How do you change the world? That’s the question at the heart of Dipo Baruwa-Etti’s new play. He and his young protagonist are hardly the first to ask it. As the play itself makes clear, 16-year-old Toye – a talented pianist and gifted student – is the latest in a long line of people who have tried to make their mark. But what stops this from becoming a glib meditation on a well-worn subject is its ability to capture the messy complexities of activism, social change and personal ambition.
When we first meet him, Toye (Samuel Tracy) is utterly focused on his immediate goal: winning a music scholarship to a private school. But while revising, he starts to notice the absence of his own history and culture in the curriculum. As a corrective, he starts a lunchtime club to teach Black British history to his classmates, supported by best friends Remi (Princess Khumalo) and Asha (Sara Hazemi). Initially, it seems like this might be a simple story of awakening and inspiration. But Half-Empty Glasses is more complicated than that.
