The Kings and Queens of Notting Dale
An excerpt and introduction
By Roy Williams
AFTER A FIRE BROKE OUT at Grenfell Tower, West London, in the early morning hours of June 14, 2017, killing seventy-two people, the playwright Roy Williams knew he would write about the tragedy. In the following journal entry, he contemplates the lives lost and notices again the power of community in the neighborhood where the fire burned: North Kensington, a part of London that has grappled with racial injustice, senseless violence, and displacement through the decades. This entry is reflective, too, of themes in Williams’s forthcoming play, The Kings and Queens of Notting Dale, a multigenerational drama that follows a number of working-class families from the 1950s through the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. His journal entry and an excerpt of the play are printed here for the first time.
—THE EDITORS
