If The Georgian House Could Speak

WHITE ACTOR
This is horrible. Oh my God, look at this.

As the three black actors read the material they begin to strip their clothing revealing that they are in chains.

WHITE ACTOR
Hey what’s going on? What’s going on?

The three actors begin a low-painful moan or drown, which becomes almost a musical chant. The actor in the center, THE GRIOT, lifts his head. He looks around the room.

THE GRIOT
Lies, lies, all lies!

WHITE ACTOR
But isn’t it great that this exhibit is here. I mean people need to know what went on.

The groans become a little louder.

THE GRIOT
The truth.

WHITE ACTOR
The truth?

A soft and steady drum beat begins. The Griot speaks.

THE GRIOT
Look, look deep into the sound of my voice and hear the words of our ancestors. Look deep into the sound of my voice and you will see what you will never see on these walls.

Look deep into the sound of my voice and see. See whites invading mother Africa with guns in their hands. LONDON’S ROYAL AFRICA COMPANY. See them enter the villages of my ancestors ruthless and greedy. See the hatred in their eyes as they pull the trigger, hear the sound of the bullets tearing into the bodies of the warriors, who know nothing of the hatred these people hold in their hearts.

Look and see my people try to defend themselves with swords and spears in defiance of destruction. See the white men tear our children and babies away from their screaming mothers. See African men, women and children clubbed to death, and the survivors, chained and forced onto the bottom ships. See them chained shoulder to shoulder, foot to head. Feel the cold steel chains around their necks. Feel the fear of my ancestors as the ships sail away from the beautiful life giving land we called home, Africa. Feel the humiliation of sleeping in urine and bile, the pain of rats gnawing at their feet, their legs, their genitals. Feel the hunger and anger of being fed gruel and slop like a pig. See, as many of my ancestors preferred to leap to the sharks than live life as a slave! Feel the pain of the women being raped and the shame of the men who could not save them from the brutality and the abuse suffered because of the colour of their skin, because of the strength of the women, the strength of the men! Because of greed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHITE ACTOR
There is nothing on these walls that speaks about that?

ACTOR ONE
No there is nothing there which speaks about what it was like to be pulled from the bottom of a hole and brought into the blinding sunlight where pale skinned people examined my body, like you would a horse, or a cow. And then held their noses because of the faeces and disease that dropped from my body.

ACTOR TWO
And the vain English women of Bristol requested a tunnel be built under the city to transport us because their sensitive noses couldn’t stand the smell. And they built that tunnel too!

ACTOR THREE
What happened to those slaves John Pinney so gracefully freed when they were too old or too sick? They suffered and died, alone. Probably for the best.

THE GRIOT
The pain of our mothers, the pain of our children, the pain of Africa!

WHITE ACTOR
I’m sorry but it says here that John Pinney was a lenient slave owner.

THE GRIOT
There is no such thing as a lenient slave owner. A slave owner was cruel by the nature of what he did, not because he gave fifty less lashes from the whip than his neighbor. He made his fortune on the lives, the backs, the suffering, the pain, on the death of human beings! Lenient! I can still hear my ancestors scream!

One of the actors gives a wailing scream.

WHITE ACTOR
But it says right here that the conditions of slavery were not known.

THE GRIOT
Not known? Should I tell you what the condition of slavery was on the plantations which John Pinney owned. He knew. You should know too.

WHITE ACTOR
I don’t think I want to know.

THE GRIOT
Do you want to be like others and turn your back on the truth? As if none of it happened the way that we know it did?

WHITE ACTOR
No.

THE GRIOT
Because nothing good will came from that. Tell him. Tell them all what should exist on these walls!

ACTOR ONE
On the ships we were forcibly separated from our families and members of our tribes so we would not be able to communicate with each other. Then forbidden to speak in our own language.

ACTOR TWO
The chains around our necks cut into our skin causing infection and death. Too many of my people died from illness, or leaped to the sharks in fear of what was to come. They preferred to die.

ACTOR THREE
Once in America, and the Caribbean, we were put on auction blocks and sold to the highest bidding, American, French, Portuguese, and British colonist and plantation owners. Chosen for breeding

ACTOR ONE
Once on the plantation we worked the cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and indigo fields, we did everything from sun up to sun down. And we were given scraps to eat and shacks to live m.

ACTOR THREE
The intestines of hogs! And when I rebelled it was like the fury of hell! Sometimes I was lashed with the whip as if I was cattle

ACTOR TWO
That is all they want to admit on these walls. They don’t talk about how my legs were pulled in opposite directions until I was ripped in half.

ACTOR THREE
This was usually done while pregnant mothers were forced to watch.

ACTOR ONE
They don’t talk about burying us up to our necks so the insects could eat us alive, they don’t talk about breaking our bones on the wheel, a sick torture device. They don’t talk about how they quartered us, decapitated us and placed our heads on poles!

ACTOR TWO
Should we go on? John Pinney was a plantation owner, a hateful man

WHITE ACTOR
There is nothing here that says any of that.

THE GRIOT
That’s why my ancestors scream from the depths of the waters surrounding Bristol. They scream from here, across the Atlantic to America, to the Caribbean, they scream over the wind, over the years that the truth be told.

ACTOR ONE
And it ain’t told here!

ACTOR TWO
If the Georgian House could speak, it would tell the truth. Five hundred years of atrocity and much of it began right here in Bristol and this is the home of one of those men.

ACTOR THREE
How John Pinney and others like him used God and the bible to justify the dehumanisation of my people.

WHITE ACTOR
Oh my God I think I am going to be sick.

THE GRIOT
This house is a testimony to inhumanity placed upon my people. It should be an indictment. Our people have survived and strived all over the world under conditions which no other people have ever experienced or survived under.

ACTOR TWO
Where’s the testimony to the real men and women who built the city of Bristol?

THE GRIOT
Those that have passed on bestowed the responsibility of the griot on all of us!

WHITE ACTOR
I demand to know why the truth is not on these walls!

THE GRIOT
Better tell the truth, or the hatred one race has for the other will never seize to exist. Humanity cannot be built on lies. Lies cause human beings to die.

ACTOR ONE
The truth.

ACTOR TWO
The truth.

ACTOR THREE
The truth.

ALL THE ACTORS
The truth

Repeated as they exit.