If you’re watching Tambo & Bones for the very first time theatre director Matthew Xia advises the following: “You’ve got to strap in, go on the ride, get off at the end and ask ‘what does that mean?’.”

Once might not be enough. “One thing I’ve learned about this show is that it really does benefit from a second watch, or even a third in some cases. Once people know how it ends, they are keen to go back to the start and watch that journey reveal itself,” he says.
Tambo & Bones – which plays Leeds Playhouse from 14-24 May – is written by US spoken word poet and playwright Dave Harris and described as “a blistering, darkly comic, satire that fuses hip-hop and theatre to explore the intersection between race, capitalism and performance.”

So what exactly is Tambo & Bones about? “What it’s about and what happens – are two different things,” says Xia, aka DJ Excalibah.

Xia was the first DJ to join BBC 1Xtra in 2001 after being recruited from his award-winning radio show on Juice FM and known for promoting UK rappers. He’s also a multi award-winning theatre director and artistic director of Actors Touring Company.

But back to Tambo & Bones … “The first thing it’s about is the commodification of Black performance,” Xia says. “The first act is a minstrel show but they are not blacked up, they aren’t in black face make -up. They are Black performers – clowns – and they have found themselves trapped in a minstrel show. They want to escape because it’s fake, it’s full of stereotypes and cliches.

“They break out of this construct and in the second act they become global hip-hop megastars. The third act is an Afro-fusion lecture and celebration. In a speech that Tambo gives in the third act, he says ‘How can anyone know true freedom when they are always being watched’.

“That’s what I think the play is about at its heart. How can Black people truly feel free under constant observation, when their behaviour, mannerisms, gestures, they way they walk, talk, breathe, is constantly being assessed, judged, critiqued and prohibited?

“More recently I’ve come to realise that this play is also very much about division, fascism and racial violence.”
Tambo & Bones, he continues, is a play that doesn’t function without the audience at its heart . “It’s about Black performance and those who are watching that performance, and what transactionally happens between the audience and the performers,” he says.

“The audience interaction is fascinating to watch, to see how people react and what people do at the end of the play… at the end we encourage audiences to stay in the auditorium for 15 minutes, just to reflect on what has happened before them.

“It is such a bold ending from the playwright. It means the really complex conversations about the play have to happen in the bar after the show. Or on the way home. Or in the auditorium in that 15-minute window we’ve created for people to reflect, hold each other, bond, think, laugh, laugh again and possibly cry.”

He says the thing that has got the most backlash isn’t the act three reveal but the prolific use of the N-word. “However if you listen to a lot of hip-hop artists that word is used in exactly the same way it’s used in Tambo & Bones – often to mean people, brother or friend. It’s kind of a catch-all term. It’s not a word I use myself when talking with people or about people. However I can’t say that I haven’t got it in about 6,000 references on my record shelves.”

Tambo & Bones is, he says, a great night out. “You’ve got humour, music, politics, playfulness, audience interaction, singalongs, dance-alongside, and call and response. In that 1 hour 25 minutes, you experience a rip-roaring rollercoaster of a ride. It’s full of surprises, twists and turns.

“It’s gloriously complex in a way that never feels complex until you start thinking about it at the culmination of the play. As with all art, what Tambo & Bones really presents. – through its satirical form – is a mirror that I really hope offers an exhilarating, provocative and transformative night at the theatre.”

Tambo & Bones is an Actors Touring Company, Stratford East and Royal & Derngate co- production in association with Leeds Playhouse, Belgrade Theatre and Liverpool Everyman.

Tambo & Bones: Courtyard Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, 14-24 May.
Leedsplayhouse.org.uk / 0113 213 7700