The Symposium

Two English stage actors, Hugo and Jago, have an artistic difference while rehearsing a radio play. This evolves rapidly into a huge fracas, and spills onto a West End side street. Naturally, this draws a horde or passersby, including an American bystander, who elects to be the peacemaker. Things soon deteriorate from the scholarly to the brutal, even physical, and long held personal and societal prejudices surface. Class, racial origins, and history are harshly debated. Then Hugo, the posh one, proclaims his African ancestry, which bombshell causes a puzzled Jago to accost an African Traffic warden for verification, thus opening a third front to his quarrel with Hugo. There is a reversal of roles, with the posh Hugo championing liberal causes, the working class Jago becoming more and more entrenched as a xenophobe, and the traffic warden boasting an exemplary academic and social pedigree, despite his job. Unbeknownst to Jago, however, this entire 'symposium' is meant either to be his Road to Damascus or ruin. This fast paced drama is set in the 2010s. It utilises a pseudo Shakespearian language that enables exquisite witticism and sarcasm, while offering a crucial historical perspective. It also allows the characters to transcend certain social boundaries, while addressing the unspoken tensions and sub­tensions undermining harmony in a cosmopolitan United Kingdom. The Symposium is a art house film project written and directed by Ghanaian poet and filmmaker Ishmael Annobil. It follows in the footsteps of his magic­ realist film, 'Salamander', which is currently in post-production. Like all his other film, Annobil designed Symposium to be shot in public, with multiple cameras, and with some amount of spectator participation.