Mixed Blessings Theatre Group
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How Mixed Blessings Theatre Group, St James House Community Room, 130 St James House, High Street, Brighton, BN2 1RW came into existence
The Mixed Blessings Theatre Group was created in 2007 when two people who had worked in the Hate Crime Arena within a Police Context Sussex Police got together write a play about the life and times of Dido Elizabeth Belle, a young mixed race woman who just might have influenced one of the greatest historical decisions, one that bought about the start of the Abolition of Slavery and started with the The Somerset Ruling
The idea for the play came from a magazine from English Heritage with an article on Kenwood House along with Dido Elizabeth Belle photos of Dido Elizabeth Belle and her personal history, which included the fact she was the daughter of a British Naval Officer John Lindsay (admiral) that she helped her Uncle the Earl of Mansfield with his paperwork and was well educated, despite being illegitimate, the daughter of a slave, as well as being mixed race.
The first Earl of Mansfield Dido's Great Uncle helped bring about the beginning of the end of slavery by presiding over the Somerset Case in the late 1700s where he declared that slavery in England was illegal.
The title of the play was "Let Justice Be Done" based on the words of the Earl of Mansfield who is allegedly supposed to have said "Let justice be done though the heavens may fall" when he made his contraversial ruling on the Somerset Case.
The play revolves around a fictional account (but based on well researched historical facts, all the characters in the play bar one were actual historical figures) of Dido Elizabeth Belle and the influence she might have had on the Abolition of Slavery in England in 1807. For example Olaudah Equiano was a well known Abolishionist who probably was well known to the Earl of Mansfield and Elizabeth Lindsay was Dido's cousin.
