Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Obituaries
- Introduction
- Unibadan Masques 1974-6, a Memoir of the First Two Years
- Ori Olokun Theatre & the Town & Gown Policy
- The Muungano Cultural Troupe
- The Making of Os bandoleiros de Schiller
- Project Phakama, Lesotho 2004
- The Asmara Theatre Association, 1961–74
- The Story of Jos Repertory Theatre
- Financing Handspring Puppet Company
- Border Crossings
- Playscript: Our House
- Book Reviews
- Index
Border Crossings
Setting up a joint Accra-London production
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Obituaries
- Introduction
- Unibadan Masques 1974-6, a Memoir of the First Two Years
- Ori Olokun Theatre & the Town & Gown Policy
- The Muungano Cultural Troupe
- The Making of Os bandoleiros de Schiller
- Project Phakama, Lesotho 2004
- The Asmara Theatre Association, 1961–74
- The Story of Jos Repertory Theatre
- Financing Handspring Puppet Company
- Border Crossings
- Playscript: Our House
- Book Reviews
- Index
Summary
This article is a diary of Michael Walling's research trip to Ghana in July 2005. The purpose of the visit was to establish links between UK-based Border Crossings and a Ghanaian company, with a view to a co-production in 2007. This would mark 50 years of Ghana's independence and 200 years since the banning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some of the article was originally published in the form of a weblog.
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Companies , pp. 109 - 122Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008