"Looking For Samuel" featuring Malika Booker and Dorothea Smartt
Commissioned by the Royal College of Music and the Victoria and Albert Museum in October 2012, 'Looking For Samuel - commemorating the death of a musical genius' draws on the musical works and events of the composer's life. Poetry and music fuse to produce a powerful piece, created collectively by all artists.
The work was premiered as part of 'Black Culture Week' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London alongside talks about the life of the composer by Katey Hamilton RCM and The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation, followed by a Q+A with all event participants.
The work was then performed again at The Albany, Canada Water.
Next performance on Tuesday 7th October 2014 at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival - tickets available at the link below:
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/samuel-coleridge-taylor-tribut-86091?dt=2014-10-07
http://sctf.org.uk
The work was premiered as part of 'Black Culture Week' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London alongside talks about the life of the composer by Katey Hamilton RCM and The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation, followed by a Q+A with all event participants.
The work was then performed again at The Albany, Canada Water.
Next performance on Tuesday 7th October 2014 at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival - tickets available at the link below:
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/samuel-coleridge-taylor-tribut-86091?dt=2014-10-07
http://sctf.org.uk
Malika Booker and Dorothea Smartt
Malika Booker is a British writer of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, who writes poetry, plays and solo monologues. Her poems are widely anthologised in anthologies and journals including: Out of Bounds, British Black & Asian Poets (Bloodaxe, 2012) Ten New Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry (The Women's Press, 1998), The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing and the India International Journal 2005. She has represented British writing internationally, both independently and with the British Council in Slovenia, New Zealand, Malaysia, India, Russia and Azerbaijan. She has performed her work at many venues around the world and has written for the stage and radio. In 1999 her first solo theatre show Absolution was commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre and the Austrian Cultural Institute and enjoyed a three-week run at the Battersea Arts Centre. Her first musical play, Catwalk, commissioned by NITRO ran at the Tricycle Theatre in June 2001 and had a successful UK tour. Malika was Hampton Court Palace Writer in Residence in 2004. In Spring 2005 she was sponsored by the Arts Council England for a three-month writer fellowship at the India International Centre in Delhi. She was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to create Bloodlines in July 2005, and in August, to create Scattered Experiences on BBC Radio's Woman's Hour, as part of their Travel Stories series. Her one-woman show, Unplanned, which explored issues around women's fertility, cultural and gender identities, was produced by Apples & Snakes - directed by Rachel Mars and toured nationwide throughout 2007. Since August 2001, she has co-run 'Malika's Kitchen,' a writers' collective based in London and Chicago, which offers weekly writers' surgeries, publishing opportunities in anthologies and showcasing new work at UK and Chicago venues. Malika is a sought-after workshop facilitator and has run creative writing courses for organizations including The Arvon Foundation, National Theatre, Young Vic and The British Festival of Visual Theatre (BFVT). She has more than 15 years experience working with young people in schools in the UK and abroad as a workshop facilitator, visiting writer and creative mentor. Malika currently teaches at City Lit and Westminster University. Her collection Breadfruit was published by flippedeye in 2007, and recommended by the Poetry Book Society. She was inaugural Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
