After Kinte

A watercolour painting of a group of figures sitting around a table. At the bottom of the image in red paint is the text 'if you think about mothers with their sons,'

A watercolour painting with a blue circle containing a roundtable painted on the right hand side, and in the top left is brown circle with semi-circles surrounding it.

a dark room with an empty roundtable with empty seats

three people sat at a round table in Tramway 1 with mugs and glasses of water. behind them are three rectangular blocks, two vertical and one horizontal.

a dark theatre space. on stage there are three people sat at a roundtable.

three people sat talking at a roundtable

completely dark scene apart from an illuminated image of a person stood in front of trees.

two people sat talking to each other at a round table. there are three glasses of water on the table

wide shot of tramway 1 stage. two people are sat at a round table in the centre whilst another stands off to the side

three people on stage in tramway 1 interacting with different blocks/plinths that are on the stage, one person is sat and the other two stand

Tako Taal’s After Kinte will be available to watch online for the final performance on Sunday 16^th June at 4pm. The video will start at 3:45.

After Kinte is a newly commissioned performance by Glasgow-based artist Tako Taal. Taking place on five occasions throughout the festival, the work comprises a theatrical staging of a script by Tako for three performers.

The performance continues Tako’s interest in the slippage between individual identity and wider cultural histories. After Kinte builds on research into the format of the actors’ roundtable, synonymous with the US-based film industry magazine The Hollywood Reporter. At these roundtables, celebrated actors often reflect on the experience and art of inhabiting a character, and the impact this has on their everyday lives.

After Kinte’s title references the fictional character, Kunta Kinte, at the centre of Alex Haley’s bestselling novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, 1976. Kinte is based on an ancestor of Haley’s who was enslaved in The Gambia throughout the 18th century and taken to North America. In 1977 Roots was serialised for television and became the most watched TV mini-series. The global success of Roots has led to Kinte’s Gambian birthplace becoming a site of pilgrimage, a condition that Tako has previously explored in her work and circulates through the character of Kunta Kinte as a cultural spectacle. After Kinte questions the various ways that histories and memory may resurface in the present day, and how characterisation can become a place of genesis or departure.

Performers
Adam Kashmiry
Sabrina Mandulu
Rebecca Wilkie

Sound Design
Claude Nouk

Producer
Conor Baird

Video Documentation
Daniel Hughes
Jordan Yorkston
Mark Readhead
Andrew Black