In conversation: Ade Solanke and May Sumbwanyambe Major playwrights discuss dramatising Black experience in 18th Century Britain

Adeola Solanke is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and founder of Spora Stories, telling the stories of the African diaspora. Her new play, Phillis in London, dramatises and re-imagines the 1773 visit to London of enslaved teenage prodigy, Phillis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of poetry in English. During her stay, she was celebrated by England's cultural and political elite, at a time when England was the largest slaving nation In the world. Described by The Scotsman as ‘one of the key creative figures in Scotland's increasingly determined effort to come to terms with its own colonial past, and particularly with Scottish involvement in slavery and the slave trade,' May Sumbwanyambe's most recent award-winning play Enough of Him dramatizes the personal and emotional lives of Joseph Knight, Annie Thomson, and John and Margaret Wedderburn in the run-up to the legal case that ruled that slavery was not recognised and could not be enforced in Scotland.
Listen to these playwrights discuss the challenges and opportunities afforded by their subjects, and join the conversation in a Q&A session.