I was interested in how power operates within certain spaces. Whether working in schools or in theatre, I observed who is allowed complexity, who is required to simplify themselves, and how identity is shaped through the act of being seen.

From my own experience of growing up as the only Black child in a white suburb, to listening to white women and Black boys express views filled with misogynoir, I became increasingly interested in the particular space Black women are expected to occupy. At its centre, The Cold Room holds space for Black women; their voices, their histories and their refusal to remain invisible.

It is always nerve-racking to open your work up to an audience. With The Cold Room, that felt particularly important because its themes live in me and in the experiences of so many other Black women and girls. The history is long. In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered the speech that became known as “Ain’t I a Woman?” More than a century later, bell hooks examined the intersections of racism and sexism in her seminal 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.

Watching The Cold Room in performance made me realise that the piece was nuanced, raw and, most importantly, that its conversation needed to reach a wider audience.