Six Maya Angelou autobiographies to air on Radio 4
The plays will feature two actresses playing the author and civil rights activist at different stages in her life.
Radio 4 is dramatising six of Maya Angelou’s autobiographies in what would have been the late author’s 90th birthday year.
The plays will feature two actresses playing Angelou at different stages in her life.
The acclaimed US author, poet and civil rights activist died at the age of 86, in 2014.
Radio 4 said the adaptation would be the first radio dramatisation of the autobiographies.
Commissioning editor for drama and fiction Jeremy Howe said: “The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are some of the best, most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography I have ever read.
“They run the gamut from life-affirming to tragedy and back again, with a tone that is a joyous, direct and searingly honest, and are an extraordinary portrait of 20th century black America.”
Indie Gjesdal will play the young Angelou, continuing with Pippa Bennett-Warner as the author as an adult.
