Practical
Monday, 21 October, 2024
- 20:00 until 22:00
Passa Porta
Antoine Dansaertstraat
46
1000
Brussels
Free of charge
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB's Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC) and Passa Porta (the International House of Literature in Brussels) invite you to listen to the radio play about American author and civil rights activist James Baldwin and to join the panel discussion on audio drama afterwards.
The radio play A Kind of Home explores James Baldwin’s first move to Paris as a young writer and the difficult conditions of bringing his first novel Go Tell It On the Mountain into the world. The city of Paris with its history of attracting strangers escaping from less hospitable ‘homes’ is a constant point of reference. Yet, all is not well in Baldwin’s Paris. Here, too, the hatred instilled by the white supremacist culture of a segregated America casts its shadows, impacting emotional landscapes and surfacing in conflicts.
The radio play, by playwrite Caryl Phillips, was first broadcast by the BBC in 2004. This would have been the year of James Baldwin’s 80th birthday, which the author did not live to see. Baldwin had passed away in 1987 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the South of France, where Caryl Phillips had first visited him in 1983.
This public radio play marks the 100th anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth and the 20th anniversary of the initial BBC broadcasting of Caryl Phillips’radio play.
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A public radio play: a unique experience
- During this evening, we'll be listening to a radio play.
- A radio play?
- Yes, a radio play.
- You mean a theatre play?
- No, we mean a radio play.
- You mean a podcast?
- No, we mean a radio play: a theatre play made for public radio.
- And we'll be listening together?
- Yes, by listening together to the play, we mix the genres of 'radio play' and 'theatre play': we make a shared experience of what is usual an individual experience. We promise it will be unique!
Programme
The radio play will be introduced by Bénédicte Ledent, 2024 Lorand Chair of Intermediality at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Honorary Professor of English Literature at the University of Liège, author and editor of numerous works of criticism on literatures of the Caribbean and its diasporas, and recently the editor of Caryl Phillips’s Radio Plays (Methuen 2023).
It will be followed by a panel discussion on audio drama.
- 20:00 – 20:15: Introduction by Bénédicte Ledent
- 20:15 – 21:15: Radio Play: A Kind of Home: James Baldwin in Paris
- 21:15 – 21:45: Panel Discussion, moderated by Tola Ositelu, VUB Phd Fellow
- Bénédicte Ledent, Lorand Chair of Intermediality at VUB
- Lander Kesteloot, co-founder of the literary podcast “De Letterfretters”
- Tundé Adefioye, dramaturge and lecturer at St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp
- 21:45 – 22:00: Questions from the audience
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About author James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)
American James Baldwin was a writer and civil rights activist whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him one of the most important voices of the 20th century. Baldwin addressed race relations with deft complexity and incisive anger. He was also one of the first Black writers to include queer themes in fiction. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked among the best English-language novels by Time Magazine. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality.
About playwrite Caryl Phillips (°1958)
Caryl Phillips is a multiple award-winning Brittish novelist, essayist and playwright whose works have been translated into numerous languages. Nine of his radioplays were broadcast by the BBC. Born in St. Kitts, he grew up in the north of England and now lives in the USA, where he is Professor of English at Yale University.
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