Ocean State Libraries

A landmark play about sexual politics in colonial Africa and modern-day Britain, in which all our assumptions about sex and gender are stunningly exploded. First staged by Joint Stock and premiered in London at the Royal Court Theatre in 1979, it has since been staged all over the world. Set in both colonial Africa and modern-day Britain, Cloud Nine is about relationships? between women and men, men and men, women and women. It is about sex, work,...

Turning her back on her privileged life in Victorian England, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), fired by her innate curiosity, journeyed the world and became fascinated with all things Arab. Traveling the length and breadth of the Arab region, armed with a love for its language and its people, she not only produced several enormously popular books based on her experiences but became instrumental to the British foreign office. When World War I erupted, and...

"The Magistrate of an isolated frontier settlement on the border of an unnamed empire looks forward to an easy retirement until the arrival of Colonel Joll, whose task it is to report on the activities of the "barbarians" and the security situation on the border. Joll conducts a series of ruthless interrogations, which leads the Magistrate to question his loyalty to the empire." --

"Caryl Churchhill plays with the idea of her parallel between colonial and sexual oppression. Act I takes place in Victorian Africa, whilst Act II is set in modern London. Much interplay is made of gender and colour: for example, Clive, the white settler, has a black servant, Joshua, who is played by a white because he wants to be what the whites want him to be"--Back cover.

"Gertrude Bell is sometimes called the female Lawrence of Arabia. Bell was an explorer, spy, archaeologist, and diplomat who helped shape the Middle East after World War I. Advisor to Winston Churchill and critic of colonial policies in Iraq, Bell was considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. The film takes viewers into a past that is eerily current. Why has Bell been written out of the history she helped make?" --

"A portrait in her own words of the female Lawrence of Arabia. One of the great woman adventurers of the twentieth century and the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I, Gertrude Bell turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the...