Rockets and Blue Lights

'I am the slave ship. Wrecked. Empty. I am a shark, livid with the desire for blood. I am the sea, boiling with fury.'On the set of a new film about Victorian artist J.M.W. Turner, young actress Lou is haunted by an unresolved history. Meanwhile, in 1840, Londoners Lucy and Thomas try to come to terms with the meaning of freedom.Moving between London past and present, Winsome Pinnock's astonishing play retells British history through the prism of the slave trade. Fusing fact with fiction, and the powerfully personal with the fiercely political, Rockets and Blue Lights asks who owns our past - and who has the right to tell its stories?Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, the play opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2020, directed by Miranda Cromwell. It transferred to the National Theatre, London, in 2021.'Rockets and Blue Lights places at its center one of the nineteenth century's most famous paintings: J. M. W. Turner's "The Slave Ship". Moving between several sets of characters and ranging from the 1800s to the present, this intricately plotted drama compels us to confront the horrors of our shared past. It does so with compassion and wit, never once compromising Pinnock's vision of theater as the communal creation of new, stranger, and perhaps truer histories' Windham-Campbell Prize committee, on awarding Winsome Pinnock a Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama in 2022

"A swirling journey through the light and shade of black history."

Auteur

Winsome Pinnock is an award-winning British playwright of Jamaican heritage. Her plays include: Rockets and Blue Lights (Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2020; National Theatre, 2021); One Under (2005) and Water (2000) at the Tricycle Theatre; Mules (Clean Break/Royal Court Theatre Upstairs/Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles and The Magic Theatre, San Francisco, 1996); Talking in Tongues (1991) and A Hero's Welcome (1989; runner-up Susan Smith Blackburn Prize) at the Royal Court Theatre; and Leave Taking (Liverpool Playhouse Theatre/Contact Theatre Manchester/Belgrade Theatre Coventry/Lyric Hammersmith/ National Theatre, 1986).

Awards include the George Devine Award, the Pearson Award and the Unity Theatre Trust Award.

Texte du rabat

An updated version of Winsome Pinnock's astonishing play that retells British history through the prism of the slave trade.

Résumé
The Alfred Fagon Award-winning play that retells British history through the prism of the slave trade.