Adura Onashile is the performer and co-creator (with the Scottish performance company, Iron-Oxide) of HeLa, a solo show about Henrietta Lacks, a Baltimore woman whose cancer cell sample, taken without her permission by Johns Hopkins Hospital, was used as the raw material for some of the most important scientific discoveries of the past 100 years.
The play, based on the book, The Immortal Life, by Rebecca Skloot was performed earlier this month in Christchurch as part of art-science symposium Breaking Ice, and in Wellington at the Otago School of Medicine, HeLa will also play at Q Theatre, Auckland (21-25 October).
Adura Onashile tells Kim Hill about the play.
