The return of pioneering playwright Winsome Pinnock: ‘New plays are always a risk’

Winsome Pinnock: 'I was interested in this country’s untold history' - (Matt Roberts)

If a soundbite is to cling to you for two decades, there are certainly worse ones to have. It’s been 23 years since Winsome Pinnock was described as “the godmother of Black British playwrights” by The Guardian, and the phrase can be found in nearly every profile that’s been written about her since. “I don’t really think about it,” the 64-year-old dramatist tells me now. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

Pinnock was only at the start of her forties when that epithet first made it to print, just a few years after she made her name with the 1988 drama Leave Taking – the first play written by a Black British woman to be produced by the National Theatre. But the intervening years have only ossified her standing. She has won a raft of accolades, including the George Devine Award; Leave Talking is now taught in schools as a GCSE text; and younger playwrights such as Chinonyerem Odimba and Natasha Gordon have cited her as influences.