The Immortality of Black Womanhood: Review of Family Tree

Everyone should know that March is Women’s History Month, with the 8th of the month celebrating International Women’s Day. The significance of this month is not lost on us at BLK BRIT. As a Black, female-led and founded organisation, we see the importance of this month to celebrate and promote Black womanhood. The ATC Theatre has provided a beautiful opportunity for us to do this through their newest production, Family Tree, written by the acclaimed Mojisola Adebayo and directed by the brilliant Matthew Zia.

Production photo: Helen Murray. (L-R) Aminita Francis, Keziah Joseph, Mofetoluwa Akande, Aimée Powell

Source: ATCTheatre.com

The play is a remembrance and celebration of one of the most remarkable, but largely unknown person in medical history: Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta was a mother, a wife, a daughter, a carer, who died in 1951 from cervical cancer. The healthcare offered to Black individuals at the time was demoralising and over-invasive highlighted by the fact that during Henrietta’s treatment, doctors took samples of her cells from her cervix without her permission. Research undertaken on these cells was like nothing they’d ever seen before; they were immortal. These cells were named ‘HeLa’ the immortal cell line, and have since been used to make some of the most important medical breakthroughs ever known, including treatments for HIV and cancer, the Polio Vaccine, the Human Genome Project, and even the COVID-19 vaccination. However, they were extracted without Henrietta’s knowledge or consent with her family only discovering the HeLa line came from Henrietta in 1975 - 24 years after her death.

Family Tree tells a story of denial, erasure, and abuse through an incredibly moving and poetic performance with the outstanding Aminita Francis starring as Henrietta herself. When I sat down in the theatre, I was expecting a hospital or medical setting, but I was greeted by the sub-Sahara. This is because the play does not look at the treatment of Henrietta and her exploitation for the ‘progression’ of medicine as a unique case; it is historical and ancestral. Without spoiling too much, the audience is introduced to the stories of Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy, enslaved women of the Antebellum South, as well as the stories of Black NHS nurses on the front-line of the COVID-19 pandemic. It tells a story of sacrifice, invisibility, and marginalisation; roles synonymous with Black womanhood.

Production Photo: Helen Murray

Mofetoluwa Akande as ‘Oshun’ Yoruba goddess of love, sensuality, and femininity

However, it does not merely look at the mistreatment and oppression of Black women, but looks to celebrate ‘Black life that never dies’. Not only through the progresses of medical science and the immortality of HeLa cells, but through the foreverness of Black womanhood. Something we will forever be interconnected with; something that survived slavery, colonisation, and years of being beaten by whiteness. The play ends with a toast, led by Henrietta which ends ‘As long as there is water, as long as there are trees, as long as there is air to breathe, we live on!’.

Family Tree is touring with ATC Theatre from March to June 2023, beginning in Coventry, and coming to Edinburgh, Brixton, Glasgow, Liverpool, Keswick, Plymouth, Sheffield, Oxford, Nottingham, Ipswich, and finally, Bristol. You can get your tickets here.