DECOLONISATION: NOT JUST A BUZZWORD…
Directed by Kristine Landon-Smith
This evolving headphone verbatim show was part of the inaugural SOAS Festival of Ideas: Decolonising Knowledge.
24TH October 5-7pm | FREE Online Performance
A documentary theatre show presenting personal testimonies around the need to decolonise public spaces, the curriculum and institutional memory ... something that has become more urgent since the Black Lives Matter activism events this summer.
Last year, Bhuchar Boulevard was invited for a residency at SOAS to examine individual and institutional responses to decolonisation through a new piece of work that looked at how SOAS was challenging its founding imperial purpose and delivering its vision to decolonise the education sector.
Decolonisation: not just a buzzword... a headphone verbatim show emerged from capturing campus conversations that wove the compelling narratives shared by interviewees and recorded by the creative team. The stories revealed deeply personal and political lived experiences that go beyond behind media headlines of wanting to remove statues, repatriate artefacts and diversify reading lists.
The result is a social portrait documentary theatre exploring some of the urgent questions of our time through actor centred naturalistic and realistic performances presenting a combination of authenticity and mischief to the audience in order to ‘speak truth to power’.
‘When you give people history, you give them political value. You’re saying, You matter. The world was constructed because you were in it and people like you.’
Verbatim theatre brings to the stage compelling stories into one conversation and invites us to listen deeply. Exploring themes that range from representation, reparation to reflexivity in pedagogy, the voices from the SOAS community are striving for transformative action.
