Summary

Amma is walking through downtown London on the morning her play, The Last Amazon of Dahomey, is opening at the National. She thinks back on her earlier years in theater, when she spent decades on the fringe protesting the exclusionary establishment which has recently begun to embrace what was once radical. Amma is anxious about the reception of this new production and misses her friend Dominique, with whom she ran an indie theatre company for many years before Dominique moved to America. Amma and Dominique bonded over their shared feminism and negative experiences as black women in theater. Amma and Dominique are also both lesbians, though they have never been romantically involved with each other. Amma and Dominique started their indie theater company so that they could make art on their own terms, without betraying their politics. In those years, Amma lived in a...