ACT 1
Here we are, one evening in October 1901. The President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, has been in office for one month. He has invited Booker T. Washington, writer, teacher and activist for the rights of African Americans, to the White House. They have dinner, and afterward the president’s family are escorted back to their apartments. The host and the guest find themselves alone, one-to-one. During their conversation, they confide their intimate feelings about each other, for better and for worse.

A GUEST OF HONOUR is a recomposition of an opera of the same name, the first created by composer Scott Joplin in 1903. During the original opera’s tour of the midwestern United States, the box office was stolen, financially ruining Joplin and leaving him unable to pay the production staff. Many of his personal effects were confiscated, including a trunk containing many scores, among them that of A Guest of Honor, which will never be recovered.

As the score of the original work is now lost, A GUEST OF HONOUR has been recomposed from the very few remaining fragments of information left today, including newspaper clippings suggesting that the opera’s argument was about a dinner that took place between Washington and Roosevelt in October 1901. The conditions of this meeting are still difficult to verify, as the White House suppressed the news following virulent criticism of Roosevelt from opponents in the southern states, who censured the president for his perceived proximity to a Black campaigner for the rights of African Americans.

While the meeting between the two men was widely satirised at the time through songs and cartoons, for many Washington’s dinner with Roosevelt became a symbol of social and racial equality. Joplin’s interest in this encounter reflects the meeting of two musical traditions in his work, which encompasses influences from 19th-century African-American music and Western classical music. His interest in the ideas of Washington, whose belief in the emancipation of the African-American people through education he shared, subsequently resurfaced in Joplin’s second opera, Treemonisha.

A GUEST OF HONOUR (act 1) stars Teddy Coste as Theodore Roosevelt and Harilay Rabenjamina as Booker T. Washington.

A GUEST OF HONOUR was developed in friendly co-operation with How To Show Up? in Amsterdam.

The project has been made possible with the support of Headline Exhibition Supporters Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation, and with support from London Performance Studios and Institut français du Royaume Uni.

Harilay Rabenjamina (b. 1992, France) is an artist living and working in Paris. His work consists of performances, films, objects and songs, often using characters who struggle with representing themselves. Rabenjamina’s work has been presented at Centrale Fies, Dro (2021); Théâtre Arsenic – Les Urbaines, Lausanne (2021); Auto Italia, London (2019); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2018); PEACH, Rotterdam (2018); and Goswell Road, Paris (2017). He was artist-in-residence at Triangle – Astérides, Marseille (2021) and recently presented a collaborative work with Loup Rivière at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (2020).