Hassan Mahamdallie
Hassan Mahamdallie is the founder of Dervish Productions. He is a playwright, director, writer and specialist in diversity and the arts. A senior arts policy maker, he authored Arts Council England’s unique approach: The Creative Case for Diversity. He is also Director of the Muslim Institute, and senior editor of its journal Critical Muslim, for which he is also its roving reporter. Published books include a biography of Victorian artist/activist William Morris and a history of Black British Radicals.
Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.
Spirits of the Black Meridian
TIME, SPACE AND MONUMENTALITY Conference
University of Greenwich
4 September 2024
Spirits of the Black Meridian brings to life the hidden, diverse pioneering stories of those global majority pioneers from the 18thC to present day whose lives and contribution reshaped our culture, landscape, cities & world view forever.
Spirits of the Black Meridian is a lecture demonstration in development by writer and director Hassan Mahamdallie, based on original archival research. An ensemble of performers alongside Hassan used performance, sound and image to interrogate one of Greenwich’s most important monuments: the prime meridian adjacent to the Royal Observatory. The performance seeks to displace the Greenwich Meridian with a future-past ‘Black Meridian’ that recentres all of travel, time, space, history, and the cosmos.
Dervish productions playwright/director and founder, Hassan Mahamdallie and producer Isobel Hawson, have brought artists, historians, musicians and activists together to bring the diverse voices of longitude to life though a series of imagined conversations which take place through time and space.
Lines of longitude, also called meridians, are imaginary lines that divide the Earth. They run north to south from pole to pole, but they measure the distance east or west. The prime meridian, which runs through Greenwich, England, has a longitude of 0 degrees. It divides the Earth into the eastern and western hemispheres.
In 1884 an international conference chose a line that ran through the telescope at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The decision recognised that the Thames estuary, Greenwich and the docks as the centre of global maritime power and trading routes.
That Empire wrapped itself around the globe, carving out new shipping lanes, linking colonial possessions and raw materials with manufacture at home. In the 18th and 19th centuries merchant shipping moved goods – and people – in and out of Britain. The Thames went out to the world, but it was also the conduit that brought people to us – the enslaved, freemen and women, adventurers, West Indian planters and lascars (sailors) from India, the African subcontinent and Asia.
Spirits of the Black Meridian sees Dervish bring diverse voices of Longitude to life, and connects them in a series of conversations through time and space using the imaginative playground of theatre.
Find out more about Dervish Productions here: www.dervishproductions.com