Spotlight on Walter Tull, hero who fought prejudice on the pitch and in the trenches

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/jan/13/walter-tull-black-war-hero

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Following the extraordinary success of War Horse, the novel by Michael Morpurgo that inspired the National Theatre and then Steven Spielberg, another forgotten tale from the first world war is now set to find a wider audience.

Next month, nearly a century after the great conflict began, Bolton's Octagon Theatre will mount a play telling the story of Walter Tull, one of Britain's first black footballers, who went on to die on the Somme as the first black army officer. Cited for bravery under fire, Tull did not receive the posthumous recognition many now believe he deserves.

Tull, who was born in Folkestone, Kent, in 1888, is already the subject of a campaign to secure him a Military Cross andhis story was a key influence on Morpurgo's latest novel, A Medal for Leroy.

"I was inspired by Walter Tull's courage, from his childhood in an orphanage, to being abused from the terraces, and then his eagerness to join up and do his bit, his courage under fire and his heroic death in France," Morpurgo has explained. He wrote his novel about prejudice and secrets, dedicated to Tull's memory, with the explicit hope it would encourage the authorities to mark the soldier's life with a medal, or a statue in the capital. "I simply felt more people should know about this remarkable man, that they would be as inspired by him as I was," said Morpurgo.

But for the acclaimed director David Thacker, Tull has been an important figure for more than a decade. Thacker came across his story when he noticed Tull had played for Northampton Town, his boyhood football club. The director began work on a film script with biographer Phil Vasili, who was already researching Tull's life. "We even had lead roles cast, but it was very hard to get interest. Now the current struggle against racism in football means the relevance of his life is even clearer."

Vasili and Thacker found that for a while he had lived in the town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, unusually sharing a house with a young, white landlady. "We couldn't find out much about Annie Williams, his landlady, and we would love to know more," said Thacker, who recently returned to his theatrical roots as artistic director of the Octagon. "We realised they would both have been quite radical to live like this, so we have filled out the character of Annie in the play and have made her a suffragette."

Tull signed for Tottenham Hotspur in 1909, but suffered racial abuse on the pitch. One report on a match against Bristol City stated: "Let me tell those Bristol hooligans that Tull is so clean in mind and method as to be a model for all white men who play football."

That match forms a scene in the play. "Tull is a great Edwardian," Thacker said. "After Spurs he was recruited to Northampton Town by Herbert Chapman, the manager who went on to Arsenal. Northampton is still proud of Tull. They have a statue of him at their ground and were the first club to respond to our letter asking for support for the show."

When war broke out Tull signed up immediately and in May 1917, despite regulations that forbade a person of colour becoming an infantry officer, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was killed in March 1918 while leading his men forward at the battle of Bapaume. His body was never found.

Thacker, like Morpurgo, feels that as a black man Tull has had to leap higher hurdles to gain recognition. It is a phenomenon understood by Dominique Moore, who played black nurse Mary Seacole in the BBC children's series Horrible Histories and is about to play the US civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks. "Seacole just wanted to care for people, so it is a shame people question her medical training now. It is completely irrelevant when she is one of the few black woman figures we know about. Why don't we celebrate the names we know?"

The song Moore wrote and sang about the Crimea, as Seacole, in the style of Beyoncé, became an internet hit. "For me, it was great I had the chance to play someone who was both real and a role model, like Walter Tull was. It is important for schoolchildren to know that there were black people in Britain before today. Otherwise it is disheartening when you are a black child."

The Bolton production, which opens on 21 February, will use no props, no scenery and no costumes. "It will be entirely down to the skill of the eight actors we have cast," said Thacker, who has collaborated with movement director Lesley Hutchison as well as Vasili to create the show. "They are going to metamorphose between being little children, footballers, old people and men and women."