Oroonoko

RSC Associate Director Gregory Doran directs the world premiere of Biyi Bandele’s new adaptation of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko. Described by Virginia Woolf as “the first woman writer to make her living by the pen,” Aphra Behn’s novel, written in the 1680’s, was first put on the stage by David Garrick in the 1750’s. This adaptation is the first complete dramatisation of the entire novel. Set in Surinam and West Africa, it is the tragic romance of the royal hero Oroonoko, grandson and heir of an African king, and Imoinda, daughter of the king’s general. It is also a remarkable early protest against the seventeenth century slave-trade.