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The Return of Benjamin Lay

Naomi Wallace

Marcus Rediker

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.

  • Classification : Plays & Playscripts
  • Pub Date : JUN 15, 2023
  • Imprint : Faber Plays
  • Page Extent : 64
  • Binding : PB
  • ISBN : 9780571387298
  • Price : INR 1,099
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Naomi Wallace

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 Com?die-Fran?aise. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Com?die's repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.

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Marcus Rediker

Marcus Rediker holds a Ph.D in history from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. One of America's foremost maritime and Atlantic historians he has held several fellowships and lectured around the world. He is author of four books including (with Peter Linebaugh) the prize-winning The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors Slaves Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.

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