‘Notting Hill Carnival is in my bones’: Yasmin Joseph on her exciting new play J’Ouvert

Ask Yasmin Joseph about her childhood, and her mind races to Notting Hill Carnival. The London-born author and playwright remembers it as a sweltering cornucopia of colour and excitement, which spread right from her home to the streets. She recalls meticulously helping her mother – who was working at a youth club on Harrow Road – with the costumes; their bath was filled with tie-dyed T-shirts to sell. “I would wear my costume on the road and [my mum would] put me to sleep on top of the speaker and I’d literally just be there vibrating,” says the 29-year-old. “It feels in my bones in that way.”

Joseph’s own Carnival journey – as well as the wider Black-British experience – forms the basis of her new play J’Ouvert, being staged as part of Sonia Friedman’s Re:Emerge season at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre. This is a production full of vim: jewels glisten, music blasts. Balancing wit with pathos, it’s not only a decidedly British story, but also reflective of a wider carnival culture, with the show’s origins rooted in Joseph’s time spent at the Labour Day parade while living in New York.

At the heart of J’Ouvert are three young women – Black-British Nadine and Jade, and Indian Nisha – navigating the clashes of tradition and modernity, freedom and objectification at Notting Hill Carnival in 2017. The show deftly encapsulates both the magnitude of the event – for which 2.5 million people annually pour into the narrow west London streets – and the pressure-cooker environment it incubates.