Episode 2
In Conversation with Ade Solanke Part 2
“The history is now. If I think about it as the past, then it's almost like a fossilized version. I don't have to have absolute fidelity to what it was really like because my audiences today aren't back there, they are here. The job is to be as faithful to the truth of the story as possible, but then reconfigure it all to speak to the audience here and now.”- Ade Solanke
“It [Faneuil Hall] was a slave market, and it's now a popular shopping mall. I moved there just before Christmas. There were the Christmas trees and all the trappings of Christmas. It took me a little while and then I realized, ‘Oh, my goodness, this history is kind of underneath all of this. It's not very far underneath, but it's right there.'" - Ade Solanke |
|
About This Episode
In Episode 2 of “PWP on Stage,” I am rejoined by Ade Solanke, writer, academic, and playwright behind the production Phillis in London. In this installment, Ade expands on the connection between history and art, and the ways in which the past is linked to the present day. She also discusses her “eye-opening” time spent in Boston researching for the play. Tune in to hear all about it!
In Episode 2 of “PWP on Stage,” I am rejoined by Ade Solanke, writer, academic, and playwright behind the production Phillis in London. In this installment, Ade expands on the connection between history and art, and the ways in which the past is linked to the present day. She also discusses her “eye-opening” time spent in Boston researching for the play. Tune in to hear all about it!
Accompanying Resources
To listen further on the themes in this episode, visit the BBC’s “Free Thinking” podcast episode on Phillis Wheatley. Ade joins other scholars to talk about Phillis in the context of her time period. Click here! (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gtsb) To read more about Phillis and her connection to Boston, access BBC’s “Phillis Wheatley: The unsung Black poet who shaped the US” here! (https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230220-phillis-wheatley-the-unsung-black-poet-who-shaped-the-us) Also, please do check out Ade's website for additional information about Phillis in London, as well as her other projects. |
Phillis Wheatley statue by Meredith Bergmann for the Boston Women’s Memorial on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boston_women_2_(121899705).jp