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THE PLAY
The play,
The Journey: From Shackles of Oppression to Mantles of Hope
captures theAfrican American multi-faceted and multi-generationalhistorical experience fromslavery, through the struggles of the civil rights period, to today when they gained theright to vote and be voted into power. Presented in an African storytelling style,
The Journey: From Shackles of Oppression to Mantles of Hope,
opens with Barbara and herdaughter Keisha discussing their poverty and what it means to be born black. It is in thisnarrative mode that Barbara invokes the poignant past, the journey of African Americansfrom Africa through the Middle passage to the Americas. The narrative reveals theAfrican American experience and the known and unknown significant sacrifices Black peoples made in their fight for social justice. The play, therefore, concerns itself with the journey in the race uplift, as well as the personal and communal struggles and triumphs of a people in a racist dominated environment. It opens up the genetic memory, questioningwhy the continuity and why not a change in the African American experience.
The Journey: From Shackles of Oppression to Mantles of Hope
speaks to the trajectory of black people’s social, political, economic and intellectual history.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Dr. Padmore Agbemabiese is a prolific and versatile poet and dramatist, who have earneda place among the coterie of important African authors. His writings cut a path to thevoices of people whose frustrations, pains, tears and desperation he expresses in hiscreative works. Padmore Agbemabiese persistently uses his creative works as a catalystfor social change much as they make your heart wheel with the stars, and your soul break loose with the wind. His dramatic oeuvre provides primarily a thematic geography thatlends itself to raising the consciousness of those who compete aggressively “to win” theirdreams in life—all which before seemed bankrupt to them. He is published in numerousanthologies in the US, in Africa and in Europe. Some of his poems have appeared in
Essence Magazine
,
Come Into Our Whirl
,
African Weekender
,
Taj Review
(India),
and POESA-An International Journal of World poetry.
Dr. Padmore Agbemabiese is aprofessor of English and African American and African Studies, and lectures in the US.
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