Bio

I, ROS MARTIN am an award winning playwright, poet, artist, experimental theatre & film maker based in Bristol, U.K. I am a freelance producer, writer & cultural activist of British, Nigerian, Brazilian and St. Lucian descent……..

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‘The past absorbs me, how it informs and impacts on our present condition, what is it that is remembered, what is not remembered, how our stories are told in museums and in schools, what we have been bequeathed from others in our present landscapes and how we respond, if at all, to this.

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I have been both writing, creating and performing & drawing up theatre performances, making digital film shorts & shows since 2002. I enjoy collaborating across art-form in projects both locally, nationally & increasingly internationally. I have a particular interest in bringing to life, little known aspects of local Bristol African, British history & heritage to elucidate, lives impacted by British colonialism, and to afford lives deemed less than, their humanity,  dignity and memorialisation in Bristol’s landscapes and beyond.

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I use whatever form that comes to me as an artist, whatever niggles me to act, create,  collaborate with others i.e partners, activists, artists, cultural providers on a project by project basis i.e through Our Stories Make Waves,  Olawale Arts or Our Our History, Our Heritage ( the latter through delivering schools workshops and talks).

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My aim  as an artist, is to socially engage others with the invisible, marginalised lives, histories and cultures of the oppressed, whoever they are and wherever they are.’

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​​EXAMPLES OF PAST WORK

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 A WING, A PREY, A SONG 2013 Producer/ lead artist, Ros Martin

migration project experimenting with animation projection & drama in residency for 2 weeks at

Guest Project Africa’s Haggerston, East London studio residency, courtesy of Yinka Shonibare MBE. ACE funded Project 

Migration animation Mike Stuart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0OHgqIipIE

Artistic team  Olusola Oyeleye director, Mike Stuart, Emilyne Mondo, Shola Adewusi, Zoe Holloway the late Adesose Wallace, Roxana Freeman, Ria Hartley

 

 

RETURN OF THE VANISHING PEASANT 2013 a short play monologue

Producer: Cambridge Menagerie Theatre’s WHAT’S UP DOC? Venues: Colchester Mercury, Cambridge Junction, Soho London Writer Ros Martin collaborates with Professor of Ethics Denise Ferreira da Silva. Set in NE Brazil Actor Vincent Kerschbaum plays Carlos, a landless worker peasant activist. It is All Souls night, a restless spirit returns..

Playscript online https://www.academia.edu/34736878/RETURN_OF_THE_VANISHING_PEASANT_2013

 

 

 ‘I WITNESS’ 2007 A multi art form theatre production by Our Stories Make Waves (African diaspora artists in creativity across the Southwest) stage show venues: Cotham School of performing Arts, KUUMBA & British Empire & Commonwealth Museum. 

In song dance, poetry and monologue I WITNESS charts the activist life of the late Caribbean historian and lawyer, Dr Richard Hart (1917-2013) in the struggle for decolonisation in 1930’s Jamaica;.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ck0XIBMvZs.

Artistic team: Shiloh Harmitt, Ruth Pitter, Mary Ingoldby, Tony Briscoe, Marvin Rees, Remi Tawose, Phillipa Smith, Alphonse Daudet Touna. Lead artist Ros Martin    

 

‘STORMING’ 2006 20min radio drama BBC radio Bristol LIFELINES. Audio of performance online https://soundcloud.com/ros-martin-699364927/storming

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