salt. - Next Wave Festival review

Selina Thompson is a 28-year-old black woman who lives in Birmingham. But being a woman of colour with ancestry from Jamaica and Montserrat, when asked where she’s from, the UK is often not considered an acceptable answer. To explore her diasporic identity, Thompson bought a ticket on a cargo ship and retraced one of the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle, going from the UK to Ghana to Jamaica, and then back.

In salt., Thompson poetically recalls this experience with the audience while reminding us of the irreparable damage colonialism has had on her ancestors and how this grief will be felt for generations to come. Thompson also ties in her own personal encounters with racism in all its forms, and we hang off her every word as she goes trough these incidents, reinforcing the fact that despite the passing of time, attitudes have changed very little.