RSA Performing Arts Network: The Other Side of Truth - a scratch performance

The RSA’s Performing Arts Network invites Fellows and their guests to a concert scratch performance of The Other Side of Truth. Juwon Ogungbe FRSA has written music and lyrics for a play by Beverley Naidoo based on her Carnegie award-winning novel. This work-in-progress performance is free to attend.

The Other Side of Truth brings together themes of social justice, political oppression, exile, Africa, and childhood in London’s care and education systems.  The project was inspired by the fact that 2017 marked the 25th anniversary of the UK signing up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (a landmark in human rights history).

The performance will feature a choir from Grafton Primary School, Islington, accompanied by the composer, and the author Beverley Naidoo will narrate and read excerpts from her novel.

Director of the Bernie Grant Centre, Peter Courtie, will introduce the performance, and there will be the opportunity to discuss the work with the composer and writer afterwards. Nibbles will be provided and a cash bar will be available before and after the performance.

Juwon Ogungbe FRSA is a composer and singer who has had a distinguished career in opera, music-theatre, and jazz-influenced music. He has composed for the BBC, Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Southbank Centre amongst many others.

Beverley Naidoo has won many awards for her writing, including the 2000 Carnegie Medal for The Other Side of Truth. She holds a doctorate in education and has received a number of honorary doctorates for her body of work. Her fiction has been widely translated.

Grafton Primary School is an institution where the individual child is at the heart of all it does. Grafton always strives to inspire children to achieve the highest level in all areas of learning.

This is one of an occasional series of events from this network intended to showcase some of the many ways in which the performing arts sector enriches society through ideas & action.

 If you have any access requirements or require any reasonable adjustments, please let the team know: networks@rsa.org.uk. Please also let us know if you have any dietary requirements or severe allergies.

Location: Bernie Grants Art Centre, Tottenham Green, London, N15 4RX

About this Network…
The RSA Performing Arts Network is for the widest range of performing arts professionals in the RSA - working in drama, dance, music, live art, opera, circus, and more. The aim is to consider the current role of the performing arts in the RSA, how we can contribute to increasing this, and how we can increase awareness of the many ways in which work in the performing arts sector dovetails with the RSA's mission to enrich society through ideas and action.  Meetings of the network have considered such topics as Verbatim Theatre projects, drama in schools, commissioning in the health sector, and community focus and funding. We believe that the performing arts sector is not just about entertainment: it empowers audiences with knowledge and new perceptions, and many practitioners’ work ties in closely with the ambitions of the Power to Create.