Light and Dark in Joseph Conrads Heart Video
HEART OF DARKNESS BY JOSEPH CONRAD // ANIMATED BOOK SUMMARY Light and Dark in Joseph Conrads HeartAdapting Joseph Conrad's challenging work for Radio 4 drama. My interest in Conrad is longstanding. My first theatre play was a notoriously terrible adaptation of Lord Jim, with a student theatre company. Thirty years and sixty plays later, my interest was rekindled when I read about oil prospecting under swamp forest in the Republic of Congo, and the toxic mineral-grab in Eastern and Southern DRC. I thought of Heart of Darkness, reimagining it as a contemporary story where corporations replace colonial Conradd as the exploiting force. I wanted my own version to put DRC characters at the heart of the story as active protagonists who spoke for themselves, in their own languages. I wanted the landscape to be rich and beautiful, with 'light glancing off the stained-glass wings of enormous dragonflies, and iridescent Congo sunbirds'.
Heart of Darkness and Tales of Unrest. 2018 Arcturus Edition
That timeline is important as two things had happened between pitch and contract: Covid 19 and Black Lives Matter. Covid 19 had big practical implications for my research phase. When writing stories about things I have not experienced, I meet and talk with people who have lived it. This can involve individuals, whole groups, perhaps opposing groups, and sometimes encountering the story as it happens. I back this up with a lot of reading. Exiled from Paradise, Just Whores, Gull Therapy, Countrysides and many other of my plays followed this research model.
2020 election
I was able, however, to work remotely with Ange Kasongo and Tracey Nyemba. Ange is a DRC political commentator and writer, and I needed her critical eye.
I found Tracey through more info Lingala teaching YouTube channel, and she became a cultural advisor. They were supportive and generous, but I really missed sitting and talking, growing conversations and networks. Black Lives Matter sent ripples through the project. I felt this alternative Heart of Darkness should still be told, but I questioned whether I was the right person to do it. BBC Radio Drama encouraged me to continue. Recording was done remotely. Voices were connected by high bandwidth recording tech, engineered from Cardiff by Nigel Lewis. Me and director James Robinson communicated by WhatsApp. It worked amazingly well.
The process had its challenges. But I trusted the people around me to challenge me and interrogate the text. It has been an amazing journey. I start and finish with my love of the novel. It was so in advance of its time, in narrative and construction. We lose sight of it, wrapped in the normal constraints of law, family, religion, political-stability and satellites. But when those things fail we are forced to look inside ourselves. Do we find values of self-governance and compassion? All Posts. Anita Sullivan. Facing the Heart of Darkness. Recent Posts See All. Ropewalk House: making an impossible building.
Turning Pan Horror stories into drama.]
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