Back Home by Liz Mytton

Back Home by Liz Mytton
Monday 1 July, Wickham Theatre, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UP
19:00 – 22:00
£8 / £6

Bristol-based theatre company Amelia’s Garden produce a one-off staged reading of a powerful new drama by Bristol-based Liz Mytton about sexuality and human rights in Jamaica.

Back Home is the story of an unlikely friendship between two lonely individuals, an elderly Jamaican woman and a young, gay asylum seeker. Both live with fear and isolation – one due to illness, the other due to a homophobic culture that caused him to flee his home. Together, they unpack their burdens and explore the true meaning of home.

The play (featuring Lynn Thomas and Shaun Wood) will be followed by a panel discussion curated by Kiki Bristol. Edson Burton will be in conversation with playwright Liz Mytton, actor Shaun Wood and founder of BLACK* artists on the Move Akulah Agbami.

Lynn Thomas originally trained as a social worker and psychologist before embarking on her acting career. She then studied theatre at City of Bristol College and the Bristol Acting Academy/Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.  Since joining the acting profession, just over seven years ago, she has appeared across feature films, television series, stage productions, commercials, short films, corporate training videos and voice-overs. Her stage work has included ‘Dead Girl Walking’ and ‘The Cheltonians by Jane Austen’. 

Shaun Wood is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work runs the gamut of the performance arts. He likes to keep himself busy with as many mediums as he can; acting, singing, playing the piano, writing, composing, sound design and directing both theatre and film. He has taken a clowning play to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; won the first Bristol Film Our City 90 Second Short Film Competition (in his film directing debut) and developed the initial drafts of a sitcom about therapists.

Liz Mytton is Bristol-based playwright, poet and coach. Red Snapper, her first full-length play, was runner-up for the 2016 Alfred Fagon Audience Award. Liz regularly works with Talking Birds Theatre Company, writing The Female Warrior and Backstage at the Albany (2017), and producing the lyrics for their Canal Song Project and the Walk with Me Tour (2018). Along with members of the BS13 community, Liz developed Southside Stories, which premiered at the Tobacco Factory in February 2019. Currently, she is working on a series of plays for General Public (Birmingham) and the Christmas show for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (Stratford on Avon).

Dr Edson Burton is a writer, historian, programme-curator and performer based in Bristol. He has been a consultant and coordinator for a range of history projects in Bristol including most recently a study of Bristol’s Old Market ward Vice & Virtue (2014) and Black South West Network’s Race Through the Generations (2016). Edson has maintained a parallel career as a poet, and a writer for theatre, radio and screen, for which his credentials include Armour of Immanuel (2007), the Chosen One (2009), Deacon (2017). A long standing associate of Bristol’s Watershed Cinema Edson has curated the highly regarded Afrofuturist season (2014) which formed part of the BFI’S Fear and Wonder Sci-Fi season.  He was writer / curator of the Bristol Old Vic / Colston Hall collaboration Frederick Douglass promenade. He is a board member of Afrika Eye and a Pervasive Media Studio resident.

Akulah Agbami is a former lecturer in English at the University of the French West Indies,and former editor of Spare Rib magazine. She is now artistic director of Sheba Soul Ensemble, having written and directed Lovesplay, Warnings and Mkeka – which have toured the UK in the past two years.  She is also director of Black Artist’s on the Move, responsible for our GLOBALEX programme, which offers developmental opportunities to Black artists from different disciplines based in Africa, the Caribbean and the US. As an artist, her work examines injustices and the circuitous path to equality for all.

in partnership with the Centre for Black Humanities & St Paul’s Carnival.

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