1. Tell us about Sancho & Me - without giving too much away?
It's a conversation. Between Sancho and me and the audience. A dual biography told fresh every performance.

2.  Your book The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho forms the basis of this piece. As an author and an actor what initially inspired you to tell this story?
The missing  stories of black and brown people in British history was a major reason I’ve spent twenty-five years in this area. I’m a storyteller by a kind of genetic pathology. The form of writing and storytelling that I find the most intimate is the novel.

3. What changed/did you discover anything new in translating the work from the pages of your novel to the stage?
I still haven’t fully grasped how the show evolved out of the novel. It’s a mystery that may be helpful, to be frank, preventing me from getting too precious about using the novel in the way I do in Sancho&Me – For One Night Only. I don’t think about the novel as a novel when I’m on stage, but as a useful aid in storytelling. With Ben Park’s extraordinary score, made all the more exceptional because some of it will be improvised, I have a powerful platform to tell a great tale from.

4. How do you prepare to play Charles Ignatius Sancho? Has there been anything you found challenging in this process?

My version of Sancho is so embedded that I sometimes slip into the persona without thinking about it. I’ve lived with him for a long time. Having said that, I was challenged about time and anachronism, when it came to considering the kinds of questions ‘Sancho’ could well be asked by the audience. I think it was the best decision to sort of bring the spirit of Sancho, rather than restrict him to his contemporary knowledge, alone. In this way I see him as the equal to the ‘Author’ of the first half in his capacity to answer any question on the fly. Still mildly terrifying, of course.

5.  And what have you enjoyed most about this process?
I've most enjoyed the audience reaction in each venue. So varied but with one constant; they all became chats by the camp fire. Conversations with friends in a kind of salon … Sancho wanted his letters to be what he called ‘conversable’, which I take to mean a conversation. Open-ended, curious and human. I think he might like it.

6. The repercussions of the transatlantic slave trade have reverberated through history and still exist today through continuing social injustices and global inequalities. What can Charles Ignatius Sancho’s story teach us about life today?

In order to right historical injustices we need to first know the fullest version of the story. That means hearing those stories from every protagonist’s angle. Sancho’s story can be considered an act of remembrance, as was the title of the first Sancho play I wrote a few years ago.

I’ve long equated a nation with a family. We’re randomly born into both. If members of that family are in dispute about past traumas then a family therapist needs to be brought in. If that therapist said, “the best remedy is forgetting all about it and just move on”, we wouldn’t pay them much for their advice. In short, as a Nation-Family, we need to talk. Sancho’s life story is just one of a myriad of ways we can achieve this state of open communication about emotive and difficult histories and their present day repercussions.

7. What advice do you have for someone who aspires to tell the story of a historical figure?
Like Shakespeare, we should first strive to find the human, the domestic, in our great historical figures. We can see them more clearly if we can bring them down off their pedestal of perfection. Lives aren’t neat, tell the muck and the glory with equal panache.

8. What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the next generation of artists?
In short, funding is the biggest challenge for the next generation of artists working in the performance and literature arena. Cuts to courses in our universities are unfairly skewed against the Arts and Humanities. History, English Literature, Black British Literature, Sociology, Anthropology, Music – sidelined for STEM. Unless artists are allowed to fulfil the promises of their gifts, we may end up with a nation of machine-makers without a knowledge of humanity and its real needs.

9. What’s your favourite memorable moment in developing this piece?

It was an early research and development session, and I was reading the Prologue from The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho. When I got to the phrase, ‘Know thy father. And forgive him’, I started telling my co-director/designer Michael Vale and composer Ben Park about my dad and his childhood stories … That lead to an important moment in the show. It also gave us the blueprint for how the show might be improvised around the text in order to mine my own memories.  

10. Summarise the show in 3 words

Intimate. Humorous. Informative.

11. What do you hope audiences will take away from this show?

No matter who we play to - from the wonderful people of Antigua to the welcoming audience at Gorleston, Great Yarmouth - we hope folks get curious about this untold history and start doing their own research.

12. What’s next for you?

Streetwise Opera Company are presenting three operettas largely created by over sixty ex-homeless people who are participants in this wonderful creative enterprise. I have had the privilege of writing the libretti for the three operas based in Nottingham, Manchester and London. Alongside this inspiring creative opportunity to take on a new skill, Ben Park and I will be presenting Sancho&Me – For One Night Only at each of the venues.

Streetwise Opera dates
London 28th May 2024 - St Johns Church, Waterloo
Manchester 7th June 2024 - Bridgewater Hall
Nottingham 29th June 2024 - Nottingham Playhouse

See our tour list for more information.