The Adowa Series

An Epic African History.

Interview on the Adowa Series

Conducted by Harlem Writers Group.

This interview was originally intended to be a conversation on my experiences in Hollywood and my attempt to set up the Adowa project, but in the unexpected lockdown that came in 2020, and from the comfort of my home over Zoom, we get into much more than Adowa - from revolution, white supremacy, feminism, to just about anything that was on my mind at the time, this is a long one but covers most of the questions I get from readers. I would like to thank the group, especially Alex for allowing me to republish the full version of our talk on my site.

Adowa Interview

Adowa Bible

Complete description of the Adowa Series

This is the Adowa Bible I used to pitch the series around Hollywood. It maps out the entire idea for the show. I am making it avaliable here on the site so that readers who want to check out the scripts can get a vibe of who the characters were in real life, and imagine the events and the over all vision for the Adowa Series.

Adowa Bible

Adowa Pilot Script

Episode One of the first season.

This is the pilot episode that encapulates the basic scope of most episodes of the first season of the Adowa Series. The pilot covers the birth and boyhood of young Kassa’s life – The future EMPEROR TEWODROS II – Each of the following episodes attempt to fit in a decade in the life and times of the emperor and his contemporaries – and like this pilot episode, the entire Adowa Series aims to deliver an EPIC EXPERIENCE to the small screen at home.

Adowa Pilot Script

The Adowa Story

An Epic history of resistance unfolding on the African continent from 1820-1900s.

 

At the end of the 19th century, most of Africa has been carved up among the various European powers. In 1895, the kingdom of Italy had set its covetous eyes on the kingdom of Ethiopia and embarked on the final European conquest of an African nation.
Waiting for them at ADOWA, in northern Ethiopia, were EMPEROR MENELIK II & his wife EMPRESS TAITU BITUL, with their gallant generals at the helm of a united force; RAS MENGESHA & RAS ALULA of Tigray; RAS MEKONNEN of Harrar; RAS MICHAEL of Wollo; RAS TEKLEHAIMANOT of Gojjam, and thousands upon thousands of patriotic men and women warriors from across the kingdom, all of them united and willed, the Ethiopians triumphed over the Italians, securing the distinction of being the ONLY African nation to squash European colonization and remain independent.

 

The victory at the battle of ADOWA was not only a defining moment for the Ethiopians but also the signal event of our times - the defeat of European power by united black Africans was the beginning of the eventual end of European global hegemony on the African continent and beyond, ushering in the era of the rise of Africans and their black descendants on the world stage that continues to unfold before us today.

 

With race-based populism and white supremacy sweeping across the globe in our own time, with African nations stroking the fire of regionalism and the Western world, particularly in America and Europe, succumbing to their ugly past of outright bigotry, the Adowa story which takes on the divisive African regionalism and the fascist ideology of the Italians head-on and obliterates them; is a timely project that aims to become a seismic cultural moment.
The story of Adowa as it had always done so in the past as the black world began to rise with a dignified resistance, will always capture the unspoken zeitgeist movement of any culture of resistance against aggression.