The Ancestors

The Ancestors was produced by the National Youth Theatre as part of the Freedom and Revolution project which explores the history of black women at the English Heritage site Portchester Castle in Hampshire. The project illuminates the lives of predominantly black and mixed-race prisoners who arrived from the Caribbean on a fleet of ships in the late 1700s. Almost all of the prisoners were held at Portchester Castle along with their families.

Portchester had a prisoner's theatre and one of the plays believed to have been performed was the historical drama The Revolutionary Philanthropist which explored how African slaves had fought for freedom in Haiti; the lives in the play seemed to mirror the lives of the black and mixed-race prisoners at Portchester. The Ancestors reimagines this play but changes the focus from a male, colonial perspective to a black, female one. The play includes a clique of Caribbean maroon warrior women, a Haitian general, and a couple who were once enslaved now seeking to reclaim their land – the Ancestors. They are presented in our world in the hope that we can stop history repeating itself.