African Snow

I went to see this over a week ago, but I've been a slacker in getting round to blogging about it!

My friend Lydia went to see it on Wed, and here are her thoughts.

I don't really have any great thoughts on it, so I shall just jot down my randomness in the order it comes to my head!

Very interesting to go to a play, where there is just one white actor and the rest are black. Seeing as though I've come from Norfolk where we're a little slow on catching up with the multiculturalness of the rest of the country, and now moved to York, where it's even more predominantly white (we do joke that my housemate is the token black person in York), it was quite weird to go to a performance in the city centre where the roles were reversed. But I appreciated it. It got me thinking.

On top of this, the black actors also played white people. I didn't twig this until Wilberforce came into the story! Again a little confusing, but an interesting take.

Unlike Lydia, it rather spoiled the play for me, having seen Amazing Grace the week previously. It's the same story, just from a different angle, so a times it felt like covering the same ground - potentially I needed to have a longer gap between the two. I did appreciate understanding the story from Olaudah Equiano's point of view though. It was a very long play. Both the film, and the play made me cry.

The question the performance is asking, is can a victim and abuser ever be reconciled? I don't think they really answered it, that wasn't the point, but it was good to get people thinking about it. As Christians is sometimes really easy to throw about words, saying that we should forgive each other etc etc. But seriously, John Newton caused Olaudah Equiano and his people so much pain, asking for forgiveness is asking a lot. I guess it can only be done with God's help.
There's so much hurt and pain, revenge and unforgiveness in this world.