NATASHA Marshall presents her debut one-woman show, Half Breed, a partly autobiographical dark comedy about faith in yourself, on tour at the York Theatre Royal Studio on Tuesday and Wednesday night.

Growing up mixed race in the West Country, Natasha moved to London to attend East15 Acting School, where she discovered her love for writing poetry, graduating in 2012.

Now she has created Half Breed, which began life as a poem at spoken-word nights and has been developed into a play through Talawa Theatre Company and Soho Theatre’s Writers’ Lab, premiered at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe with its theme of finding your voice, fighting for what you want and being fearless in who you are.

Natasha's 2018 tour brings Half Breed to a wider audience. "This tour is so important and vital for me," she says. "Growing up in a rural area and being in the minority, there was a lot of casual everyday racism that I learnt to accept as normal. I’ll be taking Half Breed home, and that’s more than a performance, it's a turning point for me on a personal level."

In Half Breed's storyline, Jazmin feels different. "She doesn’t want to stay in the village. She doesn’t want to have a baby. She doesn’t want to laugh at racist jokes in the local pub. She’s got to get out," says Natasha. "And when her gran signs her up for a drama school audition in London without telling her, she says, ‘My brain is just confused as confused as my skin. Should I stay here? Or should I try to move to London? Stay. Go. Stay. Go. Stay. Go. Stay…’."

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"Most importantly it's about hope," says Natasha Marshall, of her one-woman show Half Breed. Picture: Richard Davenport

Summing up Half Breed, Natasha says: "It's a one-woman show, where I play all the characters, that looks at racism and identity: a coming-of-age play about growing up in a rural area and standing up for yourself. It's loosely based on my own life.

Most importantly it's about hope. I really wanted it to be hopeful for people watching it because it gave me a lot of hope at the point when I was writing it. Also, I wanted to highlight a different perspective on what it is to be black and to show my experiences of being half-black."

How would she describe Jazmin. "She's really indecisive. She doesn't really know who she is, so she's trying to find all that out. She's very confused about her identity, being half-black and half-white but growing up in a white area," she says.

"There's a lot of me in the character but the reason I did it as loosely-based is because it's not so exposing for myself. Also it means you can play around with things more, building up the play to what you want and need it to be. So there are parts of me in it but I also have a sister who is mixed race and there are some of her experiences and characteristics in there too."

Natasha's original inspiration for Half Breed was a desire to wanted to write a really strong female character "because I started out as an actress seeing roles in which the female always needed to be saved".

York Press:

"It's a positive thing, opening people's minds to different perspectives and helping them feel less alone," says Natasha Marshall

"I wanted to write about a female character who could save herself. Not a lot was happening for me as an actress anyway and I was thinking about leaving the industry but I was determined not to give up on my dream without really trying one last time," she says. "That's when I wrote Half Breed and just put my all into it. There was also a frustration about not seeing enough diversity on stage."

Does Natasha believe the small-town racial isolation felt by Jazmin is commonplace? "Speaking from my experience, it's not like I was rocking back and forth in my room going 'Life is so hard'. I just didn't know any different," she says. "I'm from a really small Wiltshire village and I was around a lot of casual racism, with people saying things like 'Those people are like that' and 'These people are coming into our country taking our jobs'.

"It's a bit weird and you don't know whether to confront it because then you might seem over-sensitive and they could say 'But we're not attacking you personally'. To be honest, it's still the same because I went back recently and I encountered similar things. I've also had people message me who are from around the same area saying they left for the same reason and they left recently, so it's still current. And my sister still lives there so I hear about it first-hand."

Performing Half Breed around the country will be a positive experience, a chance to share her experiences, suggests Natasha. "What I'm so buzzing about is taking the play to places that need it the most, such as the smaller towns and venues, because if a play like this had been on in my village when I was growing up it would literally have changed my life," she says.

"It would have meant a lot to me to learn that I wasn't alone instead of having to move to London to find that out. It's important to take it to places where we don't have this discussion because in areas like the one I grew up in things like this aren't talked about, they're swept under the rug. It's a positive thing, opening people's minds to different perspectives and helping them feel less alone."

Natasha Marshall performs Half Breed, York Theatre Royal Studio, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.45pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk