There are Hidden Stories Everywhere : Geostories, Guest Writer Anita Franklin

I am pleased and excited to be a guest writer for Geo Stories.  If you are familiar with GeoStories then you will know of the innovative and accessible entertainment that is available free to you via a mobile app.  GeoStories, like its sister company Vanitas Arts, is dedicated to bringing forth the perspectives of people not usually represented in mainstream narratives.  We may know, for example the story of Dracula but what if we tell this story from the point of view of working people in 19th century Whitby?  We may be familiar with the persecution of women as witches in Pendle or Salem but Bakewell too had its share of arrests, prosecutions and executions.

There are hidden stories everywhere if we but took the time to look.

‘It Was An Unremarkable Day’ is inspired by the real life events that took place in Salem Massachusetts in the late 17th century.  In this story I wanted to give a voice to the enslaved women of the community and to invite the audience into re- imagining the Salem tragedy.  If we have been exposed to The Crucible, then we will know about Tituba but there were two other enslaved women, their stories for the most part eclipsed by the popular narrative provided by Arthur Miller’s stage play, as well as by the various films which use his work as their key source for the story.  The Salem story endures as even now issues of mass psychogenic illness and collective stress are as relevant now as it was in 1950’s America when McCarthyism threatened democratic processes.  Miller’s play was his response to those times.

My second story, ‘The Stolen’, is about the rise and spread of the power of voodoo and similar spiritual practices in the US. Largely associated with 18th century Haiti and New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries voodoo is a syncretic mix of Catholic saints and African gods/goddesses.  It has been estimated that approximately 60 million people are practitioners of voodoo.  This story is the first of a series exploring this theme in contemporary as well as historic times.

Both stories are deeply rooted in American history and in my personal ancestry as a Black American.

My writing in these two instances I share nearly always starts with a keen desire to tell a story, a desire to share that story with others.  Sometimes the story is something that comes with sorrow and delight like with the Gladys Bentley work (produced as part of Persons Of Interest audio drama podcast by Vanitas Arts), or my short stage play The Crossing (produced by Paines Plough) other times it comes with someone asking me a question about myself – as in the case of my piece on Mary MacLeod Bethune (Vanitas Arts) or the BBC radio play This Sweet Bitter Earth.  

My work is often historical, the most recent stage example being All Our Goals, which was devised by Utopia Theatre around the life of Emma Clarke, England’s first Black professional woman footballer.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that my writing starts with research.  It’s not just that I’m looking for the facts and figures behind someone who was once alive.  It’s that for me my real life characters AND their fictional cousins must have a world to live in.  That need to construct a world leads me to asking about their society. What do I need to know to sketch out the atmosphere, rhythm and rhyme of the world around them?

I hope you enjoy listening to the American Gothic Stories! 

To listen to American Gothic Series of audio dramas, search GeoStories on Apple Store or Google Play and download the free App. You can enjoy the free experience in Whitby with GPS triggered chapters, and augmented reality, alternatively, you can also enjoy listening wherever you are! 

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