Selina Thompson:
salt:dispersed

Film on demand

2021 narratinghistory online
Fr—Fr
20:00—23:59
In english language

›salt: dispersed‹ is the film adaption of Selina Thompson‘s award winning Performance ›salt.‹

In ›salt.‹, British performer Selina Thompson is a passenger on board a commercial container ship taking the route upon which her ancestors were deported from Ghana to Jamaica and then on to Britain. Thompson’s forebears were among several million black men, women and children sold as slaves whose work made Western prosperity possible and served as the foundation of contemporary European economic success. On her own journey, Thompson is confronted with normalised, systemic and casual racism and observes patriarchal power structures within the crew, suggesting that the colonial past is not as distant as she believed it was before embarking. As Thompson stands in front of the ›Door of No Return‹ at Elmina Castle in Ghana and looks out to the Atlantic Ocean, she recalls the people who died there, on the journey and in the plantations. How can the sorrow that she feels at that moment exist in a world which also contains such banal things as post offices and perfume atomisers? And what does it mean to live as a black woman in a country with a majority white population?

Selina Thompson focuses in her work on questions of identity politics and explores what it means to be Black British. She has developed projects for pubs, cafés, hair salons, public toilets and also for galleries and theatres including the National Theatre Studio, Birmingham Rep, East Street Arts and the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

CREDITS ›salt:dispersed‹

WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY Selina Thompson
DIRECTOR Wendy Yee Man Wong
SOUND Guy Dowsett
CAMERA João Luís Ribeiro
PRODUCTION Selina Thompson Ltd., Battersea Arts Centre, Arts Council England

CREDITS ›salt.‹ (Performance)

WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY Selina Thompson
DIRECTOR Dawn Walton
DESIGNED BY Katherina Radeva
MUSIC Sleepdogs
SOUND DESIGN Tanuja Amarasuriya
LIGHTING DESIGN Cassie Mitchell, Louise Charity
DRAMATURGIC SUPPORT Maddy Costa and Season Butler

Commissioned by MAYK, Theatre Bristol and Yorkshire Festival.
Supported by Arts Council England and 200 kind and generous donors who funded the voyage across the Atlantic.