SWEET TOOTH is a 50-minute cross-disciplinary music theatre piece that uses text, improvisation and movement, to stage a dramatic engagement with the brutal realities of slavery as revealed by the historical records of the sugar industry, and to reveal its contemporary echoes.
SWEET TOOTH marks the culmination of five years’ research by Mitchener into our love of sugar and the historical links between the UK sugar industry and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It is a deeply personal project not only about Black history but an important chapter of British history and the pivotal role Black people have played in it.
Credits:
Concept, Direction & Music: Elaine Mitchener
Movement Direction: Dam Van Huynh
Historical Consultant: Christer Petley
Lighting Design: Alex Johnston
Devised and performed by:
Elaine Mitchener, Sylvia Hallett, Mark Sanders, Jason Yarde
SWEET TOOTH premiered on Thursday 23 November at Bluecoat Liverpool and is currently on tour. The project has been supported with public funding from Arts Council England. Commissioned by Bluecoat in partnership with the Stuart Hall Foundation, London and The International Slavery Museum with further support from PRSF Open Fund, Edge Hill University, John Hansard Gallery, Centre 151 and St George’s Bloomsbury.
For more on Elaine’s work visit WWW.ELAINEMITCHENER.COM/
To find out more about SWEET TOOTH and how Elaine Mitchener transformed five years of research into this incredibly powerful, thought provoking and much acclaimed performance, read the conversation between Elaine Mitchener and Gilane Tawadros, the Vice-Chair of Stuart Hall Foundation – Interview between Gilane Tawadros and Elaine Mitchener.
Press
Review by Kevin Le Gendre /Jazzwise Magazine/
Breaking the chains: Elaine Mitchener on the British Empire’s legacy of cruelty /The Wire/
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