The cast of Journeys to Freedom

The set itself would challenge any Hollywood director, let alone writing nine scripts for nine plays, organising the 140 performers aged six to 19, making 1,000 costumes and assembling 400 props for three shows in two cycles.

But this week, years of work are being realised at the Pegasus Theatre when the epic Journeys to Freedom comes to the Oxford stage to celebrate the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

As the theatre's head of marketing Gill Jaggers says: "The challenge was to create epic theatre embracing many aspects of black history that would reflect and be relevant to the lives of young people and the community of Oxford.

"We explored the idea of a story that could be told in episodes over a week, tracing a sense of Africa and black people before the slave trade through the slavery period, from life in the Caribbean to the Americas and the civil rights movements, to a celebration of multi-cultural Britain and especially Oxford today.

"The finale of the epic needed to be a piece that brought together all the participants in one glorious performance telling the end of the story, and celebrating the diversity and multi-culturalism that is part of Pegasus' ethos."

Cue Angharad Phillips, one of the nine writers brought in to create one of the plays and bring it to the Pegasus stage in Magdalen Road, East Oxford.

Her 30 minute offering, Freedom of the City - Nelson Mandela and all the President's Men is number eight in the line-up, with a cast of 21 actors aged between eight and 19, and Sinini Spencer Ngwenya creating the songs.

"I nearly snapped their hands off when Pegasus asked me to write one of the plays," the 27-year-old said.

"But I developed it through workshops with the children by asking them what apartheid meant to them. So it's very much a group effort and the older kids have been mentoring the younger ones.

"There are some difficult and complicated issues to get across, but to me it was always about freedom and humanity. The only problem was fitting that and the songs into 30 minutes."

Lucas Woodward, aka Nelson Mandela, can't wait for opening night. The 16-year-old from Eynsham has been going to Pegasus for years and has appeared in countless productions, but says Journeys To Freedom is a monster project.

And to demonstrate how important Pegasus is to young people's lives, Lucas says: "When I started at Pegasus acting was a hobby, but now I see it as more than that and I am going to audition for the National Youth Theatre soon. I love it there because they always do something different and are very versatile while keeping it small, until now that is," he grins.

"As for my role as Nelson Mandela I am a little daunted, but honoured to be asked to play the part because he was such an influential man."

Journeys to Freedom runs from Tuesday to Saturday at the Pegasus Theatre.

Box office 01865 722851 or www.pegasustheatre.org.uk

2:28pm Thursday 20th March 2008

Print

Email this