March 6, 2026 | Events, Theatre,

A Note from the Co-Creators of The Secret Sharer

ABOUT CONRAD

Joseph Conrad was born in 1857 in the Ukraine as Polish nobility, under Russia’s Imperialism, and his father fought for the abolition of serfdom, Russia’s system of indentured labor. Orphaned at 11, Conrad was of poor health due to a nervous condition and sent from school to school by his uncle, until he began working on French merchant ships at 16. At 21 he fell into severe debt due to his immigrant status and attempted death by suicide. A month later, he became a British merchant marine. His many journeys to British and European colonies—and his experiences as a sailor and ship’s captain—would become the source materials for much of his writing.

While being lauded for transforming the style and structure of the novel—and many celebrated authors credit him as their inspiration—he has also been widely accused and critiqued for racism and anti-Semitism (see Achebe and Ivry). These accusations have been central to debates among literary and cultural critics. Celebrated Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe simultaneously cites Conrad’s artistic influence and condemns his racism. Conrad’s use of racialized and racist language hearkens back to George Hegel’s 1822 The Philosophy of History, in which Hegel codified racialist language about the African continent and people. Conrad employed identical language and tropes to write in Heart of Darkness about the Belgian colonization of the Congo.

Other critics, such as Guyanese writer Wilson Harris and post-colonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, respond by writing that Conrad was protesting the brutality and extractive nature of colonialism and imperialism through “parody” (Harris) or what Edward Saïd called “ironic distance,” attempting to elicit empathy for the colonized. Achebe questions why Conrad “…neglects to hint, clearly and adequately, at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters.” Saïd, one of the founders of post-colonial theory, proffers that Conrad’s literary choices would have been “inevitable and unavoidable” – that for the narrator, Marlow, “…there is no use looking for other, non-imperialist alternatives; the system has simply eliminated them and made them unthinkable.” Saïd concludes, “As a creature of his time, Conrad could not grant the [colonized Africans] their freedom, despite his severe critique of the imperialism that enslaved them.”

What is also true is that this language has caused and continues to cause harm and perpetuates anti-Black and anti-Africa/n bias. Heart of Darkness is still widely taught as a “classic” in university and high school courses around the world, often without an adequate “frame” or context, instead of other works by Conrad such as The Secret Sharer that do not position people of African heritage as “victims of racist slander”(Achebe).  

Like the narrator in Heart of Darkness, Conrad traveled as a ship’s captain up the Congo and witnessed firsthand the atrocities of European colonization, clearly feeling a sense of connection as someone born under Russian Imperialism, yet also unable (or unwilling) to release the grip of Hegel’s diction and worldview. 200 years prior, Shakespeare engaged some of the same harmful tropes as Conrad about Africans and Jews. Was Shakespeare racist and anti-Semitic? Or was he asking audiences to consider the humanity and conditions of people of certain heritages and cultures that were almost entirely unknown to Elizabethan audiences?

In the case of The Secret Sharer, Conrad had what has been described as a loveless marriage and he craved the homosociality of spending intimate time with other men (although we do not have any specific information about sexuality – see Ruppel). By Conrad’s own admission, he spent three weeks alone in a hotel room with another man, never leaving – perhaps the structural inspiration for The Secret Sharer. Conrad lived in England and was married a year after the trials of Oscar Wilde for “gross indecency,” which ultimately led to Wilde’s death. This would make any man loving men at the time think twice about his own identity, life, and self-expression. This is, perhaps, what makes his work so enduring, despite – or because of – the contradictions, complexities, controversies and debates about his intentions and humanity.

WHY CONRAD? 

As artists adapting Conrad’s work, we have been asked over the course of the past six years why we would choose to devote time and resources to such a complicated and controversial author. Fair question. 

Joseph Conrad is both most famous and infamous for his novel The Heart of Darkness, which, while being an anti-colonial treatise, also infantilizes and describes Africans and Africa in racist and colonial terms. Author Chinua Achebe, among others, analyzed and critiqued Conrad for this racist portrayal (see “About Conrad” above for more information).

In the world of intersectional identities, a reader/viewer/audience member often faces the paradox that two things can be true at the same time – that a particular work of art can be meaningful and moving while acknowledging that the creator of that work was harmful either to us or to others and people that we care about. Such is the case for us with Joseph Conrad and The Secret Sharer. Our company of predominantly Global Majority and/or LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ members is drawn to the text of The Secret Sharer – which does not include any mention of race or Africa – because of these contradictions. Each of us has experienced outsiderness because of our identities; and we have also experienced that sweet moment of connection – finding belonging in the face of an other. We also recognize in the novella’s pages the tension between visibility and concealment, a longing for recognition, and the charged intimacy between two people that the literature of Conrad’s era could never name outright. It is a parable about (in)visibility and the cost/elation of stepping into one’s own voice.

We acknowledge the harm caused by Conrad’s racialist descriptions of Africa and Africans in Heart of Darkness, while at the same time recognizing the power and importance for LGBTQ+ folks of The Secret Sharer’s tale of intimacy and seeking. We also read Conrad as a person trapped in his time and his own skin. In writing The Secret Sharer, we sense that Conrad is revealing himself and hiding at the same time, and that this struggle and the ultimate joy of allowing himself to feel something for someone could offer something positive – even hopeful – to Queer folks who do not have support around them. Despite progress in understanding and accepting Queer identity, there are still people all over the US and the world who experience pressure and life-threatening violence to not be who they are in terms of sexuality and gender expression. We find The Secret Sharer to be moving, haunting, and liberatory, which is why we have chosen it as a catalyst for holding spaces for Queer normativity, resilience, and connection. In this “peace ritual,” with Conrad’s text as a jumping off point, we co-create every performance with the audience, counter-balancing fragments of Conrad’s text with their stories and narratives from the company.

In short – why Conrad? Because we are moved by this text and his struggle, and it has provided a springboard for deep ensemble work, collective care, and personal growth as well as much needed sharing and connection among audience members. In the end, is this Conrad‘s work, or is this our brave re-versioning of it, purposefully engaging it to create spaces of belonging and healing for our own communities? The audience will need to be the judge of that, and we look forward to taking that journey with you.  

 Alvon, Daniel, Ken, and Kwesi

Bibliography:

Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism, edited by Robert Kimbrough, 3rd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 1988, pp. 251-61. Originally published in Massachusetts Review, vol. 18, 1977.

Domestico, Anthony. “Joseph Conrad.” Modernism Lab, Yale University, campuspress.yale.edu/modernismlab/joseph-conrad/. 

Harris, Wilson. “The Frontier on Which ‘Heart of Darkness’ Stands.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 12, no. 1, spring 1981, pp. 86–93.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree, Dover Publications, 1956.

Ivry, Benjamin. “How Antisemitic Was Joseph Conrad, Author of ‘Heart of Darkness’ and ‘The Secret Agent’?” The Forward, 20 Nov. 2024, forward.com/culture/676777/how-antisemitic-was-joseph-conrad-heart-of-darkness-nostromo-jewish-berdychiv/.

Meyers, Jeffrey. “Conrad and the Jews.” Conradiana, vol. 24, no. 1, spring 1992, pp. 33–40.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. “The Contradictions of Joseph Conrad.” The New York Times, 21 Nov. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/books/review/dawn-watch-joseph-conrad-biography-maya-jasanoff.html.

Ruppel, Richard. Homosexuality in the Life and Work of Joseph Conrad: Love Between the Lines. Routledge, 2008.

Said, Edward W. “Two Visions in Heart of Darkness.” Culture and Imperialism, Vintage Books, 1993, pp. 22–31.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Joseph Conrad.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 29 Nov. 2025, www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Conrad.  

Watts, Cedric. “Conrad, Joseph [formerly Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski].” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 6 Jan. 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32533.         

Footnotes:

1 In 1601 Queen Elizabeth issued an edict to deport “Blackamoors” – noting that Othello was written in 1603-4; while in 1290 King Edward I issued an edict to expel all Jews.