Windrush 26: Pantomime

Description

By Derek Walcott

As part of this year’s Windrush celebrations, Brixton House presents Pantomime, the sharp, playful and thought-provoking classic by Nobel Prize–winning writer Derek Walcott.

Set in a small guesthouse in Tobago, Pantomime reimagines the story of Robinson Crusoe through the comic yet charged relationship between Harry Trewe, a white English hotel owner, and Jackson Phillip, his Black Trinidadian handyman. As the two rehearse an unconventional pantomime for tourists—swapping the roles of Crusoe and Friday—the rehearsal quickly becomes a witty and revealing exploration of power, race, identity and colonial history.

Presented as part of the Windrush Festival, this rehearsed reading, directed by Emily Aboud, honours the enduring cultural contributions of the Caribbean community in Britain and invites audiences to reflect, laugh and see a familiar story in a radically new light.

Derek Walcott, KCSL, OBE, OCC (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet, painter and playwright. Walcott was awarded the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature.

He was the first distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Alberta, where he taught undergraduate and graduate writing courses. He also served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex from 2010 to 2013. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view as Walcott’s major achievement.

A prolific playwright, he also founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Trinity Cross from Government of Trinidad and Tobago, the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets, and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015. Walcott died at his home in Cap Estate St Lucia on March 17, 2017, and was given a state funeral. He is buried at Mount Fortune, Castries, St Lucia.

Emily Aboud is a theatre director, a film director and a writer of mixed heritage, born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, based in London. She won the Evening Standard Future Theatre Award in 2021. She is an associate artist at the Bush Theatre and Artistic Director of Lagahoo Productions. Most recently, she was shortlisted for the 2025 RTST Peter Hall Award. She was shortlisted in 2023 as well. She was in the final round for the Genesis Fellow Associate Director at the Young Vic. She was shortlisted for the JMK Award 2021 and again in 2022. She was also shortlisted for the Genesis Future Directors Award and the Old Vic 12 2020. Her directing credits include Disco Inferno (National Youth Theatre),Tender (Bush Theatre), Sweet Charity (Mountview), Rock DJ and Three Other Songs That Saved The World (New Diorama Theatre), Lady Dealer (Bush Theatre, Paines Plough Roundabout), Haemosporidian (Lyric Hammersmith), Flip! (Regional Tour with Fuel Theatre), Close Quarters (LAMDA, 2023), BOGEYMAN (Edinburgh Queen Dome, Fringe 2022), SPLINTERED, (also writer Edinburgh Fringe 2019, Soho Theatre 2023), Pink Lemonade (Bush Theatre 2021, Edinburgh Fringe 2019), British Book (Roundhouse 2021), Exceptional Promise (Bush Theatre), & Salty Irina (Ovalhouse) among others.

16 June-16 June

A rehearsed reading as part of the Windrush 26 programme.

Brixton House present

Description

By Derek Walcott

Performances