Placeholder (Parallel Text) - by Catherine Bisset (Paperback)

About the Book

A parallel text version of Catherine Bisset's dramatic solo play set in 1790 Saint-Domingue - the daughter of an enslaved woman reflects on her life as an opera singer and the importance of resistance.

Book Synopsis

A parallel text version of Catherine Bisset's play Placeholder - in English and French.

Set in motion by academic research by the Colonial-Era Caribbean Theatre and Opera Network, a cross-institutional endeavour chaired at St Andrews, Placeholder by Catherine Bisset addresses the stories that are missing from the archives and the holes in the narrative that are themselves acts of suppression.

Synopsis:

It is 1790 in Saint-Domingue, a year and a day before the start of the Haitian Revolution. Minette, a 'free woman of colour', waits in a sweltering theatre. She remembers her mother, a courageous and intelligent enslaved woman, and considers her own previous career as an Opera singer. An emotional exchange between mother and daughter reveals the insidious power of divide and rule, the pointlessness of freedom without equality and the importance of resistance. Will Minette find the courage to go back to the Opera or will she remain a 'Placeholder'?

This version of Placeholder provides the original English version with matching pages in Haitian French, translated by Elisa Finielz.

Longlisted for the 2024 Kavya Prize.

Review Quotes

"Placeholder is a 'tour-de-force' of a play that shakes up the colonial archives by using different voices as counterpoints. Bisset gives voice and visibility to people of African descent who have previously been silenced in the history books and in particular challenges the archival silencing of Minette's story. Throughout Placeholder, Minette takes up her rightful place on stage and in the world at the start of the Haitian Revolution. Elise Finielz's sensitive and elegant translation skilfully conveys both the subtlety and emotional power of the English text."
Dr Rachel Douglas, School of Modern Languages & Cultures