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.

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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.

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.

Migrants and ‘Traffickers’ - past and present

Guest blog by Prof. Crispin Bates (University of Edinburgh)

David Furlong in rehearsals for THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

Crispin Bates was one of our Consultant Historians for the devising process of our new production: THE GREAT EXPERIMENT.  Here he reflects on the history of migrations informing the play, and its relevance today.

The problems associated with today's mass migrations are nothing new. They have always arisen from the incompetent or misguided policies of governments that have often been responsible for creating the conditions from which migrants are trying to escape. In the current European refugee crisis an attempt is commonly made to distinguish between ‘deserving’ refugees, to whom asylum should be granted, and ‘economic migrants’ who should be excluded. However the distinction is not so clear- cut. So-called ‘economic migrants’ are often the victims of mis-rule by totalitarian regimes. Their poverty is therefore brought about or compounded by the actions of politicians. Persecution can involve political and economic discrimination as well as the loss of civil liberties. The chaos of war produces famine and economic distress that is as much a threat to life as the military’s guns and bombs.

Perhaps the most extreme form of political repression arises when a country is occupied by a foreign power. This describes the condition of many countries in Africa and Asia during the era of European colonialism. Political rights and civil liberties were minimal, and territories were administered primarily in the interests of the occupying power, and not those of the indigenous population. The question arises therefore whether labour migrants of the colonial era were maximising their economic opportunities, or were simply refugees. The answer, as today, is often both. Migrants made choices, but only amongst a very limited range of options. One might question the freedom of choice when it comes to most economies, but in these circumstances the range of options was often peculiarly constrained.

Global migration has a longer history than most people imagine. Apart from the millions of Europeans who migrated to America and other countries in the hope of a better life, some 20 million Chinese migrated overseas between 1840 and 1940. Mostly they went to Malaysia, where they worked in the tin mining industry, to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Siam, French Indo-China, and South Africa, where they were employed in gold mining.  Indians migrated overseas in equally large numbers from the 1830s onwards.  And wherever Asian workers went they were soon followed by merchants, who traded, set up shops and restaurants and small scale industries. Many of these migrants came from regions with traditionally high levels of out-migration, such as Bihar in northern India, as well as from Tamil Nadu in the south, but eventually every part of the Indian subcontinent became involved. They mostly left to work in sugar plantations in British colonies in the Caribbean and southern Indian Ocean, as well as in South Africa, Fiji, and in the French colonies of Reunion, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Their role was to replace African slave labour following the abolition of slavery in the British empire in 1833/4 and the French empire a decade later. Indian labourers signed up in even larger numbers to work in the paddy fields, coffee, tea and rubber plantations of Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Malaysia. They also served as construction workers, much as they do in the Middle East in the present day. They were often employed using notoriously one-sided labour contracts which obliged them to work continuously for three, four or five years for a single employer, who was thereby reimbursed for the cost of their passage. They had no passports to be confiscated, only an emigration certificate and a contract of employment, but if they did not complete their contract, they would lose the right to a free passage home.

Criticisms from the Anti-Slavery Society in London, who dubbed the first wave of indentured migration ‘a new system of slavery’, led to the suspension of indentured migration in 1838, but it was then resumed in 1843 under close supervision. Opponents of Indian overseas migration within India were reassured by the planters that they would only recruit the poorest of the poor and the most unskilled of Indian workers. However, statistical evidence suggests that by the late 1850s migrants were being recruited from amongst the landless and impoverished within all sections of society. The great Indian Uprising of 1857 gave a boost to the trade, as the economy of rural north India was devastated by war with successive famines following in 1861 and 1865. Tens of thousands of high caste Indians from disbanded regiments of the Bengal army, in particular, found themselves out of work at this time and many migrated overseas. It is true that the wages of indentured labourers were often better than those available locally. However, the alternative employment opportunities were severely limited.

Tobi King Bakare in rehearsals for THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

The indenture contract was similar to that in use in most modern armies. It was less onerous in one respect, as if they saved enough the workers could buy themselves out of the contract at any time. However, the work was hard and although hospitals were provided and Protectors and Inspectors were appointed (to whom they could and did complain), the rights of workers were limited, and always constrained by the pervasive racism of their employers and colonial governments. If workers fled from the plantation they could be arrested and imprisoned for vagrancy (a law borrowed from Britain), and workers who were absent from work, without permission, were in some colonies penalised with a two-day deduction of wages for every day they were away (the notorious ‘double cut’). Although banned by law by the end of the century, overseers in some estates often did not hesitate to use violence and abuse to keep their workers in line.

Like most long-distance migrants, the Indian recruits (referred to as ‘coolies’ – a title that later assumed a derogatory meaning) had only a limited knowledge of where they were going. There were sugar plantations in India, and some were already familiar with the type of work involved. But most had no relevant previous experience. What attracted them was the possibility of saving money and returning home with it. In some cases by migration they also hoped to escape caste, gender, or religious persecution. Better still, many were allowed to acquire land – something they could never have achieved in India - and stayed on in the sugar colonies. In the British colony of Trinidad, the earliest migrants were offered a free grant of land if they agreed to stay rather than claim the free passage home to which they were entitled. In time, many gave up working on the plantations and became farmers or shopkeepers.

Between 1.5 and 2 million Indians were contracted as indentured workers. Eventually large settled communities of Indian workers were established in the sugar colonies, which by the early twentieth century was to make this form of recruitment redundant. Other forms of recruitment also took place contemporaneously for the inter-Asian labour trade. These included the so-called ‘free migration’ of workers and the use of Indian kanganies and maistries who advanced wages and lent money to workers to pay their passage. Workers were assembled in gangs to work especially in the coffee and tea plantations of Assam and Sri Lanka, and later in the all important rubber plantations of Malaysia. Unlike the migration of indentured labourers to work in the sugar trade, this form of migration was not closely supervised by colonial governments. We will therefore never know the true numbers, but many millions were involved. Migration to work in sugar plantations probably accounted in fact for barely 10% of the total.

In all these migrations there was an opportunity for betterment, but at huge risk and often at great cost. Prior to the introduction of steamships, disease might break out on ships during the long sea passage, leading to extraordinary levels of mortality. Some were also lost in drownings at sea and shipwrecks. The treatment meted out to workers by former slave owners in the early years was often harsh. Gradually though, over time, conditions were improved with the introduction of improved rations and increasingly rigorous inspections. The complaints and protests of the workers, who struggled against colonial discrimination, played an important role in ameliorating the trade: so much so that the Internal Labour Organisation in the 1920s looked to indentured labour regulations for examples on how to define the rights of workers.  Much as in the present day, the least fortunate migrants were those who found themselves working in entirely unregulated industries, such as agriculture or domestic work.

Nisha Dassyne in rehearsals for THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

It is often assumed that planters and factory owners were themselves responsible for recruiting the workers. However, intermediaries of various sorts played a crucial role in all Indian overseas labour migration. The most important of these intermediaries was the kangani or sirdar: who was commonly a returnee migrant worker or overseer, who could provide knowledge and information about the passage, guarantee their safe arrival, and their onward employment. Much like modern people smugglers (often referred to as ‘traffickers’), they were pilloried at the time. They provided a service to the planters by securing for them employees, usually from the Indian rural locality where they originated, that the planters could not otherwise secure. They had to be paid for this, and often demanded extortionate fees. At the same time, they organised and supported the workers: navigating their way to the depot, providing them food and clothing during the passage, lending money (at high rates of interest), and securing the best possible wages for them if they chose to re-indenture on the sugar estate (in which they also claimed a share). They were indispensable to all concerned, but their loyalties were always in question.

Attempts were made by numerous colonial governments to do away with the kanganis, sirdars and other intermediaries to develop what they imagined as an entirely ‘free’ market in labour migrants. This proved to be impossible, even after the abandonment of the indentured labour contract in the 1920s under pressure from Indian nationalists. Much like people smugglers in the present-day they provided a service which no-one else could. To survive and improve their life chances, migrants had to undertake long journeys and depended upon the networks and knowledge provided by intermediaries. Even though colonial labour migration was not illegal, contracts could not be secured without the involvement of intermediaries.

In the present-day, the growth of free trade has been accompanied by an ever greater tightening of border controls. This began in the 1880s with immigration restrictions introduced by Canada and Australia to halt the inward rush of impoverished Chinese migrant labourers. Travel restrictions became more widespread in the 1930s with the impact of the depression, with the eruption of strikes and race riots being often blamed on migrant communities. Border controls then became endemic after World War II, as newly independent social democratic states struggled to define and control their citizens, to raise taxes, and to determine the legal rights of their populations. It is these restrictions, that have made intermediaries of various sorts even more important than they were in the past for those seeking and needing to cross the globe in search of sanctuary and employment.

In the parts of the Middle East and north Africa torn apart by warfare and civil strife there are no consulates where refugees can apply for asylum. At the same time, European air, sea and road transport regulations forbid any migrant to board a plane without a visa of some sort. Smuggling is thus driven by EU policy. Many politicians have pointed out how the foreign policies of the European powers, particularly the arming of rebels in the aftermath of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the bombing of Libya, Iraq and Syria, have contributed to the exodus. Nineteenth century colonialism limited the opportunities of Indian subjects so that they had little choice but to become indentured migrants, for which they were recruited by Indian sirdars. So too, have European governments compounded a state of war and then created a legal regime where would- be migrants have no choice but to put themselves in hands of smugglers, who are the only ones capable of organising their escape.

In colonial times, the Royal Commission on Indentured Migration to Mauritius in 1875, received conflicting evidence of the exploitative behaviour of sirdars: sometimes they seemed to serve the interests only of themselves, but at other times they clearly defended their gangs of workers. Neither the workers or planters could survive without them. The Royal Commission concluded there they were an ‘evil’ (hypocritically blamed on ‘the persistence of native practices’) than must be endured.8 Just as there were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sirdars in colonial times, the same can be said of intermediaries in the present: at the one end there are legitimate and responsible foreign labour recruiters and at the other end are the ‘traffickers’ who use intimidation to coerce migrants into exploitative employment in industries lacking regulation, such as agriculture, domestic and sex work. People smugglers lie somewhere in between. It is the illegality of their actions that often causes people smugglers to be prosecuted as ‘traffickers’, but for the difficult circumstances of migrants and the need for their services, European governments have a case to answer too. Because of their illegality, smugglers are forced to abandon lorries or boats before reaching their destinations, off-loading sea passengers onto dinghies that either sink or are confiscated upon arrival. Intermediaries in colonial times travelled with migrants for the whole journey, acted as overseers on the plantations, and often spent their entire lives with the persons they recruited and accompanied overseas. In fact the life of migrants was probably less hazardous in colonial times than it is now. The culpability of European governments for the poor conditions migrants have to suffer is in many ways similar, but the results are even more devastating today.

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Crispin Bates is Professor of Modern and Contemporary South Asian History at the University of Edinburgh and Co-Investigator with Prof. Andrea Major (Leeds University) in the AHRC-funded ‘Becoming Coolies’ research project on the origins of Indian overseas labour migration in the colonial era. See www.coolitude.shca.ed.ac.uk.

To find out more about THE GREAT EXPERIMENT and to book tickets, visit https://www.bordercrossings.org.uk/programme/great-experiment

The Great Experiment - rehearsal blog

A guest blog by Assistant Director Carlota Arencibia

David Furlong and Tobi King Bakare in rehearsal

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT is back after it was first developed as an R&D project two years ago. After two years of letting the piece rest, mainly to reflect about it, Michael felt it was the right time to bring it back, especially as the content of this piece feels still more relevant in today’s political and socio-economic situation.

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT tells a side of history which feels it has been buried. The indenture system happened in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in 1833. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries over 2 million Indian migrant labourers were indentured to work in plantations all over the world: Mauritius, Jamaica, Malaysia, Guiana, Trinidad and Fiji to name but a few. They were shipped all around the world to work on sugar plantations, railways and other colonial enterprises. The literal meaning of Indenture is ‘work contract’: and that is what it was. This work contract had a 5 year duration, and included their monthly wage, the amount of hours per day (9 hours) , the number of days a week ( 6 days except Sunday), passage conditions (it included a one way passage, not the return).

The show explores two worlds: on one side the historical portrayal, on the other side how these events have affected us nowadays in present time.

So far we’ve been looking at the scenes devised by the original team two years ago, while also adding new material. We’ve been trying to go further and deeper with the whole concept. Therefore a lot of questions and dilemmas have arisen. We’ve been discussing the differences  between slavery and indenture. Has it similarities? Is it a form of semi-slavery? Or are they completely different terms?

“Indenture is indeed a state of semi-slavery. Like the slave before him, the indentured labourer cannot buy his freedom. A slave was punished for not working; so also is an indentured labourer. If he is negligent, does not attend work for a day, if he answered back, – he will suffer imprisonment for any one of these lapses. A slave could be sold and handed over by one owner to another, so too [the] indentured labourer can be transferred from one employer to another. The children of a slave inherited the taint of slavery; much in the same way, the children of an indentured labourer are subject to laws specially passed for them. The only difference between the two states is that while slavery ended only with life, an indentured labourer can be free after a certain number of years.” 

MK Gandhi - Samalochak, December 1915  

The main reason why Indenture lasted till the beginning of the 20th century was simply economic. The Empire realised that there was more productivity in paying labourers as they worked harder if they had motivation and hope; in comparison with slavery where the only thing they got in return was a whiplash.

Another key issue in the play is the ethnicities of the 5 actors, two of them being Mauritian, other two white British and one African performer. As I mentioned earlier the play offers two worlds, one of them being how this history has affected us in modern days: this world is portrayed as a group of actors in the rehearsal space trying to devise a show about indenture. Conflicts, assumptions and stereotypes come up whilst they devise regarding their ethnicities which can be seen as a form of inherited racism. Is racism embedded in the social structure?

Related to everything I have just mentioned, the discussion of what actors can play and what can they not play came up. For example: can a white man play a “coolie”? We explore this term quite  a lot - especially the way Mauritians see the word, and how Westerners assume that it has negative connotations. According to Mauritian actors Nisha and David, most Mauritian families have coolie ancestors: the conflict comes when some of them carry their heritage with pride but other families prefer hide it and deny this heritage.

Rehearsals are flowing nicely and everything is falling into place, What started as a project focusing on history, has expanded much more. It has led to topics such as identity or sense of belonging. Many other matters have been discussed but I must leave some for the actual show..…

Keep an eye out for any updates here or in our social media accounts!

The Great Experiment - Guest Blog on the Devising Process by Rosanna Lowe

How can theatre bring history to life? Who writes the history? Who is written about?  Who is it written for? In re-telling stories from history, can we truthfully embody figures of the past or can we really only narrate them? Who are we entitled to represent? How much liberty can we take? How much can we invent? How authentic can we be?

These were the questions that arose, as we began the month-long research period for Border Crossings’ current theatre piece, an exploration of the indenture system in Mauritius. Previously I knew nothing about ‘The Great Experiment’, the attempt to see whether the British Empire’s economic interests could be preserved by replacing newly abolished slavery with a system of ‘free’ labour, bound by a contract called an indenture. This experiment was first trialled in the small island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, primarily to prop up sugar plantations, and saw one of the largest migrations in history - almost half a million indentured labourers, mainly from India, crossed the Kala Pani, the Black Water, to Mauritius. As a company, we set out on our own journey across unfamiliar waters –  devising a piece with no pre-established characters or storyline.

What we did have, however, were delicate fragments of historical narrative, a bewildering jigsaw puzzle of facts, figures, faces and stories.  Quickly the rehearsal room transformed into a kind of exhibition space, with mounds of related reading and articles on everything from Gandhi’s campaign against indenture in the early 20th century to contemporary Mauritian poet Khal Torabully’s concept of ‘the coral imaginary’ and of ‘coolitude’, reclaiming the identity and dignity of the ‘coolie’, a formerly derogatory word for the indentured labourer.

Often the absence or distortion of information was poignant and powerful – reading out the ship records of the names and ages of the migrants felt like a moving litany to ghosts of the past whose stories we could only imagine. Probably the most challenging and gaping absences were the stories of people of African origin in Mauritius – we had none, apart from the compelling story of the mixed race journalist Remy Ollier, who founded a newspaper, campaigned for the rights and political involvement of people of colour in the early nineteenth century and who was poisoned at a relatively young age.

The most powerful aspect of our rehearsal-room-come-exhibition space was the sea of faces that began to people the wall. These photographic portraits, required by indentured labourers for their identity documents, were amazingly diverse - whiskered or shaven headed, wizened or youthful, bejewelled or naked, sometimes with a story or information attached and sometimes not. We were of course examining these people and their stories, but with the watchful eyes of these extraordinarily striking portraits overlooking us, it felt there was a kind of additional duty to honour these people’s stories and their presence.

It was fascinating to see how our own lens on the world, on our own identity and on history shaped the way we saw the material. Even the seemingly static faces on the wall could change, as we looked at them with different eyes. One morning Nisha, our Mauritian actress, looked at our wall of faces and exclaimed with typical exuberant warmth ‘Look! They’re smiling!’ For me, something of a miserabilist, the faces had always seemed grave – perhaps because of the lives they’d lived or because of the enforced formality and stillness of photography at the time. But as soon as Nisha had said this, the faces changed in front of my eyes – suddenly smiles, life, liveliness seemed to be hovering at the corners of their mouths.

Our other incredible resource and one of the most unique parts of the process was the involvement of three eminent historians, creators of the academic research project ‘Becoming Coolies’, which aimed to break down some of the stereotypes of Indian indentured labourers, examining their diversity and their personal agency in migration. Initially I think we were curious and a little concerned about how an interaction between performers and historians might work, as was Professor Crispin Bates, when he declared to us over Skype: ‘My fear is that this could end up as a Mauritian Les Miserables…’ But once in the room together, there was a great generosity in the sharing process, with the performers benefitting from the historians’ extraordinary expertise and the historians delighting in the performers’ ability to bring history to life in unexpected ways.

Very quickly in the rehearsal process the issues of theatrical representation arose – as a group of 5 performers, two Mauritian, one Rwandan, one Irish and one British, what would or could we play? We began by playing roughly to ‘type’, in terms of gender or race. But it quickly became apparent that this was not only limiting, but also potentially problematic. Does a black actor playing a slave perpetuate a disempowering narrative? Does playing someone from a different race or culture represent a type of appropriation? Eventually, we decided that anyone could play anything and experimented with a range of modes of representation. Sometimes the jarring of the performer and the character threw up something interesting and sometimes the dividing line disappeared – whenever Ery played any character, something truthful and authentic shone through. For me, an amazing moment of alchemical transformation was when Tony took a photograph of an indentured labourer who had died of malaria and spoke from behind, using the face as a mask – suddenly the face became voiced, embodied, dignified.

Another wonderful resource for us was the presence of the three Mauritians in the room - David and Nisha as performers and Shiraz as visual artist. We heard the sound of the ravane, the goatskin drum and various variants of sega, traditional Mauritian music, from Bhojpuri sega to seggae (sega and reggae’s lovechild). We heard personal stories of the continuing difficulties of cross-cultural relationships, competing narratives of pride and shame in ones origins, of both togethernesses and tensions between the many Mauritian cultures. Shiraz’s video images showed the beauty of the island – an exquisite moonrise over lush green mountains – but they also whispered with ghosts of the past, as faces of those who had actually worked the land hovered superimposed over the sweeping miles of sugar plantation.

Rehearsals consisted of a series of games and exercises, but also an incredible amount of discussion of the material. Our director Michael often sat scribbling in a corner – and a mosaic of post-its emerged on which we heard (sometimes to our own surprise) the comments we had made, which were then rewoven into improvisation. One fantastic exercise had us creating an enormous map of nineteenth century global capitalism, drawn on the floor in chalk, tea leaves, sugar and loose change, showing the movement of goods and capital under empire. While the English craved sugar, the British Empire fostered the Chinese craving for opium, which contributed to the devastating famines that factored in many migrations from India. Rehearsal breaks subsequently took on a peculiar significance, as we all scuttled off to indulge our own personal cravings for caffeine, nicotine or sugar.

Unbeknown to us, our director Michael had envisioned from the start that the piece itself would slide between the contemporary rehearsal room and the historical scenes. A beautiful theatrical moment we created was the literal sliding between worlds – as we sat round the rehearsal table discussing the space allocated per person on the indenture ships, our own space became destabilised, our minds and stomachs began to lurch, our tabletop books began to slide and we slipped into the destabilising world of the ship itself, making its epic and hazardous journey across the Indian Ocean.

We had started rehearsing not long after events at Charlottesville – a powerful reminder of what can happen as a result of an attempt to redress racist historical narrative by removing a controversial statue. As the devising process continued, the echoes of the history we were examining seemed to ripple everywhere in the world around us. Halfway through the rehearsal process, the Evening Standard launched its campaign against ‘modern slavery’ in present day London. We were rehearsing in London Bridge, at the edge of the Thames, not so far from the docklands area that had sailed so many of the ill-gotten gains of Empire in and out. At one point in the process David realised that the building where we were rehearsing, in Exchange Theatre’s performance space, had a very old industrial chimney and a hook for hoisting goods – what was processed there? Could it have been sugar? A quick google revealed that a South African sugar company are currently housed in part of the building.

A stone’s throw from the rehearsal space was Becket House, one of the UK Border Agency’s immigration main reporting centres, also housing two ‘secure cells’ for those arrested while signing on or brought in by snatch squads operating from the centre. As I walked past to rehearsals in the morning, there was always a huge queue of people snaking round the block, holding paperwork and ID, waiting to sign on. It was a modern day reminder of the huge wave of arrivals at the Aapravasi Ghat, the immigration depot in the Mauritian capital of Port Louis, where the identity papers of new arrivals were processed by the supposed ‘Protector of Immigrants’.

One morning on the way to rehearsals, I saw a gardener moving in and around the immigration queue. He was wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Putting Down Roots’, which reminded me of Shiraz’s extraordinary photography of the gnarled roots of the banyan, a resourceful tree which begins life as an epiphyte, seeding itself in a crevice of a host tree or building. We kept returning to this theme of roots, to the physical and emotional relationship to the new land and the old, to the rootedness and uprootedness that comes with the experience of migration and which continues through subsequent generations, as the family tree grows and branches out.

Our ongoing rehearsal room discussions of race, privilege, identity, economic injustice and migration in the contemporary world became a kind of framing device for the historical scenes, which were often stark and simple, sometimes wordless, sometimes abstract, leaving space for the audience and for the complexity of interpretation. In the contemporary scenes we ended up playing slightly heightened versions of ourselves, exaggerating the tensions between us to create the conflicts and revelations of the piece. As a middle class white person, who has never reflected much about identity, origin, ancestry or white privilege, working on The Great Experiment was a powerful wake up call. I’ve always been very interested in history – my father was a history teacher who told us historical tales as bedtime stories and I’ve worked as a writer on history projects, including the TV series Horrible Histories. But it shocked me to discover how little I knew about British imperial history and how little consideration I had given to the links between Britain’s current wealth and Britain’s colonial exploitation. For all of us, finding our personal relationship to the material by examining our own identities was sometimes humbling or challenging, but ultimately eye-opening.

Border Crossings always creates work that crosses cultural, geographical and linguistic borders, as does Exchange Theatre, co-producer of The Great Experiment. The piece that we created felt like it also crossed the borders of the historical and the contemporary, the academic and the performative, as well as crossing some personal boundaries. It was about the possibilities and challenges of communicating across centuries, cultures, continents and worlds. In some modest way we went on a journey together as ‘jihaji-bai’, as ship-mates, in what felt like a fantastic theatrical experiment.

- Rosanna Lowe
Rosanna Lowe is an actor and writer.

The Great Experiment begins!

For the last four weeks, we’ve been locked in Exchange Theatre’s rehearsal space at London Bridge, developing our next devised production.  THE GREAT EXPERIMENT will reach the stage next year, and is already looking like one of the most exciting pieces we’ve ever done.  It’s part of our SEASON OF MIGRATIONS, and is rooted in the history of indentured labour – the huge movement of Indian workers through the British Empire in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery.  One of the best aspects of the month has been having no less than three expert historians visit us for several days each to help us get a stronger, more nuanced sense of the history.  Working together on the Research project “Becoming Coolies”, Crispin Bates is an expert on Indian history, Andrea Major on imperial history, and Marina Carter on the indentured labourers themselves, particularly in relation to the island of Mauritius, where the whole process really began.  Having them in the room took us way beyond the usual process of reading a few books and watching YouTube videos: they took us right to the archival sources – to the real words of people who had made the perilous journey across what they called the Kala Pani – the Black Water.

The creative team encountering this material included several of our regular collaborators, which also helped to make the process so rich – there wasn’t any need for introductions to ways of working or for overcoming trust issues.   Tony Guilfoyle (who was in both DIS-ORIENTATIONS and RE-ORIENTATIONS, as well as helping us devise CONSUMED) was back, as was Rosanna Lowe (Assistant Director on DOUBLE TONGUE), Nisha Dassyne (our Mauritian performer in MAPPA MUNDI and the translator of TOUFANN), David Furlong (another Mauritian performer and director at Exchange, who has been part of our recent training workshops).  They were joined by Mauritian visual artist Shiraz Bayjoo; and by the wonderful Rwandan actor Ery Nzaramba, who I first saw in Peter Brook’s extraordinary piece BATTLEFIELD.  The key was that all these performers work as writers, directors and visual artists as well as actors – something key to the whole process.

Amazingly, by the Friday of the fourth week there was enough material readily shaped to be shown to a small invited audience.  The response was astonishing.  This isn’t just a show about the history – it’s a show about how we relate to the history, how it reflects our contemporary realities, how it has made us who we are.  These aren’t easy subjects, but the company has been very brave in the level of personal encounter.  The resulting piece is going to be very delicate, very fragile, and, as a result, profoundly moving.

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.