Return of Benjamin Lay

In your hearts you know the truth: I was here among you three hundred years ago . . . Had you chosen differently then - before slavery and greed breathed their venom so deeply into our souls - we would be living in another world now. It is not too late to purge these poisons.

Benjamin Lay - shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist - returns from the grave almost three hundred years after his death, as feisty and unpredictable as ever.

A four-feet-tall 'Little David' confronts the 'Goliath' of slavery once again as he pleads to be readmitted into the Quaker community that has disowned him and who still believe him to be dangerous.

Now, 'trembling at the edge of playing God himself', how far will Benjamin go as he stares down his accusers?

The Return of Benjamin Lay sweeps across the centuries in a bold exploration of an utterly impossible man. The play opened at the Finborough Theatre, London, in June 2023.

Naomi Wallace's plays include One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, And I and Silence, The Breach and Returning to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani (adapted with Ismail Khalidi). Her awards include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), the Obie Award for Best Play (for One Flea Spare), a MacArthur Fellowship and the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama. Wallace is currently writing the book for the new John Mellencamp musical Small Town and co-writing the book for the new Loretta Lynn musical with George C. Wolfe.

Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. His 'histories from below', including The Slave Ship: A Human History, have been translated into 18 languages. He is the author of The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Verso), and co-author (with David Lester and Paul Buhle) of Prophet against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel (Verso).