I just can’t do that if I’m easily accessible.’
Much of this work is for screen: he’s written for shows including Queenie and Boarders, and now things are really taking off for him, he’s developing two shows of his own with Netflix and Channel 4.
The reason this is happening for him can squarely be traced back to his 2021 play For Black Boys who have Considered Suicide when the Hue Gets Too Heavy. A sort of existential celebration of Black male vulnerability in which a group of young men spill their darkest secrets in hilarious, disturbing, heartbreaking fashion, it opened at the tiny New Diorama Theatre and snowballed in popularity from there, with a stint at the Royal Court followed by two full runs in the West End.
Today we’re meeting backstage at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue to discuss its follow up, Retrograde. The virtual opposite of For Black Boys…, it’s a snappy 90-minute period thriller about a young Sidney Poitier’s first forays into Red Scare-era Hollywood. Set in a paranoid America mistrustful of Black people and anyone who seems even slightly leftwing (sound familiar?) it began life at the respected Kiln Theatre in Kilburn, and now it’s in the West End, giving Cameron West End hit number two.
Retrograde is so different to For Black Boys that it feels like a reaction against it – is it?
‘Not at all! We actually did the first reading of it in 2018, before For Black Boys. It's just really weird watching it last night and seeing how relevant it is. It's more relevant now than it was in ’18. Even in 2023 it was like, oh, America's boring again. Now there's a level of hysteria there again, you know?’
Was following up the success of For Black Boys daunting?
‘When we put Retrograde on in 2023 I think it was the most anxiety I've ever had in my whole entire life. You know, literally going, am I crazy for putting this on? I've got an audience now who know me for For Black Boys and I’ve made something totally different. And you know, when I first penned this, I hadn't even been to New York. You get those voices in your head like, you're an outsider, you're a fraud, you shouldn't be writing this kind of stuff.’
I got into theatre because it was more accessible than finding three million pounds to make a TV show
Have you always been a Sidney Poitier fan?
‘I properly came across Sidney when Obama gave him an award [the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009]. I started reading about him and there was one article where he was talking to Oprah about the Red Scare and McCarthyism and how it affected him and how he was blacklisted from Hollywood, or he thought he was. And I was like: this sounds like a thriller. But surely someone's written it? I looked it up and no one had. The idea wouldn't leave me alone. I entered a playwriting competition to win some money to take time out to be able to research, and I said to myself “if I win then I’ll write the play”. When I won and I was like, okay, I gotta write this play now.’
To the uninitiated, why was he such an important figure? How did he go so much further than Black actors before him?
‘He was born in Barbados. And being born outside of Jim Crow [segregation] was massive. For a lot of African Americans of his generation being Black and being a man was almost a huge contradiction – like how can I be a man if I’ve constantly got this knee on my neck? Whereas Sidney was born in a place where everybody was Black, race was not a massive thing for him, so he was able to establish himself as a man: these are the things that I stand for; these are the things that I don’t stand for; you can't talk to me this way; you can’t disrespect me. And then you put this guy in America and it’s like a chemical reaction. Somebody who didn’t really care about what you thought about him or his ancestry or his ethnicity. A man that was going to achieve his goals by any means necessary.’
A lot of young playwrights get a bit of attention and disappear into TV. Is that going to happen to you? Or does the fact you’ve had actual hit plays mean you’ll stay with us?
‘A bit of both! TV was my first love, even before theatre. I got into theatre because it was more accessible than being given three million pounds to make a TV show, do you know what I mean? What I want is a really healthy artistic career. I wanna be able to have the artistic freedom to articulate the things that are on my mind.’
A lot has been made about you being a Black playwright, as opposed to just a playwright. Are you happy to have your ethnicity constantly referenced?
‘I feel like it is what it is for journalists. For me there’s never been a time in my career where I’ve gone: oh, I’m the only Black person, I’m the first Black person. That’s not the ambition. My ambition is to be able to put work out there my contemporaries like. But in the last 18 months we've had Shifters, Red Pitch, and Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s Death of England trilogy all in the West End. I couldn’t have imagined that five years ago.’
For Black Boys was a very emotional work – did you find people wanted to have big chats with you about it?
‘Ha! I don’t think anybody ever just said: oh, that was really good, mate. There were emails and talks and I was being invited to do a lot of kind of deeply intellectual studies on things and I’m like: oh man, I respect it, but I am just a playwright. I don’t have the answers to any of this stuff. I am one of those boys.’
Why did you give yourself the name Calais?
‘I think it’s really sexy, man. It sounds good, it’s part of the mystique, part of the brand!’
Retrograde is at the Apollo Theatre, until Jun 14. Buy tickets here.
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