The UK premiere will take place at arts organisation Stone Nest from the 15th of March to the 8th April.
It has been confirmed that Christopher McElroen will direct the UK premiere the critically acclaimed off-Broadway show Debate: Balwin VS Buckley – a staging of the famous historic clash between author and activist James Baldwin and conservative, political commentator William F. Buckley Jr.
“Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
This was the topic on February 18, 1965 when an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to bear witness to a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America’s most influential conservative intellectual.
The stage was set for an epic confrontation that pitted Baldwin’s call for a moral revolution in race relations against Buckley’s unabashed elitism and implicit commitment to white supremacy. This historic clash reveals the deep roots and lasting legacy of racial conflict that continues to haunt America.
The UK premiere will see Teagle F. Bougere (Broadway’s The Tempest with Patrick Stewart and Ivo Van Hove’s The Crucible) as Baldwin and Eric T. Miller as Buckley who are reprising their roles while joining them in the cast from the UK is Christopher Wareham and Tom Kiteley.
Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley was originally produced in October 2020 as a live-streamed event and broadcast in partnership with BRIC. Once live performances returned to New York, it was restaged for in-person performances and premiered March 5 – April 3, 2022, at the Great Room at the A.R.T./New York South Oxford Space in Brooklyn. Following performances in autumn 2022 at Queens Theatre and Brooklyn’s Old Stone House, Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley will complete its Five Borough tour of New York City with performances in the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island in spring 2023.
To book tickets visit: https://www.stonenest.org/events/debate