The African Novel

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the BBC programme

I'm a great fan of David Olusoga. Over the last few months, he's been particularly impressive, not only making some superb historical documentaries (A House Through Time from Bristol being a case in point), but also keeping his cool and arguing coherently in the face of absurd online arguments around Black Lives Matter, the toppling of statues etc. The timely repeat of Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners (an important inspiration for THE GREAT EXPERIMENT) was provocative and moving. Last night, I watched his new documentary on the African novel: Africa Turns the Page - The Novels that Shaped a Continent.  It's on i-Player for the next month, and well worth watching.

The programme started (of course) with Heart of Darkness, and the pioneering role of Chinua Achebe in claiming the form for himself in Things Fall Apart. But, as the programme went on, I found myself becoming disturbed by a teleological subtext, which seemed to suggest that the African novel, originating in Africa, has now become a "global" phenomenon, triumphant in it conquest of international markets.  There were lots of shots of Booker dinners, with the acceptance speeches of Ben Okri and Bernardine Evaristo.  There was a great celebration of Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer as "a novel that everybody is reading." I couldn't help feeling that Chinua Achebe would have been very surprised to be told that "everybody" spoke English, lived in the Western world, and could afford the latest bestseller. I have absolutely no objection to the prizes, authors and novels in question - in fact, I thought Girl, Woman, Other quite stunning - but I do worry that a documentary about post-colonial literature should see the validation of that literature in terms of global (for which read globalised, Western) markets, and prizes bestowed in the former imperial centre.

The novel is, of course, a globalised form in a way that theatre is not.  There were theatre-makers included in the programme, but they were tellingly discussed only in terms of the novels they had written. This seemed particularly obtuse in the case of Wole Soyinka, whose work has been predominantly in theatre, and only occasionally in the novel. Watching this programme, you would have thought the Nobel prize was awarded for Season of Anomy alone. But perhaps the more telling figure for this discussion is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ also appeared in the programme, again discussed solely in terms of his novels, and not as a theatre-maker. Because of this, his hugely important decision to write in his native Gĩkũyũ, rather than the élite global English, seemed almost absurd. He was contrasted with the apparently more cosmopolitan Achebe, whose use of English was regarded as somehow more progressive. It was patronisingly explained that the use of Gĩkũyũ "wasn't really a problem", because the novels could be translated into English. Of course this is true, and from English they can also be translated into other African languages, much in the way that Girish Karnad used to translate his Kannada plays into English so that they could then be translated into other Indian languages. But the implication of the programme was that translation into English - the language of the Booker - was an end in itself. The programme included clips from Gavin Esler's Hard Talk interview with Ngũgĩ, but not the bit where he points out the absurdity of the Caine Prize for African Literature being confined to work written in English. 

Ngũgĩ's son, interviewed in the programme, did say that writing in Gĩkũyũ meant "his mother could read it" - but it also meant that all the other Gĩkũyũ could as well. It was through his work in theatre that Ngũgĩ, who has long been aware of African culture as oral rather than literary, came to the realisation that language choices are central. Ngũgĩ had already written novels that were socially and politically critical when he began the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Popular Theatre experiment, so brilliantly described in his book Decolonising the Mind. It was the staging of plays in Gĩkũyũ that led to his imprisonment and subsequent exile (as well as that of his collaborator Ngũgĩ wa Mĩriĩ, whom I was lucky enough to meet in Zimbabwe), and to the forced closure of the theatre group.  As Fancis Wade has argued in the New York Review of Books:

His play had been critical of the regime of Jomo Kenyatta, also a Gĩkũyũ; it depicted the leadership as inward-looking and elitist, far removed from the Kenyan peasantry whose interests it claimed to champion, and responsible for the acute economic inequalities that persisted long after independence. But, then again, the books he’d written before in English had similarly taken aim at postcolonial power-holders. Could it be that his crime, even long after Kenya had returned to indigenous rule, was to shun the English language? Had his jailers—among them, political leaders who had been the vanguard in the anticolonial struggle—taken up the mantle of linguistic authoritarianism from the same foreign power they had driven out? And did his use of the vernacular threaten the leadership by speaking directly to the masses not literate in English, thereby continuing the anticolonial struggle, in effect, après la lettre?

This is spot on, and underlines the importance of writers like Ngũgĩ shunning the glittering prizes of the global stage for an engagement with the realities of African societies. Of course it's great that his novels, and his plays, have been translated into English: I wouldn't be able to discuss him otherwise, and his exile in America would be pretty challenging.  But wouldn't it also be helpful if the work of African writers in English could be translated into African vernaculars?  Achebe's Things Fall Apart is the most translated of all African novels, yet of the 61 languages listed on this website, only 9 are African languages, and Gĩkũyũ is not among them.  To put that in perspective, there are around 2,000 different languages spoken on the continent.  

Individualism - a discussion of my lockdown delights

The Favourite

I finally managed to watch The Favourite as part of my lockdown cultural binge.  It's very entertaining, of course, and contains an appropriate dose of lèse-majesté - but I found myself disturbed by the way it viewed politics, which brought it far closer to more conventional costume dramas than it was perhaps intended to be. The underlying premise of the film was that whoever happened to be Queen Anne's current "favourite" (for which read female lover), held the reins of power and determined policy.  Wars, it appeared, could be started or ended in the Queen's bed.  I don't doubt that this may have been literally true, or that similar individual quirks and choices continue to influence us today. It does make a difference that Trump watches TV all day and Johnson has a very brief concentration span. But to think of politics solely in personal terms is to buy into the myth of the individual "great man" (or woman) at the expense of the more complex social, economic, technological and cultural forces which mould all of us, the "great" included. Perhaps the "great" more than anyone.

Another lockdown delight has been The Mirror and the Light - the last part of Hilary Mantel's trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell. Here again, I found that the concentration on the minutiae of the political process, the workings of faction in the Tudor court, placed an undue and artificial emphasis on the role of the individual in the shaping of history. It would be very easy to read the book, indeed the whole trilogy, with a sense of Cromwell as an entirely pragmatic figure, driven solely by the workings of realpolitik, caught up in the minutiae of family feuds and dynastic faction. But Cromwell surely had his ideological side. He was clearly sympathetic to Lutheranism at a time when that was a dangerous doctrine in England, and his adherence to Protestant thought was not only an opportunity to his enemies: it was also one of the things that made them his enemies in  the first place. Hilary Mantel certainly acknowledges Cromwell's Protestant leanings, though she demonstrates them largely through his concern for the fate of William Tyndale - an individual again, rather than the doctrine he proclaimed. There is a certain irony in this, given that Luther's emphasis on the individual, on personal salvation and a one-to-one relationship with God, is at the root of our culture's obsession with individual personality, status and achievement. Without Luther, I suspect our writers, film-makers and dramatists would be placing far less emphasis on the "great man" theory of history.

What hardly features at all in the Mantel book, but which could be regarded as Cromwell's greatest achievement, is his use of Parliament, and statute, to enact what G.R. Elton called his "Revolution in Government". It was Cromwell who established that statute was the supreme form of law, and so conceived the unique and bizarre notion of a shared form of sovereignty, that of "the King in Parliament". There is a tension at the heart of this idea - a tension between the role of the individual monarch, the "great man", and the wider social and political landscape represented by Parliament. That tension remains unresolved in our constitution, and it accounts for the chaos of the Brexit process, which was above all a prolonged clash between the quasi-monarchical Executive, exercising the Royal prerogative through the Prime Minister, and the elected representatives of the people. Lockdown joy number three was John Bercow's frank autobiography Unspeakable, in which he manages to combine an account of his passionate defence of Parliament as an institution with a totally personality-focussed view of the political process. Bercow's position is paradoxical, but then so is the central tenet of the British constitution.

Milo Rau's Lenin: Ursina Lardi in the title role

There was a brilliant counterpoint to the individualist, "great man" approach to history in Milo Rau's Lenin, which was streamed by the Berlin Schaubühne a few weeks ago. This series of streamed productions has been the greatest lockdown delight for me: a truly great theatre, rooted in ensemble practice, sharing some of its treasures, with Rau's productions a particular revelation. In Lenin, he explores the last days of the revolutionary leader, in a production that slowly creates the image of that leader as we know him. The fact that it is an image is crucial - "Lenin" (which wasn't even the man's name) is a constructed cultural figure, an artificial creation which was required by the political process, just as all "great men", even communists, are not actually themselves, and are not actually individuals but an amalgam of historical influences. By casting a woman (the remarkable Ursina Lardi) as Lenin, Rau places the character as far as possible from the known construction.  In the early scenes, Lardi is overtly herself, blonde-haired and naked. Only slowly, and in full view, is she moved  through costume, make-up and performance towards the expected image of Lenin, which is finally realised in the form of a black and white film, shot live in front of us and projected above the stage, spoken in Russian with subtitles in the audience's own language. So "Lenin" comes to be seen as a cultural construction, as the play enacts the process of his making. This way of understanding history as performance, shaped like and by theatre, made perfect sense to me.

Lenin at the Schaubühne - the film and the stage

These different ways of understanding history, politics and society have been playing out in front of us during the Covid-19 crisis. On one side, we have seen individualist, populist leaders like Johnson, Trump and Bolsonaro putting their faith in the potential of ventilators, vaccine researchers, phone apps and ingested disinfectant to deal with the virus: on the other side, we have seen more community-oriented approaches that prioritise preventative measures like early lockdowns and widespread testing. As James Meek wrote in the London Review of Books:

The divide between communal health advocates and tech fixers represents a deeper choice: between actions that aim to help an individual, so may indirectly help everyone, and actions that aim to help everyone, so may indirectly help the individual. Lockdown requires each individual to accept personal constraints for the sake of the community, even when they are not themselves ill. In theory, the tech fix can be for everyone, too, but because it is a thing to be obtained, rather than a constraint to abide by, it comes trailing issues of priority, price, privilege, exclusivity: what device, what pill, what treatment, what test can I get for myself, my family, my friends, to protect them?

This is not a simple left-right division: community health approaches can be imposed by totalitarian regimes like China as well as more benign states like Aotearoa / New Zealand. But the stark contrast between these approaches, both in terms of the ideology behind them and the numbers of deaths resulting, suggests that this is going to be an ever more important way of viewing political conflicts and decisions.

Culture it seems, far from leading the way, needs to catch up.  It may well be that one reason why countries like the US and the UK have handled Covid so shockingly badly is their ongoing culture of individualism, their "great man" approach to history and politics, their sense of an elective dictatorship somehow being a democracy. The countries that have avoided our horrific death tolls have been less fixated on success, technology and "greatness", more interested in mutuality, participation and community. Aotearoa / New Zealand has even dared to suggest that wellbeing, rather than growth, should be the driving force in its economy. So, as we absorb the shock of the pandemic and move forward, spending the Chancellor's "rescue package" and rebuilding theatre both as an economic sector and as an art form; my hope is for a new approach to cultural work that is not centred on success, stardom and leadership but on the ensemble, on the drama of difference, on equality and on productive exchange. There have been many calls for a more diverse and inclusive theatre recently, and of course that's important, but it will only be genuinely beneficial if it goes beyond replacing white faces with black ones in exactly the same jobs. The culture we must strive for has to be institutionally different, anti-hierarchical, egalitarian and communitarian, not individualistic. We need to recognise that theatre, like society, is something that is communally created.

I know this sounds like an odd thing for an Artistic Director to say. But, as Ariane Mnouchkine has frequently pointed out, in collective work the director's distinction is not one of status but of function. That's a better way to understand Thomas Cromwell, Lenin and the essential changes we have to make for a better future.

Supporting the Arts and Cultural Sectors

Every picture tells a story.  This is a photo opportunity for the Chancellor and the Culture Secretary, the men in suits who have just announced the £1.5bn rescue package for culture, posing at the Globe Theatre.  In the background, on the edge of the stage, is Artistic Director Michelle Terry.  She looks as if she's not quite sure whether she's meant to be in the picture or not.

Prior to the announcement, the DCMS Parliamentary Committee asked for written evidence on the impact Covid-19 was having on the sector.  Some examples of this evidence was published online.  Ours was not - so we're publishing it here.  The evidence, written by our Chair Dr. Alastair Niven with Artistic Director Michael Walling, was prepared well before the rescue package was announced, and before the deadline for the UK to request an extension to the Brexit transition period.

DCMS SUBMISSION FROM BORDER CROSSINGS

1. Immediate impact of Covid-19 on the sector

The challenge   

The arts define the wellbeing of a society.  They are not an add on luxury, something to decorate society once other, more basic matters have been dealt with - they are themselves basic.  The current crisis does not make our cultural life something that should be put on hold until things are “back to normal”.  We have to recognise that we are undergoing a fundamental change in the way we live - we have to imagine a different future.  It will be from the cultural sector that the essential new ideas emerge.

This is why we have been disappointed by government responses so far to the Covid-19 crisis as it relates to the arts and culture.  Every part of the sector - theatres, galleries, cinemas, concert halls, opera houses and studios, as well as makers of art, performers, directors and technicians – have been left fearful of the uncertainty they face, in a perilous financial situation, and feeling deeply undervalued.  

Because the arts and culture are not just another economic sector, but are central to future thinking, to health and wellbeing, to education and development, it would be quite wrong to respond to the way Covid-19 has impacted them as if loss of earned income were the only concern.  Cultural revival has to be a priority for a healthy emergence from the crisis.  That is why we urge the DCMS to rise to its historic challenge and re-think the way in which arts and culture are seen by government.  Arts and culture are not business any more than health and education are business.  These sectors of our society require the political support that will make them universally accessible and effective as barometers of wellbeing in the Covid era and beyond.

The sector’s immediate response. 

The arts sector, and especially theatres and other places of entertainment, were the first to close under the Covid restrictions.  Most gave their last performance on Saturday 14 March, and since then they have been physically dormant.  

Theatre organisations have, however, been astonishingly and immediately pro-active and inventive in their response to the constraints brought about by Covid-19.  Streamings of past theatre productions have brought colour and humanity into the homes where almost the whole population has been confined.  Some National Theatre productions have been viewed by over a million people.  Even a smaller company such as Border Crossings has attracted audiences running in to the thousands, including international audiences who could not have seen the live original.  At a time of great suffering, it is vital to point to this positive effect, for our standing abroad has been greatly enhanced by widening around the world knowledge of what our arts sector achieves. 

Border Crossings   

Border Crossings is a theatre company founded in 1995.  Its mission, as its name implies, is to cross frontiers – not only political frontiers, though much of its work is collaborative with partners from around the world – but also the borders between cultures and art forms.  We aim to lead in intercultural dialogue between artists, audiences and communities, working principally in theatre, but also through exhibitions, film, dance and music. We regularly curate high level debates and discussions about the contribution of theatre and the arts to global civilisation (including online during the lockdown).

Every second year Border Crossings arranges a unique festival, ORIGINS, which brings to the UK cultural work of all kinds created by Indigenous peoples in other countries: for example, by Indigenous Australians, Native peoples of the Americas, Inuit and Maori.   

Our most recent theatre production is a play called THE GREAT EXPERIMENT, which is about indentured labour migrations after the abolition of slavery.  It toured intimate but adventurous spaces such as the Cutty Sark and Tara Arts.  This production made an extraordinary impact on local audiences, many of whom were originally from communities historically moulded by the circumstances being enacted on stage.  It has now been viewed globally online.  There is no theatre company registered in the UK as committed as Border Crossings to international connections.

The devastating impact of Covid-19 upon our ability to plan.   

Because of Covid-19 we have had to take tough decisions.  Next year’s ORIGINS festival is in the balance.  It is risky to plan a large scale event that depends on international travel and the gathering of indoor audiences.  The festival’s partnerships, carefully constructed over many years with national organisations such as the British Museum and the Southbank Centre, are necessarily suspended.  Similarly, our mission to send our work overseas and to co-produce plays in other countries, as we have always done, is currently paused. Our intention to take THE GREAT EXPERIMENT to Mauritius, where it is partly set, cannot be furthered until quarantine restrictions are lifted both there and in Britain.

Turning to digital dissemination, as we have done so effectively since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, may enhance our international standing, but it does nothing for our income, and it is not supported by our funders.  We are literally earning nothing during this period.

Funding threats.   

Throughout its history Border Crossings has been successful in raising funds from a broad range of external sources.  These, far more than box office income, have sustained our work.  Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund have both assisted a variety of our projects.  We have been through two rounds of Catalyst work.  However, the pressure on ACE and NLHF in the immediate future will now, as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, make applications to either of them considerably more competitive than they have ever been. The main emphasis so far has been on ensuring the survival of flagship organisations, and this is understandable - but it should be coupled with a wider consultation around what kind of arts and cultural work should happen in the future, and how that may best be supported.  Already we have seen how the Arts Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund have shut down their project grant funds and been obliged to divert their available monies and contingency reserves into emergency Covid-19 funds.   These emergencies have very often been in companies enjoying ‘National’ status, or which were in any case in so parlous a financial situation that they required bailing out, whether or not there had been a Covid-19 crisis. This has left a well-managed, modest sized, project focused company such as Border Crossings awkwardly placed in a funding no man’s land, where we are neither big enough nor sufficiently unstable to be given emergency funds.  There is an irony in the fact that we did not appear to qualify for ACE emergency support (and so did not apply) because we had succeeded in building up a sensible and, in normal circumstances, sustainable level of reserves over the past few years.  The same good management that the DCMS has advocated is now making us vulnerable to the crisis, while some organisations that may already be bankrupt continue to be supported. 

Our scope is further constrained by the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, which has been a significant source of funding for many projects run in partnership with other European countries, but which are now under immediate threat.  The planned withdrawal from Creative Europe and likely withdrawal from Erasmus + will be a major blow for us at a very difficult time.  At the very least, an extension of the transition period would help the sector to get through the Covid crisis before the next challenge posed by Brexit.

2. Long-term Impact of Covid-19 on the sector.

General.   

The long-term effects of this crisis are likely to be financial ruin for some, reduced opportunities to be experimental and creative for all, and constant anxiety about conforming with health requirements for audiences, performers, and all involved in the creative arts.  

Financial viability.  

With smaller audiences resulting from social distancing and the massively increased competition for financial subsidies, many arts organisations face the likelihood of their demise, whatever the quality of their work or the strength of their artistic reputation.  

Health and safety.  

Health and safety issues have been taken very seriously by all arts companies in recent years, but the challenges posed by Covid-19 are unprecedented.  Spaces will need to be adapted physically, with social distancing necessitating the removal of seats, the adaptation of toilet facilities, and the segregation of audiences. 

Training.  

Artists and all involved in productions will need specialist training in managing audiences, artists and technicians. 

The population as a whole.  

One fears desperately for all sections of the population if access to theatre and other arts is circumscribed or made impossible.  Older people fuel the economy and generate their wellbeing by their engagement with arts events.  Young people need to know their inheritances, to engage with imaginative new ideas and to encounter the best of human creativity if they are to develop as civilised beings.  

The Covid-19 crisis is a health crisis.  The arts sector believes passionately that health is not just predicated on controlling the spread of infectious diseases.  It is also about the mental health and wellbeing of all people in every community.  A society that makes the choice to exist without ready and open access to the arts, and to the means of creating art, is a sick society.  We must avoid moving in that direction.

3. Lessons to be learned from current responses to Covid-19.

Togetherness.  

John Donne’s famous words in the seventeenth century are perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned from the Covid-19 crisis.

                  ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the 

                   continent, a part of the main.   If a clod be washed away by the sea, 

                   Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a 

                   manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.’

This is not the place to rehearse political comments on the manner in which the pandemic has been handled in the United Kingdom, nor to express views on the issue of Brexit, except in as much as our withdrawal from the European Union has cut off what has hitherto been a vital part of arts funding.  However, we can confidently assert that a global catastrophe on this scale has called for a global response.  The spread of infection has ignored state borders.  Every country has monitored the approach to the crisis taken by every other country.  Scientists and medical experts have sought to learn from each other, regardless of political differences.  Travel, migration and quarantine regulations have obliged nations to work together.  A global situation has created unprecedented global awareness.  This must be a lesson for how we all work and behave in the future.   Border Crossings has always worked collaboratively and is in a strong position to point the way to other arts companies.

Access to funds outside the UK. 

Given the limited public funds that are likely to be available to organisations like Border Crossings after the Covid-19 crisis, we implore the UK government to reconsider its position on participation in the European Educational and Cultural programmes.  This is not a political statement, but a pragmatic necessity.  It seems madness to cut ourselves off from largesse that the European Union has said can still be made available to the United Kingdom, despite our withdrawal.

Planning.

Clearly preparation for an event as large scale and global as this pandemic can never be sufficient.  It does, however, underline the value of both forward and contingency planning, at all levels and by all types of organisations.  For a small company like Border Crossings, which punches above its weight in terms of the value of its work, this can be very frustrating because our vision often outstrips our resources.  We shall ensure that a lesson learned from the crisis is that one can never over plan or be too careful with financial management and accountability.  At the same time, we may reluctantly have to be much more constrained in what we can do than we would wish to be.  After building up a such a strong reputation and track record internationally, we regard this as little short of tragic.

Since this is a global crisis, and since it has begun during the Brexit transition period, it would be wise for the DCMS to see how cultural policy in other European nations has enabled arts and culture to be far more resilient than has been the case here.  To offer just one example, the Berliner Ensemble has planned for an autumn re-opening with 500 seats removed from its 700 seat auditorium.  It has been able to do this without an increase in ticket prices, because the German government supports theatre not on the basis of a business selling a product, but as an essential part of a healthy society and polity.  The current moment offers us the opportunity to re-think our social, cultural and political structures, learning from societies that have dealt with the Covid-19 crisis well.

4. How the sector may evolve, with the support of DCMS.

Digital and online.

The move to digital and online work during the pandemic has both advantages and disadvantages.  The creative experimentation this has involved is good, with much more sophisticated use of monologues and of cross-screen interaction of performers being filmed in their own homes.  The screening of video recordings of past productions has widened audiences. However, a downside is that screened work is in the end no substitute for live performance and the physical coming together of audiences in a shared space.  The best streamed work leads to the response “If only I had been there to see it live”, and therefore reminds audiences of the value of live performance, rather than substituting for it.  Its use during the pandemic is a temporary stop-gap, not a long-term solution, and (as noted above) it brings in no revenue at all.  Even a “star” artist like violinist Tasmin Little has stated that 5 million streams over six months earned her £12.34.  If digital distribution is to be pursued as a preferred business model, then it necessitates a complete shift in funding models.

Social distancing.

Unless a truly effective vaccine against Covid-19 is found, it will be necessary at all public performances to protect audiences by continued social distancing.  This will have a big effect on the economies of all performing arts organisations and on exhibition spaces.  Those dependent on generating box office income rather than on subsidy will suffer acutely, perhaps fatally.  

Performers themselves will find rehearsing and playing in theatres difficult and in many cases impossible.  Any performance that requires physical contact between performers will be hard to achieve under current regulations.  We would therefore urge the DCMS to explore the arts as a priority area for continuous testing of personnel, on the lines being applied in football.  

Educational opportunities.

It may be difficult for the foreseeable future to organise school outings to plays and other arts events.  The DCMS can have a major role in ensuring that if young people cannot go to the events, then the events should come to them.  The number of trained groups specialising in theatre in education techniques should rapidly be increased.  DCMS support will be necessary for this.  

DCMS and the Department for Education should jointly devise an Arts in Schools Programme suitable for all levels in state education.  This should cover the teaching of the history of the arts as well as ensure that all children have access to seeing and performing live drama.

Cultural Renewal Taskforce.

We strongly support the idea of a Cultural Renewal Taskforce being established, under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.  This would provide evidence that the government cares about the sector and is putting its weight behind ideas to ensure its survival.  However, we would advise the DCMS to look more carefully at the composition of this group, and recognise that the Covid crisis will require major changes across the sector.  It is  surely short-sighted to confine membership of the Taskforce to those who have managed larger organisations in the pre-Covid era.  It may well be that smaller organisations, community-based artists and those working in education will have more to offer here.

5. Conclusion.

The arts are in danger.  There has not been a comparable threat to the survival of theatre since the Puritans closed playhouses in 1642.  That period of repression lasted eighteen years.  However, on returning to the boards, plays acquired a new vitality; theatre buildings moved indoors and started using new forms of lighting and scenic engineering; female actors took on leading parts in place of boys.  A new creativity came into being, affecting writing, performing, design, and the relationship of the production to the audience.  The same may happen again when the theatres re-open after Covid-19, but it is going to be a struggle.  We believe that the DCMS can rescue the situation, but it must show imagination, foresight and flexibility.  If it does, it will be thanked in perpetuity.  If it fails to do so, then history books will write disparagingly of its inability to rise to the occasion because it was philistine when it should have been cultured, bureaucratic when it should have been civilised.  The ball is in the DCMS court. 

Dev Virahsawmy - Guest blog of Farewell

Dev Virahsawmy

In this characteristically outspoken and moving guest blog, Mauritian writer and political activist Dev Virahsawmy marks his farewell to public life.  He will, however, join us for the last of The Lockdown Dialogues with Peter Sellars on June 3rd.  Dev says that "Since Toufann, I have always felt as being part of the Border Crossing community."  We are honoured to publish his message of retirement.

***

Whether we like it or not, human beings have always needed myths and will always need them. What is a myth? It may be “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events” or “a widely held but false belief or idea” or “a misrepresentation of the truth” or a combination of all these.

All societies generate their myths in order to come to terms with reality, to make life meaningful and to have a raison d’être and plural societies have several sets of myths which are often antagonistic. In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, a dominant myth was that Mauritius was ‘Little France’. The alliance between the new English masters and the local oligarchy led middle-class Euro-Creoles to rally around the French language and ‘Frenchness’.

At present, a dominant myth is the belief that Mauritius is ‘Little India’. This politically motivated myth is linked to another more pernicious one carefully nurtured to support a racial objective. It is to show that people from India belong to a superior race for they have succeeded where Afro-Creoles have failed although both groups experienced the same ill treatment. There is nothing further from the truth. Slavery and indentured labour have nothing in common. The story of my great-grandfather clearly illustrates this. He, a ‘coolie’, came to Mauritius as an indentured labourer and during his stay he was attracted by the beauty of a young lady and when he proposed, his proposal was turned down. At the end of his contract, he returned to his homeland, changed his name, bought a passenger ticket, returned to Mauritius, proposed again and was successful. This is how he and his beloved started the Virahsawmy clan. A slave did not have this kind of freedom.

A very strong myth concerns capitalism which is believed to be irreplaceable, has always existed and always will. The history of the human race shows that this is not true but billions believe it is gospel truth. Skilful and systematic brainwashing has produced the required effect.

I do not intend to condemn mythmaking or mythmakers for the poet that I am, is guilty of much of this.

• Creole is our national language and must be known as Morisien. Myth or reality?
• We can achieve universal bilingual functional literacy in Morisien and English, another creole language. Myth or reality?
• Artocarpus altilis (breadfruit) or madegonn or friyapen will one day become our preferred staple. There cannot be genuine food security without it. Myth or reality?
• It is possible to build a supraethnic identity. Myth or reality?
• Mauritius is a Maritime Republic. Myth or reality?
• Mauritius is a creole island whose flora and fauna have been transfomed by different waves of immigrants from Africa, Europe and Asia. Myth or reality?
• Marxism and religion are compatible. Myth or reality?
• Men and women are different but equal. Myth or reality?

For more than half a century, these ‘myths’ have fuelled my existence. Covid-19 and PPS now tell me to take it easy. How much time is left? Only God knows. One thing is certain: some day soon, like Hamlet, I will say, “The rest is silence.” I promise that I’ll try hard not to pester you anymore with my frivolous myths.

This is my farewell message.

God bless you all.

MORE THAN WORDS - Making the Film

MORE THAN WORDS - Raffaele Messina

“Every film is a foreign film”, write Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour, “foreign to some audience somewhere - and not simply in terms of language”.  Their book Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film addresses the paradoxical nature of this international art form in the age of digital communication and global distribution.  In spite of its apparently global reach, most film remains firmly rooted in, and so constrained by, language.  As B. Ruby Rich argues in the same volume, audiences tend to resist subtitles because reading them makes the experience of film-going into “work”, when they prefer to think of it as “relaxation” and “entertainment”.  “My guess”, argues Rich, “is that foreign films function as a rebuke for some viewers…  evidence that the world is not made in ‘our’ image, and that neither our society or our language is universal.”

The undermining of universalism, with all its postcolonial, neoliberal overtones, is a key element in the MORE THAN WORDS project.  Charged with creating a film that could function as one of the project’s Intellectual Outputs, we gradually realised that, in order to be true to the spirit of this European partnership, we had to find a way of communicating through film that was not solely, or even largely reliant on spoken or written language.  The original application form had stated that the film would be “subtitled in all project languages”.  Since there are at least seven of these (one of which, Arabic, is written in a non-Western script), conventional subtitling would have the effect of turning each shot into a calligraphic page.  Given that all the other Intellectual Outputs are written texts, this seemed to be a bit of a wasted opportunity.  As a result, there are titles in all the project languages, but they happen as an independent element in the film; highlighting the challenge posed by language, rather than using language as an artificial means towards a spurious accessibility.

Anyone who has experienced the immigration systems of European countries can tell you that language is often far from being a means of accessibility.  Language can just as readily be a tool of power.  It can be used to obscure, to obfuscate and to exclude.  Our film includes a number of sequences in which various languages are employed without subtitles, so that only a portion of the audience will have a literal understanding of what is being said.  The emotional power of these sequences should be in the way they reflect the experience of people who enter European spaces without European language skills.  The audience is made foreign by the film.

The great advantage of film to a project like MORE THAN WORDS is that it is primarily a visual medium.  Through the composition and juxtaposition of shots, the rhythmic energy of editing and the nuances of facial and bodily expression in performers, film allows for an emotional narrative that speaks across languages and moves beyond the purely intellectual.  If the film was to complement the other project outputs, and to offer something distinct from them, then it had to become more purely filmic, a visual and musical construct that could convey the project’s work in a mode that moved beyond language, that was “more than words”.  This was how music, rather than the spoken word, became the dominant element in the film’s soundtrack - to the extent that much of the language involved becomes itself a musical and emotional rather than a rational element.

The original brief was for a film that charted the linear narrative of the project’s development: I freely admit that this is not what we have done.  However, our film absolutely does what the more detailed description specifies:

“It will follow the work of the partners, the discussions and debates, it will show the problems, doubts and solutions found.… The film will also focus on how the different forms of expression - theatre, story telling, dance and humour - can be merged.… It will end up with a common performance prepared by the partners together.”

Our common performance is the film itself, which draws off the skills of the partners in Clowning, dance, theatre and the digital to tell a story inspired by our journey together.  It tries to be honest about the challenges we face, both as practitioners engaged in work that attempts to embrace linguistic minorities, and as educators whose methodologies are not always practically or ideologically compatible.  As a result, it seeks neither fusion nor resolution, but rather engages in an emerging and ongoing dialogue between different art forms, educational approaches, cultures and languages - a dialogue which is dynamic, vital and profoundly democratic.

European societies rest on a creation myth that emphasises the primacy of language: “In the Beginning was the Word.”  That is not how creation is understood elsewhere.  Hindu myth portrays the beginnings of the universe through the figure of Shiva, the cosmic dancer, while many African cultures speak of a primal music from which emerged the physical world and the spoken word.  These cultures, which today interact so potently with our changing continent, are closer to scientific truth than our own traditions.  It is now commonly accepted amongst evolutionary psychologists that music preceded language and is actually a more fundamental aspect of human communication.  If we are to generate a contemporary European polity that embraces its global reach, then we need to find ways of relating to one another that are musical just as much as linguistic.  We need to be brave enough to move beyond the merely rational.

I hope you enjoy the film.  Click here to watch it!

MORE THAN WORDS was made with the support of the Erasmus + programme of the European Union.  
The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

[Victory in] Europe Day

As my son and I took our permitted daily walk through Enfield yesterday, I felt as if I were on a film set.  The combination of street parties with social distancing was weird enough - combined with a fierce jingoism and a bizarre nostalgia for the grim 1940s, it seemed totally surreal.  I've been very disturbed in recent weeks by the rhetorical elision of Covid-19 with World War 2: the constant talk of the Blitz spirit (whatever that was); the evocation of Churchill; the way in which the war veteran Captain Tom Moore, wonderful though he undoubtedly is, became the symbol of our pandemic moment as he raised funds for the NHS, which is (incidentally) not a charity but a state service funded by general taxation.  The analogy is doubtless useful to maintaining morale, and I don't honestly begrudge people the chance to enjoy a scone and jam on a sunny Friday in the thick of a global pandemic - but the analogy is also nonsensical and frankly dangerous.  The virus is not a military enemy that might change its tactics if it works out what we're up to.  It is not a general or admiral who will surrender when the "fight" is over.  There will be no glorious moment of victory: like the world of Eliot's Hollow Men, this will end "Not with a bang but a whimper."

What makes the persistent use of the World War 2 analogy even more disturbing is that it has also been constantly employed in the Brexit debates.  This reached a new low this week, when a Daily Mail souvenir offer called VE Day “Britain’s victory over Europe”.  To unpick that a bit...  it was not "Britain's victory", because Britain was merely one member of a group of Allies, which included the USA, Russia, the free French, the exiled Polish forces, many nations from Africa, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand....   It is a total fabrication to suggest that we ever "stood alone", even in the "darkest hour" after Dunkirk.  Many of those Allies were Europeans, so of course it was not a victory "over Europe" either.  It was a victory over the racist and oppressive regimes who held power in some European countries, but most victims of those regimes were also Europeans, and for them VE Day represented a liberation, not a defeat.  Germany now calls VE Day "Liberation Day", as President Steinmeier reminded the nation yesterday, while warning against "the temptation of a new nationalism. The fascination of the authoritarian. Of distrust, isolation and hostility between nations. Of hatred and agitation, of xenophobia and contempt for democracy - because they are nothing but the old evil spirits in a new guise."

The day after VE Day is Europe Day.  Five years and one day after the end of the war in Europe, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presented The Schuman Declaration, which marked the beginning of the process that has, over the last 70 years, led to today's European Union.  "World peace", the declaration begins "cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it....   A united Europe was not achieved and we had war."  It is the most extraordinary irony that VE Day, the Union Jack, the war and that great pro-European Churchill have all been hijacked by the Brexiteers, as if history somehow justifies their preposterous narrative of British exceptionalism.  Surely, if VE Day means anything at all, then it means re-asserting the post-war settlement, of which the European Union has been a central part, creating the longest period of peace between European nations ever.  No two members of the European Union have ever been to war with one another.

As well as the European Union, the post-war settlement saw the establishment of the United Nations, which is the EU's equivalent for the American right: Trump's current whipping boy, the WHO, is a UN agency.  In Britain, the post-war settlement meant the establishment of the welfare state and the NHS - both of which have been systematically undermined for years by successive Tory governments intent on bankrolling the profiteers, with consequences we now see all too well as medical staff die for the want of protective equipment and essential testing is entrusted to provenly corrupt accountancy firms.  Brexit has to be understood as part of a larger programme to dismantle the post-war settlement for private gain, to bring about an extreme global deregulation of economic activity for the most wealthy.  It has nothing to do with patriotism, but it's easily dressed up and sold that way.  If we're not careful, the pandemic will also play into this insidious narrative.

GIFT and Manifestos

Song Ru Hui in RE-ORIENTATIONS - 2010

Whenever there is an obstacle, theatre makers find ways to make theatre.  The most obvious shift at the moment is to work happening online - and we're part of that process ourselves with our streaming offer and THE LOCKDOWN DIALOGUES.  A big part of the conversation is going to be about how the form itself can adapt, so that we move beyond streaming recordings of existing performances, and start to make work that is actually intended to happen online.  If, as seems possible, the theatres don't re-open until 2021, then this is going to be essential.

GIFT is a festival that has already started experimenting with online work, and I was a participant in the piece they presented with Rosanna Irvine, MANIFESTOS from times of CRISIS last week.  The piece was an online meeting to work out, at first in "break out groups, and then as a full group of twelve attendees, what we wanted to say and do in the time of coronavirus.  The final manifestos make interesting reading: you can guess which one I worked on....

Before we met to create our manifestos, we were asked to reflect on some questions.  The process turned out not to involve any sharing of our responses, so I thought I would post them here as a few thoughts in the time of the virus.  Responses are very welcome - we need to start working through these things together.

• What is happening?

We are retreating.  The virus is sending us all into contained, private spaces - but even before the virus we were retreating.  Brexit is a retreat.  The rejection of refugees is a retreat. Nationalism is a retreat.  And - sorry to say this but…  there are ways in which even some forms of identity politics are a retreat.  We are all saying “Keep away from me.  I will keep close only those who are mine.  I reject the other.”

• What do you want to be happening?

I want us to meet again.  Not in a Zoom room or some weird virtual reality but physically present, in the same room.  I want to be able to hug my friends and to feel our common humanity.  I want to be aware of living (and mortal) bodies passing before me in real, unredeemable time.

• What do you not want to be happening?

"We’ve done really well and we’re past the peak.  We have to keep it all in place because it’s too early to stop being scared but we want people not to be scared so let’s all wear masks because it really boosts people’s confidence if they can’t see our faces.  You aren’t allowed out unless you have to go to work in which case you can go out.  We all have to keep indoors except on Thursday evenings when we all go out and stand with our neighbours and clap all the immigrants who work in the NHS who we intend to deport after the lockdown is over.  That doctor was an Italian you know.  Amazing thing was, he was quite good."

• What are you remembering?

The last few weeks before it all really kicked in.  Performing our show across London.  The laughter in the audiences.  The energy on the stage.

• What are you hoping?

The end of the retreat - the end of fear.  A realisation that things can’t go back to normal because normal was the problem.  The return of ceremony, the recognition of common purpose.  A meaningful rite at the burial of the dead - our lives recognised as having a value beyond the statistical.

• What kind of a world do you want?

A world that retains its global connections but combines that with a local sensibility.  A new sense of place, a loyalty to the land.  A world in which travel happens because it is necessary, and where the traveller is not regarded as a dangerous interloper but as a welcome guest.