writer, researcher, londoner

‘Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave, Written by Herself’ (2023) is a new play inspired by a rare 1723 letter from an anonymous enslaved Virginian to the "Lord arch Bishop of London" (the document is housed at Lambeth Palace Library). Both fictional slave narrative and ghost story, 'Incidents' (2023) brings into the light, 300 years after a daring epistolary act (if caught, he/she could "swing upon the gallass tree", writes the anonymous Virginian) the life of an enslaved mulatto whose journey (in the play) spans key imperial sites: Virginia, Barbados and London. 'Incidents' (2023) offers a window, via story, into the history of both enslavement and resistance across the global landscape that was the British Transatlantic Slave Empire in the long eighteenth century. Drawing on in-depth archival research and historical imagination, the play explores, among other themes: slave literacy, resistance and rebellion and, of course, religion. 'Incidents' (2023) is also a tribute, by way of its attempt to restore personhood to, not only the anonymous author of one of the earliest known pleas for freedom in the British Empire, but the enslaved mulatto's African mother, who stands in for a collective: the silent millions whose humanity was confiscated during the transatlantic slavery era but who left no trace in the archives. Staged readings of 'Incidents' (2023) will begin in February 2023 at London locations including Lambeth Palace Library on 15 March 2023 (click here for tickets)

More 'Incidents' coming soon....