THE anniversary of the abolition of slavery is the inspiration behind 200 Years, a new collaborative production between the African Caribbean Association and Watford Palace Theatre.

Producer Ria Parry has worked at the National Youth Theatre, as well as the Old Vic and Young Vic and is currently the associate producer with Watford Palace. She says the project came out of a desire to put on a show based on the work of the African Caribben Association's fortnightly writers' group.

Begun a year ago, the performance has been in rehearsal for the past couple of months. Ria brought in director Gbolahan Obisesan and designer Kevin Jenkins as well as playwright Michael Bhim, who has worked on the development of the piece. Michael has worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Soho Theatre, the Tricycle (as part of the Bloomsberg Writers Group) and Paines Plough (Future Perfect scheme). He is currently on attachment at the Soho Theatre, and is a past winner of the prestigious Alfred Fagon Award for most outstanding achievement by a writer of Caribbean descent. His play Distant Violence has just been nomintated for the Meyer Whitworth Award and a new play Pure Gold is currently showing at the Soho Theatre.

Michael says he came into the project literally from scratch. He says: "I knew all the writers were producing material for the first time. It was an interesting first day. What I had to do was try and find a way to open the door to the medium of theatre so we started by ask questions, such as what's the purpose of theatre? Why have it? What does it do to you? Then the writers found a way to channel their work."

He has really enjoyed working with the Watford writers and at the Palace Theatre. "I'm amazed at what they've produced as first-time writers. I'm blown away by how good it is going to be. How they've taken this theme of slavery and individually interpreted what it means to them. Their stories cover the experiences of the Aborginal people in Australia, of emigrating to London in the 1970s, as well as historical pieces. What they've created is a magical world of theatre where the writers are not afraid to take a risk and go for what they believe."

Michael writes poetry and says he found it a useful tool to help the writers with what they wanted to say. "The good thing is a lot of them naturally wanted to write poetry and I encouraged that," he says. "For example, I literally had one of the writers read out a poem and there were three voices speaking. I said let's try and define who's speaking? Who are these characters? And that led to where it is set, what world it is describing and we were able to set it within the framework of a play.

"Being a poet, when I first started I found it quite difficult to write for theatre. I think when you study poetry of all the forms of writing it's the most dense, you're using the least amounts of words to explain the biggest things. With theatre I'd write a scene read it a few days later and I'd constantly be rewriting. It was a massive learning experience. Luckily, I'm quite stubborn. I've stuck with my particular artisitic vision and pursued it with a passion."

Ria feels that Michael's passion has certainly contributed to the group. She says: "There were four writers with very distinct styles and Michael has allowed them to keep their individual voices, but now he's making it a whole piece interweaving the stories and narratives."

One of the writers is Ademola Adeniji, the African Caribbean Association community services manager, who started the writing group. His contribution is an historical account of slavery called The Uncrowned King, which he says focuses on aspects of the beginning of slavery. To Ademola the work as a whole allow the audience to look at slavery from modern perspective and to see what contribution they can make to get rid of slavery in all its forms.

Ria adds: "We want to take the audience on a journey from 200 years ago to the present day to say that even though slavery doesn't exist in the same way as it used to, a lot of people still have that feeling of being bound in 2007."

200 Years is at Watford Palace Theatre on Saturday, November 3 at 8pm. Details: 01923 225671