Chris Pounds: What brought you to Northampton and what do you do ?

Weekes Baptiste: The question you are asking me, it’s a very, very funny question in the sense that you are trying to incorporate theatre and performance. It’s a very, odd thing because I’ve written a play, its called The Uprising. And The Uprising talks about how I came to Northampton, and it talks about the things that were happening on The Mounts. So this is really good. The question allows everything to fall into place.

It’s all related. I basically came, like most young children, I came to Northampton because my parents came here. My mum and dad came to England, to Northampton, the first Windrush generation I think, I’m not too sure. And they settled in Arthur Street, which is Kingsthorpe Hollow. And in 1970 my brother and I, arrived here- in England, and of course, you know, the usual thing happened. We got here, and it was a bit of a culture shock. We went to St. Paul’s school. From that, we then went to Bethney, and then to Kings Park Public School. But one of the things that I also talked about in The Uprising was when you are within that small group of young Black people, there was also a great deal of Black people here, but the

ones that we knew were kind of few and far between. We as a family, didn’t do a lot of going out because to be honest, we didn’t know where to go until very much like now, absolutely spot on like now, summer came, and we found that what we were sent to do was to go to places like various local shops, and I was quite happy buying stuff from the local shops, all that was great. But then my mum said, would be nice if we actually had some Caribbean food? I would love it if we were to magically find some photographs, because on The Mounts, opposite the police station, there used to be, all that area, used to be shops. And one of those shops was a Caribbean shop. The shopkeepers names fails me , but he was an Indian guy who sold Caribbean food. Things like your plantain, your yam, your, your sweet potatoes, your bananas, and your salt fish and everything else. So we would go there every now and then to try and get the food from the guy. I don’t know if most people will remember this, but at the very bottom of The Mounts there used to be a laundrette. We would go there with our clothes, put everything in and then go shopping, and then come back and pick it up and go home. So again, those places existed, and they were kind of catering for the likes of us. All the

other families who had come to England, and lived in Kingsthorpe Hollow used The Mounts as the place where we could get our provisions because no one else sold it. I mean, back then, there was Tesco, and they didn’t sell that stuff. And there is probably a good reason why they didn’t sell it, because there was no market for it. But that’s where we went. The Mounts resonates a lot of good memories because that’s where the swimming baths are, and we would go swimming there from school. I remember vividly where we lived, in Grenada where I was born, swimming was one of the most essential things because you have to learn to swim, because you are surrounded by water. So of course, going to the Mounts swimming pool would be something that we did. We enjoyed the water. We would go swimming most weekends. One of the lovely things that we would do, is go to the chip shop and getting your chips and your bottle of lemonade, and you’d walk home with the lads, eating fish and chips on the way as you went along. The Mounts does resonate because people knew it for what it had and what it provided. Now, to look at it, you would think none of that was there.

Chris Pounds: And you would be in town once you were at The Mounts ?

Weekes Baptiste: Oh, yes. That’s where the town began. There’s got to be a photograph of it somewhere.

Chris Pounds: There were the old factories on the Mounts as well. It was knocked down. They were redeveloping it at that time in the early seventies

Weekes Baptiste: We sometimes played there at that time, it was very dangerous. We shouldn’t have done it.

Chris Pounds: There was a lot happening on the Racecourse in those days.

Weekes Baptiste: There was a lot going on there. I noticed there were lots of other Black kids there. It wasn’t talked about, no one said, by the way, l’ll see you at the Racecourse. It was just spontaneous, like there was some kind of hidden radar. We would go there, everybody else is there, people that you didn’t know, you would meet people from the other Caribbean islands. Most of the people there were Jamaicans, but then you had the ones who from St. Kitts, and so you got to know all the other kids your

age. It was more a meeting place. All the lads, all the kids, all the people would be where the swings are, just sitting there reading, playing music, under the trees out of the shade. Played cricket, played football, drinking, eating food, and, and speaking. We were able to be ourselves, use the language that we wanted to use and speak how we wanted to speak and listen to the music that everybody else was listening to. So, in my play called The Uprising, it was the music that kind of brought us together more than anything else. We tapping into the reggae scene that was happening. The music brought us together more than anything else. Back in those days, kung fu was a big thing, everybody wanted to be Bruce Lee. It was great because it kind of dealt with fashion and music and style. Afro came in, and then the dreadlocks came in. Everybody wanted to wear the Afro. fashions. Then it was the Rastafarian thing as Bob Marley came in, and then everybody wanted to do that. When you went to university, when, when you went to college [THE ART COLLEGE ?] which is on Johnson Avenue [?] you found yourself there, and what happened on the Racecourse evolved into what it became.

Chris Pounds: And the social activity on the Racecourse lead somehow to the Matta Fancanta Movement ?

Weekes Baptiste: Yes. The Matta Fancanta only came in- because winter came. So we needed somewhere to go in the winter, and as a result of that, that’ s how the Matta Fancanta Movement came about, the squatting of the old Salvation Army building. Anglia TV came down to film that, that you can get on YouTube. The guys squatted it and the council got involved, and

they said what can we do to help you? it just boomed after that. I wasn’t that involved with it because I was working fulltime. I got involved when I could, but to be honest, I wasn’t that involved with it. Other people who saw it as their full-time job kept it going and supported it.

In 24 Guildhall Road- there is a big exhibition about the Matta Fancanta Movement. It’s in the Northamptonshire Black History room at the Arts Collective. There are posters and literature, and there is a film you can watch. Everything is on TV. Most of the Manta Fancanta material is there in the collection, and there is also some stuff at the County Records

Office. I made a short film in the early 80’s about the lads at the Racecourse all the activities that went on there, which is part of the exhibition. If I knew, God damn it, if you knew what was going to happen, I think I would have done a lot more!

Russ Hickman: Is that on YouTube?

Weekes Baptiste: No, I want to put it on YouTube. It’s about 25 minutes.

Chris Pounds; What was your employment at that time?

Weekes Baptiste: I was a stage technician at the Royal Theatre. It was a very gruelling job. It’s a 9 am start, and you’d go until 11:00 pm when a show was on. You guys came to the theatre 7:30 pm, show, boom, off we go. Finish at 10:00. Put everything away. Repeat the same thing again the following day.

Chris Pounds: And were you writing? Were you being creative at that time?

Weekes Baptiste: That’s a lovely question. I was, and the reason why I became creative is because after the first two or three years of the theatre - this is where it gets a bit political. I found that other people who were

with me, I just found that they were being elevated. You know, they were moving on. Or they were given responsibilities or given better positions. And I thought, well, I’m never going to be a stage manager, I’m never going be a production manager, I’m never going be the artistic director. But what I did find myself enjoying was listening to the plays and listening to the text. Whether it was David Hare, whether it was Shakespeare, whether it was whoever. I just found myself listening, and I really loved the fact that every show was different. You would come in and watch the show one night, next night a different show. Audiences responded differently, and that fascinated me. So I ended up starting to write plays, starting to write scripts. I was in a place where drama was being manufactured, and I knew how to navigate my way around the script, and what you have to do to try and make it work. You guys must know a play called An Inspector Calls ?

Chris Pounds: J. B. Priestley. From Bradford. Very unfashionable. I love him.

Weekes Baptiste: Oh my God, when I saw that, that blew me away. I thought Wow! Wow. Nothing happens in the play. You just got people talking round a table,

and it’s funny enough, everybody’s connected to that girl, to Daisy Renton, and I thought, I want to do something like that. That was the spark, actually. I want to do something as powerful as that. You don’t need special effects and all that kind of stuff, whether it was David Hare, whether it was Shakespeare, whether it was whoever.

Chris Pounds: Tell us about The Playhouse Theatre in the Mounts, on Clare Street, that was a special place. It had a brilliant bar. You worked at the Playhouse ?

Weekes Baptiste: I worked there, yeah. I did lots. I did productions . When I first got to the Playhouse Theatre, to be honest with you, I actually thought that it was a professional theatre company. I didn’t realize it was amateur, it was all, done by volunteers and we chose the plays. It was no different to what you guys are doing here. It really is, a group of people who all together. I helped with their sets, with their set design. They always wanted people to help out, get the set in, bring the set down, put the whole thing together. So I would be there to help with that I helped work in the shows as well, whether it meant do the lighting cues or the sound cues. I’d be up on what they call the Crow’s Nest, doing the sound there, helping with rehearsals

as well. If anybody was short of a costume, l’d be there. And I was very lucky to, stage and direct a play

there. It was a very British play. Oh, this is absolutely appalling. I can’t remember what it was called.

Chris Pounds : But not one of your plays ?

Weekes Baptiste: No. I did, produce and direct one of my plays there,it was called The Swan in the Attic. I did that production there, very much in the style of J.B Priestley. It was about the things that could have happened. There’s a lovely scene at the end where the family have a dinner party, lots of things are said that really shouldn’t have been said after the drinks had been out. But when we started the next scene again, no one had drank, so nothing was said. But it was too late. You knew what people were thinking. Like most new plays it takes time to evolve. You’ve got to work on it. You can’t just put it on and say that’s it, it doesn’t work like that. It’s always a trial run and you rewrite all the time. I always look at it as like moving into a new house. When you move into a new house, oh, that’s lovely. But then you, go, um, I think I’d prefer that to be red, not yellow. You know, it’s a process that you work on and you evolve these things all the time. That

scene didn’t quite work, or that needs to be explained a little bit more. You can’t put it to bed. You, need to revisit these things every so often. But the funny thing is, and Russ and you both mentioned this as well, about getting people a story about the Mounts and getting people to talk about what their experience are like and whether or not it was a welcoming thing or if it felt distant or whatever, and I really don’t want to go on too much, but let me just explain to you that I’ve written a play, which talks about all of these things I called it 1948, set just after the war, a young woman called Cynthia, who was in the area, a Black woman, who after the war left London and came to live in Northampton in St. Paul’s Road —a true story. She went to work at the Barratt’s Shoe Factory. She married a white guy, had mixed race children and it just talks about them, what life was like for them. It is performed by two actors, playing removal men doing a house clearance. Cynthia has passed on. They are putting stuff away. And as they open the boxes they learn the story of the family who lived in this house, and the audience get to know about Cynthia Watts, who moved in after the war. And as they are going through her stuff we are seeing

projected images of who she was and what the area looked like- when she moved in, how the house had changed, how the kids had changed, and how her life had changed. It became a little bit political and racist as she got older in the 60’s and 70s, and that gives the drama a different dynamic. She remained in that house until her death. It was just like what is happening now, when the kids grow up and the parents start to go. Can you deal with it? So I did deal with that. And you’ve got these two competing stories.

Chris Pounds: Has it been performed ?

Weekes Baptiste: No. We did a rehearsal reading of it. All you need is a bare stage with just two guys and you have a, box- a trunk and two chairs, and a back projection screen. I enjoyed writing that.

Chris Pounds: Do you perform yourself ?

Weekes Baptiste: I perform if I have to. My one-man show The Uprising, I perform that. That’s easy for me to perform because I’m just sitting, talking as we discussed earlier, about how I got to Northampton. The places I went to, the Racecourse, the MFM, the areas that I grew up in, and then I discuss that, and the music scene. The title is from a Bob Marley album

called The Uprising. The flip side of the story is that it would be no different if you going from Northampton to live in Grenada or Jamaica as nine-year-old, and you just drive out of your area, and all of a sudden there’s Heads from Kingsthorpe. Hello? What are you lot doing here? It has the same resonance, but it won’t resonate in the same way, as a white guy going to live in the West Indies. Seeing other white guys from England there, and then they just relate to each other.

Chris Pounds: That’s a very personal story ?

Weekes Baptiste: Oh, it is. So I perform that, and I enjoy performing that because there’s music- in between the conversation, the music from the time. The writing, the filmmaking, and the performing is something that I do.

Chris Pounds: Do you remember Henry Bird [artist] and his wife Freda Jackson [renowned local actress ] ?

Weekes Baptiste: I do. Do you know what’s even more weird? There is a woman who I worked with at the

Playhouse called Denise. She told me, You know, my bottom is on the safety curtain [ at the Royal Theatre] She went to Henry Bird’s studio and posed for him, and there she is now, on the safety curtain, a

woman with red hair holding up something – that’s me ! There is film footage of him that you can see. I think another TV company came down and filmed him as he came to the stage door. We put the safety curtain up. And that was up in sections. I hate to say this, but I filmed all of that. The film is lost. It’s not great. I’m not being funny right ? As a 20-year, when you’re doing these things, you don’t think that this might be special. No one says that to you, God, honestly, it’s lost forever. But the reason I filmed the assembly of the safety curtain, all the pictures were in sections, there was scaffolding. We then wallpapered the whole thing. That goes there, and then they traced that bit out. It was all pasted together, and I filmed the lot.