The Return of Benjamin Lay
Published on 6. July 2023
80 pages
978-0-571-38730-4 (ISBN)
Description
In your hearts you know the truth: I was here among you three hundred years ago . . . Had you chosen differently then - before slavery and greed breathed their venom so deeply into our souls - we would be living in another world now. It is not too late to purge these poisons.
Benjamin Lay - shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist - returns from the grave almost three hundred years after his death, as feisty and unpredictable as ever.
A four-feet-tall 'Little David' confronts the 'Goliath' of slavery once again as he pleads to be readmitted into the Quaker community that has disowned him and who still believe him to be dangerous.
Now, 'trembling at the edge of playing God himself', how far will Benjamin go as he stares down his accusers?
The Return of Benjamin Lay sweeps across the centuries in a bold exploration of an utterly impossible man. The play opened at the Finborough Theatre, London, in June 2023.
Benjamin Lay - shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist - returns from the grave almost three hundred years after his death, as feisty and unpredictable as ever.
A four-feet-tall 'Little David' confronts the 'Goliath' of slavery once again as he pleads to be readmitted into the Quaker community that has disowned him and who still believe him to be dangerous.
Now, 'trembling at the edge of playing God himself', how far will Benjamin go as he stares down his accusers?
The Return of Benjamin Lay sweeps across the centuries in a bold exploration of an utterly impossible man. The play opened at the Finborough Theatre, London, in June 2023.
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
File size
0,54 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-571-38730-4 (9780571387304)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Naomi Wallace | Marcus Rediker
The Return of Benjamin Lay
Book
06/2023
Faber & Faber
€14.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Naomi Wallace's Finborough Theatre productions include And I And Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New York City. Theatre includes In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creekand Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East(Public Theater, New York City), and Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City). Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, La Comedie-Francaise. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comedie's repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.
