Redemption Song

These plays by West Indian playwright Edgar White explore the themes of exile, submission and defiance as reflected in black experience.

Redemption Song is a powerful blend of melodrama and ritual. A poet, Legion Bramble, returns to his island homeland during the Mummers’ Festival after an unhappy stay in Britain, to reclaim his West Indian identity.

The Boot Dance, set in an English mental hospital, traces the relationships between Lazarus Mphele, an exiled South African dancer, a cynical West Indian guard named Gibbs, and Janette, a mixed-race teenager who once tried to murder her violent father.

Les Femmes Noires probes the lives of black women in New York. A presence in the play – almost a character in its own right – is the omnipresent TV screen, purveyor of cultural values and commodities, which both beckons and excludes those in its sway.