Theatre
The Broken Handcuff
Raymond de'Souza George · 1994
Synopsis
The play opens on the funeral of a trade unionist in independent Sierra Leone, commented on by two narrators, Kakpindi and Lavalie. It then goes back to 1792, when Governor John Clarkson clashes with the figures of resistance to colonial power, then turns, in its longest part, to the village of Sengbe Pieh, to his capture by slave traders and to the Amistad revolt.
Context
First staged in 1994 over two evenings at the British Council auditorium in Freetown, nearly three years after the start of the civil war, the play then toured western Canada for the Fringe festival. It has not been performed since, and it was published in 2019 by Ohio University Press in Staging the Amistad, a collection of three Sierra Leonean plays. More than twenty-five characters speak English, Krio and Mende in it, on an almost bare stage dominated by a large shackle.
Who it is for
For discovering Sierra Leonean theatre and its reading of the Atlantic slave trade, in a play published in English.
Prizes and reception
Christensen reads in it a play that ties yesterday's slave trade to today's war and global capital.