Riding Lights to Hit West End with Slave Trade Production

|PIC1|The Riding Lights Theatre Company will hit London's West End next week with its brand new production African Snow in collaboration with York Theatre Royal.

The production - the first such collaboration between the two theatre companies - brings John Newton, the former slave trader who made a dramatic conversion to Christ, face to face with Olaudah Equiano, a former slave and leading black figure in the British movement to abolish the slave trade.

African Snow has already received rave reviews since its opening performance at York Theatre Royal three weeks ago, The Times saying it demonstrated "undeniable disturbing power" and the BBC calling it an "intense and powerfully moving new drama".

Paul Burbridge, Artistic Director at Riding Lights Theatre, said he wanted the production to get people thinking about how to tackle modern forms of slavery like sex trafficking and economic injustice.

"We didn't want to be responsible for some kind of historical piece that would just commemorate the past but produce a play that would have real relevance and challenge the extent to which slavery is still a huge and dreadful problem in the world today in all kinds of new and modern disguises," he told Christian Today.

He added: "[The play] does ask very big questions of how we move away or move on from the legacy of these things which we still see in our society. There are still mistrustful attitudes between people of different races and different churches and that is core to the whole play."

The production gives an insight into the abolition movement from a uniquely black perspective, with only one white actor in the entire ensemble.

"From the outset, I wanted the story to be told from essentially a black perspective...just to make sure that the filter by which a British audience was looking at this story was very firmly an African one," said Burbridge.

The play has been commissioned by Church Mission Society, which was founded in 1799 by representatives of the abolitionist movement including William Wilberforce, and deliberately coincides with the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act this year.

Lead actor Israel Oyelumade, who plays Equiano in the production, told Christian Today that Equiano was the "first Afro-European role model because he came from Africa to the UK and won the heart of the people".

He said he hoped Equiano would become a great black role model to black people, but to the younger generations in particular. "We mustn't forget we have some amazing heroes he said," he said.

The play has also garnered the support of the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who said it had successfully transformed "bygone history into a pulsating human story".

"It could be yours. It could be mine," he said. "We begin to understand the past when we recognise that it is about real human beings like us. That way we better understand not only where we have come from but what we are doing now and where we are heading."

African Snow will run at the West End's Trafalgar Studios from Tuesday 24 April until Saturday 5 May before continuing on its nationwide tour.

For dates and more details, go to www.ridinglights.org