THE GREAT EXPERIMENT at the Cutty Sark - guest blog by Roshni Mooneeram

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT - Nisha Dassyne, Tony Guilfoyle & David Furlong.  Photo by John Cobb

I lived Border Crossings’ THE GREAT EXPERIMENT at the Cutty Sark in London with my hand on my heart for most of the play. I say ‘lived’ as opposed to ‘watched’, ‘attended’, ‘experienced’ because it was a Border Crossings signature piece in aesthetics and discomfort in equal measures that stirred intense emotions throughout. First of all, walking through Cutty Sark was in itself a powerful experience taking us into the very entrails of history. The walk served as an ablution ritual before entering the open space of an idol-less temple, and Border Crossings does this with finesse and rupture. There is no idol. There are conflicting voices, anachronistic self-consciousness, across the stories of the Great Experiment and its ongoing sequels. Affinities and collisions stemming from colonial dynamics emerge crossing time and space, at times speaking their truths passionately, at others allowing their biases and untruths to explode violently in the face of the audience.

The timing for this play to tour the UK and the Global South is perfect. Since the 2010 Equality Act and post-Brexit, we now have a vocabulary and a new freedom to name, address and redress white privilege. In my consultancy work in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) much of the resistance to EDI stems from people who have little sense of the historical context to ongoing institutional systemic racism and its multifaceted impact on Black and Asian Minority Ethnic groups. THE GREAT EXPERIMENT addresses, both brutally and in deeply touching human ways, those holes in the collective memory, and, in turn, the holes that this vacuum has dug into our souls on both sides of the equation. The colonial history of Britain has never been more relevant today as the momentum kick started by David Lammy manifests itself into EDI programmes and frameworks across institutions. The University of Glasgow is leading the way in its public acknowledgment of the slavery related profits that the University has benefited from. It has embarked on a programme of reparative justice which includes an ongoing partnership with the University of the West Indies. THE GREAT EXPERIMENT reminds us why we must imperatively do more.

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT.  Tony Guilfoyle & Tobi King Bakare.  Photo by John Cobb

This play will rustle different feathers in postcolonial contexts such as Mauritius where the original colonial structures in terms of land ownership and economic power remain almost intact. The play begs the all-important question of how and why, in this day and age, those who have built their fortunes on slavery in Mauritius are allowed to remain silent over an acknowledgment of the travesty of the past and reparative measures for the future. Secondly, colonial mimicry is at its best and remains consistent through the two political families which have reigned for more than half a century. Descendants of indentured labourers and slaves quibble over legitimacy, over who poured more blood and sweat over the land, over who is more deserving. I have tried through deliberately provocative press articles, to address the schism between the descendants of slaves and the descendants of indentured labourers in Mauritius. I have failed for a number of reasons including the fact that, as the play makes clear, our historical roots are the biggest taboo. Our survival strategies remain volatile, painful and raw and cannot accommodate any questioning let alone criticism. THE GREAT EXPERIMENT sits precisely in that uncomfortable place between what we ought to remember but have forgotten, and the convenient stories of identities that we have invented to suit our own purposes. Stories concocted in postcolonial times around discourses of supremacy and purity (akin to colonial ones) that we have started to believe as absolute truths and which in turn force others to forget.

The Mauritian state glorifies the Aapravasi Ghat where indentured labourers landed, and leaves a deliberate hole next to it where the Museum of slavery should stand. THE GREAT EXPERIMENT reminds us that it is not the Aapravasi Ghat that is laughing. It is the colonial project that is laughing at its unimagined perennial success to divide and rule. The play is bold, almost brash, in its intention to touch us where it hurts the most, not for the sake of it, but to allow us to confront our self-perceptions and our perceptions of otherness. Dragging us to the hold of the Cutty Sark, through the dark pages of British history and its sequels, in spite of everything that we wish to know and not know about ourselves, THE GREAT EXPERIMENT somehow manages to elevate its audience, in the way that only art can.

Roshni Mooneeram
Equality, Diversity, Inclusion Consultant
University of Nottingham.