‘Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave’ tours the Caribbean, confronting church’s role in slavery

The Right Reverend C. Leopold Friday, Bishop of the Windward Islands and Desirée Baptiste, author/performer of Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave

The one-woman monologue play “Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave” left a profound impression on the Very Reverend Tim Stratford, Dean of Chester Cathedral, who described it as a “powerful” experience that made “the hairs on the back of my neck (to) stand up.” Canon Reverend Dr. Michael Clarke, principal of Barbados’s Codrington College, saw the play in its 2023 debut and called it “thought-provoking” and “moving.”

Across the spectrum of reactions, audiences continue to engage with the play by London-based Caribbean writer Desirée Baptiste, particularly as it confronts the Anglican Church’s historical involvement in human bondage in the Caribbean, including at Codrington College, where enslaved people owned by the Church’s missionary arm were branded.

Having been performed in Edinburgh, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Chester, Northampton, and Barbados, ‘Incidents’ is now touring the Diocese of the Windward Islands, thanks to collaboration between the playwright and the Very Reverend C. Leopold Friday, Bishop of the Diocese.

Last month, the “holy trinity” of Caribbean performances began in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, ahead of the nation’s 46th Independence anniversary. The play was staged inside the historic St. George’s Anglican Cathedral, the Diocese’s Mother Church, drawing historians, judges, members of the Anglican communion, and the general public. A lively Q&A followed. In his welcome address on 22 October, Bishop Friday stressed the importance of exploring history through the “creative arts.”

St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Kingstown, SVG, built in 1820, is the ‘Mother Church’ of the Diocese of the Windward Islands and home to several memorials to colonial administrators and enslavers.
Image credit: Kingsley Roberts

The tour now moves to Grenada, with a performance and Q&A scheduled for Wednesday, November 12, 2025, at St. George’s Parish Church. Baptiste called the Grenada debut “very special,” noting her late father—a historian at UWI—from whom she inherited her passion for history, was Grenadian. She also highlighted recent research revealing the British monarchy’s direct involvement in Caribbean slavery, with a focus on Grenada.

The Grenada debut of Desirée Baptiste’s ‘Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave’ takes place on 12th November 2025

‘Incidents’ draws on a 302-year-old letter from an anonymous enslaved Virginian “mulatto” to the Archbishop and King George I, requesting freedom. Believed to be the first letter written by an enslaved person in the British Empire, it resides in the Church of England archives. Baptiste’s play imaginatively extends the letter’s story, taking the narrator from Virginia to the Caribbean, marking the first creative response to a Church of England archive item housed at Lambeth Palace Library.

Performing in Anglican spaces such as St. George’s Cathedral in Kingstown, home to memorials for colonial administrators and enslavers, was not new for Baptiste. Still, she found it particularly poignant to stand mid-performance on Alexander Leith’s memorial—a Scotsman “celebrated” for killing St. Vincent’s Garifuna leader, Joseph Chatoyer, during the Second Carib War.

Gratitude remains Baptiste’s central takeaway from the Caribbean tour. “Especially,” she said, “the fact that we have been able to make this mini tour happen without help from the UK Mother Church.” Gordon Jump, Programme Director of the Church of England Church Commissioners, noted that although the Commissioners profited from historic involvement in the African slave trade, their Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice is still under development.

Left to Right: The Venerable Junior Ebenezer Ballantyne, Archdeacon of St. Vincent and the Grenadines; The Right Reverend C. Leopold Friday, Bishop of the Windward Islands; and SVG Archdeaconry members Leslie McKenzie and Steve Francis

Undeterred, Baptiste and the Diocese of the Windward Islands, with the Archdeaconries of SVG, Grenada, and St. Lucia, have staged the mini tour. She emphasized:

“What we have been able to achieve, by making the necessary sacrifices so that we could bring this compelling story to a Caribbean public for free, shows that we can do the important ‘Repair’ work of healing via history-telling ourselves, right here in our Caribbean islands.”