Lemn Sissay: Something Dark at Oldham Coliseum
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
If you missed his recent performances at HOME, Chester Literature Festival and so on and so forth, in the new year, Lemn Sissay reprises his award-winning one-man play Something Dark in the boroughs.
Exploring identity and our place in the world, this is a moving and powerful one-hander in which the now fifty-year-old Lemn tells his real-life story of being brought up in children’s homes and foster care in Wigan, and how he embarked on the search for his blood family, who hailed from Ethiopia.
Originally directed by Manchester International Festival CEO John McGrath for National Theatre of Wales (commissioned by Contact Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre), Something Dark is a dramatic piece that has been performed around the world to critical acclaim and which was adapted for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 a couple of years back.
The event in Oldham also includes a Q&A session with the celebrated performance poet and charismatic broadcaster (not to mention Chancellor at the University of Manchester), whose collection of new selected poems, Gold from the Stone, is out now on Canongate – so start thinking up some good questions!
