Wednesday 12th July 2006

Here I sit in a sweltering internet cafe in Accra. Got in late last night after a lengthy (but not too expensive) flight via Milan and Lagos. In Lagos we just sat on the plane for 90 minutes. I was reading critical essays about Ama Ata Aidoo. Equipping myself to phone her this morning.

The purpose of this trip is to research the production we're planning for next year – her play The Dilemma of a Ghost. It's fifty years since this country's pioneering independence, and two hundred since the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire – so 2007 is the time to talk about these key issues of slavery, the global economy and the African diaspora, which this play does so brilliantly. As with so many of our projects, this won't work if we just use UK-based performers. We need to find people who are alive in the traditions portrayed, in order to explore how those traditions are interacting with the predominant West.