Safe Space

by Jamie Bogyo

seen at the Minerva Theatre Chichester on 25 October 2026

Roy Alexander Weise directs Jamie Bogyo (the playwright) as Connor, Ernest Kingsley Jr as Isaiah, Céline Buckens as Annabelle, Bola Akeju as Stacy and Ivan Opik as Omar in Safe Space, a play using fictional characters to examine the pressure from Yale students to rename Calhoun College since John C Calhoun, a prominent Senator and Vice President after whom it was named, had supported slavery. (The college was renamed in 2017.)

Connor, a mildly autistic white student, and Isaiah, a Black student, share a room in Calhoun College and also belong to the Whiffenpoofs, Yale's prestigious a cappella singing group. Their friendship, such as it is, arises from this common interest, but on other matters, such as the issue of renaming the college, they disagree with one another, Connor intensely against and Isaiah quietly for. In the meantime Annabelle, Connor's girlfriend, feels she is mentoring the newcomer Stacy and is then shocked to find that Stacy has successfully won the presidency of the Women's Leadership club that she was also standing for, and that the freshman student is not a naive Black newcomer to Yale but on the contrary a savvy and ruthless operator.

In a series of scenes the tensions between these four and the more overtly activist Omar (who has prepared the latest petition for renaming the college) are revealed, though the cultural references lying behind the scenario are occasionally obscure, requiring an attentive reading of the program notes to become more clear. This means that the tone of the play veers between an earnest investigation of the political questions and a not always convincing series of scenes which could more easily belong in a campus comedy. The performances are good, and the a cappella singing excellent, but the characters are perhaps too flat to bear the weight of the issues.

The staging, designed by Khadija Raza, impressively manages a retractable platform stage which is obscured by a painted screen when exterior scenes are required, but in which various rooms are set for the interior scenes: Connor and Isaiah's room; Omar's room; the anteroom of the Principal's office.