The True Amazon Adventures of Roger Casement
The True Amazon Adventures of Roger Casement by Andrew Shaw, directed by
Robert Reid. With Mike McEvoy, Elliot Summers, Robert Lloyd, Michael F.
Cahill, Tobias Manderson-Galvin, Johannes Scherpenhuizen, Liz McColl, Simon
Morrison-Baldwin and Alicia Benn Lawler. La Mama until February 18.
The so-called Black Diaries of Roger Casement are a kind of Turin Shroud of
modern history. Sir Roger Casement was a distinguished Victorian human
rights advocate whose reports on colonial atrocities in the Belgian Congo
and rubber plantations in Peru earned him a knighthood.
But Casement, an Anglo-Irishman, was also a believer in Irish Independence.
In 1916 he arranged for a German ship to sail for Ireland with "several
machine-guns, 20,000 rifles and a million rounds of ammunition" for the
Irish Volunteers. But his plans were exposed, and Casement was arrested and
imprisoned in London for three months awaiting trial. He was hanged by the
British for treason on August 3, 1916, for his part in the Easter Rising.
While Casement was in prison, the diaries - supposedly seized in a raid on
his house - were used to destroy his credibility and character. The diaries
contained explicit details that revealed Casement to be a promiscuous
homosexual with a taste for rough trade. Selected extracts were shown to
public figures and known sympathisers, who consequently shrank back from
appealing for clemency for a "degenerate". The Black Diaries effectively
hanged him.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Coming up: The 25Th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee at the MTC
Best to all
Alison
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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