Acts of WitnesSing - sharing at Tyne Theatre & Opera House
Artist Elisabeth Efua Sutherland continued to expand her research on the interconnected stories of black and African lives in the North East of England during her D6 residency, which is part of international programme Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues.
Building on her time in Newcastle in 2024 and 2025, Elisabeth is delving into the city’s theatres and archives to uncover stories of performers who toured the UK and other parts of Europe from the mid-1800s until the beginning of the 20th century.
The landscape of her investigation sprawls across press archives, theatre programmes, sheet music, and thrifted books by abolitionist authors. It reveals the complexity of a cultural phenomenon that developed alongside the decline of the age of empire, and in the context of several wars, and its overwhelming focus was to present black and African people in exoticised, caricatured and reductive ways: reinforcing dehumanising racial constructs that continue to be deeply harmful.
To share her research, D6 invited audiences to an intimate and moving gathering in the 1867 Café Bar at the Tyne Theatre & Opera House. The space itself held particular resonance - a setting shaped by the very histories Elisabeth is uncovering in ongoing research.
Elisabeth began with a timeline, connecting events of significance across the era of Britain's Empire, the US and Ghana that are often not connected in historical narratives.
She shared her work tracing the presence of black performers who toured the UK and Europe from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century, including James Alan Bland, Mr. Kool Kennedy, and the Jubilee Singers from North Carolina.
In collaboration with vocalist Chantelle Gillies and pianist Daps, Elisabeth invited us into a space of song, filling the room with music that may well have once echoed through those walls - perhaps even heard by abolitionist figures such as Frederick Douglass and Henry ‘Box’ Brown, also central to her research.
Spirituals such as Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Run to Jesus (a song Douglass discusses in his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom) became bridges between past and present. Through them, Elisabeth illuminated the powerful connections between music, memory and resistance, reminding us how these songs carried testimony, longing and coded messages of survival.
With songs like Dem Golden Slippers, she brought to life the worlds of the Jubilee Singers and the complex entanglements of figures like Bland - working within - and against - the world of blackface minstrelsy.
We were delighted Beverley Prevatt Goldstein could join Elisabeth for the closing words, speaking about Elisabeth's research and connection to African Lives In Northern England, and the depth and expansion of the work; and Pat Poinen (Chair of the North East of England African and Caribbean Community Association) speaking to Acts of Witnessing and links to the wider pan-Africanism movement and activism across Africa, Caribbean and UK.
Read more about Elisabeth's residency here.
Building on her time in Newcastle in 2024 and 2025, Elisabeth is delving into the city’s theatres and archives to uncover stories of performers who toured the UK and other parts of Europe from the mid-1800s until the beginning of the 20th century.
The landscape of her investigation sprawls across press archives, theatre programmes, sheet music, and thrifted books by abolitionist authors. It reveals the complexity of a cultural phenomenon that developed alongside the decline of the age of empire, and in the context of several wars, and its overwhelming focus was to present black and African people in exoticised, caricatured and reductive ways: reinforcing dehumanising racial constructs that continue to be deeply harmful.
To share her research, D6 invited audiences to an intimate and moving gathering in the 1867 Café Bar at the Tyne Theatre & Opera House. The space itself held particular resonance - a setting shaped by the very histories Elisabeth is uncovering in ongoing research.
Elisabeth began with a timeline, connecting events of significance across the era of Britain's Empire, the US and Ghana that are often not connected in historical narratives.
She shared her work tracing the presence of black performers who toured the UK and Europe from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century, including James Alan Bland, Mr. Kool Kennedy, and the Jubilee Singers from North Carolina.
In collaboration with vocalist Chantelle Gillies and pianist Daps, Elisabeth invited us into a space of song, filling the room with music that may well have once echoed through those walls - perhaps even heard by abolitionist figures such as Frederick Douglass and Henry ‘Box’ Brown, also central to her research.
Spirituals such as Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Run to Jesus (a song Douglass discusses in his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom) became bridges between past and present. Through them, Elisabeth illuminated the powerful connections between music, memory and resistance, reminding us how these songs carried testimony, longing and coded messages of survival.
With songs like Dem Golden Slippers, she brought to life the worlds of the Jubilee Singers and the complex entanglements of figures like Bland - working within - and against - the world of blackface minstrelsy.
We were delighted Beverley Prevatt Goldstein could join Elisabeth for the closing words, speaking about Elisabeth's research and connection to African Lives In Northern England, and the depth and expansion of the work; and Pat Poinen (Chair of the North East of England African and Caribbean Community Association) speaking to Acts of Witnessing and links to the wider pan-Africanism movement and activism across Africa, Caribbean and UK.
Read more about Elisabeth's residency here.
Thank you to support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Community Foundation North East and Newcastle City Council's Culture Investment Fund.
Image: Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Acts of Witnessing sharing at Tyne Theatre & Opera House. Photo: Luke Waddington
Image: Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Acts of Witnessing sharing at Tyne Theatre & Opera House. Photo: Luke Waddington
