Rockets and Blue Lights by Winsome Pinnock

(12 Mar – 4 Apr 2020)

Royal Exchange, Manchester

‘I am the slave ship. Wrecked. Empty. I am a shark, livid with the desire for blood. I am the sea, boiling with fury.’

Amid the gloom of Victorian England, Thomas, a black sailor prepares to take one last voyage, while an ageing Turner seeks artistic inspiration in a half-remembered story.

In 21st Century London, an actress finds herself handcuffed by history – two centuries after abolitionists won her ancestors their freedom.

Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, Winsome Pinnock’s astonishing new play retells British history through the prism of the slave trade. Fusing fact with fiction, past with present, the powerfully personal with the fiercely political, this epic production asks who owns our past – and who has the right to tell its stories?