Why Black Boys Theatre Club Fills Me With Hope

I’m running back and forward from the bar fetching cups of water at the Noël Coward Theatre for a group of teenagers waiting to Dracula starring Cynthia Erivo. 

It’s not the typical West End crowd. Producer Adam Kenwright has unlocked tickets for a variety of groups that may never otherwise be able attend. 

For many of the teenage lads here, however, it’s their first time inside a theatre at all.

The trip has been organised as part of an education matinee: youth charity Go Live, Erivo’s former school and in conjunction with Munya Chawawa, the comedian and satirist better known for viral sketches. But for the past year he has quietly been bringing groups of young Black boys to the theatre through his initiative, the Black Boys Theatre Club. 

After the show there is a Q&A with the resident director — and, crucially, a non negotiable trip to Nando’s.

Chawawa first publicly announced the project last October with a promotional video featuring actors including Jordan Stephens, Kedar Williams-Stirling and Mohamed Elsandel. The aim is simple but ambitious: to open up the world of theatre to a generation of young Black boys who rarely see themselves reflected in its audiences, or on its stages.

The project now has backing from major institutions including the National Theatre, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and the Bush Theatre. But its origins are personal.

Chawawa, who was born in Zimbabwe and moved to Norfolk at 11, discovered theatre relatively late. When he did, he realised how out of place he felt in those spaces.

“For me, Black Boys Theatre Club focuses on Black boys because they’re quite isolated from theatre,” he tells me. “There are cultural barriers and financial barriers.”

Those financial barriers are real. West End tickets can stretch into the hundreds — top price seats for Dracula are £225. (Prices start at £50 and there is a weekly lottery for a limited number of £30 tickets). 

Still, theatre audiences in Britain remain overwhelmingly white, and attending regularly is still largely a middle-class habit.

Yet Chawawa believes live theatre offers something increasingly rare.

“It’s one of the few places where you have face-to-face human interaction,” he says. “You experience a whole spectrum of human emotion — point blank. Not through a screen, not through digital means or VR headsets, but person to person.”

It got me thinking about a video that Reese Witherspoon recently posted a video encouraging young people to rethink the way they approach ambition. Instead of asking what their dream job is, she suggested, they should start by asking what they’re actually talented at. The advice struck a chord online — and it feels relevant here. Talent rarely reveals itself in a vacuum. Young people can’t pursue what they’re good at if they’ve never been exposed to it in the first place.

After the show, the boys stay behind for a Q&A with the resident director Amber Ruby and members of the technical team. We talk about lighting rigs, rehearsal processes and the many routes into the industry.

It’s the sort of backstage demystification that can quietly shift how a young audience imagines the arts.

“Black Boys Theatre Club aims to let boys know they’re allowed to enjoy theatre,” Chawawa says. “They have permission to.”

And at a time when the pressures on young people are perhaps greater than they have been at any time since the second world war, that sense of permission matters. 

However, a 2025 census by Major Players showed that Black men and women were on average the lowest paid across the creative industries, in both permanent salaries and freelance day rates. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation had increased in the last 12 months, but is still below the UK national average of 18.3%. 

Exposure, he hopes, might plant a seed — not only for future audiences but for future storytellers. Some might end up on stage, others behind it.

“What we’re trying to do,” he says, “is plant the seed of them becoming storytellers themselves one day. That’s how humans have always connected — through stories.”

For me, it cemented the fact that have a storytelling crisis in our society. 

So what next?

“More bums on seats,” he says, laughing. But he’s serious about scale: more school partnerships, more shows, and eventually workshops where the boys can try acting, directing or stage management themselves. 

It isn’t hard to create an environment within a building that would be welcoming to groups that are historically shut off from engagement with the arts. Theatre will be the poorer unless this changes. 

For Munya, the long-term goal is simple: a theatre industry — and audience — that looks a little more like the world outside its doors.

And perhaps, for a few of the boys leaving this afternoon a new talent or passion they didn’t yet know they had. 

Say it with me: The work is never done.