Adelle Stripe's Novel Revives Playwright Andrea Dunbar

A new novel brings the life of groundbreaking playwright Andrea Dunbar back into focus. Adelle Stripe's 'Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile,' published in French by Les Éditions du Typhon, chronicles the story of the working-class writer who found fame as a teenager.

Stripe, a journalist and first-time novelist, mixes her narration with verbatim quotes from Dunbar. The book revives the prodigy of Thatcher-era theatre. Dunbar was just 19 years old in March 1980 when she became the youngest playwright to be staged at London's prestigious Royal Court Theatre. This was ten months after Margaret Thatcher's election.

From School Assignment to Stage

Andrea Dunbar's writing talent emerged early under unlikely circumstances. Punished by her home economics teacher for not bringing the right ingredients, the 15-year-old Dunbar was set a written assignment. She produced a hilarious indictment of petty-bourgeois kitchen spirit. This piece became her first play, The Arbor, which she wrote as an English homework assignment. Her drama teacher encouraged her to continue.

The title The Arbor refers to the wasteland near the council house at 26 Brafferton Arbor in Buttershaw, Bradford, where Dunbar lived with her parents and seven siblings. The estate housed people who once worked in textile factories before mass unemployment. "People lived in the city centre before that," Dunbar recounted, according to the source. "The city demolished their houses after the war. People defecated in a rubbish heap, used ashes to cover their excrement."

Depicting a World of Dereliction

Dunbar's work strictly observes the unity of place, staying in Buttershaw, and reflects its atmosphere of abandonment. "The ground is always wet," she described. "And it rains almost every day. You can't wear anything nice. You feel far from everything. Miles from the centre of Bradford." Her plays depict the consequences of this environment.

The Arbor stages the sexual escapades of a teenager who ends up pregnant by a Pakistani man within a racist environment. Her later play, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, which was adapted for film with a screenplay by Dunbar, is also set in Buttershaw.

A Voice That Transcended Misery

The source describes Stripe's novel as striking in its realism but not devoid of a certain tenderness. Its style is compared to the films of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh's High Hopes. By giving flesh to the book's heroine, Stripe lets readers hear Andrea Dunbar's proletarian wit-her colorful and biting observations that redeem the miserabilism assigned by her condition.

Dunbar's voice was sharp and authentic. Yet her life was tragically short. A single mother and alcoholic, she collapsed in a pub and died from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 29.

The French edition of the novel, translated by Claire Charrier, has been released with the following publication details:

The book is published under the title Dents noires et sourire radieux.