ALONSO the director of an American Foundation for philanthropy in the style of art

SEBASTIAN the editor of a journal of contemporary African art

PROSPERO a well-assimilated director of a National Gallery in an unnamed African state

ANTONIO his brother, an independent curator renowned for arrogating all theory on Africa to himself

ferdinand a trainee curator

gonzalo a turgid but honest old essentialist fart

adrian & francisco collectors

CALIBAN a savaged but in-form African modernist

trinculo the publisher of Flash Art

STEPHANO a drunken Marxist critic

the master of the slaver

a museum EDUCATION OFFICER

a local

mariners/museum staff

MIRANDA ProsperoËs daughter, a student of Robert Hewison

ariel a writer-philosopher trapped in the body of an engineer

THE SHADOW OF LÉOPOLD SÉNGHOR

the ghost of oswald de andrade

the ghost of roland barthes

the ghost of picasso

the ghost of andré malraux

the ghost of frantz fanon

osun

macumba spirits

bartenders

pimps & hookers

The scene: Dakar, Senegal. There is a slaver moored, half-sunken off Gorée Island. It is not clear whether it is a museum piece or a functioning ship.

To be sung to the tune of Bob MarleyËs No Woman No Cry.¹the master of the slaver: Over time CalibanËs recovery of his island has proved a qualified triumph, with the autonomy of his emergent nation far more compromised than was imagined by the generation of more optimistic nationalists·politicians and writerËs alike·who saw the arrival of independence. Third Worlders have found it difficult to coax from the play analogies with these new circumstances wherein Prospero, having officially relinquished authority over the island, so often continues to manage it from afar. . . . The playËs declining pertinence to contemporary Africa and the Caribbean has been exacerbated by the difficulty of wresting from it any role for female defiance or leadership in a period when protest is coming increasingly from that quarter.²