Latif Abubakar
Award-winning Ghanaian playwright, Latif Abubakar, is set to premiere his 21st production, ‘The Darkest Chapter’.
The play is inspired by President John Dramani Mahama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on the transatlantic slave trade which culminated in a historic vote on the recognition of the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement as the gravest crime against humanity.
The play is being staged as part of this year’s Ghana Theatre Festival.
Produced by Globe Productions in partnership with the National Theatre, UNESCO, and the Ministries of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, and Foreign Affairs, the play seeks to transform a moment of international diplomacy into a theatrical experience.
The story revolves around an unusual character called ‘The Witness’, an immortal presence who has lived through a thousand lives over four centuries.
He is portrayed at different points as a child of the Gold Coast, a captive forced onto the Middle Passage, a plantation labourer in the Caribbean and a witness to the struggles that shaped the modern fight for freedom, culminating in his journey to the halls of the United Nations.
The story unfolds across three interconnected worlds; the shores and dungeons of Cape Coast and Elmina, a contemporary UN General Assembly chamber and a timeless spiritual realm accessible through drumming and movement.
The production fuses West African, contemporary and Caribbean dance traditions, supported by live African percussion, orchestral strings and a gospel-highlife choir.
Playwright, Latif Abubakar, said the ambition was to create an emotional experience rather than a historical recount.
“We are not asking audiences to relive four hundred years of pain. We are asking them to walk through it,” he said.
“This is not a re-enactment. It is an inheritance,” he added.
Abubakar described the production as “a sensory masterpiece; immersive, cinematic, and unapologetically global in its ambition.”
‘The Darkest Chapter’ is scheduled for October 2026 at the National Theatre in Accra. It will run for three days, Friday, October 2, at 7:00 p.m., and Saturday, October 3, and Sunday, October 4, at 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. each day.
Tickets are priced at GH¢200 and are available via USSD *447*1092# or online at www.globeproductions.biz.
A Daily Guide Report