'We have a responsibility to share': New play about modern slavery that still celebrates Sudan

As a child, Mende Nazer was abducted from her home in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains in a slaving raid. She spent six years as a domestic slave in the capital, Khartoum, before being sent to London.

Nazer documented her escape from slavery in the book "Slave: My True Story" which became the 2011 play ‘Slave: A Question of Freedom’.

This year, the play returns to UK theatres as civil war continues to rage in Sudan, a country that has been engulfed in conflict since Omar al-Bashir became head of state in 1989.

“It’s been about 24 years since Mende’s experience, but there are thousands and thousands of Mendes still all over the world,” Dr Caroline Clegg, director of the play tells Euronews Culture.

‘Slave: A Question of Freedom’ is due to start a run of UK dates this October, beginning on 9 October at the Lowry in Salford before playing in Bristol, Prescot, and London. A play about growing sympathy for trafficking victims and asylum seekers is sadly all too relevant, opening two months after violent far-right anti-immigration riots spread across the UK and saw hotels housing migrants attacked.

Clegg first came across the play in 2004.

“Somebody passed the book onto me with the caveat ‘you don’t need to turn this into a play, Caroline’. Within the first few hours, it had changed my life,” she says.

Nazer’s experience of slavery followed by the UK’s Home Office denying her original claim of asylum woke Clegg up to the breadth of human suffering perpetuated by modern slavery.

Together with writer Kevin Fegan, Clegg and Nazer put together the play in Nazer’s voice. Featuring eight actors, it tells her story of slavery.

“We are creating a piece of theatre that will project Mende’s truth and not shy away from the difficult subjects,” Clegg