Description
Set in 1792, amongst the merchant princes and cut-throat backstreets of Liverpool, in the Palace of Westminster in London and aboard the Blackamoor Jenny - a guineaman making its sixth "African voyage" to stock its foetid hold with human beings - Gabriel Gbadamosi's play Abolition unfolds a dark, inglorious undercurrent of 'Enlightenment' Britain. Arresting and deeply troubling, Abolition gives us the voices of people caught up in the original sin of slavery and fighting to survive it, profit from it, ignore it, or end it. Underpinned by impeccable research and uncanny fidelity to the language of its time, the play depicts a society both conflicted and very comfortable with the trade in African bodies. In Parliament, there is debate over moral hygiene and economic turbulence in the ship of state, whilst at sea the Blackamoor Jenny struggles with storms and depraved acts, driven on by the ever-urgent imperatives of money.
About the Author
Gabriel Gbadamosi is an Irish and Nigerian poet, playwright and critic. His London novel Vauxhall (Telegram, 2013) won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. He was the AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow at the Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, University of London, in British, European and African performance; a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University; and Writer in Residence at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. His plays include Stop and Search (Arcola Theatre), Eshu's Faust (Jesus College, Cambridge), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubuhne, Berlin), Shango (DNA, Amsterdam) and The Long, Hot Summer of '76 (BBC Radio 3), which won the first Richard Imison Award. He presented BBC Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme Night Waves and is the founding editor of WritersMosaic, a Royal Literary Fund initiative promoting black, Asian and minority ethnic writers.
Reviews
"A powerful, complex play that doesn't make any compromises with the reader ... The setting, politics and especially the language are utterly convincing." - Prof. Nigel Leask, University of Glasgow; "Haunting, poetic and brilliantly researched." - S. I. Martin; "A voyage of the damned, burning with fiery poetry." - Jack Shepherd
Book Information
ISBN 9781905233670
Author Gabriel Gbadamosi
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Flipped Eye Publishing Limited
Publisher Flipped Eye Publishing Limited
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 11mm
About the Author
Gabriel Gbadamosi is an Irish and Nigerian poet, playwright and critic. His London novel Vauxhall (Telegram, 2013) won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. He was the AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow at the Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, University of London, in British, European and African performance; a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University; and Writer in Residence at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. His plays include Stop and Search (Arcola Theatre), Eshu's Faust (Jesus College, Cambridge), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubuhne, Berlin), Shango (DNA, Amsterdam) and The Long, Hot Summer of '76 (BBC Radio 3), which won the first Richard Imison Award. He presented BBC Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme Night Waves and is the founding editor of WritersMosaic, a Royal Literary Fund initiative promoting black, Asian and minority ethnic writers.
Reviews
"A powerful, complex play that doesn't make any compromises with the reader ... The setting, politics and especially the language are utterly convincing." - Prof. Nigel Leask, University of Glasgow; "Haunting, poetic and brilliantly researched." - S. I. Martin; "A voyage of the damned, burning with fiery poetry." - Jack Shepherd
Book Information
ISBN 9781905233670
Author Gabriel Gbadamosi
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Flipped Eye Publishing Limited
Publisher Flipped Eye Publishing Limited
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 11mm
