Acts of witnessing: Elisabeth Efua Sutherland's residency
We are delighted to welcome Elisabeth Efua Sutherland back to Newcastle as she continues to expand her research on the interconnected stories of black and African people in the North East of England.
In this current residency, 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.
Of particular interest is a troupe of almost thirty formerly enslaved people who toured the UK managed by Sam Hague, an Englishman and performer, who had lived in the United States and purchased the group formerly known as the Georgia Minstrels. Their repertoire included songs and acrobatic acts created by the group members themselves - and whose trip to Newcastle boasted a line-up that included famed African American songwriter and performer James Alan Bland, and the enigmatic Mr. Kool Kennedy.
Racial narratives in popular culture
Drawing on her extensive research into the speeches of activist Frederick Douglass and minstrel entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice, Elisabeth says:
‘The troupe’s presence sits within a world of blackface minstrelsy that appropriated and distorted black culture, suffering, and existence for entertainment. There was also the more insidious purpose to justify slavery and the derogation of black and African people by delegitimising black intelligence and making black people appear less than human. This manifested as a horrifying and beastly “other”, or a bumbling and incompetent “other” that required subjugation and control or at least the mediating “benevolence” of white control dressed up as “civilisation”.’
Elisabeth’s research interrogates how these practices also coexisted with an increasingly widespread abolitionist and activist sentiment, but also the reality of ordinary people living their lives in upheaving times of war, social change, power shifts and renewal. ‘This was a deeply complex and textured situation that marked the turn of the century and decades to come, similar to the dynamic that is still somehow being worked out in the geopolitics of today,’ she says.
She is interested in exploring how these stories and structures became embedded in cultural legacies and how artists today might challenge and rewrite them.
They are part of Elisabeth’s wider investigation into the movement of black and African bodies in the North East, and how these link to the rest of the world, including: Zuza Ben I Ford, a woman who was brought to be exhibited at the African Village at the North East Coast Exhibition; the abolitionist activist and later performer Henry ‘Box’ Brown, who toured the UK after mailing himself to freedom in a wooden box; and the world’s first black professional football player, Arthur Wharton, who moved to Darlington from Jamestown, Accra, and played against Newcastle.
Through her work, Elisabeth is weaving these stories together - charting networks of movement, influence and cultural exchange that have long existed but whose interconnections have rarely been recognised.
With special thanks to North East of England African Community Association and the Africa Lives in the Northern England- who provided an invaluable introduction to some of these stories.
Elisabeth’s work with D6 has developed over research residencies that are part of the international programme Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues, responding to a central question: What is the continuing impact of colonial heritage today, and whose stories are given space to be heard?
Contested Desires is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. In the UK we are grateful for support from Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Newcastle Cultural Investment Fund.
Image: Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Contested Desires residency - work in progress sharing at Dance City, Newcastle, 2024. Photos: Fly Films UK
In this current residency, 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.
Of particular interest is a troupe of almost thirty formerly enslaved people who toured the UK managed by Sam Hague, an Englishman and performer, who had lived in the United States and purchased the group formerly known as the Georgia Minstrels. Their repertoire included songs and acrobatic acts created by the group members themselves - and whose trip to Newcastle boasted a line-up that included famed African American songwriter and performer James Alan Bland, and the enigmatic Mr. Kool Kennedy.
Racial narratives in popular culture
Drawing on her extensive research into the speeches of activist Frederick Douglass and minstrel entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice, Elisabeth says:
‘The troupe’s presence sits within a world of blackface minstrelsy that appropriated and distorted black culture, suffering, and existence for entertainment. There was also the more insidious purpose to justify slavery and the derogation of black and African people by delegitimising black intelligence and making black people appear less than human. This manifested as a horrifying and beastly “other”, or a bumbling and incompetent “other” that required subjugation and control or at least the mediating “benevolence” of white control dressed up as “civilisation”.’
Elisabeth’s research interrogates how these practices also coexisted with an increasingly widespread abolitionist and activist sentiment, but also the reality of ordinary people living their lives in upheaving times of war, social change, power shifts and renewal. ‘This was a deeply complex and textured situation that marked the turn of the century and decades to come, similar to the dynamic that is still somehow being worked out in the geopolitics of today,’ she says.
She is interested in exploring how these stories and structures became embedded in cultural legacies and how artists today might challenge and rewrite them.
They are part of Elisabeth’s wider investigation into the movement of black and African bodies in the North East, and how these link to the rest of the world, including: Zuza Ben I Ford, a woman who was brought to be exhibited at the African Village at the North East Coast Exhibition; the abolitionist activist and later performer Henry ‘Box’ Brown, who toured the UK after mailing himself to freedom in a wooden box; and the world’s first black professional football player, Arthur Wharton, who moved to Darlington from Jamestown, Accra, and played against Newcastle.
Through her work, Elisabeth is weaving these stories together - charting networks of movement, influence and cultural exchange that have long existed but whose interconnections have rarely been recognised.
With special thanks to North East of England African Community Association and the Africa Lives in the Northern England- who provided an invaluable introduction to some of these stories.
Elisabeth’s work with D6 has developed over research residencies that are part of the international programme Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues, responding to a central question: What is the continuing impact of colonial heritage today, and whose stories are given space to be heard?
Contested Desires is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. In the UK we are grateful for support from Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Newcastle Cultural Investment Fund.
Image: Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Contested Desires residency - work in progress sharing at Dance City, Newcastle, 2024. Photos: Fly Films UK
