Michael Abbensetts - Blue Plaque awareness project

Aim

Crowdfunding for Blue Plaque awareness and legacy celebration - publication and event on Saturday 29 July 2023 at the Kiln Theatre, London

The family of Michael Abbensetts are seeking support for to raise awareness of his work and to create a lasting legacy.

This is to ensure more writers and other creatives are given opportunities to represent communities fairly and with dignity and the role of popular culture in leading to a more positive representation of people in the national conscious. As was the situation in the late 1970s when enlightened individuals such as the Peter Ansorge and the BBC thought that a Black writer should represent a Black community in a popular TV format that enabled their voice to be heard.

We are crowdfunding to deepen the legacy of an individual - a British Writer - within the widest community possible, and ask questions, for example, about popular British TV with Black people in it.

Thank you for supporting the installation and celebration of this commemorative Blue Plaque. The family will be the guarantor of the commissioning and production and unveiling of the plaque if necessary, then the crowdfunding will be to support the extended commemorative and legacy event so that the symbolism of the blue plaque may have a purpose beyond the wall of the property where he lived in Kilburn. The commemorative gathering will then be invited (literally down the road from his place) to his beloved Kiln Theatre (was Tricycle Theatre) that will host an extended commemorative and legacy event.

The crowdfunding will also contribute to a commemorative limited edition publication of recently uncovered material (that will become The Michael Abbensetts Archive) and commemorative reflections of individuals; followed by a gathering of theatre and TV creatives, practitioners and professionals to give their respect, a chance to reflect and consolidate about the impact and lasting legacy.

Born in Guyana in 1938 , Michael Abbensetts migrated to the UK in 1963 and became a British citizen in 1974. He is credited as being the first black British playwright to be commissioned by the BBC to write a series . Empire Road ( 1978-79), which despite its success , ran on the BBC for only two seasons , and was the first Black drama series to be screened on British television . Nothing of its kind has been screened since then. 

Abbensetts was born in Georgetown into a middle class Guyanese family of mixed heritage that included African and European antecedents. His father , Neville John Abbensetts , was a doctor, his mother Elaine was a homemaker.  He attended Queens College Secondary School ( 1952-56 ) before moving to Canada, where he went to Stanstead College in Quebec and later studied at St George Williams University, Montreal (1960-61 ). Inspired by a performance he saw in Canada of Look Back in Anger, by John Osborne , he decided to become a playwright . 

When he arrived in Britain in the early 60s there weren't many black playwrights. Ambitious and mindful that his decision to become a writer and not a doctor or lawyer had disappointed his father , he was determined to get his plays put on . His first play, Sweet Talk was staged at the Royal Court in 1973. Abbensetts had worked briefly at the Tower of London as a security guard and translated his experiences into his play , The Museum Attendant , which had both black and white characters . Critics recognising that he ' could write white as well as black characters ' began to take notice of his work.

Abbensetts was asked by a young producer, Peter Ansorge, then beginning his career at the BBC, if he had any ideas for a TV series. He came up with Empire Road, which was set in a fictional location based on his experience of living in Birmingham. The lead characters, played by Norman Beaton (Guyanese) and Corinne Skinner Carter (Trinidadian) were styled on an uncle and his wife.

 Although it was considered a Black version of the long running British Soap Coronation Street, Empire Road with its fully black cast was making a statement about the lack of Black people on British TV. 

One of his most successful TV dramas, Black Christmas (1977) advanced questions of belonging and redefining cultural space by exploring the consequence of mental health as experienced by black people trying to adapt to life in Britain.  In writing this drama, Abbensetts once said he “wanted to deal with the fact that there are some Black people in our society that we don’t seem to talk about.”

Michael died in 2016, at the age of 78. This year marks his 85th birthday. The commemoration of a Nubian Jak Blue Plaque is a timely tribute to Michael Abbensetts for his outstanding contribution to British Drama, and literary representation of Black British life by an A -list of actors such as Norman Beaton, Carmen Monroe, Janet Bartley, Corinne Skinner Carter, Joseph Marcell, Wayne Laryea, Don Warrington, Rudolf Walker among many more, and inspiring younger generations of Black actors and playwrights.

The family of Michael Abbensetts will be the guarantor of the commissioning and production and unveiling of the plaque if necessary, yet have a more ambitious aim to fund a commemorative limited edition publication and a follow up event for black theatre and TV creatives, practitioners and professional, to raise awareness of Michael's work and the cause of ensuring more writers are given opportunities to represent communities fairly and with dignity. We are crowdfunding to create a deeper legacy of a British writer within the widest community. Thank you for supporting the installation and celebration of this commemorative Blue Plaque.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 2nd July 2023