Maud Sulter Live Programme: Service to Empire, a play by Maud Sulter (Film Screening and conversation)

Part of our Maud Sulter Live Programme

A screening of the filmed rehearsed reading of Service to Empire, directed and abridged by Onashile and co-curated with Mother Tongue. Following this screening the acclaimed actor, playwright, and director Adura Onashile will be in conversation with artist Tako Taal.

‘Sulter wrote Service to Empire, published in 2002. In this play she reimagines the relationship between the parents of Jerry Rawlings: his father was a Scot, his mother Ghanaian. Exploring long-lasting colonial legacies across two continents, Sulter considered her play as providing ‘an incisive observation of the explosive reverberations’ of their affair and its impact on Ghana’s former President (in office 1979-2002). The play was written 20 years ago, but has never been performed. This reading is long overdue bringing to light the work of this internationally renowned artist.’ (from Mother Tongue website, with thanks) 

The film and screening were produced by the National Galleries of Scotland with external funding from Art Fund and Creative Scotland, with input from the Estate of Maud Sulter.

About the speakers

Adura Onashile is a British-Nigerian writer, director and playwright, based in Glasgow. Her debut feature film GIRL, a relationship drama inspired by Adura’s experiences growing up with her mother in the UK in the 1980s, is produced by Glasgow outfit Barry Crerar, with support from BBC Film, BFI and Screen Scotland. Her short film, EXPENSIVE SHIT, about a Nigerian toilet attendant in the bathroom of a Scottish nightclub, is adapted from her own play, and premiered at the 2020 BFI London Film Festival before going on to be nominated for a BAFTA in 2021. Adura has had scripted commissions from Hera Pictures, Two Rivers, Synchronicity. She is currently developing Jacqueline Roy’s critically acclaimed novel THE GOSLING GIRL as a TV series with Green Acre Films. Her stage work has led to her being nominated for an Alfred Fagon award and in 2018 she was the recipient of the Channel 4 Playwrights Bursary in association with the Traverse Theatre.

Tako Taal is an artist who works alongside spectral, cited and physical beings to undermine history and destabilise images. She works with video, installation and performance, to consider how artefacts and anecdotes are tangents to trace shifts that merge and split boundaries between bodies, lands and states. She lives in Glasgow. In 2024 Tako presented After Kinte, a new play jointly commissioned by Glasgow International and CAPC, Bordeaux. She has exhibited at La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Workplace Foundation (Newcastle), Pace Gallery (London), Dundee Contemporary Arts (Dundee), Jerwood Arts (London), Site Gallery (Sheffield), NADA House (New York), Talbot Rice Gallery (Edinburgh), Perth Museum and Art Gallery (Perth, Scotland).

The Maud Sulter Live Programme curated by Pelumi Odubanjo accompanies our current exhibition Maud Sulter - You are my kindred spirit, open until 30 March 2025.