Output details

Inkle and Yarico

Commissioning Theatre: Ipswich Wolsey, 2009

Research imperative: to investigate a suitable theatre aesthetic for the dramatisation of issues surrounding reparations for the slave trade, without using, and potentially reinforcing, stereotypical images of slavery.

Initial research:

Interviews with a series of specialists such as Fernne Brennan (expert on legal aspects of reparations for the Caribbean); Peter Hulme (postcolonial literary critic); Jeremy Krikler (researcher on the case of the ‘Zong’; Elizabeth Kuti (expert on eighteenth-century theatre); and historical research in the British Library and at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.

The first draft of the play was divided into two sections. The first half consists of: a rewriting of George Colman’s comic opera, ‘Inkle and Yarico’, first performed in 1787, itself a version of a story originally published in ‘The Spectator’ in 1711. A chorus, a Caribbean choir, sings lyrics in Yoruba, with original music by Felix Cross of Nitro Theatre Company, providing a counter-narrative.

The second half is then set in the contemporary UK with Inkle and Yarico discussing their earlier experiences.

Subsequent research:

A research workshop (with actors and choir) took place at Ipswich Wolsey Theatre (23 – 28 May 2011; director, Pete Rowe) with a performance on 28 May 2011 under the title ‘Inkel and Yarico’.

The play was then redrafted into its present form. The research contribution here is to the contemporary debate about the consequences of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade.