'I am the slave ship. Wrecked. Empty. I am a shark, livid with the desire for blood. I am the sea, boiling with fury.'

Amid the gloom of Victorian England, a black sailor, Thomas, prepares to take one last voyage, while an ageing painter, J.M.W. Turner, seeks artistic inspiration in a half-remembered story. In twenty-first-century London, an actress finds herself handcuffed by history – two centuries after abolitionists won her ancestors their freedom.

Winsome Pinnock's astonishing play retells British history through the prism of the slave trade. Fusing fact with fiction, past with present, the powerfully personal with the fiercely political, Rockets and Blue Lights asks who owns our past – and who has the right to tell its stories?

Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, the play opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in March 2020, directed by Miranda Cromwell.

'The godmother of Black British playwrights' Guardian

'A swirling journey through the light and shade of black history' — Guardian

'A deep dive into the murky waters of the legacy of Britain's role in the slave trade... The rich depth of Pinnock's writing... It is an ugly truth, but, somehow, Winsome Pinnock has made it beautiful' — The Stage

'Ambitious and complex... beautifully held together by the poetry and quality of Pinnock's writing... an astonishingly beautiful and emotional coup de theatre... conjures the ghosts of the past and makes them powerful and engrossing in a theatre, here and now' — Whatsonstage

'Powerful, hard-hitting... urgent and important... also startlingly funny in parts' — Evening Standard

'Inspirationally ambitious and all-encompassingly humane... Bravo' — Independent