'Representing Slavery in Contemporary Black British Women’s Plays: Race, Responsibility, Reparations' by Lynette Goddard, Professor of Black Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Chaired by Dr Tolu Onabolu, Teaching Fellow, Edinburgh College of Art.

This talk explores how slavery’s past is represented in contemporary Black British women’s plays and performances. I outline the prevalence of plays depicting slavery in 2020 to consider how and why slavery is represented today before moving on to look at examples of plays that illustrate how Black women playwrights connect the past to the present by exploring important historical incidents with reference to contemporary concerns. I argue that contemporary Black British women playwrights bear witness to past atrocities and traumas while empowering Black women in their retellings of these stories in the present.

Lynette Goddard is Professor of Black Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. Their teaching and research is focused on contemporary Black British playwriting with a focus on the intersectional politics of race, gender, and sexuality. Their book publications include Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance (2007), Contemporary Black British Playwrights: Margins to Mainstream (2015) and Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (2017). They are currently working on two research projects about Black British theatre directors’ processes and productions and a project about how race is portrayed in contemporary plays through such themes as race, immigration and asylum, race, Black communities and the police, race and religion, race and the legacies of slavery, and race and the rise of right-wing politicians.

The Edinburgh Race Lectures are a series of events organised in collaboration with RACE.ED

RACE.ED is a cross-university network concerned with race, racialization and decolonial studies from a multidisciplinary perspective.

RACE.ED showcases excellence in teaching, research and knowledge, exchange, impact (KEI) in race and decolonial studies at The University of Edinburgh.

The work of the network seeks to support an understanding of the persistence of race and racialization as both historical projects and dynamic phenomenon that shape the present.