Riding Lights Theatre Company will mark the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act with a nation-wide tour of a new play, African Snow, by Murray Watts.

African Snow is about the meeting of two men - an African stolen from his home in West Africa and an English sailor - cast into the hell of the slave trade. Both survived to write remarkable accounts of their experiences and both were urged by William Wilberforce to testify before Parliament in the 18th-century campaign for abolition.

The English sailor, John Newton, is well known as the converted slave-trader who gave the world the celebrated hymn "Amazing Grace". But, as one might expect from the tacit racism of the history books, little prominence is given to Olaudah Equiano the African, whose remarkable story has been confined to a footnote or totally ignored. Equiano's ascent from the hell-hole of a slave-ship hold to the height of being the leading black voice in the political campaign is one of the most extraordinary and moving stories of any era.

Together, Equiano and Newton seemed to Wilberforce to provide the most cogent argument for winning the political battle. Bringing them face to face, however, is, perhaps, to move beyond the remit of human reason. Can victim and abuser ever be reconciled?

Writing hymns about forgiveness can never be a substitute for the experience of forgiveness, which, as everyone knows, is the heart of the issue. African Snow takes us to the heart of the human condition – to the place where two men are compelled to confront each other.