Day at the Racists

A Day at the Racists is a stunning new piece of political theatre from award-winning playwright Anders Lustgarten: a devastatingly timely examination of the rise of the BNP in London, published to coincide with the world premiere at the Finborough Theatre, March 2010. Set in the same constituency that BNP leader Nick Griffin is to stand for in the forthcoming General Election, A Day at the Racists is a uniquely brave and perceptive piece of political theatre. It both attempts to understand why people might be drawn to the BNP and diagnoses the deeper cause of that attraction: the political abandonment and betrayal of the working class by New Labour. The plot is as follows: Pete Case used to be something - a leading Labour Party organiser in the local car factories. Now he struggles to get by as a decorator as immigrant workers undercut his best mate's firm, his son Mark can't get a job or onto the housing list and nobody, from his Labour MP to his granddaughter's teacher, seems to care. Then Pete finds unexpected hope: Gina is young, mixed race and standing for Parliament on a platform of helping the local community. She is standing for the British National Party. As Pete's rage and despair gradually overcome his longstanding loathing of the BNP, he is drawn into the world of Gina's campaign and finds himself entangled in a nightmare of political machinations that pit his closest relationships - son, best mate, lover - against his longest-held beliefs and newfound aims.

Anders Lustgarten is Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre, where his first two plays: The Insurgents (2007) and Enduring Freedom (2008) were produced. Other work includes The Punishment Stories, (shortlisted for the 2007 Verity Bargate Award), and an adaptation of Slawomir Mrozek's The Police (BAC 2007). Anders is a political activist, has taught on Death Row, been arrested by the Turkish secret police, and holds a PhD in Chinese politics from the Univ of California.