Introduction: Contested Landscapes and the Politics of Public Heritage
Public heritage spaces in the Western world—stately homes, botanical gardens, municipal parks, and civic monuments—are frequently perceived by the general public as neutral, tranquil sanctuaries of natural beauty and historical leisure. However, beneath their manicured lawns, neoclassical pavilions, and exotic flora collections lies a deeply contested imperial history. Many historic botanical gardens were established during the height of European imperial expansion, serving as scientific and economic engines for cataloging, categorizing, and exploiting agricultural resources extracted from colonized territories across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
At Black & White Craft, decolonial dramaturgy is conceived as a powerful artistic intervention that interrogates these hidden histories. In our landmark promenade production, A Day in Colonial Garden staged within the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, we utilized historical satire to transform scenic heritage grounds into dynamic arenas of public historical reckoning.
Rather than treating heritage sites as untouchable museum shrines, our curatorial methodology engages with them as living archives of imperial power relations. By staging live performance directly within these spaces, we disrupt sanitized historical narratives and open up urgent dialogues regarding memory, restitution, and justice across contemporary society.
1. Satire as an Unflinching Dialectical Tool for Historical Disruption
Didactic lectures and solemn academic treatises often fail to engage wide public audiences; they can provoke defensiveness, guilt, or passive disengagement. Satire, by contrast, operates as a profound dialectical instrument of theatrical disruption. Through irony, caricature, and the dramatization of bureaucratic absurdity, satire invites spectators to laugh while simultaneously confronting uncomfortable historical truths.
In A Day in Colonial Garden, the narrative brought Victorian colonial botanists, imperial administrators, and aristocratic patrons to life, dramatizing their absurd obsession with renaming indigenous African plants, enforcing arbitrary classifications, and extracting foreign wealth under the guise of scientific benevolence. By exaggerating the rigid etiquette and pomposity of imperial bureaucracy, the performance exposed the fundamental violence and hubris underlying the colonial project.
The humor functions as a Trojan horse: it disarms audience defenses, creating a shared psychological space where spectators can critically analyze systemic exploitation without retreating into ideological polarization or emotional shut-down.
2. Promenade Staging as Experiential Historical Archaeology
Promenade staging is the essential vehicle for decolonial theatre because it demands physical presence in the exact space under critique. When spectators walk side-by-side with performers along Victorian gravel avenues, stand beneath glasshouse domes housing rubber plants and tea bushes extracted from former colonies, and witness actors dramatizing historical negotiations, the distance of time completely dissolves.
Spectators are not merely watching a historical play; they are physically traversing an imperial archive. The physical labor of walking, the smell of damp earth, and the tactile presence of heritage flora create an experiential archaeology that embeds historical awareness directly into the body of the audience. Audience members become active historical witnesses, forced to physically position themselves within the geography of imperial extraction and economic botany.
This bodily engagement generates an unforgettable affective resonance. The historical landscape is no longer an abstract painting; it is a physical space marked by labor, migration, and colonial governance, felt directly through the soles of the audience’s shoes as they follow performers across historic garden paths.
3. Subverting Archival Hegemony and Centering Silenced Narratives
Colonial historical archives were written almost exclusively by colonial administrators, cataloging victories, economic yields, and administrative decrees while deliberately erasing the voices, resistance, and trauma of colonized populations. Decolonial dramaturgy actively subverts this archival hegemony.
In our script development process, archival administrative documents were juxtaposed against unrecorded indigenous oral histories, enslaved workers’ resistance songs, and contemporary diaspora poetry. The narrative gave voice to the invisible laborers who harvested, transported, and nurtured the botanical specimens that fueled imperial fortunes, ensuring that historical memory is rebalanced with dignity, complexity, and truth.
We interrogate the very language of botanical classification, highlighting how indigenous botanical taxonomies—developed over millennia of ecological stewardship—were systematically erased and replaced with Latin binomials that honored European patrons and colonial governors.
4. Directorial Methodology: Balancing Wit, Veracity, and Multi-Vocal Scenography
Directing decolonial satire requires extraordinary nuance from the creative team. If the satire is too broad, it risks becoming cheap farce; if it is too polemical, it risks flattening historical complexity. In Opeyemi Farimoyo’s directorial methodology, every satirical scene is grounded in documented archival records—actual minutes from colonial botanical societies, real merchant shipping manifests, and genuine colonial dispatches.
Actors deliver absurd historical lines with deadpan, upper-class seriousness, allowing the inherent absurdity of the historical record to speak for itself. Meanwhile, counter-narrative performers move silently along the periphery of the garden paths, performing ritual movements and whispered laments that provide a poignant, emotional counterbalance to the satirical farce, weaving a multi-vocal tapestry of grief, irony, and resistance.
This dual-layered staging architecture allows audiences to experience historical tragedy and satirical comedy simultaneously, sharpening critical reflection and honoring ancestral resilience.
5. Ethical Care and Psychological Safety for Diverse Creative Ensembles
Staging racially charged historical satire in public outdoor environments demands extraordinary directorial care and robust protocols of psychological safety. Our diverse cast—comprising Black, diaspora, and white British actors—navigated complex themes of racial subjugation, colonial cruelty, and historical privilege.
Under Opeyemi Farimoyo’s directorial leadership, rehearsals incorporated structured debriefing circles, somatic decompression exercises, and intimacy coordination protocols. Actors were provided with clear boundaries between their personal identities and their satirical characters, creating a supportive rehearsal environment that empowered them to deliver bold, fearless performances without experiencing psychological distress or emotional burnout.
This ethic of care ensures that the creative process remains liberating and healing for the artists involved, establishing a culture of mutual respect and artistic bravery throughout the rehearsal and performance season.
6. Transforming Passive Viewers into Engaged, Reflective Citizens
The ultimate measure of decolonial theatre is the critical dialogue it sparks long after the final applause fades. Following each performance of A Day in Colonial Garden, our team facilitated structured post-show dialogue circles where spectators engaged with historians, botanical curators, and community organizers.
Audience members openly shared how traversing the gardens transformed their understanding of local heritage, prompting urgent conversations regarding cultural restitution, public memorialization, and the ongoing legacies of empire in contemporary British society. By transforming passive viewers into reflective, questioning citizens, decolonial promenade theatre proves that public art can function as an indispensable instrument of civic awakening and historical justice.
7. Institutional Impact: Influencing Heritage Site Interpretation Policies
The impact of A Day in Colonial Garden extended far beyond the closing performance. Following the production, our curatorial team collaborated with botanical garden trustees and municipal heritage officers to re-evaluate permanent site signage, visitor guidebooks, and educational outreach programs.
By providing research-backed provenance data regarding botanical collections, our production helped initiate permanent decolonial interpretive plaques that acknowledge the indigenous origins and colonial trade routes of heritage flora, demonstrating that live theatrical interventions can drive lasting institutional policy reform and redefine public historical education.
Conclusion: Decolonial Performance as an Instrument of Public Historical Reckoning
Reclaiming public heritage grounds through satire and promenade staging demonstrates that history is not fixed in stone or museum cases; it is a living, contested terrain that must be critically examined. Black & White Craft remains dedicated to creating courageous, uncompromising theatrical interventions that honor historical truth, celebrate community resilience, and foster profound civic reflection across Britain and the world.
