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.

Aapravasi Ghat

Photos of indentured labourers, taken on arrival in Mauritius

I've been in Mauritius for the last couple of weeks - largely for family reasons, but (of course) with an eye on the theatrical and the intercultural.  This was, after all, the place where the Macbeth production happened, and before that Paul and Virginie.

One of the things that was most striking about the Paul and Virginie experience was how little awareness there seemed to be in Mauritius of the island's slave history.  Given that there is no indigenous population here at all, and that almost all the population is here as a result of some sort of transportation, whether for slavery or indentured labour, that is surprising to say the least.  But the emphasis that Asian cultures place on 'shame' has resulted in what feels like a consciously self-induced act of collective amnesia.  And the result of this is a cultural barrenness, which needs to be overcome if there is to be any chance of the nation finding a cohesion, a dynamism, a democratic reality.  Roshni Mooneeram, who is a former Border Crossings board member, recently wrote about this in Le Mauricien - with two rather perturbing comments on the site!

In the face of this, it was heartening to visit Aapravasi Ghat - the UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been created at the Port-Louis dock, where almost half a million indentured labourers arrived on the island between 1834 and 1920.  The first date is significant: 1833 was the year when slavery was abolished in the British Empire, and "The Great Experiment" of indentured labour was the colonists' response to the loss of a cheap workforce.  The museum makes it very clear, in a prominently displayed quotation from correspondence between the Governor General and the Colonial Office, that the shipping of Indian workers under a supposedly free contract was a direct response to a perceived need to find a source of labour that was as 'economically viable' as slavery.  The fact that this only ended in 1920 is even more shocking. 

A couple of weeks ago, David Olusoga's brilliant pair of BBC documentaries explored how the "compensation" paid by the British government to the slave owners laid the foundations for contemporary British capitalism.  In Mauritius, the situation is perhaps even more extreme - given that the bulk of the population is descended from slaves or near slaves.  The compensation paid to slave owners in 1833 led to the setting up of the Mauritian banks and many of the businesses that dominate the island's economy today.  This process has been carefully researched by a Truth and Justice Commission, but the reports of this body have not been used as the basis for any sort of reparation.  Truth may have been unearthed - but it remains largely ignored and unknown, let alone transformed into Justice. 

Aapravasi Ghat perhaps represents a beginning in a national process of historical education and cultural revitalization, which may eventually help in the development of a more inclusive society and a participatory democracy. 

Ningbo and after

The public workshop with the students in Ningbo was really helpful to us - not least because it showed us some aspects of the play that weren't really hanging together.  We'd been a bit wary of the fact that the play is set in the business world, and opted to make the work-related story about the making of an advertisement, because we felt closer to that world. But the result was that the cultural conflicts we tried to introduce felt forced and artificial - Chinese advertising actually works in a very similar way to Western advertising - it's just that the cultural tropes employed are specific and local - as they would be anywhere in the world.  So there's not enough to hang drama on.  Good to find this out at such an early stage - and good to be pushed back towards the alien world of high finance, which is really an altogether more meaty prospect at the current moment.  We've been looking at characters caught up in a web of inter-personal connections - and, of course, they are also caught up in the complexities of the financial system.  The complexity actually is the point.  I send out some emails to various contacts who know a bit about Sino-British financial relations.  Very pleased to see that they are willing to have their brains picked.  I don't think this strand of the play is something we can create through improvisation during the current workshop - we need to put it on ice and collaborate on a writing process after the research work has been done more fully.  We know the function of the scenes in terms of the personal stories we want to tell - now we need to bring in another level.

Yesterday was spent filming some scenes which we're planning to project in the final production.  We brought in two young actors - Tie Zheng and Zhang Ying - to play younger versions of Li and Hui's characters.  Ying even looks rather like a younger version of Hui, and she has the same ease of access to her emotions - the parting scene is beautiful and very moving.  Great to bring some younger people into this process, especially after the very fruitful encounter with the students in Ningbo.  Roshni Mooneeram, our former board member who now teaches there, tells me that they always seem to be "unlocked" by our drama workshops there.  That, of course, is what theatre is for.....

Creativity in China

Friday was the last day of the workshop, and we gave a presentation of work-in-progress for the SDAC management, the Festival, and other interested parties like the Swedish cultural representative in Shanghai. I found it all a bit nerve-wracking and strange: the whole point of this time had been to avoid the pressure of performance, and suddenly here we were, not only performing, but knowing that our work was very much being assessed as a result. I tried to be as clear as I could about the state of the work – explaining that there was no script yet, that the actors were still improvising and experimenting, that the movement work was about ideas rather than finish, that there were holes all over the stories, that was they were seeing was only one version of what might happen. I was also very aware that this whole way of working was very new, even to this most avant-garde of Chinese theatres, and that the audience may just not get what I was trying to say.

So – it was a huge relief when the first sequence we showed (Denise and Micha’s choreography about the tsunami) earned a round of applause from the little crowd, and when Qi and Mia’s comedy of misunderstanding started to draw laughter. Hui and Jue also started getting laughs – and not just for lines in Chinese. And, at the end, Nick Yu stood up and said how moving a lot of the presentation had been. He then handed over to the Artistic Director of SDAC: Lu Liang. I’d been wondering for some time who really was in charge. Nick has always seemed to make the artistic decisions when I’ve been around, but I knew he didn’t have total power. For a while, I had thought that a woman director who had sat in on a number of our sessions, and given some very useful suggestions, might be the artistic director (she said she was “an artistic director here”). But no – Lu Liang is a charismatic, middle-aged man, who (I’m now told) is very famous as both an actor and director in China. He says a few apparently non-committal words about new work processes, and disappears. Otherwise the feedback is very good: Forrinna Chen from the Festival is full of enthusiasm, and the editor of a Chinese theatre magazine asks for articles about the work from both the choreographers and myself.

In the evening, Director Lu reappears next to me at dinner. Another banquet, this time hosted by SDAC for everybody who has worked with us these last three weeks. This time, he is much more forthcoming: he says that he and Nick have talked, and that, subject to “the approval of the arts board” (whatever that may be) they are keen to present the production. A huge relief to me. I “gam bei” with him in rice wine, and (via Ling) we discuss devising processes, the state of Chinese theatre, and the interesting writers at work today. It feels like the sort of event where I should make a speech of thanks, so I stand up and say some rather formal things about the value of cultural exchanges and the importance of art in envisioning the future of the planet. Director Lu’s answer is jokey and fun: he says that I clearly know what the Communist Party would expect me to say. He’s quite right that this is the sub-text of the speech (although I also believe it!) – but it’s very striking that he should say so. We also joke about calling one another “comrades”: in contemporary China, the word for “comrade” – tongzhi – has been appropriated by the emerging gay movement. It’s all very unexpected, and very liberating.

Saturday sees me on the train to Ningbo, to make another visit to the strange outpost of Nottingham University there, and my old friend Roshni Mooneeram. Roshni has advertised a workshop with me around the campus. We’d expected we might get about twenty people who were interested to explore creativity… in fact, about 150 students show up on a wet, cold Saturday afternoon. I have to get them to push their desks back to the walls, and get them moving around. To begin with, it’s incredibly difficult: the level of inhibition is quite formidable. But slowly, through little play-making exercises, we start to find some real emotional truth. Scenes emerge about students chatting up or dumping one another, about tourists looking at China, about businessmen re-developing rural areas, about decadent Western behaviour – there’s even a scene about a pick-up in a gay bar. The students, who were silent at the start of the workshop, are laughing and clapping wildly by the end, full of joy at the creativity of their contemporaries. It’s fascinating and remarkable – they are clearly totally unused to seeing their lives re-created accurately like this, particularly by people who they know.

At the end of the session, as Roshni is telling me that she’s seeing many of her students in a totally new light, one of them shyly sidles up to us. She’s been one of the most enthusiastic participants – but now she seems to have reverted to an earnest girl in glasses. “Excuse me”, she says. “I have a question. What is the point of this?”