Playwright Latif Abubakar is set to bring President John Dramani Mahama’s United Nations reckoning to the stage with his 21st production.
Produced by Globe Productions in partnership with the National Theatre, UNESCO, and the Ministries of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, and Foreign Affairs, the production, titled ‘The Darkest Chapter’, promises to be a world-class musical dance theatrical experience.
It is inspired by President Mahama’s testimony before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) earlier this year, which saw the UNGA do something it had never done since its existence, voting 123 to three on a resolution to declare the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement the gravest crime against humanity in recorded history.
The resolution, spearheaded by the Republic of Ghana and borne forward on the shoulders of the African Union, CARICOM and people of conscience across the world, provided a moment where a nation’s leadership turned centuries of silence into a verdict.
It also stands as the spark behind one of the most ambitious theatrical undertakings created by the veteran playwright to be staged in Ghana.
At the heart of the production is ‘The Witness’, an immortal narrator who has lived a thousand lives across four hundred years: a child of the Gold Coast, a man in chains on the Middle Passage, a field hand on a Caribbean plantation, a marcher beside history’s freedom fighters, and, tonight, a presence moving unseen through the halls of the United Nations.
He carries four centuries of stolen names, hard-won freedom and an unfinished promise into the UNGA chamber, and by the time the vote is called, ‘The Darkest Chapter’ turns the question back on the audience, asking: what will you do now that you know?
Set across three simultaneous worlds the shores and dungeons of Cape Coast and Elmina, a modern UN General Assembly hall, and a timeless spirit realm reachable only through drumming and movement, the production fuses West African, contemporary and Caribbean dance traditions with a live score of African percussion, orchestral strings and a full gospel-highlife choir.
“It is by every measure, a sensory masterpiece; immersive, cinematic, and unapologetically global in its ambition, and designed to premiere with equal power in Accra, Kingston, Bridgetown, Port of Spain, New York, or London,” Mr Abubakar said in a statement issued in Accra yesterday.
The award-winning playwright is urging audiences to walk through the performance so that, when the resolution is finally spoken aloud on that stage, it does not land as a headline but as an answered prayer.
“We are not asking audiences to relive four hundred years of pain. We are asking them to walk through it,” he said.
Marking his 21st production, ‘The Darkest Chapter’ celebrates Latif Abubakar’s career as a body of work that has quietly built Ghana’s most consistent bridge between theatre and social change. Read More
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