Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Rough life in an African illiberal democracy

Bobi Wine: Ghetto President pitches you face-to-face with the rough and tumble of Uganda’s political and election battles as pop star-turned-MP Robert Kyagulanyi  takes on the country’s 36-year dictatorship.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Celebrating the Peckham-Lagos connection

Lagos Peckham Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes is full of energy, humour and invention - just like the thousands of Nigerians in the south London district of Peckham, part of 12,000 Nigerians in the borough of Southwark.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Word-Play walks the talk

Extraordinarily, while Rabiah Hussain was writing her new play, a brain tumour attacked her ability to communicate. Extraordinary, because Word-Play is about language.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Is it to be African American or Critical Whiteness Studies?

Kwame Kwei-Armah has compared living with his Grenada-born parents in Britain to existing with two types of theatre: he would be serving rum to his father and his pals, while his mother was hosting church meetings in the living-room. His new play is also like two types of theatre.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Congo and coltan, personal and political

Congo has long been a victim of Western greed and violence, whether King Leopold’s atrocities; Belgium’s terrorising Force Publique with its mass amputation of labourers’ hands and feet; murderous political chicanery - including the assassination of independence leader Patrice Lumumba; and mining companies’ ruthless political and economic corruption.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

A novel way to see moving images

If you plan to see Sir Isaac Julien’s exhibition at Tate Britain, What Freedom Is To Me, you might need to set aside three-and-a-half  hours.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

From the Black Death to Covid

From the Black Death to Covid, BreaDth sets out to dramatise pandemics and the lives of older people and the racial minorities who care for them.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Lenny Henry’s one-man Windrush play

“… and that’s how I got to be here … in custody.”

And that’s the Windrush scandal, written by and starring Sir Lenny Henry at the Bush Theatre.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Ai Weiwei: Designed to provoke

A huge snake extends across the wall. Pleasingly colourful. But look closer. There’s another element: the serpent is made of scores of life vests.

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Daniel Nelson Daniel Nelson

Taking theatre off-grid

“Let’s take this show off the grid”, says Lydia West as a signal for the Barbican Centre lights to switch off and for 10 on-stage cyclists to start cranking up the power.

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