African Theatre 17: Contemporary Dance 184701187X, 9781847011879

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ISBN 978-1-84701-187-9

9 781847 011879 www.jamescurrey.com

African Theatre

Cover: Mamela Nyamza in Hatched 2015, Film Still 10. Directed by Mamela Nyamza and Robyn Denny. Cinematographer: Ebrahim Hajee (Photograph © Mamela Nyamza and Robyn Denny, reproduced by their kind permission)

African Theatre

Contemporary Dance

How is contemporary African dance being defined? How is dance contributing to postcolonial debates on representation? How are form, aesthetics and rhythm implicated in decolonising Africans and dance in Africa? This volume asks important questions about dance and representation in relation to ethnicity and race, while questioning whether ‘writing dance’ is an appropriate mode of engagement with dance. Contributors analyse the efficacy of dance to engage audiences with disavowed issues like gender, sexuality and dis/ability both within and beyond Africa. Highlights include a dance photo essay on F.O.D. Gang’s 2017 site-specific street performance ‘Untitled’ in Lagos, a new non-themed section, and the playscript Lunatic! by Zimbabwean playwright, Thoko Zulu.

Volume Editors • Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye

Volume Editors • Hutchison & Okoye

African Theatre provides a focus for research, critical discussion, information and creativity in the vigorous field of African theatre and performance. The series now welcomes open submissions, and through its resolutely pan-African coverage and accessible style, broadens the debates to all interested in African performance forms and the many roles they play in contemporary life. The editors and editorial board bring together an impressive range of experience.

17

Contemporary Dance

African Theatre 17 Contemporary Dance Volume Editors KRISTINA JOHNSTONE Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye Reviews Editor Sola Adeyemi

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Published titles in the series: African Theatre in Development African Theatre: Playwrights & Politics African Theatre: Women African Theatre: Southern Africa African Theatre: Soyinka: Blackout, Blowout & Beyond African Theatre: Youth African Theatre 7: Companies African Theatre 8: Diasporas African Theatre 9: Histories 1850–1950 African Theatre 10: Media & Performance African Theatre 11: Festivals African Theatre 12: Shakespeare in & out of Africa African Theatre 13: Ngug˜ ˜ ı wa Thiong’o & Wole Soyinka African Theatre 14: Contemporary Women African Theatre 15: China, India & the Eastern World African Theatre 16: Six Plays from East & West Africa African Theatre 17: Contemporary Dance Forthcoming: African Theatre 18 (Nov 2019) Articles not exceeding 5,000 words should be submitted preferably as an email attachment. Style: Preferably use UK rather than US spellings. Italicize titles of books or plays. Use single inverted commas and double for quotes within quotes. Type notes at the end of the text on a separate sheet. Do not justify the right-hand margins. References should follow the style of this volume (Surname date: page number) in text. All references should then be listed at the end of article in full: Surname, name, date, title of work (place of publication: name of publisher) Surname, name, date, ‘title of article’ in surname, initial (ed./eds) title of work (place of publication: publisher). or Surname, name, date, ‘title of article’, Journal, vol., no: page numbers. Reviewers should provide full bibliographic details, including extent, ISBN and price. Copyright: Please ensure, where appropriate, that clearance has been obtained from copyright holders of material used. Illustrations may also be submitted if appropriate and if accompanied by full captions and with reproduction rights clearly indicated. It is the responsibility of the contributors to clear all permissions. All submissions should be accompanied by a brief biographical profile. The editors cannot under­ take to return material submitted and contributors are advised to keep a copy of all material sent in case of loss in transit. Editorial address African Theatre, c/o Jane Plastow, Workshop Theatre, School of English, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK • [email protected] Books for review & review material for future volumes: Sola Adeyemi, Reviews Editor, African Theatre, 107 Windmill St, Rochester, Kent ME2 3XL

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African Theatre 17 Contemporary Dance KRISTINA JOHNSTONE Series Editors Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye

Reviews Editor Sola Adeyemi Associate Editors Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka

Dept of Theatre, 1530 Naismith Dr, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045–3140, USA

Awo Mana Asiedu

School of Performing Arts, PO Box 201, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

David Kerr

Dept of Media Studies, Private Bag 00703, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana

Patrick Mangeni

Head of Dept of Music, Dance & Drama, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Christine Matzke

Dept of English, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany

Olu Obafemi

Dept of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

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James Currey is an imprint of Boydell and Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com www.jamescurrey.com © Contributors 2018 Playscript Lunatic! © Thoko Zulu. Playscript copyright information: For all enquiries for performance or reproduction please contact the copyright holder. All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84701-186-2 ( James Currey Africa-only paperback edition) ISBN 978-1-84701-187-9 ( James Currey cloth edition) This publication is printed on acid free paper

Typeset in 12.5/13.5 pt MBembo by Kate Kirkwood, Cumbria, UK

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Contents

Notes on Contributorsix Introductionxv

YVETTE HUTCHISON & CHUKWUMA OKOYE

I DANCE

1

James Mweu & Kunja Dance Theatre Contemporary dance as African cultural production

3



’FUNMI ADEWOLE

Looking Behind the Mirror Challenging representationalism in contemporary dance in postcolonial African contexts

KRISTINA JOHNSTONE

Decolonising the Stage Reflecting on Mamela Nyamza in a Canadian-hosted South African performance festival

45

KYMBERLEY FELTHAM

Unmuting South African Citizenship through  Integrated/Disability Dance

23

67

YVETTE HUTCHISON v

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vi  Contents

From Television to the Streets The rise & rise of dance-based advertising in Nigeria

’TOSIN KOOSHIMA TUME

Dance Photo Essay  ‘Untitled’: FOD Gang’s environmental activism

90

113

CHUKWUMA OKOYE

II OPEN SECTION

133

Cultural Production in a Digital Age A reflection on the adaptation of an African folktale for a young audience

135



JC NIALA

And With Them Came Devils Ebrahim Hussein, Mashetani & the poetics of doubt

153

JOSHUA WILLIAMS

Playscript Lunatic! • THOKO ZULU Book Reviews edited by SOLA ADEYEMI Charles Nwadigwe on Valérie K. Orlando, New African Cinema Sola Adeyemi on Iyunolu Osagie, African Modernity & the Philosophy of Culture in the Works of Femi Euba Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong on Masitha Hoeane, Mama Mudu’s Children: A South African Post-Freedom Tragi-Comedy Martin Banham on Hope Eghagha, The Oily Marriage

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163 219

223 226 230

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Contents  vii

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. on Ignatius Chukwumah, ed., Joke-Performance in Africa: Mode, Media & Meaning Markus Coester and Christine Matzke on J.C. Abbey, Ghana’s Puppeteer, directed & produced by Steven Feld & the Anyaa Arts Kollektif (2016)

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231 235

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Notes on Contributors

’Funmi Adewole worked freelance in the Nigerian media before relocating to England in the mid-1990s where she embarked on a career as a performer. She toured mainly with African dance theatre and physical theatre companies including Horse and Bamboo Mask and Puppetry Company, Adzido Pan-African dance ensemble, Ritual Arts, Banner theatre and The Chomondeleys, a contemporary dance com­pany. She has worked in dance development for over twenty years as a dance journalist, consultant, project manager and dramaturge. As chair of the Association of Dance of the African Diaspora (now part of One Dance UK) she spearheaded the Heritage Project which documented histories of black-led dance companies. As part of this project, she co-edited the book, Voicing Black Dance: The British Experience 1930s–1990s (2007). She holds an MA in Postcolonial Studies, a Professional Graduate Certificate in Education and has recently completed a PhD in Dance Studies. She is a presently a VC 2020 lecturer in Dance at De Montfort University, Leicester. Kymberley Feltham is a Performance Studies doctoral candidate interested in the performance practices of South African contemporary dance and theatre makers who create in the context of post-apartheid change and development. Her research focuses on these performance practices as ix

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x  Notes on Contributors

agents of social change, specifically looking at how sociopolitical issues are embodied and disseminated through contemporary dance and theatre. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University, Montreal (2005), and an MA in Communication Studies from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo (2009). Kymberley is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at York University, Toronto. Yvette Hutchison is a Reader in the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research focuses on Anglophone African theatre, history and narratives of memory, and how intercultural performance practices are challenged by ongoing postcolonial issues. She is associate editor of the South African Theatre Journal and the African Theatre series and has co-edited books with Kole Omotoso and Eckhard Breitinger. She completed the Leverhulme project Performing Memory: Theatricalising identity in contemporary South Africa in 2012, which resulted in the monograph South African Performance and Archives of Memory (Manchester University Press, 2013). She is currently work­ ing on an AHRC-funded project using mobile app tech­ nology to create a platform to connect African women crea­ tive practitioners with one another and interested parties elsewhere through AWPN.org. Her focus in this project is a consideration of the aesthetics that contemporary South African women artists are employing to address issues of gender and conflict. Kristina Johnstone is a Belgian South African performer, teacher and choreographer. She holds a Master’s degree in Dance from the University of Cape Town. Kristina worked in Kampala, Uganda for several years where she managed the Dance Transmissions Festival, taught in various dance communities and lectured at the Makerere University Department of Performing Arts and Film. Currently based

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Notes on Contributors  xi

back in Cape Town, Kristina works as a freelance artist on various projects including New Dance Lab, a platform for movement research and experimental performance which aims to contribute towards building a community of practice and research among artists working outside mainstream dance. She also works as a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies teaching contemporary dance and dance history. Kristina is a co-author of the book Post-Apartheid Dance: Many Bodies, Many Voices, Many Stories published in 2012. She is currently working on a PhD through the Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg. Her main research interests include questions of representation and representationalism and contemporary dance and choreographic practices in postcolonial African contexts. JC Niala is a writer and performance storyteller from Kenya. She is writer-in-residence for V-LED, an international project that uses verbatim theatre to stimulate local climate action. Her play Heat, written as a part of this project, is due to premier in Cape Town in April 2018. She holds an MSc in Creative Writing from Kellogg College, University of Oxford. She is the author of several children’s books, which she uses to run writing workshops for children in Kenya and the UK. Niala’s poetry has been published in international journals and in 2016, she was Poet-in-Residence, Re-Mixed Borders project run by The Poetry School, London. Niala is the writer of many plays and films including Wazi? FM that won several awards including Best Picture at Zanzibar International Film Festival and an EU Award for promoting peace and cultural understanding in 2015. Niala’s most recent play Unsettled is due for release by Methuen in January 2019 as part of a collection of Contemporary African Women Playwrights. Chukwuma Okoye is a dramatist, choreographer and cos­tume designer. He studied at the University of Ibadan,

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xii  Notes on Contributors

Nigeria, where he is currently a Reader in African Theatre and Performance at the Department of Theatre Arts. His fellowship awards include The British Academy’s Newton International Fellowship, United Kingdom (2009–11) and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, Germany (2005–07). His first published drama text, We the Beast, won the Association of Nigerian Author’s Drama Prize in 1991. He has published widely on indigenous and modern Nigerian drama and theatre, film, Pentecostal Evangelism and contemporary Nigerian dance. His current research interest is in African popular and contemporary dance, music and music videos. ’Tosin Kooshima Tume holds BA and MA degrees in English and Theatre Arts from the University of Ilorin and University of Abuja, Nigeria, respectively. She is presently rounding off her doctoral research, in which she propounds the Statochoreographic theory for NAFEST Danceturgy, at the Performing Arts department of University of Ilorin, Nigeria. Her research interests are in Dance, Choreography, African Theatre and Performance. She is a performing artist and a budding theatre scholar, who has participated in several theatrical productions, festivals, carnivals, symposia, workshops and conferences within and beyond the shores of Nigeria. Ms Tume is a member of the Association of Dance Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria (ADSPON), African Theatre Association (AfTA), Women Playwrights Inter­ national (WPI), and African Women Playwrights Network (AWPN). She has served as the Events Manager of the Society of Nigerian Theatre Artists (SONTA), and is currently the Treasurer of that body, as well as the Financial Secretary of the Ekiti State Chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). She is a recipient of the 2017 SONTATheodora Tobrise Young Female Thesis Assistance Grant Award and currently teaches in the Theatre and Media Arts Department of Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.

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Notes on Contributors  xiii

Joshua Williams is a writer, teacher, theatre director and scholar currently serving as a Preceptor of Expository Writing at Harvard University. His research concerns the political figure of the animal in East African theatre and performance. His articles, essays and reviews have appeared in ASTR Online, Theatre Journal, The Johannesburg Salon, Theatre Survey, Performance Research, Africa is a Country, HowlRound, Brittle Paper and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also translating the complete plays of the Tanzanian dramatist Ebrahim Hussein from Swahili into English for Oxford University Press. Joshua earned his AB from Princeton University, his MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His own plays have been produced and developed in theatres across the United States. Thoko Zulu is a Zimbabwean multi-award winning TV writer/director who has worked in the industry for more than 15 years, alongside her work in communities and doing mentoring. She is a self-inspired artist and strategic thinker who has championed community theatre for policy advocacy with Amakhosi Theatre and Nhimbe Trust in Bulawayo. Her work has been used for advocacy and behaviour change campaigns in Zimbabwe; for example, I Love You Violently was used in a successful country-wide campaign strategy by Nhimbe Trust to address issues of domestic violence. She was co-concept developer and head writer for the Zimbabwean TV soap Amakorokoza, and the dramas Izolo Yizolo and Isithembu, which featured the seasoned Zimbabwean but South-African-based actor, Ernest Ndlovu. She adapted/directed Norwegian Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, which was a nominee for best theatre production at Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Awards. She is connected internationally as a member of the African Women Playwrights Network and as a board member at the International Centre for Women Playwrights.

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Introduction

YVETTE HUTCHISON & CHUKWUMA OKOYE

This is an exciting moment for African Theatre as we move towards a new approach which has both themed and open sections of papers. For the themed section on Contemporary Dance, we have sought to trace the diversity of contemporary African dance and physical theatre practices across the continent, in the diaspora, and as inspiration for new, contemporary dance forms more widely. As a continent, Africa has an incredibly vibrant history of dance as well as contemporary practice. However, there is tension between what is considered ‘tradi­ tional’ dance, which is seen as being rooted in African societies and often linked to spiritual or ceremonial practices and occasions, and more contemporary forms of dance that have been influenced by Africa’s contact with the global North, via colonialism and media. This tension has spawned a plethora of creative responses stretching from the purist to a diversity of hybridised categories; from the most traditional to the most Euro-American. Thus, there are individuals and companies whose forte is either ‘traditional’ or ‘contemporary’, or, more commonly, anything in between. In addition, forms that have developed in the global North, like break dancing and hip hop, are returning to Africa and defining youth cul­ ture in new ways. For example, break dancers from across Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo performed at the Batalo East Dance Fest in Uganda in 2014. xv

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xvi  Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye

However, it is also clear that dancers and choreographers are wrestling in unique ways with issues of representation – of race, class, gender, ability in and through the body in dance – and socio-cultural realities. Interestingly, what comes across in their engagement with these issues is not a programmatic de-colonial scheme, wielding an uncritical approach to either traditional and contemporary forms, but a healthy, more personal and pragmatic posture. This is evidenced by the way choreographers and dancers critically but sinuously respond to the cultures of the global North and that of ‘traditional’ Africa. Thus, it is evident that today dance and dance-based practices flourish creatively and critically in Africa and its Diasporas. However, as Judith Lynne Hanna noted in her article ‘The Status of African Dance Studies’, ‘African dance has rarely been the focus of research’ (1996: 303), for a number of reasons: first, because ‘Europeans generally objected to African dance, which appeared to be expressive and uninhibited, on secular moral grounds’ (303); second, that ‘it has only recently been conceived as an element of culture, and thus a legitimate concern’; third, ‘the technical limitations of recording equipment’ (304); and fourth, the ability to analyse it conceptually, given that it is a habituated, highly encoded cultural form. Thus, to date, books and articles have tended to write about African dance in primarily ethnographic terms, with a few exceptions. In Ghana, ‘Azonto’ dance has been quite extensively discussed, for example by US researcher Jesse Weaver who has considered dance, music and theatre in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and ’Funmi Adewole, who has considered the history of the Ghana Dance Ensemble and the waves of choreographers (Opoku, Asare, Yartey) that took that group from doing ‘traditional dances’ with a nation-building / cultural-ambassador agenda to working in a contemporary dance mode. There is a fair amount being written on dance in South Africa, but that country has a very different history of dance than that of the rest of the continent, owing to its isolation during apartheid, and how

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Introduction  xvii

both dance and theatre underwent syncretic processes and were used to challenge dominant hegemonies. However, this isolation is changing, as we can see from the programming at the South African National Arts Festival, Johannesburg’s Dance Umbrella and the Zomba festival in Durban, which host companies from across the continent that are engaged with innovative dance. Thus, we called for articles to consider the aesthetics of dance as a form, the social impact of dance for communities in and out of Africa, particularly in an increasingly global context, and what methodological issues this may raise for researchers writing in this area. We asked researchers to consider the relationship between physical theatre, dance and theatre, dance and the Diaspora, mediated and applied dance, African interculturalism and pan-African dance, and how festivals have affected the way in which contemporary dance is developing in Africa, both as a form and in terms of its perceived functions. The responses have been very exciting. However, what has been most interesting is how dance itself is wrestling with postcolonial issues of representation, asking questions about identity in the postcolonies; how forms, aesthetics, rhythms are implicated in decolonising Africa and challenging assumptions about dance and Africa by the global North. We thus choose to begin the debates with ’Funmi Adewole’s paper, which traces two issues arising from the term ‘contemporary dance’ in the African context. First, she proposes the lens of cultural production as an appropriate methodology for considering how forms have developed and evolved through various internal and external influences on various African artists, beginning with the establishment of a French-sponsored dance biennale, inter-Africa dance competition in 1995, called the Choreographic Encounters of Africa and the Indian Ocean, which has since been renamed Danse L’Afrique Danse! Second, she traces the development of Kenyan dancer-choreographer, James Mweu and his Kunja Dance Theatre to illustrate her argument that rather

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xviii  Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye

than perceive contemporary dance as a cultural import, African practitioners and audiences have, through a process of indigenization, transformed it into an important mode of African cultural production. Kristina Johnstone picks up issues of navigating colonialism and aesthetics, particularly in terms of representation and representationalism. By drawing on Karen Barad’s image of two-facing mirrors, she explores how choreographic processes can go beyond re-crafting colonially scripted representations of dancing bodies that simply play back colonial images in oppositional terms by analysing performances by two South African choreographerdancers, Mamela Nyamza and Tossie van Tonder. Kymberley Feltham extends the questions regarding colonial legacies by analysing how the international stages may be decolonised using specific dance aesthetics. Through a comparative analysis of Mamela Nyamza’s choreographic strategies in The Meal (2012), and Hatched (2009), Feltham analyses how South African contemporary dance may be read as resistance by an international audience at a Canadian-hosted South African Performance Festival, particularly as they are inflected through Canadian issues regarding indigeneity and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Yvette Hutchison traces the development of integrated/ disabled dance in South Africa and suggests how this form of contemporary dance is exposing contradictions in how citizenship has been conceptualised and socially constructed in contemporary South Africa and is unlocking new ways of thinking about cultural production in a postcolony. It analyses how Trapped and Ashed by Unmute Dance Company offers somatic engagements with uncomfortable subjects related both to disability and everyday citizenship in South Africa; thereby demonstrating how disabled persons can be actively involved in constituting themselves as citizens by engaging with discourse, rather than simply being ‘acted upon’ by it. ’Tosin Kooshima Tume looks at the relationship between media and dance as she considers the ‘rise and rise of dance-

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Introduction  xix

based advertising in Nigeria’, arguing communication as a salient function of dance. Borrowing insight from interpretive and affective communication theories, Tume analyses the different uses of dance in outdoor promotional or street adverts and much shorter television commercials. However, both forms engage with the ability of dance to communicate on a non-verbal, sentimental level, based on the central role dance holds for Nigerian cultures. In his photo essay, Chukwuma Okoye examines the manner in which five boys from Footprints of David Art Academy – a performing arts organization devoted to community development and training of young artistes based in Bariga, a densely populated suburb in Lagos, Nigeria – effectively employ contemporary dance in a challenging and largely unprecedented fashion to call attention to developmental neglect of their neighbourhood. What is perhaps most celebra­tory about FOD Gang, as the boys named themselves, is that with their revolutionary performance style, which involved a dangerous, and virtually sacrificial immersion of their bodies in the filthy and muddy potholes on prominent but neglected roads in their neighbourhood, they have successfully ‘forced’ the government to pay attention to their degraded environment. This essay not only explores important socio-political issues but highlights the particular complexities of the transience of performance that is exacerbated in dance or physical theatre as embodied forms, without any written text. By including images alongside the writing, this essay serves to draw attention both to contemporary debates in dance scholarship (Giurchescu and Torp 1991), particularly that of Bakka and Karoblis (2010) who question whether ‘writing dance’ is an appropriate mode of engagement, and who call for more innovative ways of juxtaposing choreo­ logy (descriptive writing) with analysis. This essay aims to highlight the gaps, the approximations we make in theatre, performance and especially dance scholarship as Peggy Phelan asserts: ‘performance’s only life is in the present … [It] cannot

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be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance’ (1993:146). Following Scott McCloud and David Low’s approaches to analysing comics as synchronous texts that deal in visuality and spatiality along­side textuality, we would argue that dance works simi­larly, and we experiment with this idea in the dance photo essay. Low explains that, because comics are ‘a medium of conjunction’ between a number of elements, para­ meters and procedures, ‘[e]ach panel is dependent upon the reader linking it and its semiotic space – through her or his interpretive imagination – to the panels around it’ (Low 2012: 372). This process involves the reader actively making meaning in the ‘gutters’, gaps or blank spaces between individual panels. Scott McCloud argues that we do this by means of closure, a process whereby we engage in ‘observing the parts but perceiving the whole’ (1993: 63). This process involves collaboration between the artist and reader/audience member who uses his or her imagination to take two separate images and transform them into a single idea (66), and thereby becomes not only a collaborator, but also a silent accomplice, ‘an equal partner in crime’ (68), who ‘join[s] in a silent dance of the seen and unseen. The visible and invisible’ (92; original emphasis) engagement with dance and its related discourses. Thus we move beyond anthropological or ethnographic classification of dance styles and structures, in a pseudoscientific model. Instead, we are asked to place ourselves rela­tionally as we read dance in Africa as a cultural form that is intrinsically engaged in the re-negotiation of local, regional and national identities in multi-cultural nations that are aware of their place in an increasingly globalised world. However, this process cannot be uncritical, there must be a real sense of engagement with issues of constructionism of race, gender and ability, and an awareness of how these work intersectionally, with many hegemonies at play in these negotiations.

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Introduction  xxi

The Open Section is equally exciting, and again suggests the wide approach to African theatre. JC Niala’s paper explores ‘cultural production in a digital age’, as she reflects criti­cally on issues of adapting African folktales for young audiences that are digitally literate. She draws on her own experiences of adapting stories in Kenya and the UK for this analysis. Joshua Williams’ paper, ‘And With Them Came Devils’ explores Ebrahim Hussein’s Mashetani in the context of his contemporaries in theatre practice in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, in relation to his ‘poetics of doubt’. It explores how Hussein’s oeuvre is endlessly bedevilled, his work increasingly preoccupied with tragedy, doubt and ambivalence. This year’s playscript, Lunatic! is by Thoko Zulu, a Zim­ babwean playwright. The play has emerged through the African Women Playwrights Network, which has been set up to increase the visibility and connectivity of women working creatively on the continent, and to facilitate the access of artists, researchers, programmers, and other interested parties to one another nationally and internationally. We are seeing some amazing work being shared through the network, as well as how the network is creating support for women to engage with potentially controversial, even dangerous, sociopolitical issues in their plays. This play is an example of such work as it engages with the dangerous behaviour an unjust social order engenders, which ultimately becomes absurd, even lunatic. It is inspiring to see more women like Thoko Zulu engage in these public fora. However, publication is always challenging as noted by the paucity of collections and single editions of plays by women, with Kathy Perkins’ (ed.) African Women Playwrights (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c. 2009) one of the few dedicated collections published to date. We thus look forward to the publication of Contemporary Plays by African Women (Methuen), due out in January 2019. Throughout this collection we see how African perform­ ance forms – be they dance, theatre or oral poetry – continue

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xxii  Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye

to ask difficult questions, rather than provide easy solutions. They tell us who we are now and reflect on the questions we are asking and the issues that complicate possible answers. We hope you enjoy reading these papers as much as we have enjoyed writing and editing them. REFERENCES Bakka, E. and G. Karoblis (2010), ‘Writing “A Dance”: Epistemology for Dance Research’. In Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 42, Wim van Zanten (ed.). Inter­ national Councils for Traditional Music: 167–92, www.academia.edu/ 16077335/Writing_a_Dance_Epistemology_for_Dance_Research (accessed 1 May 2018). Giurchescu, A. and L. Torp (1991), ‘Theory and Methods in Dance Research: A Euro­pean Approach to the Holistic Study of Dance’. Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 23. International Council for Traditional Music: 1–10, www.jstor. org/stable/768392 (accessed 1 May 2018). Hanna, Judith Lynne (1996), ‘The Status of African Dance Studies’. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 36, no. 3: 303–7. Low, David E. (2012), ‘“Spaces Invested with Content”: Crossing the “Gaps” in Comics with Readers in Schools’. Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 43, no. 4: 368–85 McCloud, Scott (1993), Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial – Harper­Collins Publishers. Phelan, P. (1993), Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge.

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I Dance

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James Mweu & Kunja Dance Theatre

Contemporary Dance as African Cultural Production ’FUNMI ADEWOLE

This paper argues for contemporary dance in Africa to be considered a form of African cultural production. It provides a brief discussion of the historical perspectives and research interests in cultural production as a field of inquiry and seeks to demonstrate how these provide a framework of the emerging critical discourse on contemporary dance in Africa. It then exemplifies how these ideas are manifested in practice through a consideration of James Mweu, the founder of Kunja Dance Theatre in Kenya. The discourse surrounding contemporary dance in Africa is complex. Writings on the practice suggest it could be considered both a neocolonial imposition and a contributor to processes of decolonisation. The growth of contemporary dance in Africa was stimulated by the establishment of an inter-Africa dance competition in 1995 by a Frenchsponsored dance biennale, which at the time was called the Choreographic Encounters of Africa and the Indian Ocean,1 and has since been renamed Danse l’Afrique danse! A major controversy about contemporary dance was caused by the departure from the organisation soon after its first event of one of its key instigators, the Ivorian choreographer Alphonse Tierou, in protest against the imposition of French artistic criteria by competition judges. His philosophical tenets for contemporary dance in Africa, which had guided the artistic activities leading up to the launch of the competition, were 3

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4  ’Funmi Adewole

sidelined by the organisers (Mensah 2005: 2), who set rules that insisted that entrants present ‘new forms’ of dance which should not be associated with ideas of African tradition, but which still retain motifs or signifiers which a western audience would perceive as being African. Both African choreo­ g­ raphers and scholars feared the competition was creating ‘an assistance culture’, and was a form of ‘cultural neo­colonialism’ (Mensah 2005: 2–3). While these justifiable concerns persist, there is an emerging academic discourse which promotes the ownership of contemporary dance by African choreographers and dance artists’ (Adewole 2004, Sorgel 2011, Okoye 2014, Sieveking 2014, Adair 2014, NiiYartey 2016). Observing developments in contemporary dance in Nigeria, Chukwuma Okoye for example, suggests that con­ tem­porary dance is undergoing a ‘process of indigenisation’ (2014: 55). Following Jane Desmond’s social constructionist perspective, he argues that when a foreign dance form is absorbed into a society on the terms of the people in that society, the resulting practices cannot be considered a mere copy of the form that was appropriated (55). In other words, he advocates that contemporary dance in Africa should be defined by those who have adopted the practices and have engaged with them. Similarly, Nadine Sieveking argues against the view that contemporary dance in Burkina Faso, is a ‘foreign import’. On the basis of her field work at Dialogues de Corps festivals in 2010 and 2012, and with the all-female dance training programmes Engagement Feminin in 2011 and 2012, she describes contemporary dance in Burkina Faso as a ‘cosmopolitan cultural practice that has emerged at the inter­ face between local and global art worlds and the sphere of develop­ment politics’ in that country (2014: 56), which offers a particular socio-cultural context for contemporary dance, peculiar to Burkina Faso. Practitioners in Africa do not only create dance as an artistic product but also create social processes to sustain their use of it, and they devise an appropriate language to com­municate

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about it between themselves and to others as part of their working lives (Burr 2003: 2–4). In this paper therefore, I argue for approaching contemporary dance in Africa as a form of African cultural production. My aim is to create more space for contemporary dance in African research agendas, and so begin by discussing issues involved in disciplinary positioning, rather than attempt an in-depth argument regarding contemporary dance as African cultural production. I engage James Mweu, a Kenyan choreographer that I interviewed several times since meeting him in Sweden in 2013,2 as an interesting example of an African choreographer who has developed his choreographic practice in Kenya against a range of influences. Here I use the interview as ‘a primary, perhaps obligatory resource on the visual and performing arts’ (Richard Cándida Smith quoted in Sandino and Partington, 2013: 1), which allows us to gain insights into ideas that inform artists’ works, the circumstances that shape their practices and how their practices in turn shape the worlds they inhabit.

African cultural production: A brief overview The study of cultural production in contemporary Africa en­ com­ passes music, live performance, film, photography and cartoons produced mainly in urban centres (Mekgwe and Olukoshi 2012: xiii–xiv). An umbrella term for these activities is ‘cultural industries’. David Hesmondhalgh describes the cultural industries as organisations, which could be commercial, state-owned or subsidised, and whose main aim is to generate ‘social meaning’ and to ‘communicate to an audience, to create texts’ (2013: 16). Culture in this context, he observes, is used in a narrower sense that in anthropology where it refers to the ‘way of life’ of a people. Here culture refers to the mode of signification used to com­municate ideas, in other words –the cultural or artistic practices in question (2013: 16). Concepts related to the ‘cultural industries’ include the ‘creative industries’ and

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‘creative economy’. The term ‘cultural industries’ however is preferred by those invested in the ‘cultural basis of symbolic texts’ (Hesmondhalgh 2013, quoted in De Beukelaer 2014: 20). Scholars of African cultural production, a sub-discipline of African cultural studies, investigate the cultural industries as they exist and are produced and disseminated in Africa and internationally. The field is concerned with the rapid rise in the ‘commodification’ of culture in Africa from the 1970s due to a decline in government support of cultural activities following a continent-wide economic crisis. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by the agitation for political and economic reforms by citizens in the aftermath of structural adjustment programmes, implemented by African leaders in attempts to save the situation. The political and economic troubles of these times spurned young people who had previously sought government employment to organise themselves into cultural businesses and draw on new technologies such as the Internet to produce livelihoods (Mekgwe and Olukoshi 2012: xiv). Arguably the most well-known example of cultural industries in Africa is ‘Nollywood’ the ‘straight to video cassette’ movie industry, which started in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1990s. Video technology enabled businessmen and arts practitioners to create a vibrant cultural business after the economic downturn of the 1980s made the production of live theatre difficult (Onookome 2007: 2). There is a sense of urgency in this field of study. Pinkie Megkwe and Adebayo Olukoshi, for instance, warn that in this age of globalisation the continent is in danger of being left with a notion of culture that is ‘devoid of history, a sense of location and place, and of serious intellectual investment’ (Megkwe and Olukoshi 2012: xiii–xiv). The field departs from the idea that the study of African culture should focus on producing knowledge about the lifestyles or worldview of Africans before colonialism. Frieda Ekotto and Kenneth W. Harrow stipulate that definitions of culture in this context should encompass the ‘interplay’ between ‘local’ and ‘global’ influences in the production of culture (2015: 9). The

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complexities of this interplay are evidenced by transnational interactions in the cultural industries that are encouraged by international organisations such as UNESCO, who view the circulation of cultural products between countries as a route to human and economic development, and which have con­ tri­buted to the generation of a ‘global creative economy dis­ course’ through the dissemination of policy documents and reports (De Beukelaer 2012: 21). However, this discourse is not without its problems. As Christiaan De Beukelaer’s report about the music industries in Ghana and Burkina Faso points out, many documents in circulation lack ‘critical context’. The route by which cultural activity and talent is turned into a creative business differs from country to country; but international agencies like the British Council, tend to introduce strategies for practitioners in non-western countries from European perspectives (De Beukelaer 2012: 21). Consequently, some African cultural practitioners are ambivalent about the term ‘cultural industries’. African cul­ tural production is a paradigm that generates critical con­ texts for cultural activity that is sustained by business or through subsidy, and which acknowledges local urban life­ styles. African cultural production provides a historical and socio-cultural perspective through which we can investi­ gate contemporary dance as a practice in Africa,3 while encourag­ing interdisciplinary modes of research that draw on diverse methodologies. However my interest is in African cultural production because its historical and socio-cultural perspective provides a framework to consider and develop theoretical and practical knowledge about cultural industries like contemporary dance that will support it as a professional, artistic and social practice in Africa.

Contemporary dance as African cultural production When, Choreographic Encounters (Danse l’Afrique danse!) was established in 1995, it provided opportunities for dancers

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and performers already in the business of producing dance for stage, or who were involved in theatre to apply their skills to a genre called ‘contemporary dance’ that had an international audience. As such, it was part of the entrepreneurial turn that was taking place in the arts at the time. Of the ten choreographers who featured in the second edition of the competition, a number were actors and seven were dancers and choreographers who had been working in what were described as traditional dance companies or in modern dance companies (those from South Africa), going back to the 1980s – several years before the competition was established (Genevier 1998: 30–50). Within ten years of the founding of the inter-African competition, some of the early winners seized opportunities to create and run projects in Africa, producing training programmes, performance platforms and festivals often in their home countries, using funds from local and international sources (Mensah 2005: 6). Though the competition arguably is still the most important event for choreographers in Africa who wish to develop a career in contemporary dance, there are other areas that now are being researched in the field. These include the challenges of sustaining African contemporary dance as artistic practice transnationally (Adewole 2004), how practitioners work in local settings and the kind of training that takes place in the field (Neveu Kringelbach 2013, Adair 2014), the relationship of contemporary dance in Africa to cultural movements that took place during the independence era (Neveu Kringelbach 2013, Nii-Yartey 2016), the politics and power differentials in the contemporary dance field (Neveu Kringelbach 2013, Sieveking 2013, Despres 2016), and the aesthetics of contemporary dance (Okoye 2014, Sorgel 2011). This emerging critical discourse on contemporary dance demon­strates that, if it is researched from the perspective of its practice in Africa, the knowledge generated can contribute to processes of decolonialisation, which Chielozona Eze argues should come from an engagement with reality ‘directly and critically’ in our activities, as opposed to taking the stance

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that social progress or freedom from western dominance is achieved simply through the display of African symbolism or actions taken solely to differentiate Africa from the west (Eze 2015: 414). Decolonialisation, in Eze’s use of the term, is about producing discourses, which disrupt colonial narratives and provide the postcolonial subject with the discursive tools to communicate their own vision, or to negotiate a globalised world from an informed position. It is not about glossing over complexities, paradoxes and situations where African practitioners are at a disadvantage or participate in producing stereotypes of Africans or Africa. It is by engaging with why and how choreographers navigate the difficult, uneven politics of this field that researchers will be able to generate a discourse that properly contextualises the aesthetics of the work that they produce. Both Chukwuma Okoye (2014) and Sabine Sorgel (2011) have proposed that contemporary dance in Africa can contri­bute to processes of decolonisation. In discussing the Nigerian choreographer Adedayo Liadi, Okoye looks at how Liadi negotiated his return from Europe to Nigeria, as he found that he could not simply present choreography that he had performed in Europe in Nigeria where his work was considered alien and not received favourably by audiences. Liadi’s search for ‘a new body language’ emerged from his delving into a study of traditional Nigerian dance forms which resulted in him discovering a choreographic language which audiences appreciated (Okoye 2014: 59), as evidenced by his Ori (2004) winning the inter-African dance competition. In this dance Liadi melds Yoruba symbolism with everyday pedestrian gestures and movements that are juxtaposed to aspects of indigenous dances to create a cos­­ mop­ olitan multi-ethnic landscape (Okoye 2014: 52). Okoye describes the aesthetics of Liadi’s choreography as constituting a ‘decolonising gesture’ as he succeeded in redefin­ing his practice outside the dominant western dis­ courses on contemporary dance, while creating a new dance form in Nigeria.

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Sabine Sorgel finds a similar ‘decolonising gesture’ in Faustin Linyekula’s production, Dinozord: The Dialogue Series 111 (2006), which she describes as a performance that fulfils Alphonse Tierou’s quest for an African contemporary dance that uses western choreographic practices to extrapolate the ‘philosophical complexities’ of African dance traditions within a transnational framework (Sorgel 2011: 3). Dinozord is a multi-media installation, which Linyekula announces as a memorial to his friend Kabako. The audience are participants in this performance, which includes themes from Mozart’s requiem that one would hear in a Catholic mass, alongside excerpts from speeches by Mobutu Sese Seko, the military dictator and President of then-Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of the Congo – from 1965 to 1997 (Sorgel 2011: 5–7). The five performers wear printed cotton cloths tied about their waists and face paint referencing African rituals while performing in a style of ‘abstract contemporary dance vocabulary’ (6). The performance does not provide the audience with the kind of imagery that would permit it to think of Africa as remote or distant, but it suggests an Africa in dialogue with many cultural forms and frames. The fact that the histories of Africa and Europe are intertwined is foregrounded by the aesthetics of the piece. It is only by researching contemporary dance from the point of view of African dance artists and how they engage with the local and international organisations and produce choreography that a critical discourse shedding light on African modernity can be generated. I turn now to analyse the work of James Mweu from this critical perspective.

James Mweu and Kunja Dance Theatre, Kenya In 2013, Moa Matilda Stahlin contacted me from Dansbyrån, an organisation in Gothenburg, Sweden, inviting me to come for a week to work as dramaturg for a Kenyan choreo­g­rapher, James Mweu, an invited artist-in-residence

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who had been with the organisation for some weeks. He was provided studio space to explore choreographic ideas without the pressure of staging a production, and to watch performances and network with artists in the area who were keen to meet an international guest. The theme that Dansbyrån was exploring through its events that year was ‘The Political Body’.4 When I meet James Mweu he told me that while some audience members in Kenya considered contemporary dance to be ‘the white man’s dance’, other audiences had given contemporary dance the name ‘conte’. He ascribed this shortening of the term ‘contemporary’ in relation to dance as a sign of ownership and affection by the Kenyan audiences. James Mweu was very aware of the debates around contemporary dance. He insisted that his engagement with Kenyan society through his practice is what made it part of that society. As a teenager, James Mweu spent his school holidays on the coast of Kenya, some eight hours from the capital Nairobi. He and some other youngsters (aged between 15 and 28) worked with DJ Prechard ‘Poxi’ Pouka and DJ Long Okello who ran a business called Dehmention Sound, which he later describes as a youth group, a collective or a creative incubator. The DJs would rent a space for a club night, and the boys would make and put up posters around the town and make cassettes of music to be sold at the venue. Dehmention Sound promoted Reggae music, which Mweu says was popular with young people and low-income groups. At night they slept where the equipment was stored and earned enough money to clothe and feed themselves. During this time, he took part in his first dance performances – performing reggae dance routines at the events, which he made up with some of the other young men in the collective. James Mweu also knew some other young people who made up routines with friends and looked for opportunities to perform in hotels or other venues frequented by tourists, which allowed them to earn some income. Kenya is known for its tourist industry, which was a driving force and context in which dance in

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Kenya was first promoted as a profession. Bomas of Kenya, a heritage site on the edge of the Nairobi National Park, was established in 1971 under the auspices of the Kenya Tourist Development Corporation to both ‘preserve and develop’ Kenyan culture through the performance of dances associated with the different ethnic groups in Kenya at their centre. The main audiences of these performances were schools and tourists, both Kenyan and foreign (Coombes et al. 2013: 187–9). When James Mweu finished High School, he stopped going to the coast and joined the Kuona Trust’s Museum arts studios where he trained as a visual artist. A British cultural entrepreneur, Robert Burnet, started the Kuona trust in 1995 after working for a commercial gallery in Nairobi where he felt that artists were forced to create works in the same style, as their main market was the tourist industry. Kuona Trust became a space for more experimental work. The Trust is part of a network of workshops in Kenya, which provides a system that supports the training of artists through peer learning, and some professional support as artists share materials and help each other organise exhibitions (Gerschultz 2013: 207). Once you have registered as a member of the studio, Mweu explains, you receive training through developing relationships: ‘If you are polite’, he says, ‘the older artists will allow you to assist them. You also learn from your peers.’ Over the course of five years, Mweu trained as sculptor using metal and stone. He made and exhibited work and collaborated with other artists on commissions. He continued to dedicate time to dancing while working as a visual artist. He trained in traditional dance forms from 2001 to 2004 with Isaac Karanja who ran a group called African Arts, and later he trained with Dina Abok, who ran dance projects for young people in the capital. He also attended a weekly Jazz dance class taught by the wife of the First Secretary of the Netherlands Embassy at that time. Mweu’s first contact with contemporary dance came through meeting Opiyo Okach and Faustin Linyekula5, who,

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together with German-Ethiopian dancer Affrah Tenam­ bergen, were winners of the inter-African dance competition in 1998. They had set up a training programme in Kenya in collaboration with a French dance centre called Ballet Atlantique – Régine Chopinot. He joined the training programme, which lasted from 2000 to 2003. Towards the end of the programme, Okach began to choreograph a piece of work with a group of about ten dancers, which included Mweu. The outcome was the production Shift … Centre, which they first performed in 2003, and later toured to several countries around the world between 2003 and 20096 (Adair 2014: 203). This piece offers a performative challenge to the teleology of western modernity as Okach created the performance to be seen in a visual arts gallery or theatre with few or no seats for the audience. The dancers perform around the space, not in a group but as individuals, although at times their paths cross and they interact. The audience also moves amongst the dancers and must decide which dancer or dancers to watch at any given time. It is unlikely therefore that any audience member would have the same perspective of the piece as another audience member (Adair 2014: 210). Thus, the piece demonstrates the multiplicity of perspectives and complexities of African societies – where many people can speak several languages, and live, or have relatives that live, between continents – and ‘decentres’ the western view of modernity (208). Okach’s training programme and subsequent tour made a profound impact on a number of East African choreographers who are still active today.7 His work resists the idea that African people should have a singular mode of self-expression, considering the complexity of the lives that people on the continent live. It is a view that James Mweu and the other dancers that took part in the programme share (Adair 2014: 211). In 2005, James Mweu travelled to Senegal to take part in a contemporary dance-training programme at L’Ecole des Sables, the school of Germaine Acogny, which he had heard about from his ‘big brothers’ in dance, Opiyo Okach and

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Faustin Linyekula. Germaine Acogny is commonly known as the mother of modern African and contemporary African dance. During his time at this school Mweu extended his movement vocabulary and developed his understanding of how to relate to communities through dance. Acogny took all the students to visit the chief of the village and invited him and children from the village to the school to watch performances, and she also invited members of the village to dance at the school. This programme gave Mweu the oppor­ tunity to develop a network of friends and colleagues both locally and across Africa. In between legs of the tour of Shift … Centre Series, Mweu began to work with a group of the same colleagues who were loosely called Jamo & Co.8 Though he was still training with the African Arts ensemble, he says the aesthetics of his work shifted towards contemporary dance. He was also making installa­ tions and presenting visual arts work in galleries, which further influenced his work. Kunja Dance Theatre was finally established in 2006 when Mweu and his colleagues registered their association as a community-based organisation (CBO) with the aim of opera­ting as a business. Mweu was offered office space at the newly established GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi, a multidisciplinary Arts centre established in 2003, which brokers opportunities for artists both in dance and the visual arts. He also took a short course on cultural entrepreneurship with the British Council. Contemporary arts in Kenya from the late 1990s were driven by a desire of Kenyans working in the creative and cultural industries to reinvigorate civil society and promote self-expression after a repressive political regime. The GoDown Centre was one of the products of this drive. The founding group of the Centre comprised of individual artists and arts organisations that came together in 2001 to find a way of supporting the development of the Arts in East Africa and were able acquire funding from the Ford Foundation for a building (Mboya 2007: 169–70). Joy Mboya, the director of the centre, wrote an article for the

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journal Wajibu, entitled ‘Shall We Watch Dance?’ to promote contemporary dance to audiences in Nairobi. In this article, she advises that audiences relate contemporary dance to the visual arts, cinema and theatre as opposed to viewing it as a straightforward evolution from traditional dance forms (Mboya 2006: 10–12). In keeping with its agenda, the centre supported a meeting for contemporary dance companies in East Africa in 2006, and Kunja Dance Theatrewas the host for the event.9 Fourteen dance companies from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya attended a three-day meeting to discuss how to make contemporary dance a viable and relevant profession through discussion groups that covered topics like perceptions of contemporary dance as a form of cultural betrayal and the over-reliance on foreign donors. At this event, Mweu was vocal about the need to incorporate local aesthetics and explore themes that are relevant to local audiences. He is quoted in the event’s report as arguing for local audiences for contemporary dance: ‘They like it and keep asking for more, they understand it and even call it “conte”’ (Bantu 2006: 44). Considering James Mweu’s early experiences as part of the music organisation Dehmention Sounds and his interest in creating a form that appealed to local tastes, it is not surprising that Kunja Dance Theatre recruited young enthusiastic people, from very poor families. They trained in dance and acrobatics within the group and learned the company’s repertoire. Expanding the company in this manner enabled Mweu to present his pieces at different venues, art centres and festivals. The youngsters took up roles in administration and marketing. With time, Mweu began to work with them collaboratively in making their own choreographies. Contemporary dance in Nairobi was usually programmed at art galleries or European cultural centres but as Mweu wanted to cultivate a local audience for his work, rather than an audience of expatriates or wellto-do Kenyans, he staged some of his productions at social halls, which are local community centres that anyone can

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hire as venues for sporting activities, performances or parties. Some of these spaces had been established around the 1940s by the colonial government to provide leisure activities for Kenyan workers and control their free time. Later, they became meeting places for Kenyans agitating for their rights (Frederisken, 1994: 14). Performance of contemporary dance in these resonant spaces helped contemporary dance shed some of the elitisms associated with it and enabled Kunja Dance Theater to develop a new audience. Some members of Mweu’s company left to form their own outfits: a trio that formed WapiWapi went on to win major Television dance competitions. Others created an acrobatics group and gained employment in the tourist industries in France and Spain, while others worked as contemporary dance artists at home and abroad. This activity suggests how successful the training and skills development of Mweu’s company had been.

James Mweu’s choreographic practice James Mweu describes his choreography as being driven by his interest in stories. His pieces do not employ mime or use a narrator, but they do depict everyday realities and recognisable characters. Mweu generally choreographs using collaborative methods, which make room for individual dancers to propose short compositions that are included in the final choreography. At the beginning of the rehearsal process he ‘collects’ what his dancers have as a group – the dances they know, the music they love and skills they have. ‘Acrobatics are big in Kenya’, he says, so he works with the acrobatic skills of his dancers. The outcome of this process could be called bricolage because the choreography juxtaposes elements that would normally not be seen together. One of the most successful pieces he has made using this method is Msitu wa Kabido (2007), which roughly translates from Swahili as ‘Kabido’s bush’10 or ‘The life and times of Kabido’. It is about the trials and triumphs of this

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character. He made the first sketches of the piece in 2005 and presented a finished version to Kenyan audiences in 2007. It is created for eight to ten dancers and has a running time of about 20 minutes. The setting of the piece comprises video projections for which he collaborated with visual artists. The movement vocabulary is eclectic, drawing on social dances, acrobatics and release-based improvisations to a sound track that includes classical music and percussion. James Mweu also creates choreograph through personal research. The duet Urbanite,11 which he entered into the seventh edition of Choreographic Encounters of Africa and the Indian Ocean (Danse l’Afrique danse!) was created through this process. The primary audience for this piece is different to Msitu wa Kabido (2007) and this is reflected in the aesthetics of the piece. The focus of his research was the trend of ‘rural-urban migration’. For Mweu the bus terminus in Nairobi is symbolic of this trend. It is a burst of energy, he says, with people arriving from all over the country. He took photos of the bus stops; spoke to people from rural areas about their experiences of arriving in the city, including the processes they went through as they tried to fit in and find their places in their new environments. The piece is about 14 minutes long, the stipulated length for competition entries, and is performed by James Mweu and Kepha Oiro. The version I consider is based on a video recording of the performance of the choreography at Nairobi’s Alliance Française by Kunja Dance Theatre before the competition in Tunisia. The scenario focuses on two young men in difficult circumstances who are suspicious of each other but know that they require each other’s support. There are no overt facial expressions, gestures, mime or use of a narrator. Rather, their story or journey is hinted at through the quality and pace of the dancers’ movement, whether fast, slow or staccato. The choreography has elements of abstraction and minimalism, which are features of the French avant-garde aesthetics favoured by the competition organisers (Despres 2016: 2).

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The choreography opens with James Mweu and Kepha Oiro on the floor, torsos down, leaning on their forearms. Their costume is street wear – simple shirts and trousers. They crawl forward, dragging themselves by their forearms. The lighting is low. It could be dawn or dusk. Mweu gets up suddenly, leaving Oiro on the floor. He walks to a corner and watches Oiro for a short while, then begins to dance. His improvisation is punctuated with furtive glances at his dance partner, standing still in a pedestrian non-stylised manner and wiping his brow. The movement suggests that he is searching mentally for a solution to a problem, and this is an arduous task. His improvisations create a fluid run of movements through the spine and the limbs. He creates rhythms by stamping his feet; forward thrusting motions of the head, and arms that flow outwards and then pierce the space as straight lines. At times he stoops low and then swoops up into a standing position leading with his chest. In the improvisation I could see elements of traditional dance forms. The rhythm of the dance was produced through his introducing pauses and moments of stillness into the choreography. Oiro rises from the floor and dances in a similar fluid fashion. However, he inserts into his sequences tentative taps of his feet on the floor as if trying to ascertain that the environment is safe. He stops from time to time, on one foot he then loses balance, and catches himself like a cat on all fours. Mweu joins him on the floor again. They assume a crouched position, leap up and fall flat. They repeat this over and over again. Oiro finally rolls over flat on his back and Mweu stands, looks at him and kicks his arm softly. There is a casual cruelty to the gesture. In another scene, Oiro jumps onto Mweu and goes limp. Mweu swings him like a rag doll and his legs trace an arc in the air. Though Oiro jumps on Mweu for support, it is he who ends up carrying Mweu on his back. Mweu sits there with satisfaction. The audience clap at this understated acrobatic sequence. Slowly Oiro melts into the floor and they return to rolling over

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again and again. They stand up, next to each other, but with too much distance between them to describe them as standing side by side. They dance in unison briefly and come to stillness. Here the piece ends. The audience clap. The two dancers shake hands, bow and leave the stage. The piece was warmly received in Nairobi, where the local audience reacted mainly to the parts of the piece requiring acrobatic skill. Although it was not one of the three winning pieces in Tunisia, Mweu was approached by a European theatre programmer who liked the choreography and soon after the company embarked on its first international tour, to Russia and Germany. At the time that James Mweu was invited to be an artist in residence in Gothenburg in 2013, he was involved in running a community art shop with colleagues in the Kirigiti zone of Nairobi where they lived. The aim of the shop was to celebrate arts and culture in the area. From this premise they organised dance classes and one-off Arts Festivals. Mweu taught yoga as part of an outreach project to a prison and a centre for young offenders. He also teaches Creative processes and Art appreciation to students of Design at the Technical University of Kenya. His present goal is to create a hub for young dance artists to learn through sharing ideas and experimentation. It is thus clear that Mweu’s involvement in contemporary dance is not simply about pleasing a western audience. Besides earning a living, he is promoting the values of creativity, collaboration, enterprise and sociability with the people with whom he collaborates. Mweu acquired these values from being involved in the entertainment and arts scene in Kenya from a young age and particularly through contemporary dance, due to its emphasis on compositional tools. Thus, his practice has emerged from his artistic vision and from taking advantage of what his environment has offered. It is thus understandable that, for some artists and audiences in Kenya, contemporary dance is simply ‘conte’, signalling the contemporary.

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Conclusion The terms by which contemporary dance can be considered an African cultural product are rooted in the post-1970s sociopolitical and economic struggles that swept the continent and stimulated the emergence of new cultural industries. This paper proposes that this perspective can inspire further research into contemporary dance in Africa, which should not be thought of as belonging to the same categories as the social, ritual or ceremonial dances of Africa. Rather, the practitioners of contemporary dance are working in a context shaped by policies, business and their everyday lives; and they are in dialogue with political and aesthetic discourses that have become relevant due to globalisation, urbanisation, and the search for forms of governance that work in the context of African postcolonies that continue to fight against neocolonialism. Perhaps we should consider ‘integrity’ rather than ‘authenticity’ as the yardstick by which to evaluate the work of contemporary dance choreographers. The praxis of choreog­raphers like James Mweu should inform educational studies and academic research into African modernity. NOTES   1 The title in French was Les Rencontres Chorégraphic de l’Afrique et de l’Océan Indien.   2 I interviewed James Mweu by telephone in 2013 and in 2017.   3 These issues can also be researched from other perspectives such as anthropology or sociology.   4 My role was to serve as an interlocutor for James Mweu in the studio and after events. I also sat on a panel with him at the public event organised at the end of the residency and presented an improvised performance with him. See www. dansbyran.se/archive-2013 (accessed 26 April 2018).   5 Opiyo Okach (Congo) and Faustin Linyekula (Côte d’Ivoire) are now established choreographers each running his own company.   6 The countries include Kenya, France, Spain, South Africa, Mozambique, Brazil, Germany and United Kingdom.   7 They include Kebaya Muturi, Lailah Maisga, Kepha Oiro and Juliette Omolo.  8 As Mweu worked on a project-by-project basis with them, it is difficult to ascertain the exact year some of his projects started. Jamo is James’ nickname.

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James Mweu & Kunja Dance Theatre  21 Some publicity notes also call the group ‘James and Co’ or ‘Jemo and Co’.  9 Members of Kunja at this time were Michael Ogambi, Gladys Okoko, Stella Wanda and Monica Odhiambo. Other early mem­bers include Kepha Oiro, Dennis Kariuki and Vincent Ochieng. 10 Bush or forest is a metaphor for life. 11 See Urbanite at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qws9RGqSock (accessed 6 July 2017).

REFERENCES Adair, Christy (2014), ‘Shift … Centre: Cross-cultural spaces for dance training and choreographic enquiry’. Research in Dance Education, vol. 15, no. 2: 202–16. Adewole, ’Funmi (2004), Keynote Address: ‘Dance Theatre and African Identities: Crossing physicality and academia’. In Dance Heritage: Crossing academia and physicality – Proceedings 7th NOFOD Conference. Reykjavik April 15–18 2004. Bantu, Susan K. (2006), Pre-Arts Summit Meeting for Contemporary Dancers and Choreographers in East Africa. Nairobi: GoDown Arts Centre. Burr, Vivian (2003), Social Constructionism, 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge. Chemengich, Margaret K. 2009. ‘The Prospects of Civil Society Driven Change in Kenya’. In Discourses on Civil Society in Kenya, P. Wanyande and M. A. Okebe (eds). Nairobi: African Research & Resource Forum (ARRF): 20 –30. Coombes, Annie E., Lotte Hughes and Karega-Munene (2013), Managing Heritage, Making Peace: History, identity and memory in contemporary Kenya. London: I.B. Tauris. De Beukelaer, Christiaan (2014), Developing Cultural Industries: Learning from the Palimpsest of Practice. Cultural Policy Research Award. Amsterdam: European Cultural Foundation. Despres, Altaïr (2016), ‘The Emergence of Contemporary Dance in Africa: A history of Danse l’Afrique dance! biennale’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, online, DOI: 10.1080/136996815.2016.1268951. Ekotto, Frieda and Harrow, Kenneth W. (2015), Introduction: rethinking African cultural production. In Rethinking African Cultural Production, Frieda Ekotto and Kenneth W. Harrow (eds). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 1–17. Eze, Chielozona (2015), ‘Decolonisation and its Discontents: Thoughts on the postcolonial African moral self’. South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 34, no. 4: 408–18. Frederisken, Bodil Folke (1994), Making Popular Culture from Above: Leisure in Nairobi 1940–60. Occasional Paper 145. Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Science Genevier, Christian (ed.) (1998), ‘2eme Rencontres de la création choreographique Africaine’. Afrique en Scene, no. 9: 30–50. Gerschultz, Jessica (2013), ‘Navigating Nairobi: Artists in a workshop system’. In African Art and Agency in the Workshop, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till Forster (eds). Bolington: Indiana University Press: 207–29. Hesmondhalgh, David (2013), The Cultural Industries. London: Sage. Mboya, Joy (2006), ‘Shall We Watch Dance?’ Wajibu, vol. 21, no. 1: 10–12. ——(2007), ‘The Story of the GoDown Arts Centre: A journey to freedom through

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22  ’Funmi Adewole the arts’. In Cultural Production and Social Change in Kenya: Building bridges, Kimani Njogu and G. Oluoch-Olunya (eds). Nairobi: Twaweza Communications: 169– 89. Mekgwe, Pinkie and Adebayo Olukoshi (2012), ‘Preface’. In Contemporary African Cultural Productions, V. Y. Mudimbe (ed.). Dakar: Codesria: xiii–xv. Mensah, Ayoko (2005), ‘Black Bodies, White Gaze’. Key note paper presented at Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 6 December 2005. Mweu, James (2003), ‘Urbanite Extract’, Kunja Dance2, 13 March 2017, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qws9RGqSock (accessed 6 July 2017). ——(2013), Interviews with ’Funmi Adewole. Gothenburg, Sweden, 20–24 November 2013. ——(2017), Interviews with ’Funmi Adewole, telephone, Leicester UK, 7–11 July 2017. Neveu Kringelbach, Helene (2013), Dance Circles: Movement, morality and selffashioning in urban Senegal. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Nii-Yartey, Francis (2016), African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Transformations. London: Mot Juste. Okoye, Chukwuma (2014), ‘Contemporary Dance Not African Dance: A question of a contemporary Nigerian dance’. Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing, vol. 14, no. 1: 51–63. Onookome, Okome (2007), Introducing the Special Issue on West Africa Cinema: Africa at the movies. Postcolonial Text, vol. 3, no. 2: 1–17. Sandino, Linda and Matthew Partington (eds) (2013), Oral History in the Visual Arts. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Sieveking, Nadine (2013), ‘Culture as a Resource for Development? Critical perspective from the field of contemporary African dance’. In Self-Reflexive Area Studies, Matthais Middell (ed.). Leipziger Universitatsverlag: 249–77. ——(2014), ‘“Create your space!” Locating contemporary dance in Ouagadogou’. Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 84, no. 1: 55–77. Sorgel, Sabine (2011), ‘Transnationalism and Contemporary African Dance: Faustin Linyekula’. In Emerging Bodies: The performance of worldmaking in dance and choreography, Gabriele Klein and Sandra Noeth (eds). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag: 83–93.

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Looking Behind the Mirror Challenging Representationalism in Contemporary Dance in Postcolonial African Contexts KRISTINA JOHNSTONE

This article offers some thoughts on the conceptual challenges of making, performing and thinking about con­ tem­ porary dance in Africa, specifically the role of representation and representationalism. It draws on Karen Barad’s image of two facing mirrors to argue that, within a repre­sen­ta­tion­ alist frame, choreographic processes may not only re-craft colonially scripted representations of dancing bodies, but also keep dancing bodies and danced texts locked within a ‘representationalist trap’ (Barad 2003). It asks how we explore ‘What is contemporary dance in Africa?’ outside the space between the mirrors? Does this involve looking behind, under or over the mirrors, inverting or eliminating them? It explores these questions by analysing two specific works of contemporary South African practitioners Mamela Nyamza and Tossie van Tonder.

Problematising the term ‘contemporary dance’ The term ‘contemporary dance’ gives rise to a particular prob­lem when thinking through dance in postcolonial African contexts. Part of the dilemma for those working with cont­ emporary dance in Africa is the continual need to renego­ tiate the Euro-American roots, dominance and influence of contemporary dance while responding to a postcolonial 23

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cultural project. Even in a Western dance context, Bojana Cvejic notes that the term ‘contemporary dance’ ‘entails a vague and undetermined concept’ (2015: 5). Contemporary dance, she writes serves merely to distinguish the present-day production of dance from the coexisting historical or canonical styles of – originally WestEuropean – theater dance (ballet, ‘classical dance,’ also referred to as ‘academic dance’), or from other non-Western dance traditions as well as dance forms geared to non-art purposes (social, therapeutic, enter­tainment, etc.) (5)

This description is helpful in placing the term ‘contem­por­ ary dance’ in the sphere of theatre dance, but it also complicates the understanding of this term in the context of artistic practice in Africa by distinguishing contemporary dance production from non-Western dance traditions, affirming a discourse in which contemporary dance can only be conceptualised in close relation to a canon of Western theatre dance. Recog­ nising this conceptual problem, this article specifically offers a critique of representation and representationalism with the aim of opening up an investigation into alternative con­cep­ tualisations of contemporary dance in postcolonial African contexts that may constitute ways of seeing an ‘aesthetic logic’ in the many experiments undertaken by choreog­raphers in various parts of Africa. The starting point for this article is the notion that repre­ sentational modes of meaning-making are deeply entrenched in dance practices and the reception of contemporary dance in Africa. The questions arising in this article are the result of my having worked in contemporary dance communities as a researcher, choreographer, performer and teacher in both Cape Town, South Africa and Kampala, Uganda. The examples I analyse, however, speak from a South African context. The article problematises the reliance of artists and audience members on representation in artistic creation. It argues that representation and representationalism have the potential to perpetuate colonial scripts of dance and dancing bodies. Through a discussion of some historical examples as

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well as analyses of works by two South African choreographers, Mamela Nyamza and Tossie van Tonder, the article offers some insights into ways in which representational modes of meaning-making operate and can be challenged in dance.

Colonial scripts This article is based on the understanding that colonialism was not only a system of rule but also a system of knowledge and representation and that it thus imposed a ‘colonial script’ on dancing bodies, narratives and choreographies. This colonial script refers to the ways in which the African body became the object of Western colonial constructions, which produced many sensationalised stereotypes that had their origins in colonial and early anthropological thinking and writing. Desiree Lewis writes that by the nineteenth century ‘Africans were deemed innately, biologically different and degenerate. And central to this essentialised belief were ideas about their distinctive pathological sexuality’ (2011: 200). The African body was thus figured as crude, hyper-sexual and less than human, and these stereotypes fed a script that shaped the representation of African bodies in various disciplines, including the arts. In addition, one of the primary constructs of colonialism, and through which colonialism articulated its power, was the construct of race. ‘African’ became synony­ mous with ‘Black’. Achille Mbembe explains that race became a primal form of representation that anchored its power by operating as a kind of all-consuming form, becoming ‘image, form, surface, figure, and – especially – a structure of the imagination’ (2017: 32). He further illustrates the power of the racial construct by qualifying that even though ‘race does not exist as a physical, anthropological or genetic fact’, it is not just ‘a useful fiction, a phantasmagoric construction, or an ideological projection whose function is to draw attention away from conflicts judged to be more real – the struggle between classes or genders, for example ’ (2017: 11). Through

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the law of race, Black came to represent difference in its raw manifestation – somatic, affective, aesthetic, imaginary’ (46), producing a separation between those deemed human and those deemed less than human, and between the idea of a Self and an Other. Part of this article’s premise is that representations of the body, which have categorised race and gender in particular ways, and to a lesser extent class, still operate in ways that permeate the aesthetic, the somatic, the affective and the imaginary as Mbembe describes, and that these forms of representation continually find their way back into both the making and reception of ‘African’ dance by artists and audiences respectively. South African scholar and choreographer Lliane Loots has written extensively on the notion of colonised bodies and how dance and movement, with particular reference to gender, have been and often continue to be articulated within Western patriarchal paradigms (1995). Loots discusses how prevailing assumptions of what constitutes the ideal dancing body, as exemplified by the slender, White body of classical ballet, limit the participation and appreciation of dancing bodies that do not conform to that normative ideal, such as disabled, Black or female bodies in South African dance, and that training methods associated with Western theatre dance forms like ballet and contemporary dance are still favoured in South African dance education (Loots 1995: 2010). Loots’ research, including her artistic practice through the Durban-based company Flatfoot Dance Company, echoes concerns raised by a number of South African and African contemporary dance choreographers and scholars about how to undo, unsettle and re-write colonially scripted narra­tives and representations of African dance and dancing bodies. For example, Sharon Friedman, in discussing contemporary dance in post-apartheid South Africa writes that ‘from the late 1990s, discussions in the South African dance community intensified around issues of identity and heralded work in which identity was the main focus. What is African, what

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is a South African, what should South African dance look like?’ (2012: 89). South African choreographers, like Gregory Maqoma, Desiré Davids, Jay Pather, Vincent Mantsoe and others, are making works that seek to challenge these assumptions in order to create counter-narratives to colonial scripts and constructs about African dance and dancing bodies. One significant artistic approach to these issues engages with intercultural experimentation or fusion in order to recover African cultural expressions that were devalued through various value systems nurtured by colonialism and apart­heid. Sylvia Glasser’s work with Moving Into Dance Mophatong, the company she founded in 1978, exempli­ fies the interculturalism that has characterised South African contemporary dance-making since the 1980s. Glasser’s Afrofusion arises from the combination of ‘African ritual, music, and dancing with Western forms of contemporary dance’ in order to achieve a ‘new or syncretic form of cultural expression’ (cf. Afrofusion 2016 ‘Moving into Dance Mophatong’). The notion, however, that fusion could produce a new centre for thinking through contemporary dance in Africa has been challenged. Several scholars, like Loots, have argued that the performed cultural fusion does not address the real political and cultural questions pertaining to the historically determined operations of power in South African dance, because the body is not a ‘neutral site onto which dance can be placed through training and choreography’ (Loots, 2012: 56). Rather, she argues, the body ‘comes to dance already inscribed by dis­courses and ideology whether these be gendered, racial or cultural’ (56). This idea is supported by Judith Butler’s argu­ment regarding performativity, which insists that bodies are both inscribed by, and also act as agents that participate in and perpetuate the performance of culture, gender and other learned or socially encoded aspects of identity and cate­gories of power (Butler 1990, 1993). Loots’ work thus introduces an important discussion in South African dance discourse by articulating how the dancing body and its representation are

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political sites of contestation in contemporary postcolonial African contexts. The politics of representation is a key concern for African dance scholars and practitioners considering that certain dancing bodies and cultural expressions have been excluded from theatre dance through the various value systems, and indeed the systems of oppression that were imposed by colonialism, and in South Africa by the violent system of apartheid. A critical issue in dislodging and creating counternarratives to dominant scripts of dance, however, is not only understanding that contemporary dance in African spaces has been shaped by a history of colonialism and apartheid in the case of South Africa, but also acknowledging that it continues to be shaped by these histories. Colonial (and apartheid) constructs operating in dance, continue to occupy, as Mbembe (2017) points out, aesthetic, somatic, affective and imaginary spaces. More than that, this article argues that artists both consciously and unconsciously participate in perpetuating these constructs. Lewis, for example, who writes in the context of the representation of African sexualities in art, notes that colonial scripts and their stereotypes of African bodies are more insidious than we realise. She suggests that contemporary forms of othering are not always explicitly and recog­ nisably racist. In fact, they might often be presented as positive and ennobling celebrations of the black body … [Colonial discourses] are entrenched as normal, neutral or natural in the images and symbols on which societies draw to make sense of their worlds. Moreover, colonial-inspired scripts have been recrafted by Africans ostensibly concerned with independent self-definition or ennobling views of Africa. (Lewis 2011: 201)

Lewis draws attention to the power of colonial constructs and the representations that flow out of these constructs, to the point that they may be unknowingly or unquestioningly perpetuated. Mbembe makes a similar argument and draws from Quayson (2001: 153) to point to the problematic nature of the Afro-centric impulse, which, according to Quay­son, ‘tries to excavate the glory of things past as a means of rectifying

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the sorry contemporary picture of Africa and to provide models of African achievement for the future (Quayson in Mbembe 2005: 6). The problem of the Afro-centric impulse is that it is often co-opted into recrafting or recreating colonial scripts. Contemporary dance in Africa seems to be locked in a paradigm where artistic enquiries respond to colonial scripts and constructs, and dominant Western aesthetic criteria by creating counter-narratives, which often involve replicating the very same scripts and constructs. Quayson accurately problematises this dilemma when he states that the issue with African scholarship ‘is not just saying something new about Africa, but saying it under the full burden of a West­ ern discourse that situates one’s own attempt in relation to it and repeatedly establishes the new statement as an attempt to eradicate, validate, or ignore it’ (Mbembe 2005: 6). Can contemporary dance in Africa only be thought of in close relation to a canon of Western theatre dance? Can the questions ‘what is African?’ and ‘what is African contemporary dance?’ be asked outside the politics of representation and the frameworks created by colonial narratives? As discussed earlier, bodies come to and perform dance already inscribed with culturally and socially encoded iden­ tities. In this sense, representation cannot be completely avoided. The body cannot but represent something. Still, the aim of this article is to imagine, perhaps only as a thought experiment, ways of working beyond representation in contemporary dance. The notion of thinking beyond representation, how­ ever, is not particular to the African context. Current discussions in contemporary dance and theatre in Europe and America are also engaging with these con­cerns, through the work of scholars like André Lepecki, Bojana Cvejic and Hans-Thies Lehmann. In a fascinating study, Cvejic, for example, focuses on choreographic problems that ‘critically address the prevailing regime of representation in [European] theatre dance’ (Cvejic 2015: 2). So my aim here is not to simply ‘update’ approaches and dance theory for an African context, but rather to claim a conceptual space for

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contemporary dance in Africa beyond formulating responses to colonial scripts. This article argues that working beyond these representations requires artistic enquiries that seek to refigure the body and reconfigure the relationship between audience and performance as a sensory relationship, rather than a relationship that relies on conveying and reading signs. First however, I explore the notions of representation and representationalism.

Two facing mirrors – Representation and representationalism For the purpose of this study, representation refers to the notion that language, or in this case dance, makes use of a system of signs that represent or stand in for things or ideas. According to feminist theorist Karen Barad, repre­ senta­ tionalism then, is ‘the belief in the ontological distinction between representations and that which they purport to represent … (t)hat is, there are assumed to be two distinct and independent kinds of entities – representations and entities to be represented’ (2003: 804). Observing that represen­ tationalism has received significant challenge from feminists, poststructuralists, postcolonial critics and queer theorists, Barad problematises representation as an over-reliance on language and other forms of cultural representation (in this case dance) as an accurate mirror of what is being represented (804). Or, as semiotician Walter Mignolo explains, representation ‘presupposes that there is a world out there that someone is representing’ as ‘a basic assumption of modern epistemology’ (Mignolo in Gaztambide-Fernández 2014: 198). According to Barad, representationalism is ‘so deeply entrenched within Western culture that it takes on a common sense appeal’ (2003: 806). She offers an evocative image to explain the ‘problem’ of representationalism by referring to what she calls ‘a representationalist trap of geometrical optics’ (802). This ‘geometrical optics of reflection’, she argues

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is an ‘infinite play of images between two facing mirrors [where] the epistemological gets bounced back and forth, but nothing more is seen’ (803). I argue that representational modes of meaning-making are similarly entrenched in both the creation and reception of contemporary dance in Africa because these modes are central to Western philosophical and aesthetic traditions and as such have informed contemporary dance practice and creation in various African contexts via colonialism and the colonially inspired scripts imposed on dance and dancing bodies. Barad’s image of the problematic space that is created between two facing mirrors that repro­ duces identical reflections endlessly and without pause, resonates with the particular challenges of contemporary dance-making and dance scholarship in postcolonial con­ texts, where the politics of representation occupies a critical place. The discussion above drew attention to the fact that representations of the Black body often still depend on deeply rooted, problematic stereotypes that were nurtured through colonial systems of knowledge and representation. In addition, Mbembe points out how various narratives of Blackness that have developed since colonialism serve as frameworks that keep African bodies locked within racial constructs and understandings. He argues that, while the founding narrative of Blackness – which was articulated by Westerners – had as its function ‘to codify the conditions for the appearance and the manifestation of a racial subject that would be called the Black Man’, the second narrative of Blackness, articulated by Africans and Black people in the African diaspora, attempted to restore the self, to return the Black Man to humanity, but did this without being able to discard the construct of race itself (Mbembe 2017). The economy of racial representation thus permeates both the founding narrative of Blackness as well as its counter-narra­ tives. To apply Barad’s image of two facing mirrors, one could then say that the idea of Blackness or what constitutes ‘African’ exists in the space between those mirrors, between a sign and a counter-sign, where images are endlessly

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bounced back and forth, but nothing more is seen. These images are powerful. They presuppose and affirm a racialised understanding of the world and, following Barad’s argument, the texts created by these signs pose as reliable and accurate representations of this world. Choreographies similarly create performance texts that either confirm or subvert dominant narratives. Working in live performance with bodies that cannot help but represent, choreographers often work within this economy of representation, juggling signs and counter-signs, creating performance texts for audiences who are often trained to read signs within particular (dominant) narratives. For example, South African contemporary dance works created shortly after 1994 are a good example of how dance-makers and audiences participated in the creation and reception of dance that served the framework of a ‘new’ South African identity or an imagined idea of ‘the rainbow nation’. Much of this work in the 1990s, writes Friedman (2012), dealt with the question of what constitutes a South African identity and, as discussed earlier, a performed cultural fusion was one of the ways in which choreographers attempted to solve this question. So, while acknowledging that fusion is a highly relevant and interesting way of engaging with contemporary dance in an African context, I also argue that fusion represents a performance text that suits the dominant cultural narrative of post-1994 South Africa. In other words, fusion offers choreographers some ways of dealing with the conceptual dilemma of contemporary dance in post-apartheid South Africa, and audiences in turn know how to read fusion within South Africa’s post-apartheid cultural narrative. But, as a counter-narrative to colonial and apartheid sanctioned art, the critical impact of fusion is limited to its antecedent representational frameworks, unless it also engages with the complexities of how the performer’s body has been figured by colonial and apartheid sensibilities and how, in turn, the audience’s senses have been configured to receive and experience dance by these same colonial and

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apartheid sensibilities. This exemplifies the closed circuit of two facing mirrors, where signs or images are continually regenerated, producing representations of representations of representations, without questioning the existence of the framework in the first place. Mbembe similarly notes that representationalism is particularly problematic in the case of Africa and African subject matter, where signs have long been divorced from reality. He writes that still today, as soon as the subject of Blacks and Africa is raised, words do not necessarily represent things; the true and the false become inextricable. The signification of the sign is not always adequate to what is being signified. It is not only that the sign is substituted for the thing. Word and image often have little to say about the objective world. The world of words and signs has become autonomous to such a degree that it exists not only as a screen possessed by its subject, its life, and the conditions of its production but as a force of its own, capable of emancipating itself from all anchoring in reality. (Mbembe 2017: 13)

Mbembe paints a picture of representationalism as com­ plex, ever-refracting mirrors that produce and reproduce signs and counter-signs that are ever further removed from the entities for which they stand in. He warns of the power that these texts gain over time. So, is it possible to think out­side representationalist frameworks? Can African dancing bodies escape the politics of representation, even if they can­ not fully escape representation itself? Can African dancing bodies and contemporary dance as a form be conceptualised outside predefined aesthetic and codified parameters, outside or beyond the space between the mirrors? Does this involve looking behind, under or over the mirrors, inverting or eliminating them?

Challenging representation: Disrupting the reflection in the mirrors Contemporary dance choreographers currently working in South Africa and in other parts of Africa, including Mamela

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Nyamza, Dada Masilo, Nelisiwe Xaba, Faustin Linyekula, Nora Chipaumire, Gregory Maqoma, Ariry Andria­mora­ tsiresy, Tossie van Tonder and Alan Parker, have in common their attempts to challenge identity constructions and work against simple representations of contemporary dance and African dancing bodies formed through dominant narratives of Blackness and their co-dependent narratives of Whiteness. Their works are often created on their own bodies, and play with representation by distorting the images in the mirror, creating illusions and exposing the flaws of dominant narra­ tives. By destabilising and questioning the reflection of the signs in the mirror, these contemporary dance works create the possibility of dislodging the way the closed circuit of representationalism, and the colonial scripts contained there­ in, works. South African choreographer Mamela Nyamza’s work suggests ways in which contemporary dance choreography can play with signs to destabilise and challenge both established aesthetic criteria and the ways in which the Black female body is represented in dance. Drawing from her training in ballet and contemporary dance, Nyamza both references her classical training and subverts it in order to expose and problematise the Whiteness contained in this aesthetic code, as seen in works such as Hatched (2009) and Okuya Phantsi Kwempumlo/The Meal (2012). As a choreographic device, Nyamza frequently begins by presenting the audience with a recognisable image, and then slowly transforms it into something surprising or unsettling, thus forcing the audience to see the original image differently. This choreographic device challenges ways of seeing the body as well as ways of reading the established aesthetic codes of contemporary dance. Rock to the Core, first performed in Cape Town in 2017 and choreographed by Nyamza in collaboration with performers Chuma Sopotela, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Zikhona Jacobs, Indalo Stofile and Vathiswa Nodlayiya, who replaced one of the cast members in a later run, exemplifies Nyamza’s

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characteristic choreographic strategy. It was created following a protest action held by Nyamza and a group of Black female artists in July in response to the underrepresentation of Black artists in the 2017 Fleur du Cap award nominees, which listed only 22 Black artists out of the total 78 nominees. By questioning the awards, which are the main theatre awards in South Africa’s Western Cape province, Nyamza’s protest aimed to comment on the pervasiveness of White privilege in South Africa’s broader theatre industries. Nyamza was drawing attention the fact that when Black artists are included, this is often tokenistic and often reinscribes Black artists, especially Black female artists, in stereotypical roles. Although Rock to the Core does not make use of ‘technical’ dance language as such and the work has a strong linguistic narrative, I would argue that reading the work as dance is not misplaced, but rather illustrates, as Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi have pointed out, the increasingly blurred distinctions between theatre, performance art and dance, and the breaking down of the conventional hierarchy of theatrical elements, which traditionally placed (linguistic) text at the centre (2009: 3). Central to Nyamza’s mode of critique in Rock to the Core is her focus on the body, which she constantly manipulates in order to play with representations. Rock to the Core is intended as a political and social commentary and Nyamza achieves this by drawing attention to and challenging representation by playing with, in this case, an excess of imagery. The work is flooded with images referencing stereotypes of Black female bodies, which Nyamza disrupts by manipulating these images and by using strategies such as parody and word play. Parody is also how Nyamza makes visible certain signs of White privilege that through the discourse of Whiteness have often masqueraded as ‘unmarked’ or ‘universal’ signs (van Wyk, 2012). For example, in the opening scene, the four performers appear in cocktail dresses, colourful tights, high heeled shoes and untreated sheepskins draped across their shoulders. They spend the first part of the dance shuffling across the stage in

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lines, following each other like obedient sheep and muttering instructions to each other in isiXhosa through knives that are gripped between their teeth. The tight dresses and high heeled shoes reference an over-sexualised image of the female form. The sheepskins, used instead of fur coats, parody White privilege, and the performers’ attire as a whole alludes to the formal dress and conventions seen at awards ceremonies that have been informed by a dominant culture of Whiteness. Moving in neat lines, the women are behaving ‘nicely’, as prescribed by these conventions. This is in stark contrast to the image of the knives gripped between their teeth, which is used with a double effect. On one hand, they distort the women’s speech, suggesting that they are not heard. On the other hand, the knives create an image that is at odds with the idea of women behaving according to convention, hinting at the potential for violence and resistance. The work becomes confrontational when the women use the knives to mime the shearing of their vaginal areas, forcing on the audience a violent sexualisation of their bodies. By exposing the stereotype of the Black female body as a sexually deviant object in this stark manner, Nyamza successfully comments on the way such images of Black female bodies permeate aesthetic and imaginary spaces. Later still, dressed only in underwear, the women drag themselves by their arms across the floor, and replace the knives with machetes, which they use to relentlessly beat cement bricks and sheepskins, which they had formerly worn, until their bodies reach complete exhaustion. The sweat dripping from their bodies and the bare breasts falling out of their clothes stand in stark contrast to the elegant appearance at the start and conventional expectations of dance, where dancers are expected to perform physical exertion effortlessly. Rock to the Core challenges both established conceptions of dance and stereotypes of Black female bodies, by avoiding codified dance vocabulary and relying instead on largely pedestrian actions and an intricate layering of parodic images that produce an excess of imagery, which is the main theatrical and choreographic device at

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work here. This parodic critique is emphasised at the end of the work, when the performers erect an altar using the cement bricks that lie strewn across the stage and place a trophy at the top, suggesting the gruelling physical labour these performers must go through to receive recognition and bringing the work back to a direct commentary on the awards and value systems operating in South African theatre. They shower the front rows of the audience with cola from a can and move through the audience with a plate of eats, performing again a parody of formal ceremonies as they openly mock convention. The work is complex and layered. For example, one of the thematic threads is sheep, as evidenced in the sheepskins, the action of shearing and the many repetitions of ‘baa baa black sheep’, sung out of tune in isiXhosa. Nyamza plays with the image and word associations that this reference creates: for example, behaving obediently like a sheep that stays in the fold, or falling out of grace by becoming the black sheep. In a post-performance discussion, Nyamza explains a further play on words. The isiXhosa for sheep, ‘igusha’, means both sheep and vagina, which Nyamza uses again to refer to stereotypes of Black women. But, she explains, the work also refers to ‘idlagusha’, meaning ‘sheep eaters’, which is a derogatory term used colloquially to talk about White people behind their backs. It demonstrates the work’s, in this case, hidden point of resistance and the use of isiXhosa as having a double function. Watching the work in Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre, traditionally a space for White theatre goers, it suggests how Nyamza uses the language to make clear the bond between the performers who share this inside joke while marginalising those in the audience who are not isiXhosa speakers. Nyamza bombards the audience with images that either reference stereotypes of Blackness or parody stereotypes of Whiteness. The images and actions are interspersed with the performers shouting phrases over each other, making it impossible to miss the intended political commentary:

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‘Black danger’; ‘White guilt’; ‘White wine’; ‘Black struggle’; ‘Great White’. The stage is chaotic, the transitions between different sections are abrupt and the lighting is harsh. The work leaves behind an excess of props: cocktail dresses, high heeled shoes, wigs, sheepskins, bricks, oven mitts, aprons, a rocking chair, bits of lingerie, machetes and spilt cola. Nyamza uses each prop and each action to contrast the performer’s bodies with dominant representations of the Black female body in theatre and dance. Stereotypes of Black women as sexualised and exotic (as signified by the lingerie, dresses and high heels) or docile (as signified by the rocking chair, aprons and oven mitts) are juxtaposed with razor-sharp knives, crude sheepskins and hard concrete. Much of the work is deliberately uncomfortable to watch and experience as an audience member and with the ‘unpolished’ nature of the work and lack of codified dance vocabulary, Nyamza seems to have created a work that has the effect of the emperor’s new clothes, daring anyone who sees it to call it out for not being dance. Rock to the Core exemplifies Nyamza’s skilful conjuring with signs and images in order to create a challenging social and political commentary. The work succeeds in offering not merely a counter-narrative but a destabilising narrative that is valuable as a postcolonial critique by, for example, challenging the invisibility of certain signs of privilege. The choreography, however, still operates within the parameters of representation to the extent that it relies on signs that are recognised and recognisable (Cvejic 2015). In addition, for an audience to access the work, the choreographic strategy relies on signs that can be read within a particular narrative of cultural difference based on racial fault lines. One could question to what extent working within this narrative of cultural difference, which Mbembe (2017) explains is based on Western knowledge constructions, keeps Black or ‘other’ bodies locked in a culturally specific reading that continues to make sense of Africa and African bodies as deviating from a universal (read Western) norm. Rock to the Core

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plays with signs in order to destabilise dominant aesthetic codes and established representations informed by colonial and apartheid constructions of, in this case, Black female bodies. The work, however, also demonstrates the power of the discourse of cultural difference and confirms Mbembe’s assertion that this discourse has made it impossible to ‘imagine identity without racial consciousness’ (2017: 91), and that the representations of the Black body produced by this discourse permeate aesthetic, somatic, affective and imaginary spaces to the extent that they must be dealt with in any postcolonial critique. To reiterate the earlier discussion, however, in a process characterised by representational thinking, difference is understood in relation to a conceived notion of the world and conceived notion of identity (Cevjic 2015: 36). Using Deleuze to support her performance theories, Cvejic explains that representation is ‘a reductive model of thinking because it subordinates difference to identity and thus never allows the thought to begin anew, to create anything but the recognisable and the recognised’ (36). As an artistic enquiry, Rock to the Core disrupts the reflection in the mirrors, to use Barad’s metaphor of two facing mirrors, by juxtaposing images and unsettling representations of dance, Black women and Black dancing bodies, but still exists in the space between the mirrors by relying on the recognition of signs, metaphors and images.

Looking behind the mirror: Towards new perceptual perspectives and sense understandings The questions this article asks are: can choreography move beyond representation, and can thought-through choreog­ raphy be created anew in postcolonial contexts? I propose that, given how dominant representation seems to be in dance, strategies to challenge representational frameworks involve refiguring the body in performance and creating a sensory relationship with the audience. Semiotician Walter

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Mignolo offers a valuable proposition with his notion of a ‘decolonial aesthesis’ – as distinct from ‘aesthetics’ – which he uses to describe any practice, way of thinking or doing that dismantles the sensibility of the colonised subject to recon­ stitute a different sense understanding of the self. These practices may facilitate a perceptual perspective unlike those we have come to know through dominant narratives of Blackness, and by inference Whiteness, through our inherited colonial sensibilities, which includes discourses of cultural difference and the reliance on representation based on Western rationalism. Mignolo explains that what decolonial artists want is not to create beautiful objects, installations, music, multimedia or whatever the possibilities are, but to create in order to decolonise sensibilities, to transform colonial aestheTics into decolonial aestheSis. In that regard, aestheTics is the image that reflects in the mirror of imperial/colonial aesthetics in the Kantian tradition. (Quoted in Gaztambide-Fernández 2014: 201)

According to Mignolo, challenging entrenched aesthetic sensibilities requires critical interventions in the way art is made and received (Gaztambide-Fernández 2014). What are these interventions? What are the kinds of artistic enquiries that could offer new conceptual frameworks for contem­ porary dance in Africa? I suggest that the recent work, Powers of Lightness (2017a), of South African dancer-psychologist, Tossie van Tonder, also known as Nobonke, exemplifies an artistic practice that is engaged in moving beyond representation, and thus offers a conceptual alternative to representationalism. Van Tonder’s performative practice is influenced by various somatic practices that emphasise the con­nection of mind and body, including Japanese Butoh, and Body Weathering, a practice derived from Butoh that focuses on the body in relation to the environment. In Powers of Lightness, van Tonder responds to her own inner world of affects, in response to which she produces minute changes in her body that are at times hardly perceptible to the viewer’s eye, dancing on a microscopic level, omitting any references to pedestrian or socialised movements or

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codified dance techniques. Powers of Lightness draws attention to performative presence as the dance requires van Tonder to be fully present as she moves in response to the ebb and flow of the sensations she experiences in her body. The extreme slowness of the dance, a barely audible soundtrack of atmospheric music, and a handheld light manipulated by a dancer-technician that reveals and conceals parts of van Tonder’s body create the effect of the dance taking place in a void, drawing the viewers in and challenging their sense of duration. Time becomes elastic as van Tonder draws attention to every small change occurring in her body in real time. The dance is an exercise in paying attention for the performer as well as the viewers. Van Tonder’s task is to stay attentive to every sensation in her body, however small, and for the viewers the extreme slowness of the dance forces an awareness of their own body and consciousness as their mind inevitably wanders and then returns to the performance. At times, van Tonder’s breath is audible and unintelligible utterances escape her body. This vocal layer interrupts the visual tension of the dance, drawing the audience back to the performance itself and thereby highlighting their own emotional, somatic, and affective responses to this work. The dancer-technician who carries the handheld light calibrating van Tonder’s body functions as a witness in the work, choosing when to make the body visible and when to obscure it, suggesting that the dance does not merely take place as a presentation for the benefit of the spectators. Instead, they are implicated as witnesses: their presence affirms the existence of van Tonder’s body. The performance does not present a text for audiences to read, but rather is sustained in the relationship it creates between the performer and the witnesses of the performance. Besides a traditional South African blanket and a white ‘X’ taped on the floor – which serve to locate the dance geographically, both in South Africa and in the performance space, insofar as van Tonder never moves far away from the ‘X’ – there are no obvious semiotic referents. The dance

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works through the senses of its witnesses to alter their percep­ tions of time, space and van Tonder’s body, which becomes more than a carrier of signs: white, woman, mother, child, etc. Working through the calibration of time and light, the audience perceives less than a body, part-body, and at times it perceives the body as pure energy, as more than a body, illustrating Mignolo’s ‘decolonial aestheSis’. The images never quite settle long enough for narratives to form. Powers of Lightness is an example of what Hans-Thies Lehmann defines in European terms as ‘postdramatic’ performance: as performance that turns away from a body of signification in order to work with a body that ‘no longer demonstrates anything but itself’ (Lehmann 2006: 96). Van Tonder’s work draws attention to her material body and the microscopic changes that take place with each passing second over fifty minutes. By playing with time, speed, light and space, van Tonder not only emphasises the changes in her own body, but also creates the possibility for the witness to become aware of changes taking place in their own body and consciousness. It might seem surprising to some to end this article with an example of a work by a White South African artist. This unease stems from ways in which ideas of racial authenticity and territoriality have become combined, making it ‘impossible to conceive of Africans of European origin’ (Mbembe 2017: 91). Van Tonder’s work signals a desire to disrupt these binaries as she searches for a way to trouble the reading of the body as an expressive aesthetic linked to predefined codes and representations. Rather, she seeks an embodied engagement with movement that calls for reading the body through the senses, a project she connects to Mbembe’s concept of classic Black art (cf. Van Tonder 2017b). Mbembe argues that the body and the senses are at the centre of classic Black art. The primary function of this art, he writes has never been to represent, illustrate, or narrate reality. It has always been in its nature simultaneously to confuse and mimic original forms and appearances. As a figurative form, it certainly maintained a relationship of resemblance to the original object. But at the

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Looking Behind the Mirror: Postcolonial Contexts  43 same time it constantly redoubled the original object, deforming it, distancing itself from it, and most of all conjuring with it. In fact, in most Black aesthetic traditions, art was produced only through the work of conjuring, in the space where the optic and tactile functions, along with the world of the senses, were united in a single movement aimed at revealing the double of the world. (Mbembe 2017: 173)

It is in this potential doubling that we see the potential for post-representational/non-representational dance, as it moves beyond binaries and questions how signs are constituted and what hidden hegemonies reside in unquestioned encodings of meaning. Both Nyamza and van Tonder’s work discussed in this article conjure with forms and appearances and challenge perceptions of contemporary dance in South Africa. However, I would argue that Powers of Lightness resists a confrontation with an audience through signs and, instead, attempts to strip the body of its aesthetic conditioning and create a sensory relationship with an audience of witnesses. Currently, contemporary dance in Africa is conceptualised in the space between the mirrors, within the economies of representation. Using the example of Powers of Lightness, I suggest that artistic enquiries that locate the place of research in the material body and that aim to reconfigure the relationship between audience and performance may offer new conceptual possibilities and decolonial options for contemporary dance in Africa – by looking behind the mirror. REFERENCES Afrofusion (2016), ‘Moving Into Dance Mophatong’, www.midance.co.za/dancecompany/afrofusion (accessed 13 December 2016). Barad, K. (2003), ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 28, no. 3: 801–31, http://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/faculty/publications/pdfs/baradposthumanist.pdf (accessed 27 April 2018). Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993), Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. London and New York: Routledge.

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44  Kristina Johnstone Cvejic, B. (2015), Choreographing Problems: Expressive concepts in dance and performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Friedman, S. (2012), ‘Mapping an Historical Context for Theatre Dance in South Africa’. In Post-Apartheid Dance: Many bodies, many voices, many stories, . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 1–16. Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2014), ‘Decolonial Options and Artistic/AestheSic Entanglements: An interview with Walter Mignolo’. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 3, no. 1: 196–212. Lehmann, H. (2006), Postdramatic Theatre. New York: Routledge. Lehmann, H. and P. Primavesi (2009), ‘Dramaturgy on Shifting Grounds’. Performance Research, vol 14, no. 3: 3–6. Lewis, D. (2011) ‘Representing African Sexualities’. In African Sexualities: A reader, S. Tamale (ed.). Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford: Pambazuka Press: 199–216. Loots, L. (1995), ‘Colonised Bodies: Overcoming gender constructions of bodies in dance and movement education in South Africa’. South African Theatre Journal, vol. 9, no. 2: 51–9. — (2010), ‘“You Don’t Look Like a Dancer!” Gender and disability politics in the arena of dance as performance and as a tool for learning in South Africa’. Agenda, vol. 29, no. 2: 122–32. —­(2012), ‘Voicing the Unspoken: Culturally connecting race, gender and nation in women’s choreographic and dance practice in post-apartheid South Africa’. In Post-Apartheid Dance: Many bodies, many voices, many stories, S. . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 51–72. Mbembe, A. (2005), ‘On the Postcolony: A brief response to critics’. Qui Parle, vol. 15, no. 2: 1–49. — (2017), Critique of Black Reason. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Quayson, A. (2001), ‘Breaches in the Commonplace’. African Studies Review, vol. 44, no. 2: 151–65. Van Tonder, Tossie. (2017a). Powers of Lightness, recording available at www. theimageofyourperfection.co.za/archive/index2.php (accessed 2 January 2018). — 2017b. Archive. www.theimageofyourperfection.co.za/archive (accessed 12 September 2017). van Wyk, S. (2012). ‘Ballet Blanc to Ballet Black: Performing whiteness in postapartheid South African dance’. In Post-Apartheid Dance: Many bodies, many voices, many stories, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 31–50.

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Decolonising the Stage Reflecting on Mamela Nyamza in a Canadian-hosted South African Performance Festival KYMBERLEY FELTHAM

This essay explores the ways in which contemporary dance can act as a catalyst for decolonial conversations when toured transnationally, detailing the ways in which South African choreographer Mamela Nyamza interrogates colonial constructs of power, identity, and gender through her work; and how her work has the potential to open up meaning­ ful transnational conversations in a Canadian context through her participation in the Canadian Stage’s Spotlight South Africa festival (Toronto). I begin by contextualising Nyamza’s work within the festival, including the context of current Canadian socio-political concerns. I then go on to con­sider how Nyamza’s work has the potential to agitate and subvert long-established Euro-Western performance traditions as she masterfully integrates traditional African and contemporary performance styles, and thereby disturbs comfortable understandings of Western dance practices. In April 2015, six South African works were hosted at Canadian Stage’s Spotlight South Africa festival in Toronto. This festival was the third iteration of the biennial Canadian Stage spotlight format which aims to expose Toronto audiences to renowned international artists while creating dialogues between contemporary Canadian performance and international artistic expertise. Canadian Stage Executive and Artistic Director, Matthew Jocelyn said of the lineup, ‘Toronto audiences have a healthy appetite for strong 45

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contemporary art by thoughtful, radical creators from around the world … We’re helping to feed it with the largest celebration of South African artists that Canada has ever held’ (quoted in Kaplan 2015). The Festival was planned to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s liberation, and pay tribute to the man, following his death at the end of 2013. It also marked the 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa in 2014. The three-week programme included Athol Fugard’s Nongogo (Market Theatre, 1959); two separate works by Mamela Nyamza, The Meal (2012) and Hatched (2009); Jane Taylor and William Kentridge’s Ubu and the Truth Commission (Handspring Puppet Company, 1997); Luyanda Sidya’s double-bill Dominion (2013) and Umnikelo (2011) with Vuyani Dance Theatre; and Steven Cohen’s Chandelier (2001). Each week of the festival opened two productions, beginning with Nongogo and The Meal, the second week paired Ubu with Hatched, and Dominion and Chandelier closed the festival in the final week. The place of dance and performance art alongside theatre in this programme, and the pairing of work begins to break down assumptions regarding theatre. It also suggests the careful curation of this festival, as evidenced in Matthew Jocelyn’s festival preview interviews (Crabb 2015, Kaplan 2015), where he says, ‘in Canada, I don’t think we fully understand the vitality and political force of these artists. Their artistry is heightened by their political consciousness and their political consciousness heightens their artistry’ (Crabb 2015). In highlighting the relationship between art and political consciousness in this comment, Jocelyn seems to be pointing the Toronto audience towards developing a deeper sense of their own political awareness – particularly given the timing of this festival – just two months before the results of Canada’s six-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) were released in June 2015. The TRC, which examined the traumas enacted upon Canada’s Indigenous populations by colonists through systemic land appropriation and dispossession of culture, with a particularly

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focus on the colonial residential schools’ system. With mounting pressure from Indigenous peoples to acknowledge the systemic and ongoing abuses affecting their communities within Canada, the choice of artists to present in the festival may also reflect a growing consciousness of these issues in mainstream Canada. Jocelyn elaborated further in his preview interviews: ‘It’s important to emphasize the political focus of what we’ll see. It’s impossible to be a South African artist without being engaged in some political dialogue. By that I don’t mean being right or left but rather investigating the living conditions of the country today and the wounds and scars of apartheid and centuries of abuse, as well as the drastic economic and other conditions in which many live’ (Kaplan 2015). The subtext here is that, as Canada reckons with its own less openly acknowledged colonial traumas, its collective political consciousness would be best served if political dialogue became synonymous with its art as well. While the festival as a whole addressed ongoing conversa­ tions between colonised and indigenous art, Jocelyn described Mamela Nyamza’s artistic voice as being particularly nuanced in this dialogue, as she addresses what it means to be, ‘subjugated by the culture of another people’ (quoted in Kaplan 2017) directly in both form and content in her work. Her work stood out as being urgently contemporary. The Meal opened the first week alongside the Market Theatre’s staging of Athol Fugard’s Nongogo (1959), the oldest play included. It is in the style of a 1950s kitchen-sink drama, unexpectedly featuring a strong female protagonist. Fugard’s work is canonical, taught in university English and Drama departments worldwide, and it is rare that a season goes by without a Fugard play being staged in Toronto. This potentially situates Fugard as the touchstone for South African drama for a Toronto audience. In the second week of the festival Hatched opened alongside Handspring Puppet Theatre’s Ubu and the Truth Commission, a modern classic inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi – about a vulgar, greedy and dishonest dictator. South Africa’s Ubu played during that country’s

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own TRC hearings and accurately predicted that many of the key players who enforced apartheid atrocities would not be held accountable for their actions. The Handspring Puppet Theatre had brought War Horse to Toronto the year before for a much-lauded extended tour, providing name recognition for their return with this more political play. While Nongogo and Ubu provide both name recognitions and historic reference points to contextualise the colonial legacies of South Africa’s history, conflict and resistance to a Toronto audience, Nyamza’s autobiographical work, Hatched, along with her physical presence on stage, continually reinforce the temporal themes of transformation she works with in a more immediate way. By using autobiography as her primary mode, Nyamza’s work investigates not the ‘living conditions’ of South Africa, as Jocelyn says, but the conditions for living there. Nyamza’s body, her self, is at the centre of her argument for the push and push-back nature of change and transformation in South Africa. Nyamza’s intimate and autobiographical style was com­ ple­mented by performance artist Steven Cohen’s Chandelier. In performance, Cohen is self-consciously critical of his whiteness, and invites his audiences to become selfconsciously aware of their explicit whiteness as well – for many festival attendees, their ‘whiteness’ may be literal, or referencing privilege more metaphorically. Cohen and Nyamza both create works rooted in their personal experiences, both confront and challenge their audience in a particularly embodied way. However, while Cohen’s performance reflects back experiences of implicit white privilege, Nyamza’s work extends to suggest the effects of that privilege, and so offers the potential for a deeper transformative experience as it challenges Western colonial epistemologies. Nyamza’s work also provided an interesting contrast to that of Luyanda Sidiya, the only other dancer-choreographer in the festival line-up. Sidiya, a decade younger than Nyamza, and male, grew up in the Vaal Triangle, just south

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of Johannesburg. He has trained in both contemporary and traditional African dance styles, most notably at The Dance Factory in Newtown, Johannesburg. He completed a teacher training programme in 2000 at the Community Dance project at Moving Into Dance Mophatong, a training organisation and professional dance company founded in 1978 by Sylvia Glasser, with the aim of empowering disadvantaged youth through dance education. While Sidiya’s work is informed by socio-political issues, his style lends itself to large scale projects such as being a dance captain for the 2010 World Cup FIFA Opening Concert (Sichel 2014). In 2015, Sidiya was the Artistic Director at Vuyani Dance Theatre (Gregory Maqoma), and it was the Vuyani Dance ensemble that travelled with him to Toronto to perform the double-bill of Dominion and Umnikelo. While Sidya’s work blends African and Contemporary forms, his large ensemble work is easily tourable and broadly political, as it references historic dictators such as Hitler, Gaddafi and Mugabe, and socio-economic struggles. In Umnikelo, form takes precedence over narrative, the choreography skilfully blends contemporary technique with a fusion of different South African dance styles, and the transition between styles appears to be seamless. The dancing is athletic and technical, accompanied by upbeat percussion and rousing vocalisations – the audience leapt to their feet to give this work a standing ovation at intermission on opening night (Feltham 2015). As a companion piece, Dominion was much starker. Sidiya’s well-crafted images reveal a severe rift between state military officials and the common peasantry. This imagery evokes not one particular time and place in history but can and does stand in for so many. An early notable scene presents a group of men costumed in brass and medals celebrating with a congratulatory bottle of champagne on a riser at the back of the stage to Charlie Chaplin’s famous final speech from The Great Dictator (1940). This scene of state opulence quickly dissolves as the peasants begin to gather downstage. First, one of the decorated men throws a piece of bread to

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the dancers, they descend upon it and scuffle as the winner eventually shoves the bread into her mouth, and all turn to look back up to the men on the riser. More bread is thrown, the peasants skirmish for their fair share, and the stage is littered with bread crumbs for the remainder of the performance. The desperation of the people, their hunger, their socio-economic circumstances, the gross inequalities, led to an inevitable revolutionary fight. Here Sidiya directly invokes South Africa’s revolutionary past by incorporating a deconstructed toyi-toyi, the iconic march-step used during protests and intimately tied to the anti-apartheid struggle. Tension mounts between the state and the people, articulated through intense percussive movement, and lifts and throws that are bound and restricted, rather than having free followthrough – literally embodying the tensions and restrictions Sidya learned of during a 2011 research trip to the Eastern Cape.1 During the final scenes a speech praising Zulu kings past and present plays over the action, book-ending the work after Chaplin’s earlier call for democratic equality for all. This is a clearly political call for change. Dominion also received a standing ovation, though it felt more constrained than the response to Umnikelo. Perhaps the lasting image, a man in military dress literally standing on the backs of the people before the stage fades to black, struck a nerve with the audience (Feltham 2015). Though Sidya embraces themes of hardship and political revolution in his work, there is an insulated distance created between the audience and the performance through his use of proscenium staging and the athletic contemporary dance techniques he favours. The stark division between military leaders, ‘the people’, and audience framed by the boundaries of the stage, along with the force and athleticism of the choreography creates an emotionally impactful presentation, but one that through its militantly masculine form is limited in its emotional breadth and subtlety. Nyamza’s work, in contrast, celebrates the feminine, and is personal, intimate, uncomfortable and

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persuasive – her work challenges rather than entertains – she regularly breaks the fourth wall by addressing the audience directly, subverting the safe barrier that Sidya’s large ensemble dance works, in turn, uphold. Before I begin my analysis of how dance and Nyamza’s work specifically engage in highlighting ongoing legacies of colonialism and decolonising the stage, I want to situate myself as a settler-Canadian in relation to Canada and this festival on South Africa, which took place in the traditional territory of First Nations people. In recognising that my home occupies colonised First Nations territories, and out of respect for the rights of Indigenous people, it is my responsibility to recognise both my colonial histories as well as their present-day implications. The roles I have inherited and voluntarily taken on when I, perhaps naively, set out to complete a PhD on the topic of South African contemporary dance are still in flux. In May 2017, I participated in a seminar hosted by the Canadian Association of Theatre Researchers (CATR) on the topic of Decolonizing Methodologies and Settler Responsibility in Theatre and Performance Studies, and it is from this community of scholars that I am learning how to sensitively and responsibly address the problematic areas of my research that are present due to the long histories of colonialism – of geographies, institutions and bodies – in which we are all to varying degrees implicated. I am interested in what South African performers bring to the stage in a Canadian context because our histories and the social problems that have resulted from them are not dissimilar. Canada and South Africa are both nation states built on the violent appropriation of land, resources, and cultures. Colonies were established in both lands during the seventeenth century by Europeans: the British, French, German and Dutch, in order to expand their colonial and imperial power. The British Crown wrested control of the North American colonies from the French during the eighteenth century and took measures such as the 1876 ‘Indian Act’ to further their colonial dominance over the

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Indigenous populations by way of governance, education laws and land use. The South African ‘Natives Land Act’ of 1913 functioned with some similarities, and it is widely rumoured that Canada’s reservation system offered a blueprint for the ongoing systemic oppression of indigenous populations globally, including early policy that bolstered the later Afrikaans Apartheid system (Krebs 2012; Popplewell 2010). While I draw analogies between the South African works and social justice issues that are specific to Canada, I do not suggest that one is a translation of, or solution for, the other. Rolando Vazquez warns of the danger of allowing translation to result in erasure: ‘translation brings to view the epistemic borders where a politics of visibility is at play between erasure and visibility’ (2011: 27). The politics of visibility provides the potential for greater accessibility to subaltern epistemologies only if that translation is able to represent a moment where a ‘way of knowing’ becomes inserted more accessibly into a new context, while resisting being overshadowed by the already dominant knowledges. My hope is that the complexities of Nyamza’s South African narratives in conversation with the difficult knowledges of Canada’s colonial/decolonial truths will increase the visibility of our shared and present colonial legacies. We need first to acknowledge that the traditional theatre space often upholds structures of colonialism by adhering to a Westernised ‘epistemic monoculture’ (Kerr 2014: 83). In understanding the traditional theatre space as an institution of public memory, I ask in what ways can this space also serve as a site where a public can be confronted by and interrogate their cultural heritage (Simon 2011: 193)? Dance is an embodied form of communication, one in which particular colonial and patriarchal systems of power are both upheld and challenged. During apartheid, ballet, a European (white) dance form, was privileged as superior, and understood by the dominant culture to be a dance aesthetic to which all other dance and movement styles were inferior. To this end, ballet companies were well funded

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and ballet technique provided the movement foundation for tertiary dance education. Sharon Friedman notes in her introduction to Post-Apartheid Dance: Many Bodies Many Voices Many Stories: ‘Both the colonial and apartheid regimes devalued indigenous African culture reducing it at best to ethnic curiosity. The apartheid government, no longer a Europe colony, nevertheless chose to value and fund ballet as a high art form above all forms of dance’ (2012: 2). Craighead elaborates: ‘Apartheid and its severe imposition of the notion of separateness meant that the Black/White dichotomy was fuelled by an ideological discourse that violently placed White on a pedestal and Black at its base’ (2006: 22). However, Friedman points to two prominent South African choreographers, both women, Mamela Nyamza and Dada Masilo (circa 2008), whose styles she describes as ‘deconstructive’ and ‘highly experimental’, who offer alternative and important voices in South Africa’s ballet landscape (2012: 5). These artists are using their mastery of ballet in conjunction with other forms of South African dance to challenge the racist and colonial dichotomy of high art/low art, in both the form and content of their work, and thereby are profoundly engaged in decolonising the stage. Often described biographically as a mother, an artist and an activist, Nyamza has built a reputation for developing choreography that boldly confronts current (South African) social and political issues. Born in Gugulethu, a township outside of Cape Town, as a child Nyamza trained at the Zama Dance School, which was housed in a donated church space and under the tutelage of the late Arlene Westergaard, who required a special permit to travel into the township during the height of apartheid when the dance school opened in 1985. Nyamza continued on to the prestigious Pretoria Dance Technikon (renamed Tshwane University of Technology) where she received a National Diploma in Ballet, and thus Nyamza became a trailblazer as a Black woman in the ballet world. In 1998 she received a scholarship

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to study at the Ailey School, the training centre for Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, in New York City, and subsequently toured internationally in large commercial shows such as The Lion King (Netherlands), before coming into her own as a conceptual contemporary choreographer. Artist and dance critic, Nicola van Straaten, refers to Nyamza as ‘one of the most important choreographers and dance artists in South Africa today’ (2016); dance scholar Ketu Katrak hails her as a ‘choreo-activist’ (2017) and eminent South African dance critic Adrienne Sichel refers to her as an ‘aesthetic anarchist’ (2017). Recently, Nyamza has been announced as the National Arts Festivals (Grahamstown) Featured Artist for 2018, the first time the honour has been granted to a choreographer. As the featured artist, a number of Nyamza’s past works will be presented, including her first and formative work Hatch (2007), which she developed into the perennially toured Hatched (2008). Both Hatched and The Meal utilise ballet, modern/contem­ porary, and African dance forms to underscore critical and political content. Nyamza’s work narratively probes colonial legacies of racialised disenfranchisement and the ways in which racial and gendered biases are inscribed on the body. Her inclusion in the Spotlight festival line-up was an unveiled invitation by Jocelyn for Nyamza to reclaim the Westernised Canadian contemporary theatre space through her subversive aesthetics. This is significant if we consider any theatrical space to inherently uphold the epistemologies of the cultures it represents. This festival and its spaces obviously support Euro-Western artistic practices, aesthetics, and institutional authority. When artists like Nyamza enter from outside the dominant culture, they challenge the boundaries of cultural knowledge. This is intensified in Nyamza’s work in the ways in which she uses familiar markers of Western theatrical performance to question the dominant stories of EuroWestern colonial histories. In his introduction to Decolonizing the Stage, Christopher Balme defines ‘theatrical syncretism’ as the process whereby

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culturally contrasting signs and codes are merged together, an aesthetic predicated on cultural exchange and change (1999: 1, 3). However, he is also concerned with the ways in which ‘syncretic dramatists’ consciously work with the visual semiotics of the body as a dramaturgical tool (167), using early examples of South African township performance (e.g. Woza Albert) to describe how visual corporeality can be utilised to create political statements. Balme notes that the aesthetic semiotics of township theatre provided a place where traditional performance could be ‘resemanticized in a particular way’ (169) for international audiences in a touring context. However, in both The Meal and in Hatched, Nyamza plays with this resemanticisation, embracing her ability to inscribe her own meanings in specific movements and body, through her own experiences and stories. In both pieces, Nyamza reacts to the fetishisation that she has experienced both as a dancer and as a black woman. Nyamza demonstrates how she uses syncretic dance and resists dominant cultural forms in both performances. In the opening moments of Hatched, she uses syncretism critically when she appears as an iconic, even stereotypical, image of an African women topless with her washing balanced on top of her head, but en pointe, juxtaposing markers of classical ballet and domestic labour. In dancing en pointe, Nyamza signals her training and mastery of this western dance form. The act of balancing a heavy load on one’s head while working, though much more mundane, is also a learned technique. The unlikely combination of the two physical acts which simultaneously reference gendered domestic work and an elite western dance form serves both to question the eliteness of the dance performance, and it draws attention to the precarity and resilience of gendered and racialised domestic labour. The Meal engages with issues of western cultural hegemony more directly as Nyamza blends classical ballet and South Africa indigenous dance choreography into a mocking version of Swan Lake, thereby subverting the dominance of classical

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dance, and suggesting that the two divergent forms can hold equal space and importance on the Western stage. The tone of The Meal is set by Nyamza kneeling in front of a matronly white woman, performed by musician and storyteller Dinah Eppel, representing her first childhood ballet teacher. There is a clear and loving bond between them. Initially, they mirror each other’s movements, swaying and conversing in isiXhosa until, with care, they each gather and twist their hair into a ballet bun, the traditional hair style of classical ballet, which is thought to elongate the dancer’s neck, while not distracting from the litheness of the dancing body. Most importantly, it should be as smooth and tightly controlled as the dancer herself. Eppel demonstrates with her long silky grey hair. However, Nyamza is unable to imitate the action, not having the hair to actually pull up into a bun, so Eppel pulls a long braid from her robes and pins it to the top of Nyamza’s head, while she squirms in discomfort. Eppel also gives postural notes to Nyamza: ‘shoulders down’ and ‘back tall’. These notes mark a clear cultural and hegemonic shift in the performance, as she switches from speaking isiXhosa to English, the language of cultural dominance. This same hegemony is physically reflected in Eppel’s helping Nyamza into an infantilising pink tutu for her training in classical ballet. This opening scene clearly demonstrates how the colonial hegemonies, articulated through cultural forms, both linguistic and embodied, impact on the personal relationship between Nyamza and her beloved teacher. In the next sequence Nyamza transforms into an accomplished classically trained dancer who captivates her audience with her technical precision. As she finishes the dance sequence, a younger dancer (Kirsty Ndawo) enters from stage left, holding a pink tutu which Nyamza helps her to put on, replicating Eppel in the first scene. She then teaches Ndawo the choreography that she has just finished performing, though this time she gives instructions in isiXhosa rather than English. Through the scene, both dancers struggle to get their tutus to fit comfortably. They pull and

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rearrange the material over their bottoms throughout the piece; a poignant demonstration of Emilyn Claid’s evocative description of ballet’s disdain for bodies that do not conform: ‘up, up and away: chin up, tits up, eyes lifted, bum clenched, knees pulled up, stomach lifted, hair scraped back – fight, fight, fight against the falling expanse of the flesh’ (2006: 20). We are reminded constantly of Nyamza’s introductory lines to the audience as they enter the theatre space: ‘I must not have a big bum’, which she repeats over and over. During the classical dance instruction, a different type of movement begins to emerge. The movement is frenzied but brief, pulled back within the structure of the classical technique, until it can no longer be contained. The strict ballet form breaks down as the musically complex and athletic forms of African dance rhythms take its place. Thus Nyamza and Ndawo deconstruct the classical form, performing the tensions between resistance and conformity in their bodies as the earlier recognizable choreography of the swans from Swan Lake is mocked and replaced by first an ostrich, then other bird forms, they also ‘flip us the bird’2 at one point. The performance culminates with a revision of Swan Lake’s Dying Swan performance, with both Nyamza and Ndawo alternating between South African and ballet dance forms. Nyamza carries and cradles Ndawo, Ndawo pulls the pins holding Nyamza’s bun in place, flinging them one by one onto the stage until the bun and the braid are removed from Nyamza’s head. Thus Nyamza performatively demonstrates how bodies are colonised, and how cultural epistemologies function, restrain and oppress not only cultures but individual people. In this she ‘resemanticises’ dance and its place in colonial epistemologies. However, Nyamza offers another cultural challenge toward the end of this performance, when she burns impepho – an indigenous African plant that is dried and burnt to communicate with one’s ancestors – at the back of the stage. This is a powerful gesture whereby Nyamza not only literally permeates the institutional Western theatre space with an

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alien, unfamiliar and astringent smoke that physically assaults the audience’s senses, but which also challenges cultural expectations. It sites ancestors, so brings ritual into this space, and may even cite Indigenous North American cultures.3 It breaks the smoking ban for all public indoor spaces in Canada, including the front and backstage spaces of theatres. This act, with its potential for cultural offence on many levels, calls attention to the challenges of sharing deeply rooted cultural practices transnationally within the institutions that control such actions, while signalling that culture is also hegemonic. The carefully staged act of burning a herb on stage draws attention to accepted codes of behaviour. Nyamza’s ignoring of and breaking a rule raises the question of who has authority to make and enforce such rules, on what basis and for whom? It harks back to Nyamza’s earlier instructions to Ndawo, through gritted teeth and a fake smile, to ‘look at the audience, look at them. Now smile, smile at them. Are they smiling back?’ In these moments, the audience is confronted with a dichotomy: the stereotype of the ballerina who is elegant, controlled, polite, and yet also able to challenge these values via other modes of performance – which highlight the implicit paternalism of the venue, audience and even festival to which she is pandering. This creates a dissonance in the audience expectations and potentially triggers them to reflect on other moments of colonial paternalism that have resulted in subjugation. The ‘educating’ of Nyamza and Ndawo into western cultural forms is easily compared to the aspects of colonial projects that saw cultural and academic education being used to assimilate indigenous populations into Euro-Western norms. In this context, the Canadian history of Residential Schools are an obvious point of comparison. During the nineteenth century, the Canadian Government aggressively assimilated Indigenous children into English, Canadian and Christian customs through forced removal from their homes and relocation to government- and church-run boarding schools. This was done for decades in an attempt

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to abolish native customs by depriving multiple generations of their homes, families and cultural practices. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. While church and government claimed the role of benefactor in educating the ‘uneducated’ Indian, First Nations communities continue to be devastated by the Residential School system. Physical, sexual and psychological abuses were widespread and common within the schools; the legacies of institutional humiliation and debasement of generations of First Nations peoples have resulted in disproportionately high rates of abuse, alcoholism and suicide within their communities to this day. When the final report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the Residential School System was released in June 2015, it documented the experiences of survivors, families and communities affected by the residential school system and detailed the totality of policies affecting Indigenous peoples which amounted to cultural, geographical and physical genocide.4 Nyamza similarly broke an accepted code of conduct for the theatre at the end of Hatched, when she asked the audience: ‘Does anyone have a cigarette?’ When no one responded she suggested that maybe we are too healthy in Canada; and then asked, ‘Are there any South Africans in the crowd?’ There are, but they won’t give her a cigarette either … ‘I have permission, please’, she pleaded. With no one willing to give her a cigarette she asked for a tissue instead, multiple people began digging through their bags and pockets, and she accepted a tissue from a man in the front row. In a similar way to the burning of impepho in The Meal, here Nyamza is challenging the audience’s willingness to challenge the authority of the institution, this time on her behalf. While no one is willing to offer a cigarette, the comfort measure of a tissue offered to a woman in (or feigning) distress seems socially necessary and easily accommodated. However, this moral value and response is not so simple and resonates in complex ways in the Canadian context. As in any marginalised community, girls and women tended

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to bear the brunt of colonialism’s violent legacies. In Canada, there continues to be ongoing investigations into the ‘disappearances’ of Indigenous women by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) who aim to examine the systemic causes of all forms of violence against Indigenous women, girls and members of the LGBTQ2S community in Canada.5 The Red Dress Project is an aesthetic response to the morethan-1000 missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, whereby the project will collect 600 red dresses by community donation and install these in public spaces throughout Winnipeg and across Canada to draw attention to the gendered and racialised nature of violent crimes against Aboriginal women and to, ‘evoke a presence through the marking of absence’.6 The abundance of red material in Hatched speaks to passion, the labour of womanhood. It is as innocuous as monthly menses (a source of economic and educational oppression for disadvantaged girls and women), as mundane as childbirth (reminding us of the still high rates of maternal death globally), and as violent as the rape statistics that plague indigenous communities worldwide. The red of Nyamza’s Hatched and the red of The Red Dress Project serve a similar aesthetic purpose, to thread the violent experience of women into a larger global tapestry. Through the narratives of transition and transformation, resistance and resilience that Nyamza’s work embodies, the Canadian audience is offered a lens through which they are invited to consider the complexities of the postcolony, including their own Canadian contexts. I argue that when Nyamza brings her South African stories to a Canadian stage she is countering Western dominant ideologies and calling for new epistemologies to be recognised. Mignolo describes decoloniality as a form of ‘epistemic disobedience’ (Mignolo 2009: 122–3); we must acknowledge that the laws and institutions that have provided the architecture for colonialism position themselves as self-justified by their

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own epistemological existence: it is subversion of colonial ‘knowledge’ that allows for decolonial epistemologies to achieve ascendency. One of the ways Nyamza practises ‘epistemic disobedience’ is by inverting North–South dichotomies, offering South–North models of embodied postcolonial critique. Her embodied South African stories challenge Canadian audiences to understand and empathise with her accounts of cultural subjugation as well as the empowerment she experiences through telling her stories. Through the embodied actions of dance, both classical and African, Nyamza opens windows on indigenous/colonised worlds, which become more difficult to shut, as they reveal uncomfortable truths that reside closer to home. However, although Canada’s mainstream theatre venues often do offer works by artists who are similarly probing postcolonial concerns, like Nyamza, they are invited from outside Canada, often from the global South. This suggests a willingness to engage with stories of marginalisation and injustices, but only with the protective buffer of geographic and political distance. However, contemporary dance from marginalised and Indigenous communities from within Canada have been overlooked for a long time, particularly prior to the TRC, due to long histories of systemic exclusion. Marginalised and Indigenous Canadian communities have been excluded, with very few being programmed through publicly funded or government-supported theatre com­ panies, suggesting that they are not yet perceived as having a justified place in mainstream Canadian culture. This is ironic, given that at the same time global multiculturalism has been embraced by the Canadian cultural world. This discrepancy in whose work gets staged and whose voice gets heard underscores the importance of works like Nyamza’s being staged in mainstream theatres in Canada, as these embodied colonial critiques provoke an awareness of these issues of colonial injustices, forcing mainstream audiences in Canada to see and acknowledge similar issues closer to home. However, in highlighting significant work by artists from

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abroad, it is important not to negate those Indigenous/First Nations dancers who are creating and staging contemporary work in Canada. For example, Toronto-based contemporary Indigenous dance company Red Sky Performance is creating important works, as evidenced by being granted a multi-year residency with Canadian Stage for the 2017–18 season. It is also important to acknowledge who these critical conversations benefit and who they exclude. Nyamza is both aware of and articulates these issues as she tours. At the Tanzkongress 2016 conference in Berlin, Germany, Nyamza was an invited artist who provided dance workshops and participated in structured discussions around decolonising dance. In conversation with dramaturge Guy Cools, Nyamza situates herself in these conversations on decolonisation and articulates the implications of co-opting her work for these discussions: ‘Sitting with her naked back to the audience, she embarks on an autobiographical monologue: “I feel so colonized. Just by sitting here and being the other. I have always been the other, even at home in Africa”’ (Cools 2017: 3). When finally asked if Senegalese choreographer Germaine Acogny (a fellow artist presenting at the conference) and Nyamza feel comfortable with how their work had been framed within the debate on (de)colonisation, ‘Nyamza admit[ted] that she didn’t like the title of the session. “We don’t have a word for de-colonizing in my language and I still feel colonized, being here”’ (quoted in Cools 2017: 4). Cools concludes: ‘Klein and Jansen admit that creating this specific label was the only way to give Acogny and Nyamza place and a voice in the program and another member of the audience has to come to their rescue, stating that “maybe it is our de-colonisation and cleansing process, more than theirs”’ (Cools 2017: 4). Here Cools discusses the problematic nature of applying labels in these complex socio-cultural contexts. He cautions that, ‘labels are still (ab)used to (re)install hierarchies of values’ (1). It is my concern that scholarship such as this may do the same. It is with some discomfort that I analyse Nyamza’s creative work because, in discussing

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how her divergent or shared experiences relate to Canadian histories, and in interpreting her stories as an exercise in empathy – that may aid in bringing our colonial past closer to an equitable and decolonised future – it is necessary to situate Nyamza, again, as an outsider – but one who is taking the space of the indigenous insider, and so reinscribing their absence and silence. Nonetheless, I do argue that Nyamza’s personal and on-stage stories represent larger cultural struggles: she is demonstrating on stage the layering of social meanings that lie within the messy relationship between colonial and indigenous aesthetics, and the potential for empowerment that can be accessed through the reclamation of institutional spaces. In Canada, First Nations peoples are reclaiming access to cultural practices and strengthening their communities from within. The findings of the TRC have resulted in a noticeable attempt within the mainstream settler-colonial Canadian society to build awarenesses and acknowledgements of the past and ongoing injustices experienced by First Nations and Indigenous peoples. Examples of this are seen in the inclusion of Residential School stories in public school history curriculums, public and institutional push back against the sesquicentennial ‘Canada 150’ celebrations that occurred in 2017, popularly dubbed ‘Colonial 150’, and the adoption of Land Acknowledgements read at the beginning of governmental, institutional, public and private events. As noted earlier, it is in part due to outside artists such as Nyamza, who are able to embody and illuminate the processes of assimilation and the effects these processes have had on the indigenous body, sense of self and cultural expression, that space, both physical (on stage) and empathetic (in the audience), is made for amendment and reconciliations closer to home. What Nyamza brought to the Canadian stage provided an aesthetic framework that utilised familiar classical ballet with South African dance to articulate postcolonial and decolonial interventions – an example of theatrical syncretism being

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deployed both as an aesthetic frame, and to push for new meanings to be afforded both styles. Through the form and content of her work, The Meal and Hatched were well positioned to provoke new engagements with Canada’s uncom­ fortable relationship with postcolonial, decolonial, and settler-colonial dynamics. Nyamza’s work is deeply per­ sonal to her South African experience, yet it also has the ability to transcend geographical boundaries as she connects to an international audience as a gay woman, mother and artist. It is through Nyamza’s ability to reach across inter­ national borders, to permeate local conversations, that the potential for the ‘stage’ to be decolonised through shared trans­national and postcolonial performance conversations is realised. When Nyamza’s work shifts between geographical and socio-political locations, the performance’s semiotic significance also shifts to reflect the settler-colonial tensions of its new setting. These semiotic shifts disrupt local stories of power, by reinterpreting the common understandings of historical narratives, and thus introducing the possibility for decolonising the stage.

NOTES 1 See http://jombakhuluma.blogspot.ca/2014/08/luyanda-sidiya-fulfilling-adven turous.html 2 A colloquial term for raising only the middle finger, an obscene gesture in Western culture, intended to cause offence. 3 While smudging and the ceremonial burning of herbs is a part of Indigenous North American culture and would be presumably recognizable to a largely settler-colonial audience, the ritual is still rarely shared at or integrated into Western cultural events. 4 See www.trc.ca 5 LGBTQ2S: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, queer and twospirit. Two-spirit (2S) is specific to the queer identity of (some) North American Indigenous people. On violence against Indigenous women and girls, see www. mmiwg-ffada.ca 6 See www.theredressproject.org

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REFERENCES Balme, Christopher (1999), Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical syncretism and post-colonial drama. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Black, Jaime (2014), The Red Dress Project, www.theredressproject.org (accessed 10 June 2017). Canadian Stage (2015), Spotlight South Africa festival. www.canadianstage.com/ Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WSco ntent::loadArticle::article_id=8E5E0202-E34E-49A6-A0D8-D903D96C97DE (accessed 27 April 2018). Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Chapter 3903 (2014), Equality Statement and the Mississauga Land Acknowledgement, https://3903.cupe. ca/2014/07/30/equality-statement-and-the-mississauga-land-acknowledgement (accessed 10 June 2017). CBC News (2008), ‘A History of Residential Schools in Canada: FAQs on residential schools, compensation and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, CBC News, 16 May, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-incanada-1.702280 (accessed 10 June 2017). Claid, E. (2006), Yes? No! Maybe…: Seductive ambiguity in dance. New York: Routledge. Cools, Guy (2017), ‘Politics of Labelling and Politics of Dance Techniques: Report on the session de-colonizing dance – Postcoloniality and contemporaneity’, www.tanzkongress.de/files/politics_of_labelling_and_politics_of_dance_ techniques_guycool s_eng.pdf (accessed 17 July 2017). Crabb, Michael (2015), ‘Spotlight South Africa is Personal and Political for Choreographers’, The Star (Toronto), 8 April, www.thestar.com/entertainment/ stage/2015/04/08/spotlight-south-africa-is-personal-and-political-forchoreographers.html (accessed 29 October 2017). Craighead, C. (2006), ‘Black Dance: Navigating the politics of ‘black’ in relation to the dance ‘object’ and the body of discourse. Critical Arts, vol. 20, no. 2:16–33. Feltham, Kymberley (2015) Spotlight South Africa: Umnikelo & Dominion, My Entertainment World, 8 May, www.myentertainmentworld.ca/2015/05/spotlightsouth-africa-umnikelo-dominion (accessed 23 May 2018). Friedman, Sharon (2012) Post-Apartheid Dance: Many bodies many voices many stories. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kaplan, Jon (2015), ‘Preview: Spotlight South Africa’, NOW (Toronto), 7 April, https://nowtoronto.com/culture/stage/preview-spotlight-south-africa (accessed 27 April 2018). Katrak, Ketu H. (2017), ‘Politics of Performance: Negotiating contemporary dance in post-apartheid South Africa for advocacy of marginalized communities. Choros International Dance Journal, no. 6, http://chorosjournal.com/docs/choros6/ CHOROS_6.pdf#page=37 (accessed 29 October 2017). Kerr, Jeannie (2014), ‘Western Epistemic Dominance and Colonial Structures: Considerations for thought and practice in programs of teacher education’. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 3, no. 2: 83–104. Krebs, Mike (2012) ‘Architect of Apartheid’, Briarpatch Magazine (Regina, SK), 1 May, https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/architect-of-apartheid (accessed 5 November 2017). Mignolo, Walter (2009), ‘Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-

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66  Kymberley Feltham Colonial Freedom’. Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 26, nos 7–8: 1–23. National Film Board (NFB) (2013), ‘We Were Children: Reactions from residential school survivors and other viewers’, NFB/blog, 21 August 2013, http://blog.nfb. ca/blog/2013/08/21/we-were-children-survivors-viewers-comments (accessed 17 July 2017). Popplewell, Brett (2010), ‘A History of Missteps’, The Star (Toronto), 30 October, www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2010/10/30/a_history_of_missteps.html (accessed 2 November 2017). Sichel, Adrienne (2014), ‘Luyanda Sidiya – Fulfilling an Adventurous Spirit’, Khuluma, 25 August, http://jombakhuluma.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/luyandasidiya-fulfilling-adventurous.html (accessed 8 February 2018). ——(2017), ‘Testifying for Humanity’, JOMBA! Contemporary Dance, 22 August, https://medium.com/@JombaDance/testifying-for-humanity-876a8c177185 (accessed 2 November 2017).Simon, Roger I. (2011), ‘Afterword: The Turn to Pedagogy – A needed conversation on the practice of curating difficult knowledge’. In Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places, E. Lehrer, C. Milton and M. Patterson (eds). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. van Straaten, Nicola (2016), ‘Mamela Nyamza’s Constant Reinvention’, Between 10 and 5 (Johannesburg), 16 September, http://10and5.com/2016/09/16/mamelanyamzas-constant-reinvention (accessed 8 November 2017). Vazquez, Rolando (2011), ‘Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on modernity’s epistemic violence. Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 24, no. 1: 27–44.

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Unmuting South African Citizenship through Integrated/ Disability Dance YVETTE HUTCHISON

During apartheid, the arts in South Africa were mobilised as ‘a weapon of the struggle’ to engage audiences with disavowed issues; the toyi-toyi1 is an iconic example of embodied activist resistance. However, in 1989 at an ANC in-house seminar on culture, Albie Sachs presented a paper in which he argued that, while this approach to culture had been necessary, it had skewed the imagination and creativity of South Africans, resulting in ‘the multiple ghettos of the apartheid imagination’ (1991: 187). He insisted that artists should shift from viewing culture as something ‘purely instrumental and nondialectical’, to something more open, as an imaginative way to ‘remake ourselves’ (189). The new challenge, he argued, was to find an aesthetic that has the ‘capacity to expose contradictions and reveal hidden tensions’, to find ways of expressing a new sense of cultural diversity and political pluralism (188, 190– 3). He called for the use of imagination to unlock these new ways of thinking about cultural production, and I would add South African citizenship. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996–98) did much to address disavowed memories and histories, including gendered violence, and inclusive citizenship. However, we must consider how these challenges can and have been extended through the arts. Thus, I want to consider how inclusive/ integrated/ disabled dance2 in South Africa is both exposing contradictions and unlocking new ways of thinking about cultural production. 67

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68  Yvette Hutchison

I deploy Bree Hadley’s (2014) arguments on the importance of seeing, imaging and imagining the Other as my point of departure for analysing citizenship through the lens of disability dance. The European Commission defines active citizenship as: ‘Participation in civil society, community and/or political life, characterised by mutual respect and non-violence and in accordance with human rights and democracy’ (Hoskins et al. 2006: 10). The South Africa Bill of Responsibilities for the Youth of South Africa (2012), which emerges from the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, includes the right to equality, the right to dignity, the right to work, the right to freedom and security of the person. However, this is not the case for many in South Africa, and certainly not true for people living with disabilities. The Integrated National Disability Strategy White Paper, issued by the Office of the President, ack­ nowledged: ‘The majority of people with disabilities in South Africa have been excluded from the mains­tream of society and have thus been prevented from accessing fundamental social, political and economic rights’ (1997). Although strong lobbying from various groups in the last 10 years has led to government acknowledging disability issues and funding engagement in the cultural sector, it has not led to the everyday fundamental rights of disabled or differently abled people being addressed (see Government of South Africa 2016 White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities); nor has it addressed the racial and cultural issues of many African communities where disability is viewed as ‘ancestral punishment’, something that brings shame on the individual, family and community. It is thus worth con­ sider­ ing how citizen-subjects are socially and politically const­ituted, before analysing how the arts in general, and dance in particular, can expose the contradictions between legislated citizenship and the lived experience of citizens; and imaginatively suggest new ways of thinking about cultural production and citizenship.

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In society, the subject does not exist in herself. She is constituted firstly by being named, via what Habermas (1989) has termed the public sphere, which creates common understandings about the status and meaning of bodies in relation to various socio-political systems: race, class, ethnicity, gender, etc. Analyses based on Lacan, Foucault and Žižek suggest that to a large extent the meaning of a body emerges through acts of seeing and looking,3 which evaluate the extent to which individuals are successfully performing the roles society has defined for them in and through public spaces. Thus, bodies are ‘constructed through relations of power and, specifically, normative constraints that not only produce but also regulate various bodily beings’ (Butler 1993: ix).4 However, as Foucault argues, these processes are complex because, ‘[t]wo different things are involved here: the observing gaze, the act of observation on the one hand, and internalization on the other’ (Foucault 1996: 232). Thus, the citizen-subject is constituted by both external markers applied to her, and by a process of interiorisation whereby the citizen-subject mediates any collective image of how to be in terms of highly personalised preconceptions. It is important to understand our own complicities both as observers and observed subjects in these processes of constituting and performing complex identities. These processes become even more complicated when we try to represent these imaginings of a subject, so why through disability dance? Ann Cooper Albright has argued that dance, unlike any other forms of cultural production such as books and paintings, makes the body visible in the representation itself. Thus when we look at dance with disabled dancers, we are looking at the choreography and the disability. Cracking the porcelain image of the dancer as graceful sylph, disabled dancers force the viewer to confront the cultural opposite of the classical body – the grotesque body. (2001: 100)

Here Albright is using the term ‘grotesque’ in the Bhaktin­ ian context of carnival and spectacle. Without wanting to reiterate bodily stereotypes, she cites Mary Russo’s identifica­

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tion of two bodily tropes that are set in binary opposition to one another ‘to explore the transgressive nature of the “grotesque” body in order to see if and how the disabled body could deconstruct and radically reform the representational structures of dance performances’ (2001: 100). Rosso writes: The grotesque body is the open, protruding, extended, secreting body, the body of becoming, process, and change. The grotesque body is opposed to the classical body, which is monumental, static, closed and sleek, corresponding to the aspirations of bourgeois individualism; the grotesque body is connected to the rest of the world. (Russo 1986: 219).

So, when the antithetical disabled body enters a public space usually set aside for the super-able dancing body, its very presence challenges cultural representations of social, sexual and political norms and aspirations. As Petra Kuppers argues, while ‘[d]isability as a social category is not the same as race or gender … all three terms relate to differences constructed as binaries and as biological’ (2003: 5), and it is worth noting these binaries, and how they are constituted by one another. Robert McRuer has extended earlier analyses of the implica­tions of discourse for identity politics by setting up a con­versation between disability studies and queer theory in what has been termed ‘crip theory’.5 He reveals an assumed connection between heterosexuality and able-bodied identity, which he argues is imagined and composed in terms of neoliberal capitalism, and which, he argues ‘favors and implements the unrestricted flow of corporate capital’ (McRuer 2006: 2). This in turn explains the binary placement of disabled against able-bodied citizens, who are perceived to contribute to society, as opposed to needing support from it – physically, economically, etc. This exemplifies how, when combined with performance arts, disability becomes a powerful way to reveal how systems of social knowledge are produced as bodies, and meanings are aligned in a grid of biopower (Foucault, 1976). Inserting the ‘Other’, in this case the disabled body, into the moment renders the biopower system and its mechanisms momentarily visible

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(see Kuppers 2003 for an extended analysis of this argument). The processes whereby a citizen is constituted by systems of social knowledge that constitute and normalise bodies through the discourse was evidenced in South Africa under apartheid, where race was used as the primary marker to define a person’s identity and their place in society. This enabled the white minority in power to retain political and economic control of black bodies, who were seen primarily in terms of labour. This control was structurally affected through legislation, including the Group Areas Act (1950), which assigned racial groups to different residential and busi­ ness sections in urban areas, and various Pass Laws,6 which limited black South Africans to their role as migrant workers, without any wider rights of citizenship that would guarantee them legal, political, social or economic power. Ethnicity, alongside language, was mobilised to further separate groups that could collaborate and potentially oppose minority rule in South Africa. As Goldblatt and Meintjes argued at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), specifically-defined gender roles set up effective systems for the control and subordination of women that ‘have restricted their civil and political status … These form the basis of the “public-private” divide, which has given the men the role of civil and political representative of the household, to the exclusion of women’ (1996: 5). Much has been written about these disavowed aspects of apartheid, but ‘ability’ as a marker of intersectionality (see Crenshaw 1989) has remained almost invisible in South African scholarship, apart from the work of Samuel and Loots. Nonetheless, the disabled body is implicated in these socio-political systems and hierarchies, as seen by the ways in which its appearance disrupts the normative narratives regarding the unity, universality and usefulness of the conventional human body which was articulated primarily through a capitalist frame of economic production during apartheid. The consequences of this articulation have been powerfully critiqued in many plays, often using physical

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theatre; like Manaka’s Egoli, and Maponya’s The Hungry Earth. However, these were primarily male perspectives, focused on experiences of men in mines. More recently, the extended domestic and colonial subordination of black women to the roles of servants, nannies, nurses, maids and cleaners has been increasingly addressed by contemporary performers, often through physical theatre and dance. (See for example the work of Chuma Sopotela and Mamela Nyamza). However, if black women and their issues are marginalised and muted, those related to disability are all but silent and invisible, which is ironic given how hypervisible people with physical disabilities are in public spaces where their ‘strange’ corporeality or behaviour is often perceived as spectacle. The reason for this paradox is analysed by Bree Hadley who, expanding on McRuer, argues that, while imaginings of disability that dominate Western culture present disability as a mistake, or a warning of what happens when bodies go wrong, disability is, in fact, central to the continuing cultural labour of defining the productive, useful, unified citizen’s body. The disabled body is the extreme edge or margin that allows the non-disabled body to define itself in relation to what it is not. (Hadley, 2014: 6)

In this definition, the terms ‘productive’ and ‘useful’ high­ light a neoliberal model of social value. In the African con­ text, the idea of the ‘mistake’ is often expanded to include social taboos, so that the othering of disabled people is both an explanation of what may seem to be inexplicable and serves as a warning, mobilised to encourage particular moral or spiritual behaviour (see United Nations report, 2016: 5) How then can dance expose the contradictions in how citizen­ ship is conceptualised and socially constructed in contemporary South Africa?

Disability and dance in (South) Africa Although I am going to use South Africa as my context for analysis, it is worth noting that, according to UN statistics,

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there are currently about 80 million persons with disabilities in Africa. A World Health Organization source maintains that about 40 per cent of Africa’s population consists of people with disabilities, including 10–15 per cent of schoolage children. (Disability in Africa, last updated 2016). The national disability prevalence rate is 7.5 per cent in South Africa, affecting about 2 870 130 persons (Statistics South Africa, 2011). I must admit to excitement when I saw how far South Africa has come in engaging with disabilities in dance. As a Drama student with mobility issues at the then University of Natal, Durban in the 1980s, I experienced a great willingness to include me in movement classes, but no particular awareness of how to integrate a student like myself. Nor was I aware of initiatives like John Mthethwa’s KwaZulu-Natal Ballroom Dance Association for the Disabled, based at the Stable Theatre, Alice Street, Durban. Since the 1990s, a significant number of organisations have mobilised to include people from diverse cultural, ethnic, socio-economic and ability backgrounds in their theatre and dance programmes. Many of these programmes have a social outreach agenda, like Lean On Dance, a nonprofit making organisation which was established in Soweto ‘to promote our African culture to the youth in previously disadvantaged communities in 1993. Our primary objective is to remove the youth from the streets with its negative consequences such as delinquency and promiscuity’ (Lean On Dance 2011), and which also includes disabled youths. Various groups in South Africa are teaching ballroom dancing to people that have various disabilities. In response to this trend in other provinces, Gladys Bullock set up the Circle of Dance Academy in the Western Cape in 1994 to introduce ‘mentally challenged people, the blind and visually impaired, the deaf, the wheelchair bound and paraplegics’ to dancesport, ballroom, Latin American and social dancing styles, both for fun and competitively (see www. circleofdance.net). However, when venues like Artscape, a

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major cultural centre in Cape Town, include companies like this alongside well-known theatre makers, as they did for the Women’s Humanity Festival’s7 finale Women in Song in 2014, it facilitates dialogue between gender and disability issues in relation to how South Africa is defining Humanity, and thus citizenship. This suggests a growing awareness regarding the need for training and dance opportunities, and a new way of thinking about cultural production that is bringing community-based dance closer to professional work, moving it from the margins towards various cultural centres. Another important area in which integrated or disability dance is growing is in the context of Education, particularly following Curriculum 2005, gazetted in 1997 by the Education Minister, whereby new arts and culture learning were emphasised. Gerard Samuel (2001) has contributed significantly to our understanding of the issues these changes brought for children with disabilities in Kwa-Zulu Natal, and how the government-funded Playhouse Company responded to this mandate between 1997 and 1999. He has written about the Very Special Arts (VSA) in post-1994 South Africa, which sought to work with children with disabilities across the racial divisions of apartheid (2012). In both publications he highlights the complex socio-economic legacies of apartheid that impact on this work. Samuel’s and Loots’ work and writing provide the segue for me into professional integrated/disability dance in South Africa, as their companies straddle the community and professional theatre realms.8 Disability dance in South Africa evolved in much the same way as workshop theatre did, through a process of sharing and collaboration between local artists and those from the global north. As theatre practitioners like Athol Fugard and Barney Simon drew on Grotowski and Joan Littlewood to create workshop theatre, so Gary Gordon’s First Physical Theatre Company, established in 1993,9 was strongly influenced by the London-based DV8 Physical Theatre. Candoco Dance Company, ‘the first professional touring company of disabled and non-disabled

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dancers in Europe’ (Benjamin 2002: 5), founded in London in 1991, defined South Africa’s integrated/disability dance.10 Founders Celeste Dandeker and Adam Benjamin developed work through improvisation and other exercises because, as he argues, ‘[e]ach new student to our class should encourage us to re-evaluate the body and the body of knowledge that we have come to take for granted’ (6). For Benjamin, ‘integrated practice is about problem-solving’ (10), being equipped to be reflective and respond to issues as they arise. This suggests a creative practice that works beyond pre-set choreographies, that resides in the bodies and experiences of the performers and thus offers an interesting model for responsive citizenship. It also suggests transferable skills from art to life and back. In 2000 the British Council brought Adam Benjamin out to South Africa for the Tshwaragano in Touch Integrated Dance Project. Gladys Aghulas11 had studied Integrated Contemporary Dance Teaching with Adam Benjamin in the 1990s, and was rehearsal director for this project, as it toured nationally and internationally from 2001. Benjamin’s work resonated in South Africa, where artists have long worked in ensemble, improvisation-based workshop-style processes. From this project, Remix was founded and directed by Nicola Visser in 2000, and formalised as a Trust and NonProfit Organisation in 2001, with Malcolm Black. In 2005 it became a full-time professional company, resident at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The aim of the company was to bring together more and more differently abled performers onto South African stages and to develop integrated dance locally. From Remix, Unmute Dance Company was born, and it is currently based in Cape Town as part of the Artscape Resource Centre Incubator programme. The impact of this kind of local-global connection can be seen in how it has resonated through the country. In KwaZulu Natal in 2002, Gerard Samuel set up the first youth disability dance programme with the Open Air School in Durban, which led to his establishing the LeftfeetFIRST

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youth dance company. In 2008, when Samuel was appointed head of the Dance School at the University of Cape Town, he approached Lliane Loots, founder of FLATFOOT Dance Company to take over the running of LeftFeetFIRST. FLATFOOT was already engaged in dance education that works against gender and racial stereotyping. It is important to see how disability dance has developed in South Africa from its inception because, as Albright has argued, ‘just as all disabilities are not created equal, dances made with disabled dancers are not completely alike’; some replicate ‘the representational frames of traditional proscen­ ium performances, emphasizing the elements of virtuosity and technical expertise to reaffirm a classical body in spite of its limitations’, while others ‘work to break down the distinctions between the classical and the grotesque body, radically restructuring traditional ways of seeing dancers’ (2013: 99). We see how later choreographers such as Lliane Loots have picked up Benjamin’s baton. When noting the challenges of teaching disabled dance as an able-bodied dancer, she particularly analysed how choreographic phrasing can emphasise a dancer’s inability to perform par­ticular kinds of movements or respond to particular stimuli, thereby reinforcing the dominance of normative bodies and discursive modes of being. She argued that a different choreographic approach can enable each dancer to ‘self-realise’, defining themselves in and through their own modes of performance (Loots 2015: 129). This requires that the facilitator moves from demonstrating a movement to developing ‘a system of instruction that did not specify a leg, arm, torso movement, but asks dancers to find an action or effort such that a dance phrase or piece of choreography could be made from it’ (129). This approach to dance as a social form suggests immense possibilities for citizenship that does not call for people to imitate a pre-defined identity or behaviour but responds to values and allows for various incarnations of collective ideas and ideals. I turn now to consider more closely how Unmute Dance

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Company is addressing contemporary disability issues while offering imaginative new ways of thinking about being citizens in South Africa.

Unmute Dance Company Themba Mbuli, who obtained his professional training at Moving into Dance Mophatong in 2007, choreographed the two performances I will analyse. Andile Vellem is a cofounder and Artistic Director of Unmute Dance Company and founding member of the Mixibility Network. He has worked with integrated dance in the USA, the UK and South Africa, where he danced professionally with Remix for six years. He works from his experiences as a deaf dancer who uses sign language as the source of his movement vocabulary. In publicity statements for Unmute, Vellum suggests that he brought the company together ‘to “un-mute” feelings, perceptions, social norms, expectations and deconstructing what society perceives as dance, while engaging overtly with this taboo subject’ (Behind the Scenes Communications 2014). The dancers include Nadine Mckenzie, a qualified integrated dance teacher, who trained at the ImpulsTanz International workshop in Vienna; and Zamukulingisa Sonjica a wheelchair performer, who also received his training at Remix Dance Company. The company is assisted by Jazzart trained Mpotseng Shuping, a sign language interpreter and the project manager for the Unmute Project. Unmute note the context in which they work: In work places, there are still companies who can’t employ people with disabilities. In public spaces, most things are inaccessible i.e. public transportation, access to buildings etc. Disability is still not being integrated; as a result to that, society does not know how to associate with people with disability. (Quoted in Artscape 2015)

These socio-economic issues – employment, access and social integration – highlight the material effects of how people are socially constituted. This exemplifies what Lévinas

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suggests that the process of ‘recognition, categorization and comprehension’ of a person ‘does not invoke these beings but only names them’ (1996: 9). He argues that this naming accomplish[es] a violence and a negation. A partial negation which is violence. This partiality is indicated by the fact that, without disappearing, those beings are within my power. Partial negation, which is violence, denies the independence of a being, it belongs to me. (Original emphasis, 1996: 9)

According to Lévinas, societal processes of labelling result in the dominant group or individual being able to define the degree of agency of the named subject, affecting their access to status, social institutions and even their terms of humanity and citizenship. The social effects of such labelling are evidenced directly in verbal or physical abuse, and indirectly, in the lack of facilities for disabled persons. Unmute situate themselves as actively engaging with these issues, beyond highlighting problems specific to communities of disabled people: Un-mute is obviously not the solution to this complex problem [of access], but it serves as a model for more inclusive and integrated society, hence this collaboration of artists with different artistic skills and mixed-abilities aims to encourage more integration and equality. This is a way of communicating what Andile believes is true collaboration and integration, a way of sharing skills, knowledge and stories. It is a first, he’s [sic] own art work and those he has worked with, in ‘Un-muting’. (Behind the Scenes Communications 2014)

This suggests that the company are actively offering a model for a more inclusive and integrated society. I will look at two of their performances to consider how this works in practice. I will consider particularly how their aesthetic and form extend beyond a model for collaboration between artists with different skills and abilities, to invite audiences to consider how they may be involved in integration and equality. I begin by analysing Trapped, which I saw in 2015, and which merges visual art, sound dialogue and dance in an autobiographical exploration of the emotional effects of each

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performer’s specific disability. The first challenge raised by this company is aesthetic, not in the broader Kantian sense that argues for a theory of judgement that combines pleasure with disinterestedness, which has been deconstructed in relation to disability by Tobin Siebers (2005, 2010). Rather, it engages the tension between aesthetics as an expression of taste, specifically with regard to notions of ‘beauty’ or attractiveness, and what Cohen et al. (2011: 5, 9) refer to as ‘aesthetic-as-language’, where a form or style is mobilised by an artist to evoke a particular affect, which we experience collectively as an audience. This challenge is raised as an audience is asked to consider what constitutes dance and a dancer; given that Andile Vellem is deaf, Nadine Mckenzie performs in a wheelchair, and Zama Sonjica has no legs below the upper thigh. The central aesthetic of this piece is the dialogue created between each dancer, their symbolic prop/s and the music to which they perform: Sonjica dances with shoes to music with a militant African beat. He polishes the shoes rhythmically, aggressively pushes those strung from wires above him, or attempts to attach them to his amputated thighs, later by means of wired prosthetic legs. Vellem becomes entangled and struggles with prosthetic arms attached to the floor and a vertical flat. Mckenzie performs to lyrical, nostalgic classic music, backlit in her wheelchair, before dancing an eerie pas de deux with a (ghostly) white doll suspended from above her, just out of reach (see Unmute Dance Company 2016b). The prosthetic legs and arms with which Sonjica and Vellum struggle respectively make visible the strategies of normalisation employed to render their ‘other’, or in Margrit Shildrick’s terms, ‘monstrous’, bodies normal (2002: 23). Mckenzie’s flying white doll refers to a social ideal which must forever elude her. Each of these interactions overtly draws attention to the performer’s feelings of frustration and entrapment that result from society’s responses to disabilities, which the person with a disability is required to overcome in order to perform the norm. This illustrates Snyder and

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Mitchell’s (2006) ‘cultural’ model of disability, which suggests that it is not the impairments, but the physical and normative structures of society that make people disabled. These dancers do not perform virtuosity in normative terms, which risk the erasure of their disabled bodies altogether. Instead, aesthetically, the choreographies highlight the performative innovations that have been defined by and emerge from the specific bodies of the dancers. This highlights the individuality of each of the performances in their own terms. The specificity of the performances resists the ‘violence of recognition, categorization and comprehension’ cited by Lévinas (1996: 9) in social naming processes. The performance clearly dramatises that disability is not a single experience, and that disabled bodies belong to idiosyncratic, unique people, who are not exclusively defined by their disabilities. Nowhere in this piece or the accompanying material do we get the backstories of the performers’ disabilities. Rather, we are required to see them as creative artists who are expressing and sharing emotions and inner landscapes that include struggles and dreams, as we do in non-disabled dance. The physical form facilitates a somatic, as opposed to a rational understanding of these experiences. This is important, because one cannot fully understand what one has not experienced, but the movement gives symbolic form to abstract emotions: I felt the dancers’ anger, frustration, sadness and strengths as they engaged with the emotional effects of their physical disabilities. The embodied form, beyond language, facilitated the possibility for an audience to see beyond these performers as ‘others’ that embody our fears, to an ‘alterity within’ (Sanders 2002: 97), where we recognise our own struggles and frustrations. However, we were not invited to just observe or empathise with these first-person expressions of disability in our own normative terms. The performance insists upon an audience gazing upon or staring at disabled bodies, which is complex, given that in many societies people are encouraged ‘not to stare’ or look. The acts of staring, or consciously not looking, position the disabled subject as different, and by implication

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outside ‘our’ shared humanity or citizenship. Rosemary Garland-Thomson argues that facilitating an ‘engaged stare’ may lead people to consider ‘how we look at each other and how we look to each other’, and so can potentially offer us a chance ‘to rethink the status quo’ (2009: 4, 6). This kind of performance requires an audience to consciously engage with what it means to look at a person or performer, and to recognise the implications of assuming that someone can be categorised or comprehended on the basis of a cursory glance. Looking ‘to’ someone is different, and suggests a more open, reciprocal relationship, with the potential for mutual support and collaboration. This piece thus opens a space in which disabled performers express feelings of being trapped, and an audience is invited to gaze openly at disabled bodies and thereby consider how it is implicated in the ways in which these bodies are socially constructed. It also suggests ways in which we can shift from looking ‘at’ someone to looking ‘to’ one another, and thereby suggests a different approach to citizenship in South Africa. Ashed, also a combination of visual art, spoken word, dance and sound, is a less autobiographical piece than Trapped. Unmute suggest that the work mirrors the evolution of South African citizens. Looking at ours­elves as nation; where did we come from, where we are and where are we heading to [sic]. It questions all the things that limit our growth: political, social, and economic limitations; and captures good encounters that keep us moving forward as a nation. (Unmute Dance Company 2016b)

Its title shifts the noun, ‘ash’: the grayish-white-black powdery residue left when something is burned, or the particu­late matter ejected by a volcanic eruption, to a verb. This suggests affect; that this piece is engaging with what is left behind after violence, in this case, that of apartheid. The dancers from Trapped, Andile Vellem, Nadine Mckenzie and Zama Sonjica, are joined by Yaseen Manuel, who trained with Jazzart. They are all dressed in body suits with masks, covered in mud and ash, which reduces them to

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subhuman creatures (see Unmute Dance Company 2016a for performance clip). Guest artist Thumeka Mzayiya sings poems written by Themba Mbuli and Thumeka Mzaylya in isiXhosa without translation in superscription or in a programme. This linguistic choice is significant, given how few productions in major theatres in South Africa are performed in languages other than English or Afrikaans. Language and the need for various kinds of translation is an ongoing theme in Unmute’s work: in their titular piece, Unmute, Nadine Mckenzie literally signs the isiXhosa narrative and the words to Laurie Anderson’s song ‘O Superman’, which communicates a sense of complete loneliness, in a future where intimacy has somehow been removed (see Unmute Dance Company 2016c). This exemplifies how the company works with associative symbolism to communicate experiences specific to disability to a wider constituency. In this case it renders some in the audience more ‘able’ than others by virtue of their knowledge of isiXhosa and/or sign language, but it also suggests how reading in plural ways allows for different communication: the libretto was elucidated by visual images created by the performers and their interaction with one another and with body casts. The piece begins with the singer, dressed and recognisably human, walking forward, facing a figure in a body suit covered in ash, who walks backward. S/he is somehow less human, subject to the woman, as she dictates his movements, and forcibly pushes him forward, around or down, and we hear pejorative terms spoken relentlessly. Other dancers slowly begin interacting with one another and the body casts, spinning and wheeling one another, without respect or care for their personhood. Thumeka Mzayiya sings: I hear them calling Chanting songs of hate Slowly ripping the colors of the rainbow apart I hear them calling names of hatred Names that isolate you and I from Us. (Quoted in Warschkow 2015)12

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The poet, Themba Mbuli, suggests how struggle songs that previously called for freedom for all, are dividing people ‘of the rainbow’ in the post-apartheid context. He suggests that the terminologies of apartheid that categorised people, continues to impact on all areas of South African society and life – now in terms of race, gender, ability, religion or nationality. Here the company shift from focusing on issues specific to disability to wider issues of citizenship, but maintaining their engagement with processes of naming and categorisation, which result in violence. The repetitive and insistent movements imposed by some on others suggests how people are forced into choreographies in everyday life, which they repeat to the best of their ability, but which reduces or removes their individuality and personhood. Mckenzie is tossed in a 360-degree somersault out of her wheelchair, and into the arms of Vellem, as she flails apparently helplessly. Sonjica is thrown from performer to performer as if he were a parcel. These images communicate disrespect for people who are reduced to objects, as foreigners are in xenophobic attacks, or women in rape situations. It highlights the vulner­ability of people unable to defend themselves. This exemplifies how disabled dance can challenge the aesthetics of a form in terms of its wider societal impact, using dance as a metaphor for life. Instead of classic grace and beauty, it suggests these societal norms are grotesque and ugly, not ‘other’ bodies. Specific technical approaches develop this critique: Front lighting enlarges the dancers and projects them in giant silhouettes, making this choreography even more grotesque. The use of life-sized body casts allows for performances of intimacy and manipulation that would be unbearable with human subjects, particularly in the rape simulations. This choreographic choice to work with a prop suggests how the marginalised subject who is denied any or full citizen, because they are female, foreign or somehow ‘other’, is reduced to an object. Aesthetically, this strategy creates the distance needed for audiences to see these acts of violence

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without their being vicarious titillation or reducing the acts to spectacle. These performances are difficult to watch, but visually and somatically exemplify the ultimate consequences of the spectatorial process of categorising people in a single term, be that race, gender, ability or nationality. It moves the violence and negation from the abstract to its potentially literal consequence: that viewing some people as being less human than others makes rape or murder conceivable. This negation of personhood and its consequent violence is expanded by association from the disabled body to other people who are reduced to labels, without personhood, for similar reasons. The poet asks, But then again, who is them? Them is I, I is You, You is Us and Us is Africa I am you, you are me and we are Africa. (Quoted in Warschkow 2015)

This widens the discourse from disability to other terms of citizenship in South Africa, and beyond. The piece implicitly suggests that regimes of violence, like apartheid, breed lack of self-worth, which in turn leads to further violence: ‘Why do you hate yourself so much? Why do I hate myself so much?’ However, it extends beyond exposing the hidden tensions of South African society to propose a way forward. Poet Thumeka Mzaylya says, but I strongly believe that we can do more to strengthen the connection between us, like fight for proper education, complete termination on child abuse and rape, adequate houses for everyone and make sure that we are economically equal … she teaches her children how to sing, laugh and dance like her, when she is done, she teaches them how to fight for she knows how cruel the world is. (Quoted in Warschkow 2015)

Just as the dancers can achieve more by working together – and in this section the choreography shifts into a slower pace, and the dancers take more care as they hold and pass

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body casts between them, or dance over and around one another – so the audience is asked to consider how it can share skills, knowledge and perceptions and take care of and for one another. The implication of disabled performers articulating socio-economic problems insists on their having normative citizen­ ship, with vested interest in these wider issues. It suggests a continuum of discrimination, linked back to the legacies of apartheid, which forced South Africans into hierarchical, predetermined socio-economic roles that need to be interrogated and changed. The company’s aesthetic itself challenges its audiences to consider how they constitute and make meaning of their own and other people’s bodies, art, the power of our individual and collective gaze, and the impact of public spaces in constituting citizenship. That they occupy a performance space within the lexicon of surviving professional dance companies in South Africa is significant. This exemplifies a critical use of dance, defined by control, discipline and strict choreography, which translates these terms into everyday life, asking its audiences to consider the ways in which we individually and collectively constitute our own and other peoples’ citizenship by means of everyday choreographies whereby we engage or deny other people equal rights as ourselves. These performances offer somatic engagements with uncomfortable subjects, while insisting that disabled persons can, as Foucault argues, be actively involved in constituting themselves while challenging terms of citizenship by engaging with discourse, rather than simply being ‘acted upon’ by it (1997: 291). Thus, disability dance demonstrates how, through our imaginations we can unlock a new way of thinking about cultural production and citizenship, characterised by mutual respect and nonviolence, and thereby perhaps move towards real integration.

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NOTES  1 Toyi-toyi is a Southern African dance, originally from the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) forces, which has been extensively used in political protests in South Africa.  2 These terms are used interchangeably to refer to dance where disabled and non-disabled dancers perform together, or which celebrates the first-person experience of disability, not as a medical model but as a social phenomenon. I am conflicted about the use of the term ‘disabled’. However, I am using it in line with crip theory (see Note 5), which suggests that these terms are significant insofar as they highlight silences, absences, assumptions and insist on persons with disabilities having specific identities that offer alternative modes of being. This ‘establishes disability as a significant value in itself’ (Siebers 2005: 543).   3 See Krips (2010) on how these arguments on the gaze intersect, Hadley (2014) on the trajectories of imagings and imaginings of disability through history, including freak shows, museums, etc. Kuppers’ ‘The Wheelchair’s Rhetoric’ (2007) critically considers cinematic engagement with disability, particularly in terms of nondisabled actors performing disability.   4 See Ellen Samuels on issues raised in terms of Butler and disability theory (2002)  5 The term ‘crip’, shorthand for ‘cripple’, which has been and is used as an insult to people with disabilities, has been reclaimed as an intra-group term of empowerment, solidarity and resistance; and ‘expanded to include not only those with physical impairments but those of sensory or mental impairments also’ (Sandahl, 2003: 27).   6 For details on these laws, see South African History Online (2011).   7 This festival marks South Africa’s Women’s Month in August each year  8 In theatre, for example, From The Hip: Khulumakhale (FTH:K) works in non-verbal, visual theatre that integrates Deaf and hearing artists, and works in multiple languages, thereby addressing many intersectionalities in contemporary South Africa; see From the Hip (n.d.). (Khulumakhale means ‘good’.)   9 See Sichel (2010) on physical theatre and dance in South Africa. 10 In the United States and the United Kingdom, physically integrated dance emerged for the mainstream public with Amici Dance Theatre Company in 1980 and DV8 Physical Theatre in 1986 in London, AXIS Dance Company in Oakland California in 1987, and Candoco Dance Company in London in 1991. 11 Gladys Aghulas continues to work with integrated dance in South Africa, and in other initiatives across the continent, including Senegal. For more information on her, see Aghulas 2007. 12 Translation of extracts of the poems by Klaus Warschkow, and quoted in Warschkow, 2015.

REFERENCES African Studies Centre (2008), ‘Disability in Africa’. Leiden: ASC Library, Docu­ men­ ta­ tion and Information Department, www.ascleiden.nl/webdossiers/ disability-africa (accessed 27 April 2018). Aghulas, Gladys (2007), ‘Biography: Gladys Aghulas’. FNB Dance Umbrella,

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Unmuting South African Citizenship through Dance  87 7 February, http://fnbdanceumbrella.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/biograpyhygladys-agulhas.html (accessed 30 April 2018). Artscape Highlights at the National Arts Festival 2015’, 29 June, www.mycomlink. co.za/posting.php?i=19156 (accessed 27 April 2018). Behind the Scenes Communications (2014), ‘’’ FebruaryArtslink.co.za News (October). Benjamin, Adam (2002), Making an Entrance: Theory and practice for disabled and nondisabled dancers. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Butler, Judith (1993), Bodies that Matter. New York and London: Routledge. Cohen, Cynthia E., Roberto Gutiérrez Varea and Polly O. Walker (eds) (2011), Acting Together: Performance and the creative transformation of violence, vol. I: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence. New York: New Village Press. Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989), ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and anti­ racist politics’. The University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1989, article 8: 139–167. Department of Education (2012) ‘R’.epublic of outh fricawww.greenworks.co.za/ Bill_of_Responsabilities.pdf( July 20) Foucault, Michel ([1976] 1990), The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, Robert Hurley (trans). New York: Vintage. ——(1996), Foucault Live: Interviews, 1961–1984, Sylvère Lotringer (ed.), Lysa Hochroth and John Johnson (trans). New York: Semiotext(e). ——(1997), ‘The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom’. In Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth – The essential works of Foucault, vol. 1, P. Rabinow (ed.). New York: The New Press. From the Hip: Khulumakhale (n.d.) ‘About the Company’, www.fthk.co.za/about_ fthk/about_the_company.htm (accessed 10 November 2017). Garland-Thomson, Rosemary (2009), Staring: How we look. Oxford and New York: OUP. Goldblatt, Beth and Sheila Meintjes (1996), ‘Gender and the Truth and Reconcilia­ tion Commission’. Unpublished submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Com­mission. Government of South Africa (2016), White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. No. 230, Department of Social Development. Government Gazette 39792, 9 March, www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/39792_gon230.pdf (accessed 30 April 2018). Habermas, Jürgen (1989), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Hadley, Bree (2014), Disability, Public Space Performance and Spectatorship: Unconscious performers. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoskins, Bryony, J. Jesinghaus, M. Mascherini, G. Munda et al. (2006), Measuring Active Citizenship in Europe. Research Paper 4, Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen, Luxembourg: European Communities, https:// ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/jrc-coin-measuring-active-citizenship-2006_ en.pdf (accessed 31 July 2017). Krips, Henry (2010), ‘The Politics of the Gaze: Foucault, Lacan and Žižek’, Culture Unbound, vol. 2: 91–102, www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se. Kuppers, Petra (2003), Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on edge. New York and London: Routledge.

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88  Yvette Hutchison ——(2007). ‘The Wheelchair’s Rhetoric: The Performance of Disability’. TDR: The Drama Review, vol. 51, no. 4: 80–88. Lacan, Jacques (1981), The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), Alan Sheridan (trans). New York: W.W. Norton. Lean On Dance (2011), ‘Lean On Dance Theatre’. Dance Directory South Africa, www.dancedirectory.co.za/content/articles/articles.asp?Section=DanceOutreac hProgrammes (accessed 30 April 2018). Lévinas, Emmanuel (1996), ‘Is Ontology Fundamental?’ In Emmanuel Lévinas: Basic philosophical writings, A. Peperzak, S. Critchley and R. Bernasconi (eds). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1–10. Loots, Lliane (2015), ‘“You Don’t Look Like a Dancer!” Gender and disability politics in the arena of dance as performance and as a tool for learning in South Africa. Agenda, vol. 29, no. 2: 122–32. McRuer, Robert (2006), Crip Theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press. Office of the Deputy President, South Africa (1997) , www.mindbank.info/ download_file/104/9ed5500435ab48b5f000c652e484a8acdfdea1b1(3 May 2018) Russo, Mary (1986), ‘Female Grotesques: Carnival and theory’. In Feminist Studies/ Critical Studies, Teresa de Lauretis (ed.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Sachs, Albie (1991), ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom: Culture and the ANC Guidelines’. TDR: The Drama Review, vol. 35, no. 1: 187–93. Samuels, Ellen (2002). ‘Critical Divides: Judith Butler’s body theory and the question of disability’. NWSA Journal, vol. 14, no. 3: 58–76. Samuel, Gerard Manley (2001), The Emergence of Intercultural Dialogues: Children, disability and dance in KwaZulu-Natal, MA Thesis, http://researchspace.ukzn. ac.za/handle/10413/5897 (accessed 20 September 2016). ——(2012), ‘Left Feet First: Dancing disability’. In Post-Apartheid Dance: Many bodies, many voices, many stories, Sharon Friedman (ed.). Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 127–45. Sandahl, Carrie (2003), ‘Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer? Intersections of queer and crip identities in solo autobiographical performance’. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 9, nos 1–2: 25–56. Sanders, Mark (2002), Complicities: The intellectual and apartheid. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Shildrick, Magrit (2002), Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the vulnerable self. London: Sage. Sichel, Adrienne (2010), ‘Grappling with South African Physical Theatre’. South African Theatre Journal, vol. 24, no. 1: 41–50. Siebers, Tobin (2005), ‘Disability Aesthetics’. PMLA, vol. 120, no. 2: 542–6. ——(2010), Disability Aesthetics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Snyder, Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell (2006), Cultural Locations of Disability. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. South African History Online (2011), ‘Pass Laws in South Africa 1800–1994’. Cape Town: SAHO, www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994 (accessed 19 September 2017). Statistics South Africa (2014), Census 2011: Profile of persons with disabilities in South Africa, Report No. 03-01-59, www.statssa.gov.za/publications/

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Unmuting South African Citizenship through Dance  89 Report-03-01-59/Report-03-01-592011.pdf (accessed 31 July 2017). United Nations (2016), Toolkit on Disability for Africa: Culture, beliefs, and disability. UN Division for Social Policy and Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/disability/ Toolkit/Cultures-Beliefs-Disability.pdf (accessed 25 July 2017). Unmute Dance Company (2016a), Ashed performance extract. Choreographed by Themba Mbuli, Performed by Unmute Dance Company, 11 March, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcgVud9q5bA (accessed 31 July 2017). Unmute Dance Company (2016b), Trapped, performance directed by Themba Mbuli, 11 March, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cotz—N8DtWc (accessed 31 July 2017). Unmute Dance Company (2016c), Unmute Part 1 performance extract. Choreo­ graphed by Andile Vellem, 23 July, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v= ABo7EpNqAbQ (accessed 31 July 2017). Warschkow, Klaus (2015), ‘Unmute Dance Company’s Upcoming Performances’. Out of the love of dance. Always! http://capetowndance.tumblr.com/ post/122798125359/unmute-dance-companys-upcoming-performances (accessed 21 September 2015). Žižek, Slavoj (1997), The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.

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From Television to the Streets

The rise & rise of dance-based advertising in Nigeria

’TOSIN KOOSHIMA TUME

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. Norman Douglas

The purpose of this research is to analyse the trend of dance-based advertising in Nigeria. The research appraises the nature and features of dance in two street/outdoor promo­tional and television commercials respectively. The study argues communication as a salient function of dance, borrow­ ing insight from interpretive and affective com­ muni­ca­tion theories for an analysis of the use of dance in specific adverts. This research adopts descriptive, analytical and deductive research methods to analyse how and why dance-based adverts in Nigeria have become a popular feature in street/outdoor promotional and television adverts. Drawing on its entertainment value, as well as its narrative and expressive attributes, dance has become an important factor in advertising. In Nigeria, dance is a vital art form, permeating every aspect of life, and is one of the vibrant and expressive features of Nigerian culture and creative arts. It is a living art which performs multiple functions, including worship, entertain­ ment, therapy, a means of cultural identification and, in recent times, advertising as well. The advertising world is a highly competitive one, therefore, advertisers are forever devising ways to make products more appealing to consumers. Being an expressive and affective global language, dance can 90

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communicate potentially indelible images in the minds of its audiences. Thus, dance has become one of the creative tools employed by advertisers for their trade. Several studies have explored the relationship between advertising and the performing arts. Travassos (2016) treated the issue of dance space in contemporary audio-visual adver­ tising, while Walter and Altamimi (2011) examined dance in advertising vis-à-vis cultural meaning, and its influence on consumption and culture. Anjum et al. (2012) investigated the impact of celebrity-endorsed adverts on consumers, and Allan (2006) considered the effects of popular music in advertising on attention and memory. However, in spite of the existing research in these areas, there is a dearth of literature on the forms and structure of choreography in dance-based adverts made in Africa. Information is especially lacking on the form and nature of dance as utilised in street/ outdoor promotional and television adverts. This research, there­ fore, examines the dance forms and choreographic principles deployed in these adverts. Lately, dance has become a regular feature in most Nigerian adverts; ranging from television commercials to street or outdoor promotions, and even social media skits. However, the forms of dance and choreography engaged in these adverts indicate that dance is employed for different purposes in the various categories of adverts. To corroborate this, Ugolo notes that ‘the functions/roles which dance play in societies directly affect the form and style of expression’ (2006: 47). This research, therefore, aims to proffer answers to the following questions: Is there a particular reason for the upward trend of dance-based adverts in Nigeria? Is dance employed for different purposes in street/outdoor promotional and television commercials respectively? What are the forms and nature of the dances employed in each category of dance-based adverts? It will briefly highlight the multiple functions of dance within the Nigerian worldview, as well as the relationship between advertising and dance. It will specifically consider examples of two particular approaches to

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advertising: outdoor promotional and television advertising. The article explores the practical, creative, technical and aesthetic issues arising from using dance in street/outdoor promotional and television commercials.

Why dance? There are several definitions of dance which focus on its ability to communicate. Ojo Rasaki Bakare (1994: 1) defines dance as ‘the rhythmic movement of the body in time and space to make statements’, while Ajayi states that it is an ‘expressive non-verbal art form’ that communicates both ‘cognitively and affectively’ (1986: 11). Though dance is ephemeral and transient in nature, its expressive value makes its effects tangible and long-lasting. Justifying dance as a vibrant art that permeates every aspect of life, UffordAzorbo opines: Among the artistic forms common to Nigeria, dance is one of the most popular as it encompasses language, social custom, family structure, political orientation, religion, economy, philosophy, belief and value systems of the people. Dance in Nigeria is shaped through the way a Nigerian thinks, feels, believes, and reacts to the physical resources which surround the dancer and her intangible cosmos. Dance, therefore, houses the totality of life and culture expressed in pure visible form. (2011: 11)

Without any doubt, dance holds a highly sentimental value for Africans. Ododo and Igweonu observe that ‘dance exists in every culture of the world’, and ‘its practice and functional values have direct bearing with the socio-aesthetic and cultural sensibilities of any given society’ (2001: 54). This indicates that the practice and functions of dance may vary in different climes. However, the socio-cultural values of each of the contexts influences how dance is perceived and mobilised. Dance is also known to communicate the socio-cultural realities of the people to whom it belongs. Ijeoma Akunna

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asserts: ‘In the Nigerian society as in other parts of Africa, dance performances are reflections of events in everyday life’ (2006: 110); and Chris Ugolo states that ‘the dance art is woven around the fabrics of the traditional societies, especially the socio-political and economic life of the people [thus] to dance in the Nigerian society is to encode significant meanings’ (2006: 46). These articulations on dance suggest that it is involved in communicating the experiences, ideals and aspirations of its creator(s). If, as Smyth argues, dance also elicits a ‘response from its viewer’ (1984: 2), it must be recognised as a powerful mode of engaging an audience for a variety of purposes. The elements of composition, manner of execution, and encoded messages in the dance will affect how it may be used and the responses it evokes.

Dance and advertising Advertising is a mode of communication used by an identified producer or sponsor with the intention of making something, a product or service, known to the general public in order to generate demand for the product or service. Advertising modes include traditional media, television, radio, online platforms, domain names, print media, outdoor engagements, point-of-sale venues, novelties and celebrity branding, aerial and covert advertising. The art of advertising is also known as marketing com­ munication, which indicates that communication is a crucial aspect of advertising. Thus, attention is paid to the brand identity and the target audience, so as to avoid ambiguity in communication and effectively connect with the target audiences’ emotions and positive associations, so that they are favourably disposed towards the product. Since dance in Nigeria has been established as an art which is imbued with elements that can communicate the ideologies, fears, hopes and aspirations of the creator, performer, and even the audience, it is no surprise that dance is used for

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advertisement purposes in Nigeria. Marina Travassos suggests that: The relationship between dance and advertising is a long-standing one and had several meetings. The French posters of the nineteenth century, advertising inserts built from musical comedies of the 70s and 80s and the flash mob are just a few examples of this partnership. (2016: 1)

Beautemps et al. (1984) believe that: Advertising explores dance to express and reinforce its message. Its images illustrate the message, but the polysemy contained in these images creates the transfer of values, the association of ideas. (Quoted in Travassos 2016: 1 – her translation)

The cultural meanings associated with movements and other elements of a dance performance either make the viewers identify with or dissociate from the ideas being proposed. Though an audience may be more easily influenced by dance with which they have an emotional association, the dexterity with which a new dance form is executed may arouse the interest of an audience and sway their views. Thus, dance could serve as a means for affirming wellknown communal stances, as well as propagating new ideas. Mick and Buhl consider advertising to be a ‘communication method by which we mediate reality and meaning through life themes and life projects’ (1992: 1). Dance thus has the potential to mediate reality by creating links between products and the everyday experiences of audiences. Walter and Altamimi argue that dance has become an important factor in advertising for its ‘cultural and interpretive implications’ (2011: 1). They believe dance-based adverts ‘to be an alternative way of understanding consumer behaviour’, as dance provides ‘entertainment, a favourable distraction, and hedonic feelings’ (1), and thereby potentially redirect audience/consumer behaviour. Thus, the responses of an audience to dance in advertisements can be viewed as an indicator of the degree to which their feelings have been swayed towards the products being advertised. It can also be

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a pointer to their values and aspirations. Largely, due to the appeal of dance as a cultural art form, associating dance with brands makes the products more attractive and potentially more desirable. Travassos, who posits that dance gives advertising a unique language, stresses that: Dance provides the advertising world with its movements, the beauty of its lines and its unique way of expressing feelings and emotions … In turn, [advertising] places dance in several media spaces (screens, street, photography etc.) which demands dance exploration of movements and effects appropriate to each media type. (2016: 2)

This suggests that dance aesthetics provide an embodied language to express feelings and emotions that advertisers want to tap into for their products. In the context of using dance to sell products in television advertising, Sherril Dodds explains that ‘we take dance in television advertising as the performance and the viewer as the audience’ (2004: 1). Dance thus, becomes an element representing the advertised product, by disseminating details about the product to the audience and thereby evoking feelings of association and aspiration in them. In employing dance for advertising, music is effective, as the combination of sounds, rhythm and song lyrics expand the communication of the advert. Due to the symbiotic relation­ship between music and dance, we find that most adverts that utilise dance inevitably employ music and catchy songs, which Allan argues tends to command more ‘atten­tion’, by creating vivid ‘memories’, and constituting ‘emotional meaning’ for consumers (2006: 2). First, they draw the attention of the audience to the product, then they create or draw on positive memories of an experience that is linked to the product, which then constitutes a positive emotional meaning, thereby creating brand loyalty. Going by Stanton’s definition of advertising as an ‘audio or visual form of marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a

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product, service, or idea’ (1981: 1), I turn to explore the aspects of dance that enhance these aims.

Of affective and interpretive communication Dance is of interest to advertising because it offers an affec­ tive means of communication that works beyond language, to include the body, emotions and empathy. Christian Julmi illus­ trates that the main idea of the affective communication theory is that, regardless of the concrete content or circumstances, all human interactions and relationships take place within the two opposing corporeal dimensions of ‘attraction and repul­sion’ and ‘dominance and sub-dominance’ (2016: 10). Though it could work either positively or negatively, affective involvement during communication results in awareness and action. Julmi further explains that: The affective communication theory suggests that, within social situations, sharing perspectives leads to attraction and attraction leads to sharing perspectives; people with similar perspectives attract each other, and attraction leads to sharing perspectives. (2016: 19)

Employing affective communication in advertising depends on the advertiser connecting with the emotion of the consumer. Thus, in a bid to survive in the highly com­ petitive world of advertising, some adverts have featured celebrities who are mainly performing artistes or sportsmen. This is a soft approach at making the viewers or consumers identify the advertised product with the reliability, success and glamour associated with the celebrities referenced in the advert. Anjum, Dandha and Nagra note that the ‘general belief among advertisers is that advertising messages delivered by celebrities provide a higher degree of appeal, attention and possibly message recall than those delivered by noncelebrities’ (2012: 22–3). Beyond evoking positive feelings in consumers about themselves by association in celebrity-endorsed products,

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these adverts also tend to engender consumer trust in the products because celebrities are viewed as knowledgeable role models. Thus, celebrity-endorsed products are believed to be effective. While affective communication works through bodily or corporeal associations, interpretive communication relies on the cultural interpretation of meanings embedded in any communication, which involves an audience correctly finding the intended meaning in a text, which could be audio or visual, viewed, read or listened to. Examples of such texts are a radio programme or story, reading a newspaper or story, announcement on a public-address system, an interview, a movie, song, speech or lecture, television programme or commercial. It is usually a one-way form of communication that depends on the receiver interpreting the form’s vocabulary, structure and rate of delivery in order to process and comprehend the intended meaning, either literally or inferentially. The success of most advertisements is particularly dependent on inferential comprehension. I turn now to illustrate how these ideas work in specific examples of outdoor promotional or street adverts and television commercials. Two adverts have been selected from each category for analysis.

Outdoor promotional/ street adverts Street promotions are direct channels through which a wide range of potential consumers can be reached regardless of age or gender. It is a smart means of optimising an advertising budget, as the materials for advertising are readily available to the advertiser. The infusion of dance into these forms of adverts is ingenious because dance entertains, while creating awareness for products. The strategy is to employ dance performances to keep the audience riveted, while the company staff engage them in the main business of marketing.

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MTN Street Advert, Post Office Road, Ilorin, Kwara State, 16 October 2017 MTN is among the pioneer telecommunication companies that brought Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) services to Nigeria in 2001.With almost 50 million subscribers, MTN remains one of the leading mobile operators in Nigeria, and indeed Africa, with the widest network coverage and rural penetration in Nigeria. Its recorded success might be related to the company’s ongoing and diverse creative ways of connecting with consumers through advertising, including their use of trending street adverts. On 16 October 2017, I witnessed a street advert displayed by MTN in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. The venue of was the popular and ever busy Post Office Road in Ilorin. A branded MTN bus was strategically parked near the roundabout/ road island, while a disc jockey inside the bus played music by various popular Nigerian musicians like Olamide, Davido, Yemi Alade, Wizkid, Simi, Adekunle Gold and Falz. Five male and five female dancers costumed in MTN branded yellow T-shirts and blue jeans, took frozen positions in front of the MTN bus, which soon became the centre of attention as passers-by could be seen waiting in anticipation of what was to unfold. To signal the beginning of the show, the loudspeakers played Shake Body, a popular song by the Nigerian recording artist, Skales. The dancers broke out of their frozen positions and started thrilling the teeming audience to scintillating popular dances such as Shakitibobo, Etighi, Azonto and Skelewu. Shakitibobo is a dance move which raved alongside a music track with the same name by Olamide, a Nigerian musician. Its execution involves the simultaneous jerking and twitching of the shoulder, while the entire body tilts sideways. Etighi dance made its debut onto the contemporary dance stage during the 2011 edition of the Calabar Carnival in Nigeria. Though it derives from the motif of the traditional Akwa Ibom dances, it was popularised by its spectacular feature in

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Iyanya’s Kukere music video. It features the locking of the knees in order to propel a raising of the hips in an alternate manner. Azonto is basically a Ghanaian dance movement which was made popular by Fuse ODG’s music track with the same name. In Nigeria, Wizkid also produced a song titled Azonto, thereby popularising the dance in Nigeria. Its execution involves alternate movements of hands and legs to 2/4 counts in music time signature. Skelewu is a dance movement popularised by Davido’s music track with the same title. The dance features stretching the right palm forward while the left is placed on the waist, and rocking the shoulder and entire torso in forward and backward motions. These dance movements are mostly performed by Nigerian youths, and they have become part of the popular culture as they are performed at ceremonies such as weddings, as well as birthdays and club parties. The combination of the aforementioned dance moves in performance had a palpable effect on the audience as they broke into shrieks of delight. The dancers started with choreographed movements and then shifted into solo, duet and trio performances during which MTN staff engaged the audience with the company’s products: SIM cards, customised phones and recharge cards. There was also a raffle-draw moment during which members of the audience won gifts such as mobile phones and MTN branded T-shirts. Some were seen buying these products, while some completely ignored the marketing staff and concentrated fully on the dance performance. The event lasted for several hours.

Wokkman Ventures, Adebayo Road, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, 24 March 2017 Wokkman Ventures is a one-stop shop for everything that has to do with electronics and ICT, with offices in Ondo and Ekiti States of Nigeria. It is a fast-growing company which offers diverse services such as sales, computer engineering training, internet browsing services, repairs and maintenance.

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To keep up with the highly competitive ICT business, the management of Wokkman Ventures deploy outdoor promotions as one of the means of advertising their products and services. An interview with the manager of the AdoEkiti branch of the company, Mr Oluwaseyi, revealed that the company organises a promotional event during the last week of every month, with dance as the main attraction. On 24 March 2017, I was an observer AT a promotional event that took place in front of the Ado-Ekiti branch of the company, on the popular Adebayo Road of the town. This particular event coincided with the company’s quarterly clearance sale, which also advertised a bonus for every bought product. Hired dancers and a disc jockey who wore branded T-shirts of the company were on standby. Tables displaying several of the company’s products were conspicuously arranged. Popular music blaring from the disc jockey’s stereo kick-started the event at exactly 10 a.m. The costumed dancers began dancing while also displaying handy products such as mobile phones, irons, laptops, water heaters and power banks. The mode of dancing was purely improvisational, devoid of any structured choreography. The dancers performed various popular contemporary dances like Galala, Swo, Alanta and Shoki. Galala is a contemporary Nigerian dance popularised by Ajegunle musical artistes like Daddy Showkey, Papa Fryo and African China in the 1990s and early 2000s. The dance, which enacts the daily happenings in Ajegunle, a ghetto in Lagos, features crouching movements, bent knees, backward thrusts and jerks of the buttocks, backward and forward sliding footwork, clenched fists and stern eye contact with members of the audience. The dance motifs reference pickpocketing, boxing, scavenging, bullying and bragging, all aspects of ghetto life. Swo is another popular dance which originated from Ajegunle and made popular by the duo of Mad Melon and Mountain Black when they released their debut musical album titled Danfo Driver in 2003. In performing the dance, the knees are bent, and

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gradually opened and closed, while the index finger of both hands are continuously put in a clockwise motion at the peak of which a tying gesture is executed. On the other hand, the Alanta dance features the contortion of the face and the entire body to suggest orgasm or the experiencing of acute pleasure. The hands move as if they are fanning flames on the body while a leg is suspended in the air. Shoki is perhaps the most popular contemporary dance in Nigeria currently. It emerged in the year 2014 after Lil Kesh released a song by the same name. In executing the movement, the torso undulates continually from the medium to the high level, while both palms are manipulated in a packing gesture. The peak of the movement is when both palms are suspended at the head level. It also features the intermittent covering of one eye while the torso undulates. As the dancers performed, they engaged members of the audience by holding products out to them. The peak of the event was the point at which members of the crowd were randomly picked to participate in a dancing competition. The winners of the competition were rewarded with electronic gadgets, mobile phones and a promise of a free one-month maintenance service for every electronic product bought from the company. I participated in the dancing competition and won a standing fan. Though the promotion lasted the whole day, the dancing aspect of the event ended around 3 p.m. The observation of the street adverts under study lends credence to Julmi’s (2016: 2) statement that the dynamics of body movements during a dance performance usually influences the viewer’s perspective on the subject matter being treated in the performance. This forms the basis of affective communication during the street advert events, during which corporeal engagement and somatic affect rather than purely rational engagement with products pre­ dominates ( Julmi 2016: 2). Members of the audience were not compelled to seek any hidden meaning in the dance performance, rather what was required of them was their affective attention. The process therefore significantly dwelt

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on the mutual interaction between the advertiser and the audience. From these two dance-based street/ outdoor promotionals, we can draw out a number of characteristics: Since the aim is mainly to attract and sustain people’s atten­ tion before the advertisement proper, dance-based street adverts typically use minimal choreography, and mostly on-site improvisational dance movements that are usually freestyle, popular and spectacular, with loose or no narra­ tives. The use of popular music and contemporary dance movements is strategic, as it awakens in the audience a desire to be part of the advertising event. This form of dance capitalises on the audience’s familiarity with the movements. As the audience recognise and connect with the dances, they are drawn into the advert performance. Sometimes they participate in the dance, and this makes them associate with the products on a personal level. Product-branded costumes are typically in the company’s colours, which are usually very bright, featuring trendy designs. These easily attract the attention of passers-by, and make the products seem exciting and trendy. The logos help audiences associate fun with the brand, thereby promoting brand loyalty. The live quality of street adverts enhances advertiserconsumer interaction. It creates an enabling atmosphere in which consumers can ask questions about the products, and the company can also get feedback on their products and so improve on their outputs. During outdoor promotions, members of the audience are engaged in various ways, such as dancing competitions and raffle draws. At times, both members of an audience and staff engage in duo dance perfor­mances, which usually culminate in members of the audience being rewarded with some of the products. This technique heightens the excitement, gives the participants a sense of belonging and fulfilment, and associates them personally with the products. Due to the circus-like nature, outdoor promotional/street

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advertising events have no rigid timeframe, and therefore encourage durational engagement with the public. The event could last for several hours during which different sets of audience wander in and out. The downside of this is that it could become monotonous and boring for those members of the audience that watch for a long time Also, an interview with some of the dancers reveals that they were paid a paltry sum of 5,000 Naira for the entire day. The remuneration is not commensurate with the rigours of the job, and this is a negative reflection on how dance practitioners are viewed in the Nigerian society. The performance spaces chosen for street advertising events are usually busy areas and public places like market squares and popular street junctions. For the viewers, the dance performance is the primary attraction, while the product being advertised is a secondary concern. The open performance space is akin to an open-air theatre where they come to fulfil their artistic expectations, and in the process satisfy their curiosity about the products. Thus, dance becomes a key strategy to ensure an effective crowdsourcing for the adverts. At the point where members of the audience are enthralled in the dance performance, they experience a synergy which makes them become connected with the advertisers and their products.

Television commercials Television is one of the most expensive and sophisticated media for advertising. The ingrained narrative structure and combined use of sound, dialogue, picture and locations gives television adverts a theatrical texture. Therefore, the incorpora­ tion of dance into television commercials is a laudable innovation. In this genre of advert, movement and music are the primary expressive elements rather than words. It is suggested that through advertising, consumers ‘understand and interpret their lives’ (Walter and Altamimi, 2011: 3).

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Therefore, dance in television commercials draws on specific cultural symbolic forms of knowledge and determinant lifestyles. This method of advert is totally dependent on the viewer comprehending the form and its associations, which puts the emphasis on the skilful engagement of the viewer’s mind. I proceed now with an examination of two case studies to demonstrate the ways in which dance is employed in dance-based television commercials.

Panadol Extra ‘Oga na master’ television commercial Panadol Extra is one of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s most popular products in its range of global Panadol brand products. It is reputedly the leading pain relief medication endorsed by the Society for the Study of Pain (SSPN) in Nigeria for providing quick relief from the multiple symptoms of flu, fever, and general body pain. GSK endears its brand to consumers through thematic and creative adverts. One such advert is the Panadol Extra ‘Oga na master’ television commercial. The advert tells the story of how Panadol Extra ‘rescues’ the boss of a blacksmith workshop from his headache. The 50-second advert opens with the visual images of a busy blacksmith site. The boss is a very strong and hardworking man with rippling muscles. Through the use of elaborate travel movements in opposite directions, he is depicted as a hands-on leader who urges his subordinates to work harder. Then one day he develops a splitting head­ache, and as a result, he is unable to work or supervise his staff. The boss executes weak but sustained rubbing of his temple in a clockwise motion, and moves his head sideways to a rhythm, while his facial expression suggests that he is in agony. As a result of the boss’s indisposition, the workshop, which was hitherto a hive of welding activities, becomes a ghost of itself. It loses customers, and the staff become redundant, which they enact by sitting down and swinging their feet in a pendulum motion, while rhythmically hitting their hammer into their palms with a

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forlorn look on their faces. The man continues to suffer until one of his staff urges another to offer their boss Panadol Extra. Natural movements of nudging executed in staccato rhythm is employed by the workers to illustrate their debate on how to provide relief for the boss. Immediately after taking Panadol Extra, the boss gets better and work resumes. He makes heavy and vigorous pounding movements to underscore his agility, while his workers follow suit using jumping and turning movements to demonstrate welding, sword-forging and metal bending. To celebrate, they all hit their hammers on the welding tools and move their waists sideways alternately, to demonstrate that work had resumed. Beaming with delight, the workers rejoice and sing praises of Panadol Extra as the surest antidote to headaches thus: Song (Pidgin English): I wan tell una one tory about one man, him name na Solo Di man na Oga for a big workshop eeh But one day tory com change, all him customers begin waka Di man wey tink say him be Oga, no be Oga for strong strong headache Him work stop, him head dey hammer Na so headache com be him Oga eeh But tory change again when Oga of headache, Panadol Extra, com hammer di strong strong headache eeh Panadol Extra na him be Oga, and Oga na master, Panadol Extra dey hammer headache Panadol Extra, Oga na master. (Translation to standard English): Let me tell you the story of a man named Solo He was the boss in a big workshop One day, the story changed, and he lost all his customers The man who thought himself boss, found that he could not boss headaches around He had a splitting headache which made him stop working Thus, headache began to boss him around Fortunately for him, Panadol Extra, the boss of all headaches, came to his rescue Panadol Extra is the only boss, who bosses headaches around All hail Panadol Extra, the boss of all headaches.

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The advert has a poignant quality, telling the story with the aid of visual images with which an average working-class Nigerian can identify. The imagery utilised in the advert gives detailed information about the product. The display of the features of the product such as its size, dosage, colour, and packaging are fully depicted through the dance, as they juxtapose pain and well-being, headache and the lack of it. The well-choreographed dance movements punctuate the music. The camera was placed so that it could capture seemingly trivial dance movements, such as the tapping of the dancers’ feet and hitting of their palms with a hammer. This approach transforms apparently mundane actions into choreography and videography, with the intention of dwelling on the emotive connection inherent in the dance art and linking these to the product in the audiences’ minds. The small intricacies and details engage the audience and mentally transport them to a typical industrial environment with which they may well identify, while communicating messages specific to the product. Linking dance movements, an integral aspect of the lives of viewers, with other everyday references is emotive. The grace and precision of the move­ ments are reminiscent of everyday happenings around the viewers, which further aids personal identification with the products, and with social values like strength, work ethics, professionalism and reliability.

Skye Bank’s ‘Hakuna matata’ television commercial Skye Bank is one of the new generation banks in Nigeria, and one of the 26 commercial banks licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria. The bank is famed for creating popular and inspirational adverts, such as the ‘Hakuna matata’ television commercial. The one-minute advert starts with the chant ‘Hakuna matata’, a Swahili phrase which literally means ‘no worries’, by some foot soldiers on the march through the land. The reverberating chant triggers a chain reaction – waking up a driver dozing off

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in his cab and rocking his cup of tea, knocking down a basket of oranges in the marketplace, jiggling the water dispenser in an office, and rustling the feathers of feeding pigeons. Using the augmentation style of motif development, the performers initially nod their heads and suspend their arms by their sides. Then they swing their arms from side to side, and later turn 360 degrees to accompany their rhythmic chant and march past. Soon, the foot soldiers evolve from everyday people in the market place to an assembly of working-class people, and then to a group of oil workers. They march against several familiar and iconic backgrounds such as a popular motor park in Lagos, an office environment, an oil well, the Abuja National Assembly, the Olumo rock in Abeokuta, and a bridge repre­senting the logo of Skye Bank, suggesting that this bank brings together people from all walks of life. The dance peaks with the performers waving their hands, and making curvy gestures, as they transpose to the middle level on the bridge symbolising the bank’s logo. The identified visual images are kaleidoscopic and symbolic of the wide diversity of satisfied Skye Bank customers, regardless of age, gender, social status, occupation and ethnic groupings. The song used in the commercial goes thus: Hakuna matata, hakuna matata (x2) It means no worries For the rest of your days Skye Bank’s problem-free philosophy Hakuna matata.

Borrowing from the motif of the Zulu Isicathamiya dance form, this choreographed military-like march past executed in unison symbolises determination and a unity of purpose between the management of the bank and its customers. To buttress the theme of the advert, the adopted dance move­ ments aptly suggest confidence and carefreeness. The message perceived from the advert is that it is beneficial to patronise Skye Bank, because the bank caters to all of its customers in an equal and fair manner. The advert also illustrates that

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banking with Skye Bank means ‘no worries’, because the bank is organised, reliable and runs like a friendly military organisation.

Observed features of dance-based TV commercials Due to its movement-based nature, emphasis is placed on the craft and composition of stylised dance movements. Move­ ments depicting everyday actions are imbued with expressive and natural dance movements through detailed and professional choreography; this links viewers to the product. It also allows for explicit message dissemination and a kinetic stimuli response to the dance. As enacted in the sequence of actions in the adverts, viewers get to know and understand the values of the product. For instance, through the choice of dance movements employed in the first advert, viewers associate Panadol Extra’s cure of migraine with manual labour, industrial workers, and vigour – both in workers and the product – through the dance movements communicated through the advert. Professional choreographers are engaged to ensure that specific and relevant rhythms, structure, logic and brand values are integrated into choreographed movements. Detailed information about the brand is woven into and embodied in a dance story, expressing diverse emotions and unifying experiences drawing in diverse people. Attention is paid to suitable theatrical embellishments such as props, costumes and make-up. In addition to the carefree dance movements, specific costumes such as the paramilitary uniform of the Nigerian corps members, iro and buba (blouse and wrapper) of the Yoruba market women, the orange helmet and dungarees of oil rig workers, and diverse ethnic costumes are used to suggest that Skye Bank works for everyone. In the same vein, the oily grit and scum make up on the performers in the Panadol Extra advert creates the image of hardworking staff in an industrial workshop situation. The use of appropriate theatrical embellishments enhances the

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message of the advert and aids easy interpretation. The adverts display narrative values and relevant dramatic actions that accentuate the product’s selling point. The potency of non-verbal communication resides in its ability to explore body language and emotions, while generating specific contextual cues for effective communication. The expressive nature of dance is thoroughly used to communicate specific visual images and non-verbal cues. The well-plotted storylines usually address a theme or topic, the main idea of the advert, while the visual images provide supporting details. Dance-based television ads are typically short and straight to the point, usually not exceeding a full minute. Although it may require a repeat watch before the message is clearly deciphered, the ads are repeated on television. The concise nature of the adverts therefore demands skilful handling of the choreography, to avoid ambiguity in the message. As a result, this dance form encourages the engagement of professional choreographers and dancers, serving as a lucrative means of livelihood for them. A dancer for one of the Maltina dancebased commercials, Bem Iwah, was reluctant to disclose his honorarium for the job but acknowledged that he was paid close to a million Naira. The meagre five thousand Naira artiste fee usually paid to the street advert dancers pales in comparison to this. Theme songs and catchy refrains are used to underscore the main idea of the advert. They are usually uncomplicated and so are easily learnt and become household songs, and the dance identified with such songs enjoy the same benefits. The popularity of the music and dances then is associated with the products, as evidenced by the dances being named after the products.

Findings and conclusion This study set out to ascertain the cause of the rise of dance-based adverts in Nigeria, and establish the functions,

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forms and structure of the dances deployed in outdoor promotional/street adverts and television commercials. The research reveals that dance holds a sentimental and cultural value for Nigerian people, and so the multi-functionality of dance and its lively and expressive nature, makes it a potent advertising agent. We also note that the upward trend of dance-based advertising is an innovative idea that shows no sign of abating. In as much as communication is the crux of advertising, we find that the two categories under study employ dance for different forms of communication. Outdoor promotional/ street adverts utilise dance to attract and sustain the interest of viewers before advertising, functioning like an opening glee before the show proper, in primarily affective ways. On the other hand, in television commercials, dance is used as a non-verbal means of communicating and/or enhancing the advert’s main message. Music and dance are used to inform target customers about products, their functions and advantages, thereby engaging both their minds and associated emotions in a more interpretative way than outdoor promotions. Compared to other modes of advertising, street adverts and outdoor promotional events are relatively cheaper to operate. This is because this mode of advert requires minimal materials which are usually readily available to the advertisers. The choice of popular locations helps to address specific focus groups and maximise crowdsourcing, while the dance aspect of the advertising creates an adventurous atmosphere, spectacle and a lasting buzz about the event and the product. This approach keeps the brand fresh in the consciousness of the target market. On a very large scale, street adverts or outdoor promotional events exhibit pure entertainment dances that make no statement about the products being advertised, while television commercials make use of expressive modern and natural dance movements to convey specific ideas or associations. However, there is the fear that the street adverts’ approach may cause a disconnect,

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as the audience/target customers may be totally carried away by the entertainment values of the dances, while the original mission of advertisement remains unfulfilled. Television commercials thrive on sound and visual stimuli, while the soul of outdoor promotional/street adverts is the live interaction with spectators. The fusion of specific brand details with well-choreographed dance movements, captured from various angles of the camera, transforms dance-based television commercials into pure theatre. Tai Krige, a South African cinematographer, is credited as director of the Skye Bank ‘Hakuna matata’ advert. However, we are unable to ascertain the choreographers of both the dance-based television commercials under study. We have established that dance practitioners find television commercials to be more lucrative than street adverts. However, we believe that dance artistes should be acknowledged in the credits of the adverts. Though the nature of these adverts seemingly do not allow for this, our suggestion takes initiative from the example of the Panadol Extra Television commercial which was uploaded on the internet, in which details about the brand, theme and duration of the advert were listed. We reckon that since this could be achieved, likewise, details about the choreographers of dance-based adverts could also be included on any version of an advert uploaded on the internet. This is good for the professional fulfilment of choreographers, dancers and the advert genre itself. This study submits that outdoor promotional/street adverts and television commercials vary along the lines of the dance styles, scope of the performance space, duration of performance, and the intended functions of dance in the advert. Despite these specific differences, dance remains a viable and central medium of communication in both categories of adverts. It is the conclusion of this study that the established variance in the form and structure of both categories of adverts under study is largely dependent on the expectations of the target audience and the aims of the advertiser.

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REFERENCES Ajayi, O. (1986), ‘Nigerian Stage Dances: A historical perspective’, paper presented at the National Symposium on Nigeria Dance, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, 7–11 July 1986. Akunna, G. I. (2006), ‘Expressions of Womanhood in Modern Nigerian Dance Forms’. In Critical Perspectives on Dance in Nigeria, A. Yerima, A. Udoka and O. R. Bakare (eds). Ibadan: Kraft Books, 110–23. Allan, D. (2006), ‘Effects of Popular Music in Advertising on Attention and Memory’, Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 46, no. 4: 434–44. Anjum, B., Dhanda and S. Nagra (2012), ‘Impact of Celebrity Endorsed Advertisements on Consumers’. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing & Management Review, vol. 1, no. 2: 22–3. Bakare, O. R. (1994), Rudiments of Choreography. Zaria: Space 2000 Publishers. Beautemps, Chantal, Isabelle Brill and Valérie Meot (1984), ‘L’image de la danse dans la publicité télévisée’. La Recherche en danse: revue annuelle de travaux universitaires sur la danse, no. 3: 83–96. Dodds, Sherril (2004), Dance on Screen, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Iwah, Bem. Interview at 9 Iorkyaa Ako, High Level Area, Makurdi, Benue State, 23 July 2010. Julmi, C. (2016), ‘A Theory of Affective Communication’. Discussion Paper 498, Faculty of Economics. University of Hagen, Germany. Mick, D. G. and C. Buhl (1992), ‘A Meaning-Based Model of Advertising Experiences’. Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 19, no. 3: 317–38. Ododo, S. E. and K. Igweonu (2001), ‘Dance Drama and Dance Theatre: Unknotting the conflicting perceptions’. The Performer: The Ilorin Journal of the Performing Arts, vol. 3, no. 5: 51–8. Panadol (2012), ‘Oga Na Master’ TVC, YouTube Prima Garnet, posted 25 July, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjRv9RXy2Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 28 September 2016). Skye Bank Commercial (2008), ‘Hakuna Matata’, YouTube TheKushChronicles, posted 20 June, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKOPZf9o1zI&feature=youtu be_gdata_player (accessed 28 September 2016). Smyth, M. M. (1984), ‘Kinaesthetic Communication in Dance’. Dance Research Journal, vol. 16, no. 2: 19–22. Stanton, W. J. (1984), Fundamentals of Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill. Travassos, M. (2016), ‘The Dance Space in Audiovisual Advertising’. Textos y Sentidos, no. 13, online version, http://biblioteca.ucp.edu.co/OJS/index.php/ textosysentidos/article/download/2759/2737 (accessed on 25 October 2017). Ufford-Azorbo, I. I. (2011), Form and Content of Canoe Dance Theatre of Peoples of the Niger Delta. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Ugolo, C. (2006), ‘Dance Documentation and Preservation in Nigeria’. In Critical Perspec­tives on Dance in Nigeria, A. Yerima, A. Udoka and O. R. Bakare (eds). Ibadan: Kraft Books: 45–54. Walter, C. S. and L. Altamimi (2011), ‘Exploring Dance in Advertising and its Influence on Consumption and Culture Using an Online Survey Method’. Inter­ national Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology, vol. 1, no. 3: 228–54.

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Dance Photo Essay

‘Untitled’: FOD Gang’s environmental activism

CHUKWUMA OKOYE

I want to change things in my community. Seun Awobajo (Founder, FOD)

On 30 July 2017, I had the opportunity of seeing a unique contemporary dance performance in Bariga, a suburb in Lagos, Nigeria. The performance ‘Untitled: Series IV, a Site-Specific Performance’, was created and performed by a group of six boys aged between 15 and 16 years called Footprints of David Gang, or simply FOD Gang,1 which was constituted by Seun Awobajo in 2015 as an arm of Footprints of David Art Academy. I heard effusive oral reports of the performance from friends and saw clips of it on social media. Thus, I was especially eager to see this show that was described by Alithnayn Abdulkareem as ‘an extraordinary piece’ of ‘radical street performance.’2 For me it was indeed an extraordinary experience. It was physical theatre of a most visceral, engaging, somatic, confrontational, revolutionary, immersive, provocative and disturbing kind; unique in its crashing of the hallowed divide between performance and the everyday, space and the body, art and life. It was indeed a rare experience, which evoked in me a mixture of anxiety and excitement comparable somewhat to the masquerade performances of my youth in my home town where to perform and to spectate were to take risks and to be in palpable danger as both performer and audience could be critically injured. In many ways, ‘Untitled’ was a daring, 113

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1. The poster advertising the ‘Untitled’ performance

(© and reproduced by kind permission of Ibeabuchi Benson Ugochukwu)

risky and potentially dangerous adventure by the FOD Gang. It was, indeed, a site-specific performance in the sense that it was performed in a space not conventionally designed for theatrical performances. However, its spatial regime was much more radical and engaging than most site-specific perform­ ances insofar as the space was not in any way adapted to the performance, but rather, the performance highlighted or framed the space, making the audience see the performance space in an entirely new light. Secondly, the performers moved continually and engaged the audience physically so that they also moved and even ran with the performers. There was no discriminatory performer/audience spatial allocation. Rather space was shared concretely by performers

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2. In lieu of a placard this cast-off part of an armoured cable drum placed con­ spicuously on one end of the selected site announces the nature and objective of the performance: an appeal to the Lagos state governor, Akinwumi Ambode, to ‘Save our Road’. (All performance photographs © and reproduced by kind permission of Ibeabuchi Benson Ugochukwu)

and their audiences: in a unique manner the performance shared the performance space with pedestrians, motorists and motorcyclists. Following the directions given over the phone by Seun Awobajo, the founder and leader of the Academy, I found my way to the venue: Berger Bus Stop, beside Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos. The selected site comprises two contiguous spaces: the first is an open, busy square with a lot of people and vehicles coming and going. The second, about ten metres from the square, is a derelict, mud-flooded section of a dirt road which, but for the visible tracks of vehicular traffic that disappear into the puddles of muddy water and reemerge beyond, seems to me to be in a practically unusable condition.

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3. The perform­ance starts here, an open and busy square. In the background is the second and main site: the section of a flooded dirt road in a terrible state of disrepair. To the left is a high wire fence that physically and socially marks off this suburban lowbrow neighbourhood dirt road from a section of the highbrow superhighway known as Third Mainland Bridge.

4. A view of a section of the second site for the performance: a flooded, murky and deplor­able section of a dirt road. In spite of its deplorable state this is still an unbelievably busy road.

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The road is right beside a wide and decently tarred super­ highway with a pedestrian bridge. Both roads are visibly marked off spatially and socially by a high wire fence. The highway is a section of the famous Third Mainland Bridge, and the murky dirt road is a part of the ignoble Berger Bus Stop in Bariga, a district described by Joseph Unwana as ‘one of Lagos’ most notorious areas for cult clashes and gangland skirmishes’.3

5. Seun Awobajo walking around the square playing a djembe drum before the performance to call the attention of the audience.

The performance is heralded by drumming. Seun, play­ing a djembe drum, walks leisurely about the open space, announc­ing the performance and inviting potential audience members to see the performance. Soon, he is joined by a masked drummer playing a bata drum. After a while, another drummer begins

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to play sharp staccato beats on a set of two freestanding drums. Five boys, dressed in plain white singlets and trousers made from different designs of a common Nigerian print called ‘ankara’, run into the performance space, each with a plastic can of a type commonly used as containers for gasoline or petrol. They rush frantically to another performer holding a petrol dispenser nozzle. They struggle for attention, displacing and nudging one another out of the way. Finally, they are all served.

6. One of the few mimetic representations of social challenges in the entire performance is this opening skit captioned ‘Fuel your Brain’. Here the boys hustle desperately for petrol. This is a dramatic representation of the anguish the community goes through during the incessant periods of acute scarcity of petrol, or ‘fuel’, as it is commonly known in Nigeria.

They assemble in a straight line in the middle of the square. In exaggerated slow motion they slowly unscrew the caps off the cans and empty the contents over their heads. Some members of the audience gasp in surprise and shock at the thought of the performers actually drenching their bodies in real petrol.

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7. And after all the troubles of procuring the very scarce essential spirit they pour the ‘petrol’ over their heads, literally ‘fuelling their brains’ or, more appropriately, poisoning them.

Individually, they place their cans beside them as they lie down in a straight line, with each of them, save the one at the top of the line, placing his head between the legs of the person ahead of him. They sway their outstretched arms in unison and after a while three of them get up and run to the second space, the dirt road immersed in pools of muddy water. The remaining two sway their arms in the air awhile and get up slowly. After a few frantic dance movements, comprising running in circles, leaping into the air, acrobatic lifts, solo and duo choreographed movements – some in unison, others inharmonious – they take off at high speed to join the other three already in the second space. The audience also join in the race, curious and determined to continue to see the performance. The five boys line up beside each other on the edge of the dirt road. They sway precariously, with arms flailing in the air as if they are struggling to keep their balance, but eventually, to the audience’s amazement, they fall bodily into the murky pool of water. Against the background of

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8. Two of the boys running from the first space to join their three colleagues already waiting for them at the main site.

9. The two boys join their colleagues on the main site, the long stretch of a flooded, dirt road.

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a monotonous and ominous beat of the drum they splash, groan, roll, tumble, dance, swim and skip heedlessly in the murk.

10 & 11. Playfully they pelt each other with mud, run around, splash and dance in the muddy puddles, in defiance of the health hazard and possible physical injury which could be inflicted by any dangerous object buried in the muddy water.

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They run around in circles and finally end up in a straight line. By now their costumes and bodies have transformed them from boys in clean white singlets and ankara print trousers into gruesome figures soaked in red-brown dripping mud. At intervals, however, any one of them who feels like washing off some of the dirt, especially from his face and head, walks to a large container of clean water placed beside the road and washes himself off.

12. Time to wash some of the grime off the face and upper body.

The few mimetic but scantily narrative movements include the dash for fuel which references the recurrent scene in the country where scarcity of petroleum is one of the most persistent travails that punctuate everyday life, especially of the common people. Religious and ethnic conflicts are also ridiculed wherein each performer, representing a particular religion or ethnic identity using voice and props, chant and babble until they rush for weapons, charge at each other holding their weapons aloft in readiness to strike, and then freeze.

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13. A mimetic but largely metaphoric critique of endemic ethnic and religious conflicts in the society. Armed with bottles and representing some ethnic groups and religious sects with costume fragments (caps) and props (chaplets, red cloth and prayer beads) the boys lunge at each other.

However, on the whole, movements are more abstract. Immersed hideously in visibly sopping filth the boys dance, mime, tumble and play, visibly at home in the obviously un­ healthy dirty environment. Although some of their move­ments bear traces of indigenous dance styles such as bata and swange, they essentially perform contemporary dance movements charac­terised by expressive and largely stretched, jerky and staccato routines. And although there are occasional skits narrat­ing common scenes symptomatic of the challenges of living life in such a poor, degraded and dangerous environment, most of the movements are abstract and affective, with very scanty literal, mimetic or narrative threads. The movements are laboured, occasionally erratic and uncoordinated, and seem consciously designed to emotionally move or shock rather than entertain the audience.

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14 & 15. Movements, gestures, vocal sounds and facial expressions combine with the sordid environment to present a compelling image of physical and emotional anguish.

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16 & 17. Along with these very moving images of hopelessness, dereliction, depriva­tion and death, everyday life trudges on; performance and everyday reality become one and the same. Motorists, pedestrians and spectators coalesce in a space that is itself run down and despoiled, thus emblematising their everyday reality.

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The performance’s concern with environmental issues is exemplified in their choice of site, which was consciously selected for its deplorable state. As any true site-specific performance, the site is an integral element of the performance it hosts. However, in this instance the site dominates the perform­ ance as it interacts with the performing bodies and marks or smears them with its dirt, uncleanness. Thus features of the site seem to constitute or overcome the bodies thereby transforming them and making them one with the environment. A few minutes into the performance and all the performers are totally drenched in murk, filth becoming both makeup and costume, and in some instances properties as well. The FOD Gang’s chosen site is symbolic, signifying widespread environmental and social neglect, especially in lowbrow, densely populated suburban communities. The choice of a road close to a square is ingenious because it is quite a busy road that pedestrians and motorists use to get to the square. All through the performance the road continues to be used by motorists and pedestrians. Sometimes a motorist is implored to wait a few seconds, especially if performers are directly in his or her path, or to meander around or through the performers. Some motorists tarry awhile to see as much of the performance as they can see, before continuing with their journeys. Thus the choice of the road not only guarantees spectatorship, but in the very business of living life, of going and coming, it highlights how the road, and all that is associated with it, plays a central role in the life of that community. The road enables movement and access; its condition is closely associated with the condition of those who use it; those who do their business either on it, through it or with it. Thus, the purposively selected space and its role in the performance becomes a visual narrative of the people’s social, economic and political realities. In addition, the neglect and marginalisation of that particular site is rendered in high relief when contrasted to the conspicuous superhighway on the other side of the fence.

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18. In this posture and gesture the Gang, visually embodying the gloomy physical and psychological state of their environment, make a passionate plea for institu­ tional attention.

In its affective and somatic format, ‘Untitled’ conveys to its audience the challenging experiences of life in an environment totally lacking basic civic amenities, especially electricity, water and useable roads. The pain, anger, frustra­ tion and helplessness of the inhabitants are not expressed literally, through speech or mimetic dance, but through the interaction of performers’ bodies and the physical state of the space in which they perform, and within which many in their audiences live. The arduous, stretched body movements

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19. The boys’ arms are ‘bound’ together behind them. Bound like this and dumped helplessly into this dangerous puddle the image gives a moving impression of the kind of torture and deprivation the boys endure from their deplorable environment.

and gestures, the vocal sounds (grunts, moans and shrieks) they make, their facial expressions, use of costume and even musical and non-musical drumming all cohere to graphically and aurally push home not just the anger of the youths but also that of the entire community. With the physical look of performers – visually smeared, totally marked by the dirty and unkempt environment in which they live – the audience is one with the performance through somatic and kinaesthetic empathy. They laugh, scream and cringe from the dirt, but acknowledge the symbolic parallels in their own lived experience in this part of Lagos. And, because most of the audience are members of the same community, identification with the performance and its cause is compulsive. In an interview, Seun Awobajo stated that ‘Untitled’ was a final year examination project devised by graduating students of the Footprints of David Art Academy. He explained that they hold a festival every year, which is a way of showing the community what they have been doing all year while they disturbed them with noise during their rehearsals. Friends

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and colleagues are invited to the festival which doubles as a graduation ceremony for the latest graduates of the academy who are required to do a practical project. This time, the graduands embarked on what he described as ‘an advanced version of what we call Ashawa; which is like going around public spaces and coming out with performances’. According to him, when he saw a sneak preview of what they were rehearsing, he was as excited as he was alarmed because of the dangerous nature of the community (violent crimes mostly operated by local gangs and cults) and the health and safety hazards to which the proposed performance would certainly expose the boys. He invited a few colleagues to witness a rehearsal and, influenced by the doggedness of the young boys, he finally gave his approval for the project. Thereafter, he proceeded to examine the site chosen by the students and to speak with the immediate inhabitants of the area. Eventually, the performance was held to unprecedented acclaim. According to Seun, it brought popular attention to the group: ‘In less than three months after the performance went viral on the Internet,’ he said, ‘Ambode, the Lagos State Governor came around and declared that the road should be fixed. Soon enough the road was reconstructed. Later, a second performance was held on another site and again the neglected and dilapidated site was fixed by the Governor.’ Smiling, Seun concluded proudly: ‘Now people in other parts of the community are calling on us to also come and perform in their environment.’ According to Seun, before ‘Untitled’ there had been several attempts to bring institutional attention to the community’s deplorable environment, poor power supply, lack of potable water and inadequate healthcare system. They engaged in protest marches and awareness campaigns, invited television stations and journalists. But none of these approaches yielded any positive result. He laughed: ‘We dressed decently and even hired buses. We did this on social media, wrote letters, with no real positive outcome. I guess we were too neat and organised and formal in our approach.’

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20. The Gang proudly poses on one of the newly reconstructed sites of their performance. Looking clean and happy, both road and the Gang free of dirty water and grime, the Gang is concrete evidence that physical theatre is an efficacious tool for social and environmental activism.

Ironically, ‘Untitled’, which was far from being neat, organised and formal, made a huge impact, and perhaps Footprints of David Gang have found a radically effectual revolutionary model for using site-specific contemporary dance and physical theatre for environmental activism. So again we see how contemporary dance is evolving, responding to rhythms, spaces and environments of the people in various African contexts. It is challenging the view that dance is used in Africa traditionally for festival, religious or aesthetic purposes. Here we see a new embodied sociopolitical activism emerging through contemporary dance.

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NOTES 1. The Gang comprises Chidera Nwobodo (dancer, aged 15), Segun Ademeso (dancer, aged 16), Ridwan Rasheed (dancer, aged 15), Adebajo Oluwafemi (dancer, aged 15), Anuoluwapo Sangokunle (dancer, aged 15) and Peter Abayomi (drummer, aged 15). 2. ‘FOD Gang: The Radical Contemporary Dancers Straight out of Bariga’, https:// thesoleadventurer.com/2016/12/14/fod-gang-the-radical-contemporarydancers-straight-out-of-bariga (accessed 14 December 2017). 3. Joseph Unwana (2016), ‘Top Ten Most Dangerous Places in Bariga’, www.naija. ng/699248-top-10-dangerous-places-bariga-lagos.html (accessed 20 February 2018).

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II Open Section

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Cultural Production in a Digital Age A Reflection on the adaptation of an African folktale for a young audience JC NIALA

There is a current obsession with story. Whether a TED Talk or an advertisement, the received wisdom is that in order for things to engage or even sell there has to be a story. Yet storytelling, an art form once synonymous with the African continent, is allegedly dying.1 I am fascinated by this apparent contradiction. How is it possible that, on the one hand, it seems people are queuing up to ‘tell their stories’, and yet on the other hand, it looks like the craft that brought these stories to life appears to be waning? I have been thinking about this for some time, and these questions emerge for me: Does the digital age mean that the way in which we want to engage with stories has changed? Are the old stories or folktales no longer relevant? Could we prevent folktales’ disappearance by adapting them? As I was considering these questions, an opportunity arose for me to test out some of my hypotheses regarding whether folktales and storytelling were dying out or had already changed into a new digital form.

The threat to storytelling What is clear is that storytelling, particularly in its oral form, which could be considered the ‘mother’ of all narrative135

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based cultural production (Popova 2014), is under threat on the continent. Particularly in rapidly expanding urban areas,2 the vast majority of people no longer sit around the fire in the evening and listen to stories, a primary way in which stories were engaged with over centuries. The question remains as to how large this threat is. Although there are still people both on the continent and in the diaspora who note their profession as storytellers, some of whom make this their sole means of economic survival, what has not been adequately studied is if there are fewer storytellers, and as a consequence, fewer accompanying stories than there were, say, a hundred years ago. There is a history of efforts to preserve stories outside of the vulnerable human body. In colonial times, priests and colonial officials wrote down and recorded stories and, in the digital era, digital media has provided a route to preserve folktales.3 Changing the media through which folktales are preserved and transmitted necessarily calls for adaptation as we do not write like we speak, for example, and digital technology has carried on with this process of adaptation at an even faster rate than before (Burket 1992). Thus the digital era provides a possible solution as it continues to propagate an evolutionary process that has allowed folktales to transcend genre and become incorporated into epics. Zipes argues that ‘oral and literary tales form one immense and complex genre because they are inextricably dependent on one another’ (2013: 3). This position, however, is not without its perils. Although the plethora of YouTube videos of storytellers at work capture some of the live experience, it is not the same as breathing the same air as the storyteller when you are told a story in the traditional way. Furthermore, digitising stories via YouTube videos push storytelling more into the realm of entertainment, whereas storytelling in Africa has always been a lot more than just entertainment. It was, and in some places remains, a key source of knowledge and means of negotiating accepted knowledge and belief systems that are handed down between

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the generations. So what has happened to storytelling in the digital era4 when the speed at which knowledge moves around the world is faster than a human mouth can form the sentences to share it?

My experience of the world of story I am a Kenyan theatre maker and, although I grew up in an urban setting, I am of a generation for whom folktales and storytelling are still very much alive and a part of my upbringing. Unlike my parents, who grew up in different parts of Western Kenya with mainly stories from within their own ethnic group, my experiences with storytelling mirrored the complexities of a post-colonial culture where the folktales I heard were a patchwork of my father’s Luo tales, my mother’s Samia tales, and those of the Danish writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), after whom the Karen area in Nairobi was named. The Ngong Hills that she mentions in Out of Africa (Dinesen 2016) are a group of knuckle-shaped hills that derived their name from a well-known Maasai folktale that many of us heard under their shadow.5 I still remember the moment of awe I experienced as a teenager on reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1986) and discovering my favourite Luo folktale within its pages. This led to a discussion with my parents in which I learned about the social and cultural connections between my own ethnic group the Luo of Eastern Africa, and the Igbo of Western Africa, which further cemented my pan-African worldview. There were some important similarities between these cultures, for example the ways in which both Luos and Igbos name their children after an event that occurred surrounding the birth. As a child, it was obvious to me that when I ‘graduated’ from the childhood productions that my cousin Jonathan and I put on for friends and family in my parents’ living room, the canon of folktales I grew up with would inform and become

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a part of the plays that I would go on to create and produce as an adult. Meanwhile, other ways of engaging with stories entered our family home through the first family computer (a Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and early computer games such as Pac Man. Digital media had a strong impact on my work: by the time I staged my first play, The Strong Room, in Nairobi, folktales were the last possible source of inspiration for my work. Like many Kenyan plays being staged at the time (2011), it was a distinctly urban play tackling issues of social inequality, security and politics; all the sorts of quotidian things with which Nairobians engaged. It also featured technology as a central aspect to the plot of the play. The conceit in the play is centred on a technological security feature in a wealthy woman’s house (a strong room) that malfunctions when there is a power cut. However, upon reviewing my work with the Kenyan Women’s Theatre Circle,6 I came to realise that I had not abandoned folk tales altogether, that in actual fact my work was split: The plays that I wrote for adults were largely issue based. They were a way for me to collectively work with other African women in exploring and having a voice on the things that were going on in our societies that affected us. My children’s plays, however, were still rooted in folktale and reproduced the same varied mix I had grown up with, as well as incorporating folktales I had learned from other African storytellers along the way. This split echoed that of my parents’ rural childhood and urban adulthood and it highlighted the rupture that had occurred in many Kenyan homes whose generations included those born before and after independence. This rupture removed stories from their context and strained the way in which a post-independent generation perceived them. In 2016, I was invited to participate in a poetry residency titled Re-Mixed Borders, jointly held by The Poetry School and the London Parks & Gardens Trust. The brief was open, I just needed to create poetry, some of which would be published, and there should be a performance. I could use the time in the Cable Street Community Gardens as I wished.

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Alongside the poems that were published and a poetry trail, I decided to adapt a classic South African folktale into a verse drama for the performance part of my residency. In order to test out my hypotheses regarding traditional folktales, I decided to work with a traditional story that carried a universal theme – in this case love. However, in Kenelinda and Fana, the story I chose to work with, the love was expressed in a dutiful and self-sacrificial way, which, it could be argued, is not a commonly depicted expression of love in this day and age. Kenelinda and Fana, also known as The Story of Umshayandlela, is a classic South African (Zulu and Xhosa) folktale that has been retold and rewritten many times – as I experienced when two different South African storytellers told me this tale, both of whom had separately been told the story in a continuous chain going back many generations. Like most folktales, there are many versions of the story but here is its basic spine. Kenelinda, a young child, is her father’s favourite and as such is given a prized cow, Fana to look after. Fana is Kene­linda’s main companion and draws jealous attention from surrounding villages as there are many people who would like to steal Fana. This happens one day, but when the villains try to get Fana to go with them she is magically stuck to the ground. It is only when the villains threaten to kill Kenelinda, and she pleads with Fana for her life that Fana moves. The villains decide to take both child and cow as it appears to them that only Kenelinda can control Fana. They get to a seasonal river, which has flooded, and the thugs insist that Kenelinda must cross first. In order to avert the risk of Kenelinda drowning, Fana causes the water to part and they safely get through to the other side. When they get to the villains’ village, the people in the village prepare for a great feast (Fana is a fat and healthy cow) but every time they try to slaughter her, their knives bounce off and cannot pierce her skin. Again, they threaten to kill Kenelinda who pleads with Fana, who then succumbs to the slaughter. After the villagers have feasted, they go to bed leaving Kenelinda alone

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with Fana’s skin and scattered bones. Kenelinda is overcome with grief. An old lady nearby takes pity on her and tells her that the villains are also cannibals and if Kenelinda does not escape that night, she will be eaten the following day. With no one else to turn to, Kenelinda gathers up Fana’s skin and bones and continues to weep, wishing that her friend were there to help. Fana magically begins to come together and alive and helps Kenelinda escape and return home where they live together ‘happily ever after’. In my first adaptation of the folktale, I set A Cow’s Tale (the title of my play) in the 2010s. It told the story of a young urban boy returning to the village with his widower father and reigniting a friendship with a cow that he had known as a child. There was a sense of loss and reconciliation that underpinned the play. His father’s deep grief at the loss of his wife meant that he had not returned to the village where his wife was buried since her death. The young boy in the play re-discovers who he is by engaging with a talking cow. The juxtaposition of the ‘old magical way of life’, where there is a norm for cows to talk, and the ‘new technological existence’, the young boy landing in trouble with castle rustlers as he chases a mobile phone signal, were the trigger for the young boy’s process of remembering or recalling that there are other sources of wisdom rooted within his own traditions. The process of recalling is an on-going discussion amongst contemporary Kenyan storytellers. Many of the stories that storytellers have to work with are fragments or have been altered in such a way that it takes a certain amount of detective work to piece together what could have been the ‘original’ story. I was living and working in Kenya at the time, and so it was an important theme for me too. My parents had grown up in a rural area and come to live in Nairobi via Kampala and London, where they met while pursuing higher education. I had returned to work in Kenya from the United Kingdom where I too had studied. I was deeply aware of the effects of migration and the concomitant loss of culture. Most studies on the effects of migration

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have focused on economic and material consequences but there is something also of a cultural dislocation. Did the culturally diverse setting in which I grew up provide me with something, but also deny me something else? It was not possible for my parents to replicate the treasured childhoods that they had. For one thing they came from differ­ ent cultures, and for another the stories that made sense in their respective cultural settings were not easy to transpose onto a ‘modern urban’ lifestyle. These thoughts were echoed by one of the contributors to the BBC debate on storytelling who gave an apt description: ‘A lot of the stories are based on village lifestyles that are not familiar to those of us brought up in urban settings and that will make it harder and less likely for us to pass them on to our children’ (BBC 2004). I was aware of how many of the details of the folktales I had been told from my childhood I had forgotten, which perhaps led to my unconscious decision to adapt a folktale that I first encountered as an adult. Furthermore, I had used the translation technique of domestication (Lawrence 2008), whereby a creator changes details to bring a story into a modern setting, to bring it closer to the intended audience of young urban Nairobi children. This is a process that is not without its perils. The poet and cantadora7 Clarissa Pinkola Estes (2007) discusses this in her work where she describes the theory that the fairy tale The Red Shoes as we know it is incomplete because of the alterations that have been made to the story as it has been passed down. She argues that the original intention/ meaning has been lost or obscured, while critical elements of the story remain.

Why choose to work with folktales? I also faced a philosophical challenge: was I, unbeknownst to myself, reproducing a romantic notion of the use of African folktales? I was aware that in the UK there were certain stereotypical expectations of what an ‘African’ story should

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be, which often include an essentialised version of ‘African’ culture – moral tales – often featuring animals, with a linear plot and a strong message. Work that was more readily appreciated was work that fell into these expectations. Con­ comitantly, in my work I was often sub-consciously trying to bridge the gaps between the disparate parts of my identity. I loved the folktales of my childhood, I wanted to make work that was current and relevant all at the same time as I was trying to discover my own unique voice. Just as the collections of African folktales published by missionaries and colonial officials around the turn of the century reflected their biases, reading the words of the Senegalese artist Iba N’Diaye made me question why it was that I wanted to use folktales in the plays I was writing for children: I have no desire to be fashionable. Certain Europeans, seeking exotic thrills, expect me to serve them folklore. I refuse to do it – otherwise I would exist only as a function of their segregationist ideas of the African artist. (Quoted in Mudimbe 1994: 163)

When I was growing up, the folktales the adults in my life shared with me described a world unlike one that I was living in, but with very positive and strong associations. They did not include the identity issues associated with growing up in post-colonial Kenya. In brief, a utopia to which those adults sometimes appeared to wish to return but knew they never could. I found that I was unable to stage that adaptation. I had focused my research on the mechanics of the adaptation and in doing so missed a critical step in its process. Although I was working with a story that captivated me (this in and of itself is a powerful tool in the process of adaptation), and despite the fact that artists are able to do whatever they like, their motive and impetus remain critical (DiPiano 2011). I had to dig deep to explore the reasons why I wanted to work with African folktales in the first place. What was it that was really drawing me to them beyond fond childhood memories? I knew that folktales had done more than just entertained

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me. They had also rooted me in my environment (the Legend of the Ngong Hills) whilst allowing me to travel and make connections with people from other parts of the world. Folklorists have written about how the tales reveal a lot about our cultural and social history (Møllegaard 2013); for example the fact that Luos and Igbos are cultural cousins would not have hit me as viscerally had I simply read it in a history book rather than made the connection through folktales. I became curious as to what it was about the folktales that allowed them to do this. Before proceeding with my adaptation, I had to find out more about the nature of folktales in order to work with them. According to Jack Zipes, folktales work in the way that they do because they are memetic. He describes a cultural evolution in which folk tales change, transform and replicate allowing them to endure because they are ‘a cultural indication of what we have endeavoured to communicate to help one another adapt to changing environments while preserving an instinctual morality’ (2013: 20). Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene is a clear source of inspiration for this theory. In Dawkins’ book the gene is the transmitter of genetic information while in Zipes’ the folk tale is a cultural information transmitter (Dawkins 1976). Folktales’ responses to the environments in which they live are what makes them so resilient. It is perhaps no surprise that even the language itself, namely ‘adaptation’ of works, also relates to the language of genetics from which the memetic theory originates. However, an evolutionary framework was also one I approached with caution. All too often, Africa and African people and material culture have been placed historically at the bottom of the evolutionary chain, with the implicit understanding being that development and progress meant a move away from the source and a movement towards a European/Western ideal, particularly in terms of Modernist technological progress, which had underpinned the industrial revolution and was intrinsic to the colonial endeavour. It became all the more pertinent to define for whom I was

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adapting the play, and whose gaze was being cast on the folktale as I worked through the process of adaptation. In the adaption process I found that folktales, because they are stories, ‘work with people, for people and always stories work on people, affecting what people are able to see as real, as possible, and as worth doing or best avoided’ (Frank 2010: 3). Kenelinda and Fana was already working on me. I had initially been drawn to the story because the essential theme is of a profound bond between a child (or in some cases twins) and a cow. Depending on the interpretation of this bond it can be seen in the context of duty and service. (In all versions I found of the story, the cow does not die without the complicity of the child). However, there is also a foundation to the story that love conquers all (the cow comes back to life). In the end, ironically, it was seeing African folktales and storytelling through a digital metaphor that allowed me to work on a second adaptation. Starting afresh, I explored the ‘technologies’ of African folktales and storytelling. I found that the structural analysis of the folktale as proposed by Vladimir Propp (1968) shows how it is interconnected with our fundamental biology: ‘The organising principle of a tale, the soul of a plot, is found to operate at the level of biology. The tale is created as a necessary sequence of “motifemes” and it has the pragmatic function of solving a problem. In other words, the quest is established as the means for problem solving, and it is represented and communicated through the tale’ (Burket 1992: 65). Thus it means that, as well as folktales existing because we do, ‘we can elucidate why they continue to be irresistible and breathe mimetically through us, offering us hope that we can change ourselves while changing the world’ (Zipes 2013: 20). This suggests an important function not only to tell us how the world is, but also how we could imagine, and rehearse it differently. It became clear to me that my quest was to use African performance technologies, such as call and response, shared singing, the use of rhyme and riddles, immersion and audience participation to meet

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a current need for connection to others in the world of the children for whom I was writing the play.8 The call to interconnectedness highlighted the theme of love in the play, particularly as it is an inter-species love and, given the current environmental challenges, the idea that it is not too late to save a world that we can all live in and love together, rose to the fore.

A new adaptation The first thing that I did for the new adaptation was to search for as many printed versions of the story as I could find in order to try and unpick what key elements of the story endured even as details changed (Leshoai 1989, Makhuphula 1998, Savory and Baxter 1961). I was unsurprised to find out early on in this process that the story had previously been adapted for the stage because it is a dramatic tale with a ‘strong narrative’ and yet offers ‘interpretative latitude’ in which Kenelinda and Fana (cow and child) go through a series of misfortunes during which Kenelinda is slaughtered (Riccio, 2007: 31). Next came the choice of form. Drawing on my Luo culture I felt that a verse drama would bring in the technologies of music and rhythm and help to maintain the thread of authenticity of the storytelling style. I felt that verse would heighten and intensify the experience, and indeed one child who experienced the play pointed out that the verse was the most pleasurable part of it. If, as Attridge argues, the experience of poetry on the page ‘is a feeling of intensified referentiality combined with (and inseparable from) a heightened awareness of the aural qualities of language’ (1998: 135), then this feeling can only deepen further when the verse is heard, not just read. Finally, I was interested in exploring the use of song in traditional African storytelling. There are many different functions of song, ranging from ways to amplify the most important speeches, to moving the

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story along. However, in this case, one of the key uses of song was to ‘maintain audience involvement’. To that end I composed a song, which was sung periodically throughout the play, involving the audience in the same way as would occur in many types of African performance settings. Even though some of the techniques used were not immediately familiar to the audience in East London, the play was as well received as it was in Nairobi. A Cow’s Tale was enacted as a promenade performance with an immersive experience. Children watching the play also participated in the story as they walked around the Cable Street Community Gardens with myself as author/ storyteller and an accompanying musician, singing the song and playing percussion instruments to produce relevant sound effects. This is in direct contrast to some folktale adaptations that have been criticised for being less able to engage a modern audience because, ‘when tales recorded in this way [by missionaries and colonial officers] are transcribed verbatim, the first thing that impresses the reader is that they are abundantly unreadable, even boring’ (Abrahams 2011: xiv). The adaptations that fare better are those that are worked on and with, and in the digital era made relevant by the use of technology, that can turn even them into graphic novels and animations (Newall 1987, Pager 2016). I discovered this first hand when I workshopped A Cow’s Tale with a group of urban children in Nairobi, Kenya, aged between 6 and 13 years, prior to the residency. Not only were their questions and observations insightful, but I found that their response to the immersive experience was so complete that they growled and made appropriate noises where animals were mentioned, something I had not anticipated. This suggested to me that the children were able to be transported from an urban setting to ‘other worlds’ through the immersive experience. Props were minimal, because as long as the descriptions were adequate (the children were quick to point out where they were not) the children were able to use the power of their imaginations to transport them into the world of

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Kenelinda and Fana, a world where a cow and a girl are twins and rivers part to magical commands. Indeed, the work­shop became integral to the re-writing and revision of the piece that was then performed first in Oxford at Rock Edge Nature Reserve and then in London at Cable Street Com­munity Gardens. Immersive theatre varies widely in its delivery in the UK from highly stylised settings (Geoghegan 2014) to strippedback performances where children’s imaginations become part of the experience (Gattenhof and Radavan 2009). This process can be liberating for any writer for the stage, who may otherwise be inhibited from writing fantastical plots in case they do not get staged. I drew from my experience of Waldorf/Steiner theatre, where children are provided with only small amounts of set design and props specifically to allow their imagination to take hold and fill in the gaps in their own way. This approach allows children in effect to create their own worlds and experiences. A strip of blue cloth can become a river and a simple mask a giraffe. I was also concerned to ensure that my adaptation main­ tained key elements of the folktale even though the work evolved into a play in its own right. The sequencing and plot points of the misfortunes faced by Kenelinda and Fana remained, as did the way in which the story was performed. In the African context, a storyteller would not have access to elaborate set design and so I and the musician who played the recorder in the production wore simple, portable costumes to indicate that we were trees. The Wisdom Tree narrator is a motif that appears all over the continent in different guises. I was keen that my adaptation would not unintentionally slip into an exercise in cultural poaching (Kinga 2016, Griffiths and Watts 2013) and so took care to ground A Cow’s Tale in its African roots.9 Even though certain elements of domestication were used, African names for places and people were important and the narrator opens the play with a tradi­tional call, inviting the audience to join in the story in Kenya. This augmented the immersive experience as children in East London left

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behind tower blocks and concrete to find themselves on the savannah plains in Kenya. Workshopping the play helped me to ascertain a suitable age range for the play, in this case 7 to 11 years. Whilst every child is different, it has been noted by the child psychologist Piaget that this period is when children’s cognitive development allows them to follow logical progression. However, they are not yet thinking fully in abstract ways, nor are they as easily misled or tricked as younger children (Mooney 2013). I found that this age group enjoyed the workshop experience because it was as though they were creatively entering a game. Vygostsky has explored this aspect of development in his work (Willet et al. 2008). As long as children grasp the basic rules, their imaginations are free to run wild. The younger children (aged 6 years) had a tendency to get lost in the play and did best using the percussion instruments. They needed more guidance regarding when to stop and start, which is something that could slow down or disrupt a live performance. The older children (ages 12 to 13 years) did not involve themselves as much as the 7–11 year olds, and were quick to point out inconsistencies, holes in the plot or places where it was simply dull. The insight that I garnered from this is that it might be possible to write off folktales as having lost relevance when adapting for digital native children,10 but that actually the fault often lies with the way in which they are adapted or targeted at the appropriate age group. In terms of the writerly process, I found that working with the intended audience was a powerful tool in my approach to adaptation. It enabled me to be freer in my choices as I incorporated what the children did or did not respond to. Indeed, both in Kenya and UK, the children wanted to repeat the play immediately after they had just participated in it. This signalled the fact that they had enjoyed the folktale and wanted to experience it again. Particularly in the UK, where audience participation can fail miserably (Gardner 2013), I was both relieved and excited by the possibilities

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of working in a decidedly African way, drawing on Africa’s long participatory and immersive history. Scholars like Mabweazara have argued that ‘the demarcation between the audience and the performer was non-existent’ (2002). I found it empowering because I was able to use an African source to engage with children from different parts of the world in a way that impacts on current issues touching their lives. Perhaps in an age where technology moves at a phenomenal speed, and children are highly literate on the internet and with mediated modes of storytelling, it is a radical thing for them to return to such a fundamental source like a folktale, and actively engage in the storytelling process, as they imagine themselves in the story and actively solve problems being posed by the tale.

The way ahead Going forwards, I am convinced that I will continue to work with African folktales not only as a relevant but also as an appropriate source for cultural production. Apart from the benefits mentioned in this essay, such as the way in which the adaptation process allowed me to explore my positioning as a theatre maker and artist – as I plan to work in Kenya again – using folktales as a source also has practical benefits. ‘Historically, the most influential new communications technologies have reduced the price of entry into a cultural field, creating openings for actors … who were previously unable to get their work into the public’ (Klinnenberg and Benzecry 2005: 16). Folktales, with their lack of copyright and ubiquitous nature, are just the sort of ‘technology’ that cultural practitioners in the digital era can use effectively to both entertain and educate in a broader sense, audiences with whom they engage. They are cost effective, and can work in environments with resource challenges, without any loss of impact. Indeed, since my own project a whole (unrelated) movement has sprung up in Nairobi called

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Re-Imagined Stories. Started by Maimouna Jallow, the project has challenged artists to be daring in their re-telling of classic African folktales; these are being performed all around Nairobi and have gone on to be published. The BBC, who in 2004 opened the debate on the supposed death of folktales and storytelling as an art form, found itself reporting on their revival in 2017. It seems we are not done with the ancient practice yet (BBC Africa 2017).

NOTES   1 In 2004 BBC Africa hosted a lively virtual debate Is story-telling a dying art? in which respondents overall showed their love for the art form but acknowledged that mainly in urban areas but also in rural areas, ‘story telling is an almost dying art’. Whilst some saw this as inevitable due to changing lifestyles, there was also a consistent call to preserve these stories in various ways because of an underlying concern that, ‘[s]tory-telling is like the DNA of our ancestral heritage – if storytelling dies so shall our human species’ (BBC 2004).   2 As of 2014, 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, with the most rapid growth being in Africa and Asia (United Nations 2014).   3 Just one example of many is a project in District Six, Cape Town (Marsden et al. 2010).  4 The ‘digital era’ is characterised by technology that increases the speed and breadth of knowledge turnover within the economy and society. ‘The social and economic implications of the Digital Era are huge and will increase as technological functionality becomes more knowledge-based, our everyday lives and understanding of ourselves become more linked to it, and it takes on a “life” of its own’ (Shepherd 2004: 1).   5 The Kenyan filmmaker Kwame Nyong’o, also a Karen resident, won awards for his animation, The Legend of the Ngong Hills, based on this Maasai folktale (ASIFA Egypt 2012).   6 I tried to found this network alongside a group of other Kenyan Women Theatre makers. We were a unique group in that we all came from different ethnic and racial backgrounds. Unfortunately, the network did not take off for a number of reasons, including competing demands on our time and resources.  7 One who hands down myths and stories by word of mouth – from ancient Spanish/Latin tradition.  8 By the time of the second adaptation, I was living and working in UK, and the play was being written for a poetry residency in London. In the end, it was performed in London, Oxford and Nairobi.   9 Before the adaptation, I discussed the project with the two storytellers who had taught me the story about its use, and retrospectively I also discussed the project at a departmental seminar at the University of Cape Town Theatre department; both rigorous discussions affirmed my use of the folktale.

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Cultural Production in a Digital Age  151 10 A digital native is an individual who was born after the widespread adoption of digital technology. The term ‘digital native’ does not refer to a particular generation, but is rather a catch-all category for children who have grown up using technology such as the Internet, computers and mobile devices. This exposure to technology in the early years is believed to give digital natives a greater familiarity with and understanding of technology than people who were born before it was widespread.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrahams, Roger (2011), African Folktales. New York: Knopf Doubleday. Achebe, Chinua (1986), Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann. ASIFA Egypt (2012), ‘The Kenyan Film The Legend of Ngong Hills Wins Best Animation at Nigeria’s African Oscar 2012’. 17 June, http://egypt.asifa.net/ index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=38 (accessed 4 December 2017). Attridge, Derek (1988), Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce. London: Methuen. BBC (2004), ‘Is Story-Telling a Dying Art?’ 16 July, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/africa/3898337.stm (accessed 4 December 2017). BBC Africa (2017), ‘Bringing African Folktales to Life’. 2 July, www.bbc.co.uk/ news/world-africa-40460236 (accessed 4 December 2017). Burket, Walter (1992), Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dawkins, Richard (1976), The Selfish Gene Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dinesen, Isak [Karen Blixen] (2016 [1937]), Out of Africa. London: Penguin. DiPiano, Hilary (2011) ‘Adapt or Perish! Five things to consider before starting an adaptation’. Playscripts Blog, 21 September, www.playscripts.com/blog/2011/09/ adapt-or-perish-five-things-to-consider-before-starting-an-adaptation (accessed 4 December 2017). Estes, Clarissa Pinkola (2007), The Red Shoes: On torment and the recovery of soul life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True. Etherton, Michael (ed.) (2006), African Theatre: Youth. Oxford: James Currey. Frank, Arthur W. (2010), Letting Stories Breathe: A socio-narratology. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Gardner, Lynn (2013), ‘Role Reversal: When audience participation doesn’t work’. The Guardian, 28 October, www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2013/oct/ 28/when-audience-participation-doesn-t-work (accessed 4 December 2017). Gattenhof, Sandra and Mark Radavan (2009), ‘In the Mouth of the Imagination: Positioning children as co-researchers and co-artists to create a professional children’s theatre production’. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 14, no. 2: 211–24. Geoghegan, Kev (2014), ‘Grimm Tales Premieres In East London Basement’. 22 March, www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26681712 (accessed 4 Decem­ber 2017). Griffiths, Kate and Andrew Watts (2013), Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Litera­ ture in film, theatre, television, radio and print. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Kinga, Varga-Dobai (2016), From Folktales to Popular Culture: Poaching and relevance in

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152  JC Niala the process of history. 25 June, www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol40/varga.pdf (accessed 4 December 2017). Lawrence, Venuti (2008), The Translator’s Invisibility: A history of translation. London: Routledge. Leshoai, B. L. (1983), Isong le Nkhono: African Folktales for Children Revised Edition. Braamfontein: Skotaville Publishers. Klinnenberg, Eric and Claudio Benzecry (2005), ‘Introduction: Cultural production in a digital age’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 597, 6–18. Mabweazara, Hayes (2002), ‘Present Day African Theatre Forms have Filtered Through From the Past’. African Postcolonial Literature in English in the Postcolonial Web, 12 April, www.postcolonialweb.org/africa/mabweazara1.html (accessed 5 February 2018). Makhuphula, Nombuelo (1998), Xhosa Fireside Tales. Johannesburg: Seriti sa Sechara. Marsden, Gary, Ilda Ladeira, Thomas Reitmaier, Nicola J. Bidwell and Edwin Blake (2010), ‘Digital Storytelling in Africa’. International Journal of Computing, vol. 9, no. 3: 257–65. Møllegaard, Kirsten (2013), ‘Review – The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The cultural and social history of a genre’. Folklore, vol. 124, no. 1: 119–20. Mooney, Carol Garhart (2013), Theories of Childhood: An introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky, second edition. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press. Mudimbe, Valentin Yves (1994), The Idea of Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Uni­ ver­sity Press; London: James Currey. Newall, Venetia, (1987), ‘The Adaptation of Folklore and Tradition’. Folklore, vol. 98, no. 2: 131–51. Pager, Sean A. (2016), Folklore 2.0: Preservation through Innovation. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Popova, Maria (2014), ‘Vladimir Nabokov on Writing, Reading, and the Three Qualities a Great Storyteller Must Have’, brainpickings, 21 February, www. brain­ pickings.org/2014/02/21/vladimir-nabokov-on-storytelling (accessed 4 December 2017). Propp, Vladimir (1968), Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, TX: University of Texas. Riccio, Thomas (2007), Performing Africa: Remixing tradition, theatre and culture. New York: Peter Lang. Savory, Phyllis and Sylvia Baxter (1961), Zulu Fireside Tales. New York: Hastings House. Shepherd, Jill (2004), ‘What is the Digital Era?’ In Social and Economic Transformation in the Digital Era, Georgios Doukidis, Nikolaos Mylonopoulos and Nancy Pouloudi (eds). Hershey: Idea Group Publishing: 1–18. Sylvester, Doug (1998), Folkfest: Folktales from around the world. Newton, IL: Rainbow Horizons Publishing. United Nations (2014), ‘World’s Population Increasingly Urban with More Than Half Living in Urban Areas’.10 July. New York: UN, www.un.org/en/ development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html. Willet, Rebekah, Muriel Robsinson and Jackie Marsh (2008), Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures. London: Routledge. Zipes, Jack (2013), The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The cultural and social history of a genre. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

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And With Them Came Devils Ebrahim Hussein, Mashetani & the poetics of doubt

JOSHUA WILLIAMS

The iconoclastic Tanzanian dramatist Ebrahim Hussein (b. 1943) is a leading member of the pioneering generation of African theatre artists that rose to prominence in the revolu­ tionary ferment of the 1960s and 1970s. In his 1976 verse play Ngao ya Jadi, or The Shield of Tradition, Hussein locates himself within the literary pantheon of decolonial East Africa, albeit with a significant twist. A brave young chief has just defeated a monstrous serpent with seventy heads. The village’s best and brightest arrive to celebrate: STORYTELLER: Shaaban Robert Stood tall in the field Mathias Mnyampala Was called there by his friends Kezilahabi, Muyaka Both heeded the call People were intoxicated with poetry Also Penina Muhando Especially Ngugi wa Thiong’o Abdilatif isn’t stiff They entertained people with songs for the dancing And in the midst of the hubbub Were those Husseins, common men And with them came devils They waved with relief and were allowed in. (Hussein 1976: 45, J. Williams’ translation.)

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In Ngao ya Jadi, the chief’s life-and-death confrontation with his terrible antagonist allegorises the struggle of freedom fighters against colonial power. Consequently, the celebration that ensues after his triumph maps onto the euphoria that followed on the heels of independence in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania in the early 1960s. Euphrase Kezilahabi, Penina Muhando, Abdilatif Abdalla, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o were some of the leading lights of the politically committed Kenyan and Tanzanian intelligentsia from the late 1960s onward; the nineteenth-century Mombasan poet Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy and the early twentieth-century Tanzanian writers Shaaban Robert and Mathias Mnyampala,1 both of whom died in the first decade of independence, were critical literary forebears of the contemporary Swahili style that Hussein, Kezilahabi and others sought to master. Hussein himself, lost ‘in the midst of the hubbub’, arrives on this scene of national self-invention with significant baggage and is only begrudgingly ‘allowed in’. Unlike some who have come before him, he is a ‘common [man]’ – and, even more ominously, he brings ‘devils’, ‘mashetani’, with him. Unlike the work of many of his contemporaries, Hussein’s oeuvre is endlessly bedevilled. He has published eight plays over the course of his career, each of them increasingly preoccupied with tragedy, doubt and ambivalence. His early dramatic experiments – Wakati Ukuta, or Time is a Wall and Alikiona, or She Got What She Deserved, both published in 1970 but written four or five years earlier – provide largely apolitical and mostly naturalistic glimpses into the everyday life of Dar es Salaam’s middle class. With Kinjeketile (1969), however, Hussein entered what Robert Philipson calls his ‘major phase’ (Philipson 1989: 97): a series of plays haunted by the difficulty of history and the intractability of difference. While Kinjeketile, Ngao ya Jadi, and Jogoo Kijijini, or The Cock Crows in the Village (1976), reimagine anti-colonial revolution in a minor key, Mashetani, or Devils (1971), Arusi, or The Wedding (1980), and Kwenye Ukingo wa Thim, or At the Edge of No-Man’s Land (1988), dwell on the fissures that

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rend communities and keep utopian dreams of progress from ever quite coming true. These plays eschew easy answers in favour of the vexing complexity of the present, with all its half-healed wounds. Hussein, in other words, unlike many other artists who make their careers in times of revolutionary transition, is not interested in rousing sentiment or rosy prognostication. For him, the devil is in the details. This fiercely iconoclastic approach to art and politics did not endear Hussein to the Tanzanian cultural establishment. Jane Plastow has noted that while he did have an early period of ‘commitment to Marxism’ that was at least partially in line with the political imperatives of the post-colonial state, Hussein subsequently ‘moved further and further towards an aesthetic, individualist approach to theatre’ (1996: 193). His later plays are written in elliptical prose – and occasionally verse – that often verges on the obscure. With the possible exception of his last published play, Kwenye Ukingo wa Thim, he has also largely abandoned theatrical naturalism in favour of a tortured expressionism laced with lyricism and a subversive sense of humour. As Joachim Fiebach, Hussein’s friend and former teacher, puts it, ‘[h]is pieces are designed for a “theater of intimacy”, loaded with symbols and dreams and visions, employing dense, difficult-to-decipher meta­ phors and intricate flashbacks and flash-forwards in “fictional time”’ (1997: 26). Hussein’s critics allege that this increasing investment in a poetic ‘theater of intimacy’ made his work less accessible to the public. Hussein has responded to this critique – and a host of other attacks, both real and imagined, on his autonomy as an artist and intellectual – by withdrawing still further from public life. By the early 1980s, he had given up his teaching post at the University of Dar es Salaam; he now lives in self-imposed internal exile, consenting only very rarely to interviews. It should come as no surprise, given Hussein’s estrangement from precisely those communities that might patronise performances of his work, that his plays are rarely produced. His most widely performed play is Kinjeketile, a multifaceted

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theatricalisation of the 1905–1907 Maji Maji insurgency against German colonial dominion in what is now southern Tanzania. Part of Kinjeketile’s appeal, especially in the 1970s, was its revolutionary subject matter which, at least on a surface level, is more in keeping with the decolonial aesthetic of the independence period than the rest of Hussein’s mature plays. Kinjeketile was also buoyed by the fact that Hussein, breaking with his usual practice of writing for the stage in the Swahili language exclusively, translated his original dialogue into English. This English-language adaptation of Kinjeketile went on to be published in Oxford University Press’ New Drama from Africa Series and represented Tanzania at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in Dakar in 1977. Since then, Kinjeketile has been performed a handful of times in Swahili and in English, including a production I directed with student actors at the University of California, Berkeley in 2011, and a free-form adaptation, entitled Maji Maji Flava, made by Asadeva and Flinn Works in Kassel, Berlin and Dar es Salaam in 2016– 2017. However, like the rest of Hussein’s plays, it hasn’t become part of the repertory in the way that the plays of Wole Soyinka or even Ngugi wa Thiong’o have done. The complexity of Hussein’s language, his aversion to cultivating sustained artistic collaborations, and the infrastructural and economic challenges facing ‘art theatre’ in contemporary Tanzania have all conspired to ensure that Hussein’s plays remain of little more than literary interest even within the Swahili-speaking ambit of eastern Africa. Mashetani follows in this essential pattern. In fact, its subject – the disintegrating friendship of Kitaru and Juma, two university students in 1960s Dar es Salaam – seems to have been met with considerably less enthusiasm than Kinjketile’s evocation of Tanzania’s revolutionary past. The only production of Mashetani that I know of took place at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1977 or 1978 and met with lukewarm reviews. Indeed, it is notable chiefly for the fact that it was directed by Amandina Lihamba, who also played

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Juma’s grandmother; Lihamba – like Emmanuel Mbogo, who played Kitaru’s father – went on to considerable success on the Tanzanian literary scene. The delay between the publication of Mashetani in 1971 and its premiere years later was no doubt due in part to the fact that Hussein left Tanzania in the early 1970s to pursue postgraduate study at Humboldt University in East Berlin. However, it is also of a piece with the gradual fraying of Hussein’s relationship with his theatrical interlocutors. In his review of the University of Dar es Salaam production, R. Ohly notes that he found Mashetani’s focus on ‘“petit bourgeois” conflicts’ ‘regrettable’ (1978: 108). (For what it’s worth, he also criticized the production’s minimalist open-air staging, declaring that ‘the troupe had no proper stagecraft at its disposal’ – 105.) In addition to these political considerations of appropriate subject matter, the perennial question of Hussein’s inaccessibility also found its champions. According to Alain Ricard, the literary critic S.D. Kiango lamented that while Mashetani should have been of interest to his fellow Tanzanians, too few were able to understand it: ‘Kwa wengi, unakuwa ni kama kujaribu kuvunja chuma kwa meno’, which Ricard translates: ‘For many, it will be like trying to break steel with one’s teeth’ (2000: 62). To my mind, these conversations about politics and aesthetics are inextricably intertwined. The story Mashetani tells opens up almost immediately onto broader questions of class and ethnicity that were extraordinarily pressing in the 1960s and 1970s – and that substantially exceed the frame of ‘“petit bourgeois” conflicts’. As he has done so many times over the course of his career, Hussein was attempting in this instance to find a theatrical form adequate to the complexity of his political present. Ricard argues that by the time he wrote Mashetani, Hussein had realised that ‘political reality [was] no longer of an epic order’, that circumstances ‘call[ed] for other forms of figuration, closer to psychodrama, when facing the double inappropriateness of Victorian theatre (an outmoded colonial heritage) and epic theatre (an outrageous revolutionary dream)’ (2000: 57). The question at the heart

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of Mashetani is not how colonial structures of repression and control can be swept away, but rather what remains in the aftermath of that purgation. Kitaru, one of the two protagonists of the piece, is beset by existential anxiety spurred on by questions about the utility of the revolution and the future of the nation it brought into being. This is why an expressionist ‘psychodrama’ suited Hussein’s purposes much more readily than Victorian melodrama or Brechtian epic theatre. Mashetani had to be difficult precisely because it sought access to Kitaru’s febrile mind in order to make its tortured interiority theatrically manifest. This is a play about political doubt, ambivalence and angst as it reverberates within the collective psyche of independent Tanzania’s intellectual elite. For that reason – the outstanding theatricality of the first act’s play-within-a-play and the second act’s surrealistic dream sequences notwithstanding – I consider Mashetani a kind of post-colonial closet drama. It does not need to be performed for its ‘psychodrama’ to do its work. Readers like S. D. Kiango, who shared with Mashetani’s protagonists a deep preoccupation with the future of independent Tanzania’s fledgling national community, found in the published text of the play an experiential echo of difficulties they were not fully prepared to acknowledge. Crucially, Hussein wrote Mashetani in the immediate wake of two events of signal importance in the post-colonial history of Tanzania: the 1964 unification of the mainland with Zanzibar after the ouster of the Sultan, and the 1967 Arusha Declaration, in which Julius Nyerere, the first presi­ dent of Tanzania, committed the country to a socialist political philosophy he called Ujamaa, or ‘Familyhood’.2 Union with Zanzibar laid bare the ethnic, religious and cultural fault lines that separated the islands of Pemba and Unguja – and, to a lesser extent, the Indian Ocean coast of the mainland – from the interior of the country. To this day, variously inflected forms of factionalism organised around putative differences between ‘African’ and ‘Arab’,3 Christian and Muslim Tanzanians continue to affect national and

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regional politics, though thankfully largely without blood­ shed. Revolution in Zanzibar also had profound economic consequences, not least because it dislodged the aristocracy of the archipelago from their estates and spice planta­tions, which they had administered for generations under an essentially feudal system of land tenure. Unification with Tanganyika caused many of these dislocated elites to migrate to Dar es Salaam and other large towns on the mainland, where they encountered members of the ‘African’ nouveau riche who had risen to positions of economic, social and political prominence in the heady early days of Tanzania’s independence. Nyerere’s programme of Ujamaa threatened to throw all of this further into disarray, not only because it insisted on the family relation between Zanzibaris and their new neighbours from the interior, but also because it threatened to clip the wings of the new – and unabashedly capitalist – ‘African’ elite. Hussein almost certainly wrote Mashetani in 1970–1971 but set it in 1966, a year before Nyerere made his Arusha Declaration. This enabled Hussein to gesture in fascinating ways towards changes that were still to come for his characters. The idea that a definitive pronouncement about the future of the country may be at hand runs throughout the text. Hussein uses the word ‘azimio’, or ‘declaration’, which Nyerere used to refer to his official promulgation of Ujamaa at Arusha, throughout the play, but no conclusive statement is forthcoming. Swahili-speaking audiences at the time could not have missed this subversive link to the Arusha Declaration and its promises. The overall effect of this political mise-en-scène is one of uncertainty. None of the characters, no matter their background, can say with any confidence what is to come. The characters in the play map quite neatly onto the demographic categories I have just described. Kitaru and his family are members of the ‘African’ nouveau riche in Dar es Salaam; his father is an ‘mbenzi’, a man who has just bought a Mercedes-Benz. Kitaru is acutely aware that although he now has power and influence at his fingertips, he does

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not come from money – unlike his college classmate and friend Juma, a son of the displaced Zanzibari aristocracy. Juma’s grandmother is particularly bitter at her family’s fall from grace; she reminds Juma in no uncertain terms that he is better than his peers for having come from the upper echelons of the land-owning class. Juma and Kitaru, for their part, manage to maintain their friendship until the pressures of the world in which they live become too much to bear. The play opens with them performing a play of their own devising in which Juma plays the Devil and Kitaru plays Man. This play-within-a-play – not unlike Hussein’s own Ngao ya Jadi – depicts a power struggle between humanity and the oppressive forces that seek to constrain its future. It ends with Man killing the Devil and then immediately succumbing to doubt and despair. Is the Devil really dead? Did he have some ulterior motive in offering himself up for death? The anxiety prompted by his performance as Man in the play-within-the-play follows Kitaru into his day-to-day life and drives a wedge between him and Juma. Mashetani ends with Kitaru demanding that they restage their imagined confrontation between the Devil and Man with the roles reversed. When Juma refuses to give up the role of the Devil, their friendship is finally irrevocably broken. The allegorical resonances of ‘The Devil and Man’ are likely clear. S. D. Kiango and T. S. Y. Sengo put it baldly: ‘Tumeonyeshwa kwamba mkoloni ndiye Shetani’ – ‘It is made clear to us that the colonialist is in fact the Devil’ (Kiango and Sengo, 1975: 6).4 According to this logic, the conflict between the Devil and Man is a mythic transposition of the independence struggle, in which revolutionary forces throw off their colonial oppressors only to find themselves wondering why poverty, inequality and dependence remain in place. This reading is complicated significantly by the fact that it is Juma, the lapsed Zanzibari aristocrat, who plays the Devil, rather than a white man or even another member of the ascendant ‘African’ professional class, with all their neo-colonial ambitions. Juma’s performance in that

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role raises the question of ‘Arab’ imperialism in East Africa and the stubborn persistence of class distinctions in a postcolonial state premised on the fellow-feeling of all. In fact, it is this very indeterminacy – this subtle slippage from one regime of oppression to another – that matters here. Kitaru’s anxiety is driven by the invisibility of his oppression, by his overwhelming fear that something is amiss that he can’t articulate or define. The Swahili word ‘shaka’ – ‘doubt’, ‘worry’, ‘existential paralysis’ – recurs over and over again in the text of Mashetani. Even at the level of language, this is a play about ambivalence and anxiety. The reason that his critics find him difficult is that Hussein’s is a poetics of doubt. Small wonder, then, that Kitaru in particular is fixated on the idea of a ‘declaration’ that will set everything to rights. What he wants more than anything is truth and a path forward. Devils, however, are tricksters. It is not in their nature to provide solutions. In his discussion of Mashetani, Robert Philipson provides a lucid exposition of the many meanings that attach to the idea of devilry in the Tanzanian context, from the singular ‘shetani’, whose very name suggests affinities with Satan as imagined in Abrahamic religious discourses, to the plural ‘mashetani’, which indexes the many malevolent spirits and djinns that lurk in the shadows, ready to take their victims unawares (Philipson 1989: 128–30). If the Devil of Kitaru and Juma’s ‘The Devil and Man’ is a kind of Satan, the devils that haunt the occult landscape of the rest of the play belong definitively to the second category and its endless plurality. This is the world of the beautiful grotesqueries of Makonde sculpture, which work to make the unseen seen (Kingdon, 2002). Kitaru’s nervous breakdown stems from the fact that he begins to see devils everywhere. These polymorphous presences are symptomatic of his anxiety over his – and his country’s – place in the world. Is it all just his imagination? Or is there some unseen thing that haunts all efforts in the direction of freedom, prosperity and reconciliation? Will a declaration – a positive programme founded on belief in human nature and faith in a better

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future – offer a way out? Or will it only complicate matters further? These are the questions that animate Hussein’s play, the devils he brings with him wherever he goes. NOTES 1 Strictly speaking, Robert was a Tanganyikan writer, since he died two years before the unification of mainland Tanganyika with Zanzibar produced the Tanzanian state. Mnyampala only lived as a Tanzanian for five years before his death in 1969. However, both Robert and Mnyampala are accorded special places of honour in the cultural history of Tanzania and are for all practical purposes considered modern Tanzanian writers. 2 ‘Familyhood’ is Nyerere’s own preferred translation of the Swahili term ‘Ujamaa’. It could also be taken to mean something like ‘fellow-feeling’ or ‘relationality’ (Nyerere 1968: 12). 3 I have chosen to keep these terms in inverted commas throughout this essay to avoid the impression that they have any objective basis. The long history of exchange along the Indian Ocean coast of Tanzania makes distinguishing ‘Arab’ from ‘African’ impossible. These are, however, political distinctions that remain very much in force. 4 See also Philipson 1989: 133.

REFERENCES Fiebach, Joachim (1997), ‘Ebrahim Hussein’s Dramaturgy: A Swahili Multiculturalist’s Journey in Drama and Theater’. Research in African Literatures, vol. 28, no. 4: 19–37. Hussein, Ebrahim N. (1976), ‘Ngao Ya Jadi’. In Jogoo Kijijini and Ngao Ya Jadi. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press: 33–50. Kiango, S. D. and T. S. Y. Sengo (1975), ‘Mashetani’. In Ndimu Zetu 2: Uchambuzi Wa Maandishi Ya Kiswahili. Dar es Salaam: Longman: 1–19. Kingdon, Zachary (2002), A Host of Devils: The History and Context of the Making of Makonde Spirit Sculpture. London: Routledge. Nyerere, Julius K. (1968), ‘Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism’. In his Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press: 1–12. Ohly, R. (1978), ‘Mashetani Replayed’. Kiswahili, vol. 48, no. 1: 105–8. Philipson, Robert Meyer (1989), ‘Drama and National Culture: A Marxist Study of Ebrahim Hussein’. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison. Plastow, Jane (1996), African Theatre and Politics: The Evolution of Theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Ricard, Alain (2000), Ebrahim Hussein: Swahili Theatre and Individualism. Translated by Nàomi Morgan. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.

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Playscript Lunatic!

THOKO ZULU

Synopsis Khanda, a personal driver to the former president is transferred to a female prison disguised as a woman. His two prison inmates, Sdudla and Bhakhosi are unaware that Khanda is a man. The two women fear being killed for betraying state secrets and constantly lie to save their lives but when left alone in the cell they are vulnerable and confess who they are, hoping to be rescued. Khanda feels rejected by his cell inmates Sdudla and Bhakhosi and forms an alliance with Nyembezi, an emotionally unstable woman confined to the isolation wall. The two female guards Supervisor and Bhoza, who have the task of keeping all four prisoners in check, manipulate Khanda to satisfy their sexual needs. Hell breaks loose when Bhakhosi discovers that Khanda is a man, which leads to his death and Sdudla’s torture and isolation. Lunatic! gives insight into human behaviour which is extreme, and the conflict accompanying the demands of living in an unjust society. This is a raw, dark musical comedy drama depicting each character in different states of emo­ tional distress, but could also represent different sides to one person with a dissociative identity disorder. The story’s many layers are told through different mediums text, dance, song and symbols with multiple meanings and interpretations. It is suitable for a mature audience. 163

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Language In his original study, Degradation, Kevin W. Saunders (18 January 2011) traces the progression of degradation as it moves from sexual references to hate speech. In this play, obscenity is used in various ways as a metaphor for hate speech, for example when a man refers to a woman as a ‘bitch’ or ‘slut’; however, the same words may be acceptable if exchanged between two women who are friends, as in the case of Sdudla and Bhakhosi. Another example, when an African American man calls another ‘Nigga’ but the same word is an insult if a white person uses it to address a black person because of the history of slavery. It is therefore important to note that hate speech is being used in this play as a metaphor rather than as terms of insult or disrespect.

Background of the play Interpretation of political stories by women is very limited if not non-existent in Zimbabwe. My country is missing female perspectives on this crucial issue. The reasons for the scarcity of female perspectives are linked to state policies that restrict people’s freedom of expression through the fear of victimization. Lunatic! came about as an experiment relating to my fascination with Broadway and Shakespeare. I wanted to see what would happen if I fused my reality, my professional dreams and my imagination. It started with thoughts and processes that were not unified, but with every rewrite it became clearer and I was able to see all my characters leap and move on paper. The play was selected for a reading at the International Women Playwrights Conference in Sweden 2012, and selected as best play by Nhimbe Trust in 2017 through a competition targeting Zimbabwean female playwrights, while also including writers in the diaspora. The play was

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never given the prize money or produced due to copyright and production-related issues.

Characters KHANDA: Pompous, arrogant, insecure male disguised as a woman in her 60s SDUDLA: Fat, aggressive no-nonsense bully, woman in her mid-50s BHAKHOSI: Naive, beautiful, busty, emotional woman in her mid-40s NYEMBEZI: Traumatized woman in solitary confinement in her late 50’s BHOZA/SUPERVISOR: Very abusive prison officials/ double-up as protestors 40’s SIX MUSICIANS: Who double as Protestors/Policemen in their 30s-40s Location/Set: Prison cell with the musicians’ platform at the top and two flights of stairs on both the left and right wings. The isolation wall is on the right side of the cell painted in a grim colour. Time: The present. ACT I, SCENE 1 (It is dark and quiet. A female whisper.) Sdudla Bhakhosi… (Silence) Sdudla (Cont’d) Bhakhosi… Bhakhosi What? Sdudla Are you awake? Bhakhosi No. Sdudla You’re awake – Bhakhosi I am now…thanks to you. (Silence) Sdudla (sighs) It’s too hot in here. I wonder how you sleep. Bhakhosi You should try it too, just close your eyes.

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Sdudla I can’t sleep. Bhakhosi That’s not my problem. Let those who can sleep…sleep. (Sound of footsteps and metal keys turning. In a prison cell, lights go up at the same time. SDUDLA and BHAKHOSI abruptly sit up on narrow beds opposite each other. KHANDA is pushed into the cell, sound of hard steel as cell is closed and locked. His prison dress is unflatteringly long, his head clean shaven. KHANDA hugs a light mattress and other bed accessories, looks nervous. BHAKHOSI and SDUDLA stare at each other, then KHANDA.) Sdudla A new inmate? Bhakhosi In the middle of the night? This is not normal procedure. (He timidly looks at the two women, stares at the audience looking lost.) Sdudla She sure is one ugly bitch. Nyembezi (V.O.) Our Father who art in Heaven – Bhakhosi Here she goes again! (SDUDLA rushes to the isolation wall, bangs on it with clenched fists. BHAKHOSI lies down on her bed. KHANDA has not moved a muscle.) Nyembezi (V.O.) Hallowed be thy name…thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Sdudla (Kicks and bangs on the wall) Shut up! (KHANDA sees an opportunity to make his resting nest on the floor between the two beds.) Sdudla (sees KHANDA roll his mattress, rushes back to him) Who gave you permission to occupy that space? (KHANDA continues making his bed.) Nyembezi (V.O.) Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Sdudla (SDUDLA rushes back to the wall) Shut your mouth, I said! (KHANDA sleeps.) Sdudla (Rushes back to kick KHANDA’s buttocks) I asked you a question, I’m expecting an answer!

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(KHANDA is motionless, SDUDLA kicks him again.) Nyembezi (V.O.) Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil…for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory – Sdudla Shut up, you child killer! Shut up! (NYEMBEZI sobs, BHAKHOSI covers her head with the blanket. SDUDLA kicks KHANDA who does not retaliate.) Sdudla (Cont’d) You are occupying my space! (NYEMBEZI continues to weep. SDUDLA goes to her bed and the lights go out. Silence as NYEMBEZI also goes quiet.) Sdudla (Cont’d) Bhakhosi… (No response.) Sdudla (Cont’d) Bhakhosi… (Sound of urine hitting the toilet bowl, then huge bursts of gas.) Sdudla (Cont’d) Hold it in, you cheap slut! You’re stinking up the whole place! (BHAKHOSI farts again.) Sdudla Oh, shit! Bhakhosi All you need to do is shut your big mouth and BOOM…my gas will disappear. (Lights are back on, followed by sound of steel as keys turn and cell doors open.) Bhoza (V.O.) Prisoners’ check! (The three prison inmates quickly get up and make their beds before spreading their legs. BHOZA, with an enormous bum and her anorexic SUPERVISOR enter the cell. SUPERVISOR holds a register, BHOZA a baton stick which she uses to prod at the prisoners’ backs and legs.) Bhoza (Cont’d) Prisoner MFP! (SDUDLA salutes, marches three steps forward, salutes again before she stands rigid facing the audience. SUPERVISOR nods like a robot, ticks register.) Bhoza (Cont’d) Prisoner ZAB! (BAKHOSI salutes, marches three steps forward and joins SDUDLA in front line with chest out. KHANDA looks nervous waiting for his call. BHOZA prods at his back and kicks his legs further apart. He struggles to maintain balance.

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BHAKHOSI and SDUDLA stand still looking straight ahead. BHOZA uses the baton stick to lift the front part of KHANDA’s dress and bends down to look under his dress. BHOZA straightens up and throws a quick glance at her SUPERVISOR who nods her head like a robot and smiles. KHANDA is still struggling for balance, with his legs spread apart. SDUDLA and BHAKHOSI are getting impatient, unsuccess­ fully trying to establish eye contact. BHOZA and SUPERVISOR move their limbs like robots.) Supervisor (Sings) Halleluiah! Bhoza (Responding) Halleluiah! Halleluiah! (KHANDA falls forward, balances his hands on the floor bending down with his legs still spread apart.) Supervisor (Sings) Our God is merciful – Bhoza Halleluiah! Halleluiah… (SDUDLA and BHAKHOSI roll their eyes. KHANDA struggles back onto his feet.) Supervisor Prisoner…(peruses the pages looking for KHANDA’s name) (BHAKHOSI and SDUDLA salute in anticipation of the longawaited KHANDA’s march. Instead, BHOZA marches to front line, stands between BHAKHOSI and SDUDLA who look confused but remain rigid in salutation. SUPERVISOR continues perusing the pages looking for KHANDA’s prison name.) Bhoza (Prods BHAKHOSI with the baton stick, sings) Halle­ luiah! (BHAKHOSI remains still. BHOZA prods BHAKHOSI again.) Bhoza (Cont’d) Halleluiah! Bhakhosi (Confused, sings) Halle…luiah… Bhoza (Also prods SDUDLA with the baton stick) Halleluiah! (SDUDLA refuses to obey the order, maintains silence. BHOZA kicks SDUDLA’s legs.) Bhoza (Cont’d) Sing! Supervisor (Finds KHANDA’s name) Prisoner…USO! (KHANDA salutes, marches to front line. BHAKHOSI continues to sing but SDUDLA is silent. BHOZA’s baton stick lands on

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SDUDLA’s back. SDUDLA doubles over.) Bhoza Sing! Supervisor (Joining the front line next to KHANDA) Our God is merciful! Bhakhosi/Sdudla/Bhoza Halleluiah! Halleluiah! Supervisor Hallee, hallee, hallee…! Bhakhosi/Sdudla/Bhoza Halelu, Halelu, Halelu! Supervisor Hallee, hallee, hallee… Bhakhosi/Sdudla/Bhoza Halelu, Halelu, Halelu! Supervisor (shouts) Attention!!! (KHANDA, BHAKHOSI, SDUDLA AND BHOZA all lift one leg in unison and salute.) Supervisor Attention prisoners!!!! (KHANDA, BHAKHOSI, SDUDLA slam the lifted leg down, lift the other and salute uniformly. SUPERVISOR marches to the exit with BHOZA closely following behind.) Sdudla (Tilts her head to look behind her, disengages) What the fuck was all that about? Bhakhosi She must be one very important prisoner to receive such a big standing ovation. (KHANDA replaces the lifted leg on the floor, stands rigid in salutation.) Sdudla (Circling around him) Who are you? (No response or movement from KHANDA.) Sdudla (Grabs him by his dress collar) I asked you a question! (The breakfast siren shrieks out.) Bhakhosi (Holding SDUDLA’s arm) Food first, Sdudla. It’s too early in the day to get your hands dirty, you can deal with her later. (SDUDLA shoves KHANDA to the floor, follows BHAKHOSI out. KHANDA gets up, obviously not liking the way he looks.) Nyembezi (V.O.) The world is full of cunning business dealers, who set out to exploit the weaknesses of the distraught without interest in the welfare of the families affected. (KHANDA turns to the wall behind him.) Nyembezi (Cont’d V.O.) They will gladly take the land but

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not care for the surviving members. We sacrifice for causes we don’t benefit from or understand. We suffer and die at the hands of those who should protect us. Who can we trust if not ourselves? With whom should we stand if not on our own? (KHANDA walks to the wall. NYEMBEZI giggles, he steps back.) Nyembezi (Cont’d V.O.) Every single one of us has realities in our past contributing to our present, nobody can claim total innocence. We are what we are not by independent choice or everybody would be a perfect specimen. (A man’s traumatized voice cries out behind the stage.) Man (V.O.) No! Please…no! I’ll do anything…anything but this…please…don’t. I will pay you. I’ve a few dollar notes stashed in my bed…a box of cigarettes…some homebaked cookies… (KHANDA looks around, scared.) Man (Cont’d V.O.) You can take my food…I will do your chores… (KHANDA looks for a place to hide behind BHAKHOSI’s bed, and tries to squeeze himself under SDUDLA’s bed. Two MALE GUARDS march from opposite ends of the stage towards each other. KHANDA runs to the MALE GUARDS.) Khanda Guards! Help…help me! (The GUARDS ignore KHANDA, march past each other to the ends of the stage and back again.) Khanda (runs to the GUARDS again) Please, help me! (The GUARDS ignore KHANDA.) Khanda (On his knees, pleading with an invisible figure) Wait… we can sort this out… (holds tightly to his dress, tucks it between his legs) I’ve friends in high places…they can help you escape from this prison…they will reduce your sentence. (The TWO GUARDS march behind KHANDA.) Khanda (Calling out, his hands tightly gripping his dress) Guards! (The TWO GUARDS continue their duty march towards/past each other. The invisible force pulls KHANDA up to his feet,

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forcing him to release his dress and bend backwards as if being held tightly by his neck. KHANDA struggles to breathe, he is being strangled.) Khanda (Choking voice) Hhhheee…lllppp…!!!!! (KHANDA bends over as if shoved roughly from behind, screams. His lowered back moves forward and back, the invisible figure raping him. The TWO GUARDS march out in opposite directions. KHANDA drops to the floor like a heavy sack of flour, lies still for a moment before crawling on all fours to pick up one of his stray shoes. He struggles to regain his composure but finally gets up.) Khanda (Uses his hands to wipe the dust from his dress, speaks without looking at the audience) I’m a man, I can handle it… it’s only a small price to pay for what awaits me outside. His people will get me out of here. I’m sure this is…only temporary…a diversion until he puts the agreed plan in action. (He pushes up one of his breasts so it is in line with the other) I wonder why I wasn’t told they were transferring me here. I would have been more prepared, I don’t know how to behave like a woman. (Angry) I know I’m dressed like one but…that doesn’t make me a woman or… (Finally looks at the audience) does it? (Touches his crotch) What if my jewels don’t soften? What if my breasts fail to hold? What if…I must get out of here! (Sings song, ‘I must get out of here’ then sits on BHAKHOSI’s bed looking sad.) Nyembezi (V.O.) You’re not getting out of here. Khanda Yes, I will! Nyembezi (V.O.) No, you won’t – Khanda (marching to the wall) I will! Nyembezi (V.O.) Won’t. Khanda Will – Nyembezi (V.O.) Won’t – Khanda (Angry) I’m innocent, he shot his girlfriend’s lover, not me! (Walks around, frustrated) God…what am I saying?! The demons must be playing tricks with my mind again…I was sworn to silence, I cannot reveal state secrets! (Looks back at the isolation wall) What is she trying to tell me? How

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does she know who I am? Who is she? Who are those two women? (Pauses to think, scratches his balls.) (NYEMBEZI giggles.) Khanda (Cont’d…ignores NYEMBEZI) One of those two women is familiar, I think I’ve seen her before but I don’t remember where…or when. (Thinks) The guards who smuggled me in here know I’m a man, but what does all this mean? Why have I been smuggled into a female prison disguised as a woman? (Panics, struggles to breathe.) (Talks to himself) Breathe, Khanda…breathe (breathes heavily in and out and counts) 1-2-3-4-5-6… breathe in Khanda (breathes in)…and out. (Breathes out and calms down. He tries walking up and down the stage like a woman) That didn’t feel or look right, I swayed too much, straight women don’t walk like me. (Tries the walk again, stiff and straight before jumping up in frustration) No! I’m too stiff… too rigid, I must relax. Ok…here I go again (walks, throws his arms up in the air and speaks like a woman) Don’t speak like a man, dammit! You’re not a man! (Confused, speaks like a man) I’m not a man? What am I saying? I AM a man! (Walks) Relax, Khanda…you can do this. (Clears his throat and speaks like a woman) Those two pigs will be back any minute and I need to pull my act together otherwise I am in big trouble. (NYEMBEZI laughs.) Khanda (Rushes to the wall) Traitor! Those two cows will not believe you, even if you tell them the truth! I will play the female so good they won’t suspect I am a man. (Silence.) Khanda (Cont’d) I’m a woman…do you hear me? I am a woman and there’s nothing you can do or say that can make those two think otherwise…nothing! (No response from NYEMBEZI.) Khanda (Puts his ear to the wall) Crazy woman, are you there? (Silence.) Khanda Lunatic, hello? (NYEMBEZI laughs.)

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Khanda (Pissed off) Nx! (Goes back to the audience, speaks like a man) Anything can happen behind these high walls and barbed wire…something you people out there cannot see. You probably think I deserve being locked up in here but a sin is a sin, isn’t it? Killing is a sin and so is stealing, lying and fornication but the big question is…who determines which sin is greater than the other? You…or me? Don’t judge me…lest you be judged by your own sins. Bhoza (Walking in) Why didn’t you go out for breakfast like all the other prisoners? (KHANDA salutes.) Bhoza (Grabs KHANDA by his balls) I asked you a question! (KHANDA moans in pain. The baton stick lands on KHANDA’s back.) Bhoza (Cont’d) Speak when spoken to! Khanda (Speaks with a man’s voice) I’m not hungry – (The baton stick lands on his back again.) Bhoza What did you say? Khanda I’m not hungry – Bhoza (Kicks his legs) You’re not a man, prisoner! (Kicks him again) You’re a woman and you will speak, eat, breathe and fart like a woman, do you understand me!? (Kicks him again and again until he falls to the floor) Nobody…and I mean nobody must find out who you are. Nobody! (SDUDLA and BHAKHOSI are back and watch the baton stick land again and again on KHANDA’s body before BHOZA drags KHANDA off the stage.) Bhakhosi Maybe she’s not what we suspect. Sdudla She must be the reason for the religious celebrations this morning. No ordinary criminal transfers from one prison to the next in the middle of the night. Bhakhosi (Thinks) She does look familiar though. Sdudla Familiar how? Bhakhosi I can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen her before. Sdudla Something about that bitch doesn’t smell right, we shouldn’t trust her. Bhakhosi You worry too much. We negotiated a good deal,

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even if she’s a spy nobody should be giving us trouble. Sdudla You think being locked up in here is a good deal? Bhakhosi I was just thinking aloud. What could they possibly want from us after so many years in prison? It’s not like we’ve talked to anybody anyway. Sdudla Enough! Bhakhosi I am just thinking aloud. Sdudla (Reverts to an unrecognizable language) Ghuvnvkv uvhvyvtvhvjnjdkd. Bhakhosi (Looks around suspiciously) You think they have planted secret agents in the audience? Sdudla (Frustrated, continues with the unrecognizable language) Hjuhngyftrderdenjhu! Bhakhosi What!? Sdudla We don’t know these people! Bhakhosi (Searching the audience) Not all of them but I can see Thando sitting in the front row with her husband over there. I personally invited them here, they deserve to know the truth. Sdudla You want these people to know the truth, right? Bhakhosi Yes. Sdudla Look at what is happening in neighbouring South Africa. Our own people are fighting other people’s battles to remove President Zuma instead of coming back home to protest an old president clinging to power. If everybody flees seeking refuge in foreign countries who will liberate Zimbabwe? Bhakhosi What you’re insinuating will never work. We are not hooligans like other African countries who resort to violence instead of negotiating a peaceful transition. Sdudla (Turns to the audience) Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. This is a maximum security prison for women. She is a drug trafficking prostitute and I am – Bhakhosi Wait a minute. We are not done yet. You should be introducing a strategy motivating our people to stand up and fight for the restoration of our country. Sdudla I’ve said what needed to be said, the rest is up to

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them the foundation has been laid. Bhakhosi Are you changing the plot? Sdudla What plot? Bhakhosi The plot misleading the audience into believing we are criminals. Sdudla I don’t follow – Bhakhosi You just told them I’m a drug trafficking prostitute? Sdudla You are a drug trafficking prostitute – Bhakhosi No, I’m not – Sdudla Yes, you are! Bhakhosi (Confused) Like for real? This must be an illusion, right? You calling me a prostitute in front of all these people…you don’t mean it, do you? It’s all an act to keep us alive. Sdudla I mean it, bitch. Stop dilly dallying and do as you’re told. Bhakhosi (Nervous) I don’t think I understand what is going on here, my head is spinning. You have switched the characters, I’m supposed to be the gangster. You are the drug trafficking prostitute. Sdudla We’re not switching. I’m the criminal, you’re the cocaine hooker. Bhakhosi I can’t be the cocaine hooker. I have spent weeks preparing for the gangster role watching American and Italian movies. (Talks American gangster style) Relax, bitch, I gat this shit. (Walks towards the audience like a gangster) Hey, ol’ lady and you sister over there! What you goin’ do now that the foundation’s been laid? What you goin’ do? This sister over here is ready to strip down to her VJ and hit the streets stark naked in protest. Hey niggaz, (unbuttoning her dress) you want some of this shit, huh? I said, do you want some of this shit, yes or no? Sdudla (holding her so she doesn’t take off her dress) What are you doing? Bhakhosi (To SDUDLA, in cheap American slang) What you mean, what am I doing, bitch? I’m playing gangster.

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Sdudla No, you’re not. Bhakhosi I didn’t pull it off? Sdudla (Shaking her head) You didn’t. Bhakhosi I can try the Italians – Sdudla No, wait – Bhakhosi (Already talking to the audience cheap Italian gangster style) Hey, Antonio! Make sure you pay my money tomorrow or I shoot your dog, your cat and everything inside your house including your grandpa and take your brother as my bitch, do you understand me? (SDUDLA is watching BHAKHOSI with arms folded.) Bhakhosi (Continues Italian lingo) Ask Roberto what I did to his family when he betrayed me and ran off with my merchandise. If you want to stay in my street you should know who the boss around here is. What I say goes and if I say I want my money tomorrow 11 AM…you bring my money 10 AM! Sdudla Sit down Bhakhosi. Bhakhosi (Going to sit on her bed, sulking) You said the only way I can survive prison is to follow your lead. These people now think I’m stupid. Sdudla That wasn’t following my lead, you fucked up the original plan. Bhakhosi Ok, ok I get it! You’re the gangster and I’m your bitch, right? Sdudla (Sits on her bed, lights a cigarette) You’re not my bitch. Bhakhosi So…what am I supposed to do now? Sdudla (Smokes) Follow the plan, play the hooker. (BHAKHOSI paces up and down.) Sdudla If you have something to say, say it. Bhakhosi Don’t you ever wonder how your life could have played out if you hadn’t been arrested? Sdudla I am not like you, I don’t waste time worrying about things I cannot change. My reality is inside this prison, and the only thing I wonder about is how to get out. Bhakhosi There are times I wish there was a scientific invention that bottles up memories so one wouldn’t

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remember. I try not to think about the wrong choices I made or things I could have done differently. I also worry about the welfare of my children…where they live…what they eat. Sdudla (Throws the cigarette under her foot and squashes it) There’s no such magic so cut the crap and stop wallowing in self-pity. You’re stuck with your stinky memories just like the rest of us. Bhakhosi I know but you must have moments in your life you wish to recapture or thoughts you would rather forget. Sdudla Listen here, bitch. I have no interest following the direction your conversation is going so give me a fucking break. (Gets up) Bhakhosi Maybe these people can help us, we don’t know who is sitting in our audience. Could be members of the Human Rights Commission…Amnesty International or Activists Against Women Abuse. Sdudla (Responds in unrecognizable language, angry) Bhgybnjvud hdmdklinmjbjkbnbkjhnj!! Bhakhosi (Also responds the same, angry) Mkiojhdndndmk sks0s9d7f6hh!! Sdudla (Walking away) ijuhnbmkhytgrijhg! Bhakhosi (Following her) nhkogkgogyudhdgdtfbfnd! Sdudla (Spits on the floor) Fine, go ahead and tell them! (BHAKHOSI continues to speak in unrecognizable language, fuming.) Sdudla (Cont’d) Do you think they care about women like you or people like me? What is done is done, people don’t forgive or forget other people’s mistakes. Bhakhosi I know they could be out there watching us and we must be careful what we say but I cannot continue playing this game anymore. We need help. Sdudla What game? What help, and who could be out there and why would anybody be watching us? Bhakhosi (Points at the audience) Them – Sdudla Them who? Bhakhosi (Points again) Them!

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Sdudla They are our audience, they’re supposed to be here. Bhakhosi (Confused) You said we must be careful, you said – Sdudla I have no idea what you’re talking about. Bhakhosi We don’t know these people, remember? Sdudla No, Bhakhosi…I don’t remember. Bhakhosi (Nervous, searches the audience as if looking for some­ one) I’m not going crazy, am I? (Looks at Nyembezi’s isolation wall and back at the audience) She is awfully quiet today, maybe she’s dead or I am really losing my mind. (BHAKHOSI quietly goes to sit on her bed, confused.) Sdudla (Lights another cigarette) I know what you’re think­ ing but somebody has to protect her, she doesn’t know when to shut up. I don’t want her end­ing up like the crazy woman behind that wall. (Smokes) This is no place to confess sins, God doesn’t live here anymore. If she doesn’t keep her trap shut we both face the consequences one way or another. Khanda (Speaks with a strained female voice, his face bruised but cleaned up) I spent weeks in solitary confinement for breaking another prisoner’s leg. Sdudla (Going to KHANDA) So what are you going to do? Break my leg like you did the other prisoner? Khanda (Points a threatening finger at SDUDLA) Let us make the rules clear once and for all to hear. If you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you. (SDUDLA grabs KHANDA’s neck.) Nyembezi (V.O.) Forgive me Father, for I know many sins – Bhakhosi (Happy, jumps) She’s alive! (Runs to the isolation wall) Nyembezi is alive! (KHANDA and SDUDLA size each other up at close range.) Nyembezi (V.O.) It has been 30 years since my last confession – (SDUDLA and KHANDA are at each other’s necks.) Bhakhosi (Runs back to SDUDLA in panic) She’s making a confession! (SDUDLA is preoccupied with KHANDA. BHAKHOSI grabs SDUDLA’s arm.)

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Sdudla What!? Bhakhosi Nyembezi is making another confession! Nyembezi (V.O.) I’m not sure what I should or shouldn’t say or if I should say anything at all but my silence has selected me for media slaughter. Sdudla (Rushing to the wall) No…wait! Too many people out here! Bhakhosi (Shouts, banging on the wall) Code red…code red! (KHANDA watches the proceedings with amusement.) Nyembezi (V.O.) In a crowd I remain invisible…from the sweat and scent of many people I struggle desperately for fresh air…to be seen…to be given the recognition I know I deserve. Living a lie is having no life and in my silence, I have suffered. Why do you look at me like that? I haven’t said anything yet. Sdudla This is not the right time to confess your sins wicked witch! Your timing is wrong! Code red! Nyembezi (V.O.) Sometimes we don’t tell the truth not because we want to lie but to protect other people. I loved my son. Sdudla (Turns to BHAKHOSI) Do something! Bhakhosi (Runs to KHANDA) Say something! Khanda (Arrogant) I have no idea what is going on here, and I don’t want to be part of it. Nyembezi (V.O.) Like victims of war, some women and men carry physical and psychological scars that cannot be altered. Yes, Father…l know other times we think we know people but the truth is, nobody really knows everybody. Sdudla (SDUDLA pushes KHANDA next to BHAKHOSI) Help her! (KHANDA resists.) Nyembezi (V.O.) It is a curse for one to drink their own blood and devour their own flesh. You and you…and yes, you too…you see angels but I see ghosts…I see dead people…my son, your son…my brother, I see your mother too.

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(KHANDA watches SDUDLA rush back to the isolation wall, BHAKHOSI slapping her forehead repeatedly in frustration.) Bhakhosi (Walks around) What should I do, what should I do? Sdudla (Shouts to KHANDA) Distract the audience you bone head! Khanda Distract the audience? (Sarcastic) Oh, so now you want my help? (Goes to audience) Can somebody please give a smoke or a very, very cold beer! Nyembezi (V.O.) They said I should obey my leaders and not ask questions. They also said I should protect and safeguard the secrets of the party. Wasn’t I a committed party card holder? Didn’t I obey and follow all their rules? Sdudla (Grabs KHANDA from behind) Help! Khanda Last time I checked, you two women didn’t want anything to do with me. Bhakhosi We’re in this together, if she talks we’re all in trouble! Khanda Excuse me, did you just say ‘we’…meaning you, me and big black panda over here are now a team? Sdudla (Sings and dances in a distorted and amusing fashion to an old African hit song to drown NYEMBEZI’s confession) Lelilizwe kalilamali. Eh, kalilamali [This country has no money] Lelilizwe kalila kudla, er…kalilakudla [This country has no food] Ngifun’ ingengerenge mina, ngifun’ ingengerenge [I want money, I want money]. Nyembezi (Confession changes to unrecognizable language, fades in the background) Gghhkkhggffhjkkjhjkkkkkkkhhjuytfl. (BHAKHOSI joins the singing and dancing, out of tune. KHANDA stands in the middle watching the two women.) Nyembezi (V.O. overpowers the singing) My son was a good boy, he was not a member of the youth gang responsible for violent activities in our village. They asked why he was campaigning for the opposition party and said he should be disciplined. Sdudla (Turns to KHANDA) Why the hell are you not helping?

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Nyembezi (Speaks with unrecognizable language in the back­ground) Gkinyghtfrddthgkffghlk. Ghffkmfhklgujhlkikk hggggg. Hkiubju8765c5nmjhgghjjjjjhn. Jhhytd654rtd9j dndnbdbd vdv. Khanda I don’t fight for causes I don’t understand. Bhakhosi (Shouts) I have an idea. We should list the names of all political parties in Zimbabwe! Sdudla No, no, no…this is not a campaign rally or registration for presidential elections. And what would be the point? No opposition has enough credentials to win the elections anyway. Not until they unite and stand as one entity to exit the ruling party. Khanda That’s not true. There is one prominent opposition party which continues to give the powers that be a credible electoral challenge. I’m sure you’ve read about the rigging of the elections, even the Human Rights Watch did confirm our elections are deeply flawed. Sdudla Which opposition party continues to give a credible electoral challenge? Khanda (Looks around suspiciously) We are not supposed to be discussing these issues in public places without clearance and written permission from the police. We should change our line of conversation. Bhakhosi Are you by any chance forgetting we’re already in prison? Khanda (Hesitant) Maybe we should just stick to acceptable political conversations not directly implicating the ruling party and its leaders. We can however mention men who contributed to the liberation struggle and were granted hero’s status. Bhakhosi You mean men and women who contributed to the liberation struggle but qualified by the ruling party for heroes’ status. I personally would celebrate achievements of people like Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo and – Khanda Acceptable meaning not affiliated to the opposition. Sdudla Meaning Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo is not –

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Khanda Let’s just say I’m a concerned citizen worried about his safety. I refuse to be drawn to tribal lines. Discussing Joshua Mqabuko brings up – Bhakhosi Can you just stop! We have pressing economic issues bigger than tribal rivalry. If you two are looking to pick another fight I don’t want to be part of it. (Goes to lie on her bed with legs lifted up and thighs exposed.) (KHANDA doubles over, both hands on his stomach.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d. Sitting up) What is wrong? Khanda (Moans) Stomach cramps. Sdudla (Spits) The bitch is menstruating! (KHANDA crosses his legs, nods.) Nyembezi (V.O.) Every night I see his face burning after they set his hut on fire. They murder us by tribe. They kill our children and relatives to punish those who betray them. (Sobs) Bhakhosi ( Jumps) Nyembezi! Sdudla (Quickly starts another African song to drown NYEMBEZI’s sobbing) Sengithandwa likula mama, likula lami ngedwa (I’m in love with an Indian woman) Sengikhonjwe likula mama, likula lami ngedwa (She belongs to no other but me) Sesihamba sonke emahoteleni, s’tshay’ iband sobabili (We go together to hotels singing and dancing our own songs). Bhakhosi (Grabs KHANDA’s hand) Bring the stack of old newspapers in the toilet. Khanda You want me to use newspapers as pads for my period? Sdudla Who gives a shit about your fucking menstruation? We want the headlines. (He moans again with both hands on his stomach.) Bhakhosi (Shouts) Get the newspapers! (He hurries to grab the newspapers. SDUDLA continues to sing and dance, NYEMBEZI sobs.) Bhakhosi (Grabbing a few newspapers from Khanda’s hands) Chronicle, Friday 6 May 2011 – Khanda (Reads) The Mthwakazi Liberation Front is a terrorist movement!

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Sdudla Do you have a problem with Ndebele people? Khanda (Picking a fight) No. You’re the one having a problem with Shona people. Bhakhosi Sunday Times, May 2011 – A woman marries two husbands. Khanda That is impossible, a woman cannot marry two men. Sdudla You seem to have a problem with everything we say – Bhakhosi This article confirms they all live under the same roof in the high density township of Sizinda. (KHANDA peruses the pages.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) I said – Khanda (Throws the newspapers on the floor) I heard you the first time, there’s no need to continue with all this madness. How can a woman cohabitate with two men in the same house? Who sleeps with whom and when? Whose kid will it be when she gets pregnant? Sdudla If the two men are happy with the arrangement what business do you have meddling in other people’s marital affairs? Bhakhosi You’re right, Sdudla I don’t understand what her problem is. We should all be celebrating because this is good news for women. Khanda (Sulks, reluctantly picks up the newspapers with a long lip) Lira, Dudu’s Jazz collaboration goes viral. (NYEMBEZI laughs. They all freeze to look back at the wall.) Bhakhosi (Recovers quickly) The Standard, February 2011 – Khanda Benjani Mwaruwari talks tough on football career – Sdudla That is not a headline, you’re reading from the sports section! (NYEMBEZI suddenly goes quiet.) Bhakhosi We’re not always here. What if she talks when – Khanda Why shouldn’t she talk? Everybody has a right to freedom of speech and expression. Bhakhosi Freedom of speech and expression where? Khanda Inside this cell, you two cows don’t own this place.

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Sdudla (Approaches him, threatening) Did you just call me a cow? Khanda What if I did and what are you going to do about it? (SDUDLA wants to grab him, BHAKHOSI stands between them.) Khanda I’ve already said it once…don’t bother me and – Sdudla You won’t bother me, right? Khanda According to my sharp memory, that is very correct, yes. (Lunch siren.) Bhoza (Opens cell) Prisoner USO! You’ve a visitor. (KHANDA salutes, follows BHOZA.) Sdudla Make sure the old hag behind that wall doesn’t blow her pipe again. I’ll follow that ugly bitch and see what she’s up to, you’ll grab your lunch when I come back. (SDUDLA leaves.) Bhakhosi (Timidly toys with her fingers) Did I tell you I have six sisters, five brothers and a dozen other siblings my mother didn’t even know existed? Life was tough growing up and I have many battle scars to prove it. (Looks around, afraid SDUDLA will show up) I don’t want to get into trouble with Sdudla…she’s a very good woman despite the swearing and all the other stuff. You’ll love her when you see her softer side. (Caresses her shoulder as if a chill has run up her spine) I forgot to mention I have two children with a dozen men who all believe the kids are theirs. I suppose that makes me a prostitute, doesn’t it? (Bites her nails) Nyembezi (V.O. calm and collected) Although queen of your palace, you may be an outcast if you disobey the king. Disobey and you will be cast out together with your womb to rot outside in the scorching sun to be eaten by scavengers and spit on by the poor. (BHAKHOSI turns to the wall behind her.) Nyembezi (V.O. cont’d) Such brutal, merciless so-called kings who rule with an iron fist. Should you disobey you’ll be crushed like an ant under an elephant’s foot. Bhakhosi (Turns back to the audience) Can you look back in

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your past and identify a time or moment when your life changed by accident or design? I cannot remember much, my spirit is weary. I don’t own my body or my feelings, my mouth or my voice or my actions anymore because unlike you I am not free. I am locked in this prison together with my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes and my fears. Nyembezi (V.O.) Although you’re an outcast from society, you reign if you obey God. Even though you’re a slave to sin by nature, you can break free, but only with repentance to God. Bhakhosi However I may look or sound, whatever I say or do or think or feel is no longer authentically mine. If some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought and felt turned out to be unfitting or undesirable…l cannot discard that which is unfitting and keep the rest and invent something new because what I discard I can still see…hear…feel… think, say and do. Sdudla (Returning) Who are you talking to? Bhakhosi I wasn’t talking to anybody. Sdudla I heard you talking to someone – Bhakhosi I have already told you I wasn’t talking to anybody. (SDUDLA goes for her pack of cigarettes under her pillow.) Bhakhosi Can I go, now? Sdudla You don’t need my permission to eat, I’m not your mother. (BHAKHOSI hesitates.) Sdudla (Lights a cigarette) What the hell are you waiting for? (BHAKHOSI leaves.) Sdudla (Squashes the cigarette under her foot) You said it’s my party! As a party member you told me it was my duty to protect party secrets in order to go down in history as having contributed to our country’s liberation struggle. All I had to do was deny I was a major witness to the murder of a prominent politician in return, I should have received party benefits enabling me to live a comfortable life abroad with my family. (Pissed off) Comfortable my flat ass! I’ve been locked up in this hell hole for ten no fucking

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years and not once did you or the party indulge me with your liberated presence! Talk of being at the wrong place at the wrong time! I went to the police station expecting to be protected by the law but guess what happened? I get picked up for killing my fornicating ex-husband! Fuck! I should’ve just taken the bribe money and relocated to another country but instead, I chose to do the right thing. Now look where I ended up…(Looks around, panics) I didn’t do it…I swear, it wasn’t me… I didn’t…no – (Two policemen, TEARGAS and GORILLA walk into the stage, one with a bucket of water and another with electric jumpers. SDUDLA puts her arms behind her as if hand cuffed and drags her feet as if in leg irons.) Sdudla (Scared) I didn’t kill him…you must believe me – (TEARGAS grabs SDUDLA by her neck and forces her head into the bucket. SDUDLA struggles to break free in order to breathe but GORILLA holds her down and attaches the electric jumpers to her buttocks. SDUDLA convulses in seizures, her bum swerving sideways, up and down before she collapses to the floor. TEARGAS and GORILLA pick up the bucket and jumpers and walk off Charlie Chaplin style. SDUDLA is coughing and gasping for air when TWO JOURNALISTS, a man and woman rush to the scene with note pads and digital cameras.) Female Journalist Why did you murder your ex-husband? Male Journalist Are you still bitter about the divorce? Sdudla (Looks at them, not fully recovered) I’ve already issued a statement – Female Journalist (Writes on pad) What an outrageous statement! The police found your finger prints at the scene of the crime – Sdudla I’m not the one who killed him – Male Journalist (Also writes) What about the weapon used to commit the crime? Why was it found hidden at your residence? Sdudla They must have planted it. Female Journalist (Shoving an audio recorder into Sdudla’s face) They…who?

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Sdudla I don’t know. (The JOURNALISTS click away taking pictures in opposite directions towards two exits. FOUR PEOPLE in ancient African costume and face masks depicting different emotions walk down, two from the left wing and the other two from the right wing of the stairs holding big newspaper headline cards.) THE SUNDAY NEWS THOKO ZULU GOES AWOL! DAILY NEWS MURDER SHE WROTE! B METRO NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED THE STANDARD HUSBAND KILLED IN LOVE TRIANGLE! Sdudla (Gets up, puts on some ridiculously big eye glasses and adopts the personality of another person) You journalists have a tendency of making people say things they haven’t said. Some of you are on the payroll writing false information pushing hidden agendas of those who pay you behind closed doors. Where were you when the old man impregnated his young student and paid the girls’ parents damages in thousands of US dollars? Where were you when she was falsely accused of misappropriating company funds simply because she didn’t massage some people’s egos? Was there a public statement clearing her name when the audit report was released with nothing irregular? Did any female reporter fighting for women’s rights protect her from sexual harassment when the board member called her every morning wanting to know the colour of her panties? (The FOUR PEOPLE with newspaper headlines walk off the stage like zombies.) Sdudla (Cont’d) What you don’t realize is you didn’t ruin the life of one person. Her children’s life stopped after those stories. Her family and friends also suffered. She is

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no wonder woman and, like you, she is also human. Don’t you people know all dogs have fleas? (Removing the big glasses) At least now I know I shouldn’t have trusted the kindness of hyenas. That is what Tshaka Zulu said, isn’t it? To never turn your back on your enemies. (She goes to her bed, sleeps.) Bhakhosi (Surprised to find SDUDLA sleeping) Sdudla… (Goes to stand near SDUDLA’s bed) Sdudla… (SDUDLA is fast asleep. KHANDA also comes back.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d, to KHANDA) You wouldn’t break her bones even if you tried. Stay away from her if you want to get out of this place alive. (Lights go out.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) Sdudla – Khanda The wicked witch has dozed off, peace finally prevails. Bhakhosi Sdudla never sleeps…Sdudla? (No response from SDUDLA. Individual spot lights on BHAK­ HOSI and KHANDA who sits with his legs pulled up fully clothed.) Bhakhosi (Lying on her bed, face up and half dressed) One would think female wardens make prison life bearable but it gets harder…lonelier. (KHANDA clears his throat, changes his sitting position.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) Why don’t you ever take your clothes off? Khanda Why should l? This is not a 5-star hotel, these blankets stink. Bhakhosi I’ve never seen you naked. Khanda Why do you want to see me naked? (Awkward silence.) Bhakhosi (Sitting up) Have we met before? Khanda I would remember if we know each other, I have a very good memory. Bhakhosi I was just asking. (Lies down) How long were you in the other prison before your transfer here? Khanda It’s none of your business.

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Bhakhosi I am trying to be civil. Khanda Why should I be the only one giving out personal information when I know nothing about you? If you want answers, you should be able to meet me half way. (BHAKHOSI ignores him.) Khanda (Cont’d) This rumour doing the rounds about you being a hooker – Bhakhosi What about it? Khanda It’s not possible to get such a long sentence for prostitution. Bhakhosi (Sitting up) You have been investigating me? Khanda The same way you’ve been sniffing around about my private business. (Awkward silence. KHANDA clears his throat again.) Bhakhosi Men in powerful positions can make strange things happen. Khanda Not to such extremity, I know the law. My boss was… (Stops) Bhakhosi Your boss was what? Khanda Let’s just say he was educated and well connected. The police should’ve just picked you up for indecent loitering, locked you up for a couple of days or months or make you pay a fine. Bhakhosi I’m sure you can see it didn’t happen in my case. Khanda We should be honest with each other. This hide a seek we’re playing will not get us anywhere, not with our living arrangements anyway. Bhakhosi You first. Khanda No, you go first – Bhakhosi You suggested it so – (Spot light on SDUDLA as she sits up abruptly.) Bhakhosi (Rushes to SDUDLA’s side) Sdudla… (SDUDLA gets up as if in a trance and walks eyes closed in para­ chute grandma panties and body top.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d, following SDUDLA) Sdudla… Khanda (Giggling) The witch is sleep walking. Bhakhosi She’s not a sleep walker.

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Khanda There’s always a first time for everything, there she is in all her glory! (Giggles again) Bhakhosi (Pokes SDUDLA with a finger) Sdudla, wake up! (SDUDLA walks back to her bed, sleeps.) Bhakhosi (Sitting on SDUDLA’s bed) Something must be wrong. She has never walked in her sleep. Khanda Let’s forget about her, I want to know more about you let’s continue our conversation. Sdudla (Moans, talks in her sleep) No…I didn’t do it… please…you must believe me, I didn’t kill him. Bhakhosi (Lifts SDUDLA’s head and rests it on her lap, strokes SDUDLA’s head) She was tortured by the police forcing her to admit to a crime she didn’t commit. (No response from KHANDA.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) What about you? Khanda What about me? Bhakhosi Didn’t something happen to you in the other prison? Khanda Something like what? Bhakhosi I don’t know, weird stuff happens in here. Khanda Nothing happened. Bhakhosi You were not tortured…intimidated? Khanda (Snaps) I’ve already told you nothing happened. I’m a man, I can defend myself! Bhakhosi (Resting SDUDLA’s head back on the bed, quickly gets up) What do you mean you’re a man? Khanda (Realizing his verbal blunder, quickly recovers) I mean… sometimes a woman must defend herself like a man when the situation demands it. (KHANDA lies down and covers his head for the first time with the blanket.) (Blackout)

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ACT II, SCENE 1 (KHANDA excitedly dances his way into the stage Elvis Presley style, behaves and speaks like a man.) Khanda I feel good…na na na na na na I just got laid…na na na na na na. I feel good…na na na na na na I got pussy today. Oh, yeah – ohh yeah! It feels good to be me! (He is a very happy man) The crazy woman behind that wall said sometimes we don’t tell the truth not because we lie, but to protect other people. So true in my case, I lied to protect my boss and here I am finally enjoying the fruits of my labour. (Proudly walks with new swag) That guard and her Supervisor (Looks around to make sure no one is around) …they are…you know (winks)…my visitors. (Sings, brags) Ngithabile, ngitholile…ngithabile ngitholile! (I’m happy I got laid!’) At least now I know for sure I am getting out of here…confirmed and intimately sealed on the Supervisor’s office desk in my birthday suit. (Walks around like a proud peacock) What, you want proof? (Grabs his balls) Proof is right here, baby! This nigga has got game, bro! Those two security goats were howling like wolves, their hands all over me like horny lizards. (His buttocks move back and forth, one hand on his waist) Oohh, ahhh, ooh, ahh…give it to me…give it to me, big boy…yeah, that’s right…oohhh, yeah! (Sings, song ‘I Stand Accused’, dances as if riding a horse and slaps his bum) Nyembezi (V.O.) When a hyena laughs, he’s not happy! Khanda (Jumps) You, loony…you almost gave me a heart attack! Nyembezi (V.O.) When the hyena laughs…he’s not happy. Be careful who you trust. Khanda Well…just in case you haven’t noticed this particular hyena over here is laughing because he – is – happy! There’s nothing you can say to change my good mood, do you hear me? I’m happy, happy…hyena HAPPY! (NYEMBEZI giggles.) Khanda (Cont’d) Didn’t anybody ever tell you in a place like this, it’s always good to have someone on your side?

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(Walks like a proud business man.) I wonder how long you’ve been locked in that lonely, empty shell of yours… alone with nobody to talk to except the smelly sticky cockroaches crawling up your old dirty skin. Out here we can shower, I can take a walk checking out the girls…see the beautiful sun rise. (NYEMBEZI stops giggling.) Khanda (Cont’d) See? It doesn’t hurt to be nice, I know those two monkeys don’t like you either we need each other. Just think about it…you and I making a formidable team it doesn’t matter you’re in there and I’m out here, I can still protect you. For instance, let’s talk about your human rights issues. I know you’re a spiritual woman who likes to pray – it helps you get through the day. I also understand once in a while you need to confess your sins to the guy up there to forgive your trespasses as you will forgive my arrogance. Under all this disguise is a man with an ego that sometimes gets in the way. (Going to the wall) Now here is the plan…make sure you make a lot of noise making it impossible for those two women to communicate. When they try to keep you quiet, bang on that wall, scream or do whatever it is that will comfort your sorrows. I will be out here giving you all the emotional support you need. (No response from NYEMBEZI.) Khanda (Cont’d) Come on, give me a sign so I know we are now on the same side. Nyembezi (V.O.) You’re not the hyena. Khanda (Confused) I’m not the hyena? Nyembezi (V.O.) No. Khanda If I’m not the hyena…who is? Nyembezi (V.O.) He is. Khanda (Looks around) He…who? (Looks up) You mean… the guy up there? Nyembezi (V.O.) How can God be the hyena? He is the almighty, creator of the universe. All life must bow before him, it’s humans who cannot be trusted. What you see is not what is, don’t be deceived or fooled.

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Khanda (Thinks) What I see is not what is and I shouldn’t be deceived or fooled? Wait a minute…are you trying to tell me something? (No response from NYEMBEZI.) Khanda (Cont’d) How could you possibly know what is going on out here when you’re locked up in there with no human contact? Look…I know you could’ve heard me say things I shouldn’t have in moments of weakness but so far you haven’t betrayed my secret which means I can trust you. (No response from NYEMBEZI.) Khanda (Cont’d) Does your silence confirm you and I have formed an alliance? Can you tell me more about this socalled hyena? (Silence.) Khanda (Cont’d) Nobody respects us around here…you and I are not allowed to exercise our rights as equal habitants and that really pisses me off! We should do something about that…a protest or unified governance to balance the equation. They do and say whatever it is they want and we’re expected to follow their stupid rules like they own this place! Hell, no! Take for instance the other day you wanted to make your confession to the priest with everybody trying to distract you and, by the way, I wasn’t part of that conspiracy. I was manipulated…used and you can prove it. I mean…you were not out here to see what was happening but you heard everything, right? (Going to the wall) Now…here is the plan to separate those two pigs. When the two women are here, make a lot of noise so that it’s impossible for them to communicate. Bang on that stupid wall, scream or do whatever it is that will comfort your sorrows. I will be out here giving you all the emotional support you need. (No response from NYEMBEZI.) Khanda (Cont’d) Come on, give me a sign so I know we are now on the same side. (KHANDA does not see BHAKHOSI walk in.)

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Bhakhosi What is wrong with your voice? Khanda (Panics, clears his throat and speaks with a strained female voice.) My voice? I think I’m er…coming down with a bad cold or something more contagious. Bhakhosi Keep the distance…I don’t want your chicken virus! (KHANDA clears his throat again, fakes a cough. NYEMBEZI sings a beautiful but very sad song.) Bhakhosi (Turning to the wall) What is going on here? Why is she singing? Khanda She is singing because she wants to sing. Bhakhosi (Takes off her dirty dress, walks to her bed to pick up a clean one) Whatever you’re trying to do won’t work. You must either follow our stupid rules or join her behind that wall. (He stares at BHAKHOSI half-naked in her granny bra and panties, clean dress in hand.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) And if you think you can team up with Nyembezi to boss us around, you got yourself another battle coming! Sdudla will beat the brains out of your big stupid head. (KHANDA continues to stare at BHAKHOSI.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) Why are you staring at me like that? (She turns around checking herself, shouts to KHANDA) Tell her to stop!! (KHANDA coughs, signalling NYEMBEZI to stop singing and she does.) Khanda (Regains his composure) Prison garb is unflattering to your beautiful figure. Bhakhosi (Quickly covers her front with dress in hand) Are you checking me out? Khanda (Turns his body the other way, both arms crossed in front of his dress) I’m giving you a compliment…woman to woman that’s all. (They stare at each other. SDUDLA rushes in, breathing heavily.) Bhakhosi (Panics) What is it? (SDUDLA is out of breath, slumps to the floor.)

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Bhakhosi (Shakes SDUDLA) Say something! Sdudla (Breathing heavily) Men! (NYEMBEZI bangs on the wall.) Khanda ( Jumps in panic) A man! Where? Bhakhosi She said men…not a man you big head. (Turning to the wall) Shut up, Nyembezi! (NYEMBEZI bangs the wall.) Khanda (Relaxes) But we do have men in this audience, don’t we? (Points a finger at one guy in the audience) I can see the guy down there giving Miss Piggy over here the horny looks. (Shouts) Hey, buddy…you want some bacon? Bhakhosi (To Khanda) So this is what you have been up to, isn’t it? Plotting with Nyembezi to disrupt peace. (KHANDA coughs again signalling NYEMBEZI to stop and she stops.) Khanda Nyembezi and I have rights too, this is government property. You won’t have peace until our grievances are met. Sdudla (Speaks in a hushed tone) We…me and five other prisoners were taken to a place outside here for maintenance work in a government complex. Bhakhosi Slow down…I can hardly understand what you’re saying. Khanda (Bending down with his ear to SDUDLA’s mouth) You and five other prisoners were taken to a government complex outside this prison to do maintenance work? Sdudla (Still speaking very fast) The government workers are on strike and these men were all over the place singing and dancing and… Bhakhosi Speak slowly. Khanda (To BHAKHOSI) You must be deaf. I have already explained she and five other prisoners were taken to a place outside this prison where they did maintenance work to a government complex. The company apparently fired all its employees for going on an illegal strike. Bhakhosi (Frustrated) No, no no…that’s not what she said. Khanda Not her exact words but…I’m assuming it’s some­

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thing along those lines. Sdudla (Gets up, walks about, speaks in unrecognizable language) Gokijuhnghthjjkkkkkkk. Bhakhosi (Follows SDUDLA) What are you trying to tell me? Are we in danger? Sdudla (Continues unrecognizable language) Drtyygjjdnhb cjuvuimn hgbgjgkifkdkdkskln! Bhakhosi (Panics) What happened out there? Please use the secret language I can understand. Khanda You women have a secret language? Guard (V.O.) Security check! (KHANDA salutes, stands still. BHAKHOSI slaps SDUDLA.) Sdudla (Confused) What!? Bhakhosi Security checks. (BHAKHOSI salutes and stands in line with KHANDA.) Guard (V.O.) Security check! Sdudla (Looking lost) Security what? Female Guard (V.O.) Prisoner USO! (KHANDA quickly spreads his legs and lifts his arms up in the air, smiling broadly.) Female Guard (V.O.) You’ve visitors prisoner USO! Khanda salutes, marches off with his new found swag and a naughty grin, coughs. Nyembezi (V.O., in mockery) Na, na, na, na, na, na! Yada, yada, yada! Bhakhosi Shut up! (To SDUDLA) She has formed an alliance with Khanda. Sdudla (Preoccupied) I forgot how it feels to be out there without the intrusion of these big walls and steel bars. Out there there’s life…people…men. Nyembezi (V.O.) Nyori, nyori, nyori! Wada, wada, wada! Bhakhosi (Shaking SDUDLA) Sdudla! (THREE WOMEN in different Zimbabwean political party cos­ tume make their entry singing and dancing to a protest song ‘Inkomo Zikababa’ meaning ‘My Father’s Cattle’. VELVET is an angry bull, LILLY a proud cock and ROSE a midget clown. Velvet (Imitating angry bull, charges) Mhoooooo!!!

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(LILLY walks around like a proud, pompous cock. ROSE’s palms are painted red and white. She imitates climbing a wall, falls but gets up again and climbs. BHAKHOSI feels threatened and drags SDUDLA out of the stage.) Velvet (Charging) Mhooooooooooooo!!!! Lilly (Flapping wings) Cockorookocoorooo!!! (VELVET fights with LILLY out the stage. ROSE continues to climb her wall, falls, gets up and climbs again. Three men carrying different traditional weapons run into the stage singing a song, ‘Ngifuna Ukukhuluma’ [I want to Speak]. DK, in his early 30s, wears a pair of designer jeans and is shirtless. RAZOR, mid-40s, wears a dirty work suit. OZONE, mid 50s, a suit and tie.) Teargas (V.O.) Imi vanhu imi! murikuyitei? [You people, what are you trying to happen?] (Translated to broken English.) (TEARGAS and GORILLA enter the stage holding an oversized can of tear gas and an enormous machine gun. DK, RAZOR and OZONE continue to sing and dance, waving their weapons in the air. ROSE climbs her wall.) Gorilla (Shona speaking bad Ndebele) Tell me ukhuthi lizama ukhuyenzani? [What are you trying to do?] Ozone (Singing protest song) Konje mina bengifun’ukuthini? [By the way, what was I about to say?] Konje mina bengifun’ ukukhuluma wee! [I know I wanted to speak my mind!] Konje mina bengifun’ukuthi lina lathi mina ngithi ngisathi ngoba lisithi [By the way I wanted to speak my mind but you forced me to say something totally different] Konje mina bengifun’ ukukhuluma! [I know I wanted to speak my mind!] (TEARGAS and GORILLA break out in laughter.) Teargas (Speaking bad English) There is no law in this country of my fore fathers allowing commoners like you stupid boys and girls to speak your idle minds in public places! (Removing the security latch on the gas cylinder) Do you think this is South Africa where people run around like crazy wild animals looting, burning and destroying government and private property all in the name of exercising their right to

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freedom of expression? Where in this land of Kaguvi and Nehanda [‘Zimbabwean liberation heroes’] will you see irrelevant opposition parties insulting their president on national and international TV with no respect for protocol all in the name of the liberation struggle? Who will rebuild and with whose money will the vandalized properties be repaired? The president’s multi billions or your silly hardearned tax? Gorilla (Also speaking bad English) Did you get permission letter from the police constable in head office to gather and do all this nonsensical rubbish? Don’t you know that syllabus yakachinja? [‘Don’t you know the police syllabus has changed?’] (Aiming the gun at them) We’re now equipped and certified permitted to deal with lawless hooligans like you efficiently and effectively…returning little fire with more fire, we shoot to kill! Down your stupid weapons now and surrender before I release the bullets on your useless carcasses! (The PROTESTORS down their weapons and lift their arms up in the air, scared. ROSE lifts up her arms, smiling.) Teargas Tsika pawuro conisiteburu!! [Step on their necks constable!] Gorilla Tsika!! [Step on them!] (Both TEARGAS and GORILLA slam their feet hard on the stage. DK, OZONE, RAZOR and ROSE fall on their backs, holding their necks struggling to breathe. TEARGAS and GORILLA lift their feet from the ground and all four protestors sit up uniformly gasping for air.) Teargas Tsika pawuro mpurisa! [Step on their necks Mr Policeman!] Gorilla Tsika! [Step on them!] (The policemen slam their feet hard on the floor again. DK, OZONE, RAZOR and ROSE fall backwards clutching their necks, legs kicking in the air.) Teargas (His foot grinding the floor) You people think you are very clever hayikhona? Murikufunga kuti makangwara? [You stupid people think you’re very clever?] Today we

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shall teach you a valuable lesson you will not forget! (Protestors are convulsing, as if dying.) Gorilla (Threatening to shoot the audience) When will you stupid people ever learn? Don’t you know half a loaf is better than nothing?! Yap, yap, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah opening your big stinky mouths to complain! Who are YOU to complain and to WHOM are you complaining you silly baboons? (TEARGAS finally lifts his grinding foot from the floor. OZONE and DK are coughing and gasping for breath attempting to sit up. ROSE is dead. RAZOR sits up reaching out to the audience for help. GORILLA fires gun shots into the air, TEARGAS sprays the stage with gas.) Teargas We’ll sort you out if you continue doing your banana business in the streets! If you have an opinion, keep it to yourself, nobody wants to hear it! Gorilla (Pointing the gun at the audience) Our leader doesn’t tolerate bullshit! Human rights, what stupid human rights in whose country? We the police force the rules around here not someone in United British of America. Teargas (Pointing the tear gas nozzle at the audience) Our President doesn’t govern other country laws telling them how to run their business and their people. Who are you to challenge him? (GORILLA drags dead ROSE out of the stage followed by TEAR­GAS who sprays the stage with gas leaving it white with smoke. Through the clearing smoke, OZONE, DK and RAZOR stand frozen in various positions. SDUDLA and BHAKHOSI re-enter the stage.) Bhakhosi (Looking around) It is now safe, Sdudla the riot police are gone. Sdudla (Ignores BHAKHOSI, slowly approaches OZONE) I wonder if she loves you like I do. Does she hold and make love to you the same way? Every weekend I wait for your visit…every night I lie awake thinking about you and wondering if you have forgotten I need you here. Bhakhosi (Looking around) We shouldn’t have come back,

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the police could be lurking somewhere waiting to attack again. Sdudla (Still talking to OZONE) I wonder what little things you whisper in her ear? (Reaches out to touch OZONE’s face) I also wonder about the little things she indulges you to keep you away. Bhakhosi Sdudla? Sdudla (Sees RAZOR, rushes to him) You miserable piece of shit! You ungrateful old lying rat! (Slaps him hard on his face) I gave you twelve of my best years and in return you spit in my face! (Kicks him) You dirty old goat! (BHAKHOSI tries to hold SDUDLA who beats the man to the ground. BHAKHOSI grabs SDUDLA from behind.) Bhakhosi (Grabs SDUDLA from behind) Enough, Sdudla, let go! (SDUDLA is distracted by DK, breaks from BHAKHOSI’s grip and in slow motion runs to DK. SDUDLA trips and falls but quickly crawls on all fours to unbuckle DK’s belt. BHAKHOSI tries to stop her. The two women hustle and tussle both falling to the ground with SDUDLA pulling down DK’s pants in the process. DK falls, SDUDLA not letting go of his pants. BHAKHOSI pulls SDUDLA’s legs trying to disengage her, also dragging DK in the same process. SDUDLA kicks BHAKHOSI who falls backwards. SDUDLA throws her body over DK and locks her arms tightly around his thighs, her head resting flat on his half naked crotch.) Teargas (Coming back on stage) Haven’t you women heard about the law prohibiting eating of men in public places? (BHAKHOSI panics and quickly gets up with both arms lifted high in the air. SDUDLA is reluctant to get up, is on her knees. TEARGAS kicks DK, RAZOR and OZONE off the stage.) Gorilla (Swinging his waist seductively in SDUDLA’s face, gun on his shoulder) I’m available…and my colleague over there won’t arrest you if you do me proper and give me head like you were doing that guy nice – nice. (Grabs SDUDLA’s head with one hand and rubs her face in his crotch) Yes, oooh yes…I rike it, I rike it [I like it, I like it]. (TEARGAS grabs BHAKHOSI from behind and fondles her

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breasts rubbing his crotch against her behind, gas cylinder on his shoulder. SDUDLA punches GORILLA in the crotch and he doubles over but recovers quickly, tries to grab SDUDLA who spits in his face.) Gorilla (Points the gun in her face and speaks in broken English) I rike it when a woman shows fire…I rike it. [I like it when a woman shows fire…I like it]. Spit on me again and I will shoot you dead. Teargas (Still fondling BHAKHOSI’s breasts and rubbing his crotch against her bum. Speaks in broken English) Not here, Constable…I shall arrest you if you do your business in public place with all these witnesses watching. After arresting you I will make disappear your docket and release you later when nobody is watching. (Giggles.) Gorilla (Points the gun at the audience) Witnesses? Witness against whom…me the untouchable valuable employee of the ruling party? Witness and you shall see. Teargas (Also releasing BHAKHOSI pointing a threatening finger at both women) Next time we catch you doing your intimate gymnastics in public we’ll throw you behind bars with no trial! (Turns to fellow policeman) Let’s go Constable, our job is done! (TEARGAS and GORILLA fast forward march Charlie Chaplin style to exit. SDUDLA wants to throw her shoe at them, BHA­ KHOSI holds her.) Sdudla (Fuming, throws herself on the bed) Bastards! (KHANDA walks in, whistling.) Bhakhosi You’re breaking prison rules at every street corner and the authorities are not raising any eyes brows. Why? Khanda (Makes his bed) Yes, I am breaking the rules and getting away with it because some of us are connected in the right places, which is none of your business by the way. And just in case you want to know, some of us have family and friends who understand how much we need their support in here. Bhakhosi You’re confessing doing illegal dealings with the authorities?

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Khanda I didn’t confess to anything. You asked me a question and I answered as expected. (Pushes BHAKHOSI aside) Now if you’ll excuse me this prisoner with limitless privileged benefits wants to rest after an exhausting double shift. Cleaning the supervisor’s big office is not an easy job. (Sleeps.) (Individual spot lights on sleeping KHANDA fully clothed and BHAKHOSI half-naked facing upwards.) Khanda (Yawns, stretches an arm and a leg) I see Miss Piggy is in one of her bad moods again. Somebody really needs to get laid. (Short giggle.) Bhakhosi I can see right through that big fake mask of yours. Something sneaky is going on between you and those prison guards. You must be here to spy on us. Khanda (Sitting up) Can we please change the subject and talk about something involving you for a change. There is nothing to spy on, you and big panda over there are common low life criminals. That is what my silly gossips with other prisoners has revealed unless if there are secrets about you too deserving my special scrutiny, there’s nothing special about you so don’t flatter yourself. (Sleeps.) Bhakhosi I don’t believe you’re a murderer, you don’t seem like you have the guts. Yes, you’re so full of yourself and can pick fights with Sdudla once in a while but that’s all there is to you. Deep down I think you’re a softie like me. Khanda (Sitting up again) Now that you’ve got me started, I want to know more about this prostitution business of yours. How is it possible to have been sentenced for so many years just by demanding payment for sex? Bhakhosi (Sleeping) You wouldn’t believe me anyway so why should I waste my time trying to convince you? Khanda (Pissed off) I was sleeping peacefully and you started yapping about me not having the balls to – (Realises his verbal blunder) Bhakhosi (Sitting up) Balls? Khanda Figure of speech, women don’t have balls…I mean guts.

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(BHAKHOSI stares at him.) Khanda (Nervous) What? Bhakhosi It’s just weird how your conversations sometimes reflect characteristics which are male. Khanda Blame it on the high testosterone levels due to our obvious circumstances. I don’t know about you but I have needs and judging from the look of things your friend is also struggling. We need a man in here. Bhakhosi Men…plural not singular – Khanda Plural, singular whatever you do get my point. (Sulks, sleeps.) (Brief silence.) Bhakhosi Just in case you’re still interested, one of my clients was a cabinet minister. Khanda Here you go again with your lies and deceit. You wouldn’t sell your body if you were dating a cabinet minister. Forgive me for having a brain but it doesn’t make any sense. Your rich boyfriend could’ve easily paid your bills or financed whatever it is you were prostituting yourself for. Bhakhosi (Pissed off, sitting up) Do you have a problem with women like me? Khanda (Also sitting up) Do I have a problem with women having sex with different men for money? No, not at all. Everybody must be proud of their professions which I’m sure you were by the way. Bhakhosi No…you obviously don’t like hookers. Khanda I have no problem how other people make their money. I just think as a mother you should’ve been…you know…a better role model. You could’ve chosen other respectable and more acceptable professions like nursing or teaching or if you’re not educated, housekeeping. And by the way, I’m not stupid…two thieves can see right through each other’s cheap tricks. I am however offended you continue deceiving me with your lies. (He wants to sleep) (BHAKHOSI pulls a box from under her bed, places it on her lap.)

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Khanda (Cont’d) What is that box? Bhakhosi My work clothes. (In the box are beautiful, expensive clothes. A pair of bum shorts, jeans, a tank top, a long flowing evening gown, pantyhose and killer high heels.) Khanda (Curiously elongating his neck) Your work clothes? You mean…THE night shift hooker clothes? No…you’re just playing my bad side it’s obvious you don’t trust me with the truth. You must be in jail for something totally not related to obscenity. Bhakhosi I am who I say I am, but the big question is… have you really trusted me with your truth? (KHANDA scratches his head. Spot light goes out on BHA­ KHOSI.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) You forget I’ve a brain too, you know. Whatever it is you’re hiding I’m sure you have a very good reason you’ll tell me when you’re ready. I am after all, a very patient woman. Khanda What are you doing in the dark? Bhakhosi (Still invisible) Lie to me again…tell me what your profession was before you allegedly started killing people? Khanda (Clears his throat) This and that you know…wheeling and dealing like everybody else hustling for survival. Bhakhosi Which translates your hustling to how much money per day…week…a month? Khanda Come out in the light where I can see you, you’re beginning to freak me out. I don’t trust people hiding in dark places. Bhakhosi You said we must trust each other with honesty, didn’t you? (Still in the dark, puts a leg on KHANDA’s shoulder) Give me your figures. Khanda (Looking at BHAKHOSI’s leg, his mouth opens and closes) Figures? Bhakhosi (Flirting with KHANDA, she slowly runs her finger down his face) How much did you make a day…week… fortnight…month? Khanda (Struggles to remain calm) Why don’t you… give me

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your figures instead? (Spot light is back on BHAKHOSI, she looks ravishing in a beautiful red evening gown and high heels. KHANDA is blown away, whistles.) Bhakhosi (Strikes a sexy pose, walks) On good nights… about a thousand bucks and bad days…only a fraction. Some clients demanded the most absurd of services but the money was very, very good. (Walks to an invisible client waiting in his car) How much will you pay for the punani, Mr. Lover man? (Shakes her head, bends down to flaunt a sexy cleavage) This girl got the best honey in the business she will feed you straight from the jar for only 200 bucks…no discounts or electronic transfers, strictly cash. (KHANDA watches her, changes his seating position.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d. Straightens up, one hand on waist) What, you don’t have that kind of money? How ’bout thirty bucks for a quickie then? (Brushes customer off with an attitude) No money for pudding…no dessert, you nut head! Now buzz off! (Sees another customer, peels off her dress to reveal a pair of skinny jeans and tank top. She takes a big red lolly pop from her bra, licks it and rolls it around her tongue) Hello there pretty boy! You wanna play mom and daddy with the nanny? (KHANDA shifts uncomfortably, pulls up his legs still watching her.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d, caresses one breast) Your place or mine, junior? (Swings her torso side to side) 100 dollars and this nanny will teach you new tricks all in…one…very… good…lesson. (Sees another client) Hey, Papa Bear, wait up! (Ditches the lolly pop, peels off jeans and tank top to reveal a bum short/push-up bra combo.) What you mean you don’t do bitches? I’m no bitch, just a lonely girl looking for a good time! (Turns around, hands akimbo) Hey, Rambo…what the hell is your fucking problem? I told you this girl don’t give no freebies, I’m not bending my rules for you loser. If you want pussy you gotta pay for it I ain’t giving you nothin’ for free! (She runs to a new client shoving her competitor aside with an elbow) This one’s mine old lady! (Pushes invisible

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woman with both hands) He’s mine, men don’t want no loose granny vagina! (Turns around and smiles to a guy she picks in the audience) What you wanna do, Batman? (Smacks her bum) You wanna be tied up and get your ass whipped, I see you’ve been a very, very bad boy. Khanda (Excited, howls like a wolf at full moon) Aw, aw, awoooooooooooo!!!! Bhakhosi (Turns to KHANDA) Don’t get carried away I don’t do women. (Spot light goes out on BHAKHOSI. KHANDA lowers his legs, covering his lap with blanket.) Bhakhosi (In the dark) The competition was tough but most men preferred younger girls and I had the advantage. I thought I was the luckiest hooker alive when one of my new clients offered me a retirement package I couldn’t refuse. Khanda What kind of retirement package? Bhakhosi I was servicing two big clients from opposing political parties. One of them discovered I was sleeping with the enemy and convinced me to poison his rival for one hundred thousand United States Dollars. Khanda (Whistles) A hundred thousand United States Dollars! You’ll be sitting pretty when you finally get out of here. Bhakhosi (Spot light back on BHAKHOSI in her prison dress sitting on her bed) Not a chance. Things got messed up and the presidential candidate I was supposed to poison caught me in bed with his rival and killed him instead. I cheated death with a bullet in my bum when I jumped out an open window. Khanda (Shocked) You’re the hooker who jumped out of the window? Bhakhosi How do you know I’m the girlfriend who jumped out the window? Khanda (Recollecting his thoughts) I must have read something about it somewhere, a story like that must have hit the newspaper headlines.

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Bhakhosi I did make front-page newspaper headlines which is where you must have read the story. The part where the killer minister’s driver parked outside the hotel broke my fall when I jumped out the window wasn’t included. And to cut a long story short, I was forced to testify the driver shot me and killed my other boyfriend in a jealous rage. While waiting for my big pay out, the police showed up at my house and discovered five million worth cocaine stashed in my bed. Khanda (Still in shock) You’ve gained a lot of weight…you look different. Bhakhosi (Snaps) I was younger and smaller then it’s not possible to look the same way after so many years. Khanda I was just thinking aloud, no need to get all worked up over nothing. The picture of you in the newspaper was much juicier (Clears his throat) I mean…prettier. Bhakhosi (Angry) I have lost my best years locked up in here for a crime committed by another person and you’re telling me I’m getting worked up over nothing! (Lights go up, the breakfast siren rings. BHAKHOSI ignores it sitting on her bed like a zombie.) Khanda I’m sorry, ok? I didn’t mean to be insensitive. It’s just that…anyway, never mind. (Folds his bedding and puts it away, turns to look at SDUDLA) Wake up, Miss Piggy… it’s munch-munch time. (Looks at BHAKHOSI) I said I’m sorry, Bhakhosi, I didn’t mean to upset you. (SDUDLA is asleep.) Khanda (Goes to SDUDLA’s bed, shakes her) Miss Piggy, wake up its breakfast time. (SDUDLA sits up still heavy with sleep. She looks at BHAKHOSI sitting on her bed like a zombie, stares up at KHANDA hovering above her like a mother hen. SDUDLA quickly jumps out of bed, marches out.) Khanda (Making SDUDLA’s bed) Come on, stop worrying I’m sure nobody heard you, your secret is safe with me I will not reveal it to anyone. Bhakhosi (Scared) What about all these people sitting here?

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They were listening, they heard me talking to you. Khanda (Finishes making SDUDLA’s bed, walks with a slight limp) You and big black panda have told so many lies the audience doesn’t know what to believe anymore. And besides, the guards should have dragged you out by now if somebody in the audience has betrayed you. Bhakhosi (Notices the limp) What is wrong with your legs? Why are you limping? Khanda (Showing discomfort) What is wrong with my legs? Bhakhosi You are you limping. Khanda Why am I limping? Bhakhosi (Gets up) Stop answering a question with another question! Khanda Why are you always poking your nose into my private business? Bhakhosi (Arrogant) My sincere apologies for noticing you’re seemingly in excruciating pain as if carrying a heavy load between your legs. Khanda (Stretches and shakes both legs) I am not carrying any heavy load…I have…er…those cramps again…you know, the usual monthly symptoms you women go through…I mean us women go through before we get…er…to that time of the…you know…month. Bhakhosi Something is definitely wrong with your cycle you must be checked out if you’re still bleeding. Khanda Something of that sort, yes I’m still bleeding. And for your own information I have already been checked out and the doctor said…er…these things do happen three or four times a month to some women just in case you don’t know. It must be an inconvenience to other people but sad news is, I’m one of those unfortunate ones who bleed more than…er…normal. (Doubles over, moans) I should see the Supervisor and her deputy again. Bhakhosi You should see the prison doctor again, not the Supervisor or her deputy, you need medical attention. (Walking to exit) And don’t mess up the place with your stinky blood! I’m going out to eat it’s your turn to watch

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the old woman, make sure she keeps her mouth shut. (KHANDA sighs, reaches under his dress to touch his balls and walks up and down with legs apart.) Nyembezi (V.O., chants ancient Indian style, beating a drum) Ho yaya, he yaya, hiyaya, hoyaya, hiyaya, heyaya, hiyaya! Khanda Shut up!! (Abrupt silence. He takes off his dress, revealing a stuffed bra and black tights. KHANDA bends over to grab a clean dress under his pillow on the floor. He does not see BHAKHOSI re-enter the cell. She is stopped in her tracks by KHANDA’s bulging balls, stares at the audience and back at KHANDA.) Bhakhosi (Tiptoes closer and bends down behind him for a closer look) You have balls!! (KHANDA panics, drops the dress.) Bhakhosi (Her eyes dropping to his crotch, points a shaky finger at him) You have…a dick! (They stare at each other.) Khanda (Recovers, picks up his dress and quickly covers his front, nervous) Balls…a dick? Me? No…I…I can…explain all that. Bhakhosi (Moving backwards to the exit) You’re…a man! Khanda (Grabs BHAKHOSI, dress falls to the floor) Let me explain – Bhakhosi You’re not a woman! Khanda (Puts his hand over her mouth, drags her back to centre stage) Yes, I have a dick, balls…everything. I’m a man, ok… you got that part right. (BHAKHOSI wants to break free.) Khanda (Cont’d. Holding her close) You must calm down… give me a chance to explain. I’m going to let you go slowly…promise you’ll stay and listen. (BHAKHOSI nods, he releases her but she wants to run and he grabs her again, this time holding her so they face each other.) Bhakhosi (Searches his face, touches his head and face) Oh, my God, it’s you! Khanda (Nods quickly, still holding her) Yes, it’s me…you remember. And like you, I’m older…and probably uglier.

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Bhakhosi I knew there was something familiar about you…I knew it! (He slowly releases her.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) You’re the former president’s driver! You broke my fall when I jumped out the hotel window! You’re the man I falsely accused of shooting Morgan Tsvangirai! Khanda (Nods) Yes, I am. Bhakhosi Sdudla was right, you’re a spy. They sent you here to kill me so I wouldn’t tell anyone the newspaper story was all a scam. They don’t want anybody to know your president is a murderer. (She wants to run) Khanda (Quickly grabs her, covers her mouth) You shouldn’t have said that, you know we’re not alone. (Looks around suspiciously, takes her aside) I’m not here to kill you I know your hand was forced. I’m also aware cocaine was planted in your house. Bhakhosi You know about the drugs? Khanda The police planted the drugs. It was the only way to keep you quiet, so you wouldn’t find refuge with the dead man’s allies or confess what really happened that night. In here your visitors are screened and monitored you’ve no access to the outside world to blow the whistle. Bhakhosi I’m not a drug dealing prostitute, it’s all a lie. Khanda (Pissed off) Oh, come on! Get off your high horse, you were bonking two men from opposing political parties contesting for the highest seat in the country. You’re the reason I’m in this bloody mess. You’re the reason Tsvangirai is dead. Bhakhosi (Panicking) I must find Sdudla! You’re here to kill me! Khanda (Grabs her arm) If I was here to kill you don’t you think I would have done it already? If they wanted you dead you wouldn’t still be alive, don’t fool yourself thinking this is a game show. You should at least show gratitude I saved your life! If somebody else finds out about this we’re both dead.

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Bhakhosi (Wants to break free) I cannot betray Sdudla, she must know who you are. Khanda (Holding her very close) Come on, you and I can help each other out, you don’t know how much longer we’ll be locked up in here now that our secret is out. My suggestion is we shouldn’t involve a third party. Bhakhosi Everybody in here already knows, Sdudla must know too. Either way, we’re all dead whether you acknow­ledge it or not. Khanda If you know they will kill us why not die happy? (Pulls her close) it’s very lonely in here, I have what you need. Miss Piggy doesn’t have to find out right away. (Kisses her ear) I know you want me, I can give it to you right here, right now. Bhakhosi (Pushes him) Our lives are in danger and you’re thinking about having sex? You are insane! Khanda (Holding her close again) Come on, death can wait let’s do a quickie…it will take only a few minutes – Bhakhosi (Shakes her head) No, sex CAN wait. Something doesn’t add up here. Why didn’t your boss hire someone for the hit? Why do it himself when he could have hired you as the assassin? Khanda Who knows how these politicians think? When you didn’t pull it off he must have decided to do it himself to make sure his rival was dead. Bhakhosi What are you doing behind bars when you should be running out there scot free? Khanda What do you mean what am I doing behind bars? I’m in prison for murder. Bhakhosi A murder you didn’t commit. For a man bragging intelligence, you should’ve already figured out you shouldn’t be in jail. Khanda I don’t understand…can you please elaborate? Some­times common sense doesn’t come easily to a man who’s under a lot of pressure. Bhakhosi Why did the president frame you for his crime? Why have you been transferred to a female prison disguised

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as a woman? Khanda Why did my boss frame me for his crime? Why am I in a female prison disguised as a woman? Bhakhosi Don’t answer questions with other questions. Khanda (Thinks) I don’t know. Bhakhosi Can’t you see? There must be a dubious plan in action to eliminate existing evidence. If one of us talks the world will know our former president is a killer. Khanda (Quickly covers BHAKHOSI’s mouth) You shouldn’t repeat that statement, he has people still loyal to him even if he is no longer in power. (She nods and he lets her go.) Khanda (Cont’d, scratches his head and balls, walks) If what you say is true, what about your friend Miss Piggy? Bhakhosi What about Sdudla? Khanda Where does she fit in the puzzle? (It is BHAKHOSI’s turn to walk and think.) Khanda (Cont’d) And to answer your question regarding my transfer here, I was informed my boss has secret agents inside this prison to smuggle me out of the country with a new identity. Bhakhosi Why bring you here to share the same cell with the woman who allegedly framed you? Khanda I need time to process all this information. In the mean­time you and I can put our time to good use. (Looks around) Come here, I want to be close to you right now and should I die tonight at least I’ll go to heaven. (Kisses her) Sdudla (Entering the cell) What the fuck…??? (KHANDA panics, quickly hides behind BHAKHOSI.) Bhakhosi It’s not what you think. Sdudla All this time I’ve been protecting your stupid ass and you’re busy grinding her. Bhakhosi Let me explain…it’s not how it looks. (KHANDA is holding BHAKHOSI at the waist, dragging her backwards so he can pick up his dress.) Sdudla (Disgusted, turns to go) You bitches deserve each other.

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Bhakhosi (Breaks free, runs after SDUDLA) Sdudla wait! (KHANDA quickly picks up his dress, throws it over his head, and goes after BHAKHOSI.) Sdudla There’s nothing to explain, I’ve seen what I needed to see! Bhakhosi She’s not – Khanda (His hand covering Bhakhosi’s mouth) We didn’t want you to find out this way, it was a spur of the moment thing we got carried away. One thing led to another and before we knew it our hands were all over each other. You can join the fun if you want to. (SDUDLA spits, walks out. BHAKHOSI bites KHANDA’s hand, wants to follow SDUDLA but he blocks her way.) Khanda (Cont’d) Do you know what will happen to me if the authorities find out you know my secret? Bhakhosi (Hands akimbo) Oh, I see…how convenient, it’s now your secret. Do you happen to know what will happen to US both now that everybody heard us incriminate the former head of state? Khanda I only told Miss Piggy what she wanted to hear! What if she betrays me…US? Bhakhosi (Pleads with him) I know Sdudla will never betray our secret – Khanda They will kill me – Bhakhosi Don’t you get it? They, who will kill you, will kill me too. Khanda You don’t understand – Bhakhosi Then make me understand. Khanda I can’t tell you – Bhakhosi I already know who you are. What else haven’t you told me that I should know? (He scratches his head, BHAKHOSI walks.) Khanda (Following her) Wait! (BHAKHOSI stops.) Khanda (Cont’d, takes her aside) The day of the incident when you jumped out the window – (Looks around again) The gun my boss used to murder your client…it was mine.

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Bhakhosi It was your gun? Khanda Yes. Bhakhosi (Confused) Why give him your gun to commit his crime unless the two of you connived to make it look like you were the killer? Khanda It’s complicated – Bhakhosi Uncomplicate it or I’m going straight to the supervisor’s office. You’re lying to me about something. Khanda It’s not that simple – Bhakhosi Make it simple. (KHANDA hesitates, looks around. BHAKHOSI walks to the exit.) Khanda My boss’ wife and I were having an affair. Bhakhosi (Stops, turns around slowly, goes to him) Your boss’s wife and…YOU? Are you nuts? Khanda You’re no saint to be pointing fingers, my sins are not accountable to you. Bhakhosi You and her? (Shakes her head) That’s impossible. Why you, when she had better men available at her fingertips? (Looks around, speaks in hushed tones) We are talking about the former first lady here, right? Khanda Some women find me appealing, by the way and yes, we are talking about the former first lady but I don’t think she was attracted to me. The plan was to murder her husband and the sex was just to soften me up, she knew I was fiercely loyal to the president. Bhakhosi Correction…former president. (Looks around again, nervous, goes to sit on her bed) We are sooo DEAD. Khanda (Sitting on SDUDLA’s bed) The man was very old and close to his grave anyway, which is the reason the wife positioned herself in his shoes gunning for support to take over the presidency. Her husband was reluctant to endorse her as his successor insisting it was against the constitution, and advised her to join the race through the ballot box at national congress where party nominations are conducted. Bhakhosi But she preferred the short cut, bulldozing her way to power, resulting in military intervention with the

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coup ousting her husband from power. Khanda That is what we think transpired. Some people must have died trying to protect their leader, it just wasn’t reported in the press. And despite their ridiculous age difference the president secretly wanted his wife to take over, which is why he eliminated her competition. Bhakhosi And Tsvangirai was the strongest opponent from the opposition. Khanda They forgot Morgan wasn’t the only opponent. The night your lover was killed my boss asked for my gun…said he needed to take care of something. When I heard the gun shots I rushed to the window and saw you jump. Bhakhosi (Going to sit next to him) You saved my life by breaking my fall, I wouldn’t have survived that height. Khanda I don’t know how he found out I was sleeping with the missus and being the powerful man he is, I knew he could easily kill me and get away with it anyway. Bhakhosi So you decided to keep his secret and plead guilty to the crime he committed as an apology for betraying him? Khanda Something to that effect, yes. You also agreed to testify against me as the jealous lover who shot Tsvangirai. Bhakhosi (Walks) It’s obvious we were both duped. There’s no compensation or mercy. Keeping us here must be some kind of twisted punishment. I don’t see us getting out of here alive. (SDUDLA comes back. KHANDA makes his bed on the floor.) Bhakhosi Khanda is the man who saved my life when I jumped out the window. (SDUDLA stops briefly to look at both KHANDA and BHAK­ HOSI, goes to lie on her bed.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d. Going to SDUDLA) I only found out today, you know I wouldn’t betray you. (SDUDLA is not interested.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d, turning to KHANDA) Take off your clothes.

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Khanda We don’t really have to go that far…it is – Bhakhosi Now! (KHANDA hesitates.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) We’re in this mess together, we both know there is nowhere to run. (Going to the entrance) I’ll stand at the entrance and look out for the guards. Khanda (Still reluctant) This is ridiculous! You don’t really expect me to strip naked in front of all these people. Bhakhosi Your choice…either you blow your cover or I go to the Supervisor’s office. (KHANDA reluctantly takes off his dress, his fake breasts. SDUDLA sits up. With his back to the audience KHANDA drops his tights. SDUDLA faints, her body slumping backwards on the bed.) Bhakhosi (Runs to SDUDLA, slaps her face to revive her) Sdudla, wake up! Sdudla! (SDUDLA wakes, stares at KHANDA pulling up his tights and faints again.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d. Slaps SDUDLA back to consciousness again) Wake up, Sdudla – wake up! (KHANDA puts on his bra and stuffs his fake breasts.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) Wake up, Sdudla! Sdudla (Sits up) She has a dick, Bhakhosi…she has a dick. Bhakhosi Yes, Sdudla…she has a dick…and balls too. Sdudla (Gets up, points a finger at KHANDA, shouts) She’s a man! Bhakhosi (Tries holding SDUDLA down) Calm down the audience is already aware. Sdudla (Breaks free, rushes to KHANDA) You’re a man!!! (Laughs hysterically) Nyembezi (V.O.) I killed my son! I killed him. (Weeps) (SDUDLA runs across the stage and back, giggling. KHANDA runs after SDUDLA. BHAKHOSI goes to the isolation wall.) Bhakhosi You didn’t know they were going to torture your son and burn him to death. They said he was being taken to the police station for further questioning. He didn’t want to go but you reassured him nobody would harm

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him because you were a senior and important member of the ruling party. You didn’t kill your son, Nyembezi… they did. Stop blaming yourself for his death you cannot bring him back. Sdudla (Shouts) She’s a man!!! (KHANDA grabs SDUDLA and covers her mouth.) Khanda They already know, shut up! (KHANDA struggles to keep her still and quiet.) Bhoza (V.O.) Security check! (BHAKHOSI salutes and waits to be counted. KHANDA holds onto SDUDLA. BHOZA and her SUPERVISOR enter the cell.) Bhoza Security check! (KHANDA releases SDUDLA.) Sdudla (Runs up and down the stage again, shouting) She’s a man! (KHANDA wants to go after SDUDLA but changes his mind when he sees BHAKHOSI waiting for inspection. BHOZA and SUPERVISOR watch SDUDLA running up and down laughing and shouting.) Sdudla (Cont’d) She’s a man!! She’s a man! (BHOZA runs after SDUDLA. KHANDA salutes as expected.) Supervisor Prisoner USO! (KHANDA hesitates.) Supervisor (Cont’d) Prisoner USO!!! (KHANDA marches three steps forward. BHOZA catches SDUDLA and beats her to the ground until she faints.) Supervisor You’ve a visitor prisoner USO! (The SUPERVISOR marches to exit with KHANDA following her like a defeated man. He turns briefly to look at BHAKHOSI before walking out. BHOZA drags limp SDUDLA off the stage.) Bhakhosi (Disengages) Nobody should hold Nyembezi responsible for her child’s death – she shouldn’t have poisoned the woman who betrayed her son. The truth is now out in the open you know who we are. I’m not proud of who I am and it’s up to you to pick up the first stone and drag me to my shallow grave.

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(The spiritual song ‘Nkosi Yami’ [Dear God] can be heard in the background as KHANDA’s half naked body is lowered from the top of the stage behind BHAKHOSI who doesn’t turn to look at the limp body dangling behind her. KHANDA’s face is twisted in agony, his eyes wide open. He hangs from pieces of cloth ripped from the lower part of his dress, leaving his thighs and buttocks bare.) Bhakhosi (Speaks between gaps of the song) The police report said Khanda committed suicide but we all know they killed him. Sdudla, like Nyembezi has been locked up in solitary confinement having lost her mind. As I stand before you I ask myself many questions. Will I get out of here alive or will I be tossed out dead for stray dogs to feed on my rotting carcass? If I do ever get out, will I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive and to make sense and order out of the world…of people and things outside of me? I have many thoughts that are conceived in the spur of the moment…some are dreams, some visions and often I’m unable to distinguish between the two. (KHANDA’s body is pulled up behind BHAKHOSI.) Bhakhosi (Cont’d) I’ve learned the hard way sex is not a contract to a man’s heart and expensive gifts are not promises for love. I have also learned to build my thoughts on today because I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I accept my defeats with my head held up with the grace of a woman and not the tears of a child. In here I have also learned to plant my own garden, nobody brings me flowers anymore. You’ve been here listening to our story but the journey doesn’t and shouldn’t end here. You know what needs to be done but it’s not up to me to say when and how. (Sound of steel as the cell gate opens and a new female prisoner who is a MIDGET is pushed into the cell. BHAKHOSI stares at the MIDGET who gets up and points a ‘fuck you’ finger at BHAKHOSI.) Sdudla (V.O. giggling) She’s a man! (Laughing) She’s a man! CURTAIN

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Book Reviews

Valérie K. Orlando, New African Cinema New Brunswick, Camden and New York: Rutgers University Press, 2017, 175pp. ISBN 9780813579573. Pb £13.24 / $17.38

This book attempts an overview of significant developments and trends that characterize the postcolonial African cinema. The author approaches the discourse from three impor­ tant epochs that are commonly associated with the post­ colonial cinema culture in Africa: the past (1960s–90s), the present (twenty-first century) and the future (projections or conjectures about the directions of African cinematic develop­ment). Structurally, Orlando’s New African Cinema consists of four parts: the introduction, the first part, the second part and the conclusion. Thematically, Orlando’s discourse uses the representative media of films, videos and television soap operas with examples drawn from different regions of Africa to interrogate some critical issues that surround the produc­ tion of the moving image in twenty-first century Africa. The introductory essay begins by ‘acknowledging the colon­ial past as part of the present’ while observing that ‘contem­porary filmmakers no longer solely blame the colon­ izer for the social woes of their respective societies’ (1–2). The author then identifies technology as a major factor in the evolution of African cinema as typified in the influence of ‘light handheld cameras and digital technologies’. This has 219

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empowered the younger generation and emerging cineastes to build an African brand of ‘popular culture’ cinema. Another significant influence is the nature of the African cinema content which is dedicated to offering sociocultural and political messages to the audiences; hence African film ‘is never made purely for entertainment’ but mostly ‘for sociopolitical critique’ (3). However, when these African films are produced, the distribu­tion network becomes a challenge due to the scarcity of viable theatres on the continent. The author suggests that ‘the solution to the lack of cinemas lies in taking back control of distribution and screening rights that influence local markets for their films’ (7). The problem of contextualizing or framing African films in terms of region of the filmmaking is also highlighted by Orlando who contends that ‘geographical, linguistic and ethnic divisions have consistently defined Africa’ as well as ‘the films made there’ (12). Hence, the author argues that Africa should not be treated as ‘one huge geographical landmass’ in order to avoid misconceptions, ‘neo-colonial markers’ and ‘blanket stereotypes’ in discussing her cinematic cultures. Another issue treated in the introductory section of the book is the Anglophone versus the Francophone cinema dichotomy and the challenges (and potentials) of making films in the colonizers’ languages in fast urbanizing and multicultural settings that have become the character of African ‘metropolitan locations where multiple languages are spoken’ (18). The next section of the book is historical in orientation. Here, Orlando argues that ‘the most effective way to under­ stand the trajectory of African cinema since the early 1960s is to review chronologically the various trends and influences that have shaped it up to the present’ (39). Thus, in this section the author engages the transitions that characterize the African cinema over the years, as African filmmaking evolved from ‘reflecting Third Cinema ideology’ through ‘social realist frameworks’ up to ‘Afrocentric philosophical

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agendas’, and finally to the ‘transnational and global themes of the twenty-first Afropolitan century’ of today. Third Cinema is seen as a radical approach used by Third World filmmakers as a revolutionary weapon against oppres­ sion by the ruling classes. When applied to the African context as postulated by the Ethiopian scholar, Teshome Gabriel, Third Cinema becomes a sociopolitical ideo­ logy against inequality, injustice and impunity of the ruling class, which are glaring in the postcolonial state. The social realist frameworks, though didactic, are an extension of the critical mantra, exposing social contradictions, raising consciousness and promoting the interests of marginalized groups by making them heroes in the cinematic narrative. As part of the ‘Afrocentricity of new cinemas’ using social realist themes, Orlando highlights the contributions of women filmmakers in various regions of Africa which include Assia Djebar, Sofia Djama (Algeria), Safi Faye, Khady Sylla, Fatou Senghor (Senegal), Sarah Maldoror (Angola), Anne-Laure Folly (Togo), Farida Benlyazid (Morocco), Moufida Tlati (Tunisia), among other Maghreb women filmmakers. These African women filmmakers fall mostly within the thematic category of social realist filmmaking focusing on ‘once taboo and controversial topics from rural poverty and prostitution to divorce and repudiation and the general challenges facing African women living between tradition and modernity’ (80). The second part of the book interrogates what the author refers to as ‘new awakenings and new realities of twentyfirst century African cinema’, arguing that most films made from 2002 have been ‘less politically defined’ and not quite inclined to using DVD distributions but focusing more on art house and traditional theatres to make the films accessible to international markets. Another instance of the new realities are the factors of themes and technologies of the films. The twenty-first century filmmakers adopt themes that speak to the younger audiences as well as new cinematic digital technologies and

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camera equipment that are more portable, affordable and accessible. Furthermore, globalization is having a considerable impact on contemporary African cultural productions. Thus, filmmakers of today are realizing that they are citizens of both Africa and the world and their narratives are becoming globalized cultural products. The new African film while reflecting new technologies and new patterns of culture elicits certain questions con­ cerning conceptions of home and place, language, region and urbanization in Africa as well as ‘delicate’ issues such as religion, culture, gender and sexual orientation. Politically, the new filmmakers in embracing ‘new awakening and new realities’ and moving away from critiquing ‘neocolonial relationships with former European colonizers’ and focusing more on ‘evaluating the autocracies that their postcolonial governments have become’ (86). In essence, they are rejecting the inclination to defensive radicalism – the tendency to blame the colonizers or the West for all the problems of Africa. Instead, the filmmakers are becoming ‘Afropolitan’ in orientation, by refusing ‘any form of victim identity’ but articulating a space which is defined by the diverse experiences encountered in Africa even as they query and subvert stereotypes produced by Western representations of Africa. The author illustrates this new awakening with the works of some Maghreb filmmakers. In their ‘Africanization of universal themes’, the new African cineastes are preoccupied with the portrayal of the local and global pressures that affect individuals and their societies in the twenty-first century. The author concludes the book by projecting into ‘the futures of African film’, whereby the twenty-first century filmmakers will become ‘Afropolitan’, depicting ‘the actuality of their time’ and instructing global audiences about ‘the hurdles and issues facing contemporary Africa’ (141). By so doing, they become voices for the voiceless, challenging corruption and sociopolitical malaise that submerge the continent. The new films are expected to also exhibit more technical savvy by taking advantage of technological

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advances, new media and infrastructure of production as well as the transnational connections in the industry. In conclusion, Valérie Orlando’s book is a bold attempt to engage the salient issues that confront the new African cinema. However, the author’s illustrations and case studies are clearly lopsided, focusing on the North African and Francophone filmmakers while neglecting cinematic develop­ ments in Anglophone and even Lusophone Africa, which remain significant reference points in the discourse of the new African film. Perhaps, this imbalance and sampling bias may be attributed to the author’s French and Francophone background. But it casts shadows and raises questions on the title of the book which could be misleading as a study on a truly pan-African cinema. Charles Nwadigwe Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria

Iyunolu Osagie, African Modernity & the Philosophy of Culture in the Works of Femi Euba Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2017, 154+xxxii pp. ISBN 9781498545662. Hb £60 / $90; Ebook £57 / $78.46

Femi Euba is a Nigerian playwright and novelist whose work has probably not received the critical attention it deserves. Perhaps more than any other writer of his generation, particularly those whose works have engaged with or chal­ lenged Wole Soyinka’s ideology and interpretation of Yoruba cosmology and the idea of black consciousness, Femi Euba has situated his writing in Soyinka’s ‘fourth area of existence’, the chthonic realm where the mysteries of origin, life and tragedy are located. Until the publication of African Modernity and the Philosophy of Culture in the Works of Femi Euba however, little is known about Euba’s writing,

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and there has been no critical appreciation of his work. African Modernity is therefore an important contribution, not only for the study of Euba’s oeuvre and his position in African playwriting, but also to the deeper understanding of African dramaturgy and the pervading influence of Yoruba philosophy and culture in modern Nigerian drama and on drama from the black diaspora. What makes Euba’s drama further important is his approach to writing from a tri-continental perspective. To inform his writing, Euba draws upon his Yoruba heritage, his performa­ tive experience on the London stage where he was for several years an actor, and his decades of living in the United States of America, with its many multicultural influences. These are factors that elevate the contributions of Euba to African playwriting, as Iyunolu Osagie expresses in this book. The first of African Modernity’s five chapters, ‘Archetypes of Modernity’, introduces us to the Yoruba ideology that underpins Euba’s writing. He chooses the Yoruba god, Esu, as his dramatic muse, and his plays are significantly set at the cross­roads, the market place, or junctions of history, places where Esu mythically resides. Esu is believed in Yoruba culture to control the relationship between the people, their destiny and their gods, and Euba re-appropriates this particular relationship into the major characters in his plays. The chapter also discusses the centrality of Esu to the generation of mean­ ing and the creation of dramatic action in Euba’s writing. Accord­ing to Osagie, Euba ‘insists on a global Esu whose characters and actions implicate the entire world’ (xxvi) and articulates his philosophy within this discourse of modernity with the use of ritual, myth and the performance elements in Yoruba culture. With this introduction into how his drama evolves, Osagie devotes the rest of the book to examining the values that Euba evokes in both traditional Yoruba culture and contemporary world – read ‘black diaspora’ – consciousness in his exploration of a philosophical approach to the intertextual engagement with Yoruba culture and, more particularly, to the writing of Wole Soyinka.

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The analysis of The Gulf (1991), Euba’s first play, which he wrote and produced for his doctoral degree in 1987 at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), is quite instructive. Osagie points out how this play determined Euba’s dramaturgy and how he used it to interrogate how the traditional Yoruba world negotiates an existence with the postcolonial effects of modern (Western) technology. The Gulf is a metaphor for the Middle Passage experience, not only as the chthonic realm of existence in Yoruba metaphysics, but also as the literal gulf that separates the Yoruba diaspora from, for instance, Yoruba culture. Osagie further draws attention to Euba’s other writings, especially his second play, The Eye of Gabriel (2002); and his adaptation of Aristophanes’ Frogs, the epic satire on race Dionysus of the Holocaust (1998) that Kevin Wetmore in The Athenian Sun in an African Sky (2003) once described as ‘not only cross-cultural, but also cross-temporal’. Osagie defines Gabriel as a play that exemplifies the psychological interconnections between old gods and new worlds. She further provides a generous analysis of Euba’s one act plays, with a concluding chapter on the only novel in his oeuvre, Camwood at Crossroads. In African Modernity, Osagie’s focus is on Femi Euba’s deployment of Esu and Esu ‘types’ in his creative process to interrogate the idea of modernity, and to challenge concepts that are sometimes rigid and unbending in their acceptance (or non-acceptance) of tradition and culture, especially where cultures collide and interweave. African Modernity is a welcome addition to the growing body of critical work on African drama; it introduces a new ‘voice’ into the discourse and invites us to re-examine the politics of identity in modern drama. Sola Adeyemi Goldsmiths, University of London

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Masitha Hoeane, Mama Mudu’s Children: A South African Post-Freedom Tragi-Comedy Grant Park: African Perspectives Publishing, 2017, 88 pp. ISBN 9780992236380. Pb £15 / $20

Scholars of African theatre in general and Theatre-forDevelopment in particular will definitely find the technique of dramaturgy that Masitha Hoeane employs in scripting Mama Mudu’s Children relevant in delineating contemporary issues. In reviewing the play, I look at the following aspects: patronage, thematic considerations, technique and relevance. The play is partitioned into five scenes, plus a prologue, an interlude and an epilogue, which do not only serve the pur­ poses of prefacing, providing an interruptive deviation from the main subject or creating a witty conclusion to dramatic ekstasis respectively, but which also illustrate how Hoeane has used the play to unravel tensions which are intricately linked to one another and to the characters as they attempt to seek answers to the major question of the play, i.e. the absence of Ubuntu in a contemporary Edladleni society. The tragi-comedy dramatic style of Mama Mudu’s Children is embedded in the language employed as it unravels the characters’ motives, which when deconstructed denounce condescending human behaviour. The language pattern reflects agency, yet with idiomatic expressions that particularly cite xenophobic tendencies, rendering the Edladleni society a paradoxical space of dwelling. The play chronicles the life of Mama Mudu, an elderly female character, who is caught between protecting her family and the larger Edladleni community from violence, crime and poverty, and protecting migrants from other African countries from prejudice and xenophobic attacks. Although she ends up raising the consciousness of the society against absurd killings of defenceless inhabitants of Edladleni irrespective of where they come from, she loses her grandson, Lulu, to gun violence. While Mercy, a migrant from another African nation is brutally murdered by a mob in what is

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clearly a xenophobic attack, her father, Sam, barely escapes with his life, while his kiosk rages with an engulfing flame torched by the same mob. A succinct background to the creation of Mama Mudu’s Children, provided in the preface and acknowledgment of the play invites comments on the question of patronage in African Performative Arts. I read this play after returning from the symposium, ‘Power to the People?: Patronage, Inter­ vention and Transformation in African Performative Arts’ at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya, 20–25 March 2018. The symposium provides a platform to reflect on reasons why certain artistic projects, such as Mama Mudu’s Children, are commissioned. The question that was raised during this symposium was whether agencies that fund performing arts in Africa seize intervention and creative freedom from the artists. One of the conclusions reached at the symposium ties in neatly with the commissioning and scripting of Mama Mudu’s Children expressed by Hoeane in the preface of the play and noted as a synergetic relation between the patron and artist and a ‘win-win situation’ in the case of the Moi symposium. Precisely, Mama Mudu’s Children, according to Masitha Hoeane, was commissioned by the Ubuntu project at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa, and funded by the Temple World Charity Foundation USA. ‘The two commissioning pro­ fessors (James Ogude and Bheki Peterson) on the one and the writer and Director on the other, struck a symbiotic … chord which delivered the brief but gave creative amplitude to the writer which would make an interesting study’ (v). It is indeed in this collaboration between the two groups that I conclude that the play engages with ‘hot button’ issues that are authentic to the society that it reflects. This authenticity, the author unravels, was registered in the participatory nature of the performance of the play (2016) in which the audience was deeply engaged in the post-performance discussions. According to James Ogube, who is the Principal Investiga­ tor and Director of the Centre for the Advancement of

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Scholarship, the play interrogates ‘the value and relevance of Ubuntu, in conflict/post-conflict situations in contemporary society’ (viii), and specifically the South African context. Published in both English and Sotho languages, Mama Mudu’s Children explores complex subjects that seem to define contemporary South Africa after the demise of Apart­heid. The society which is metaphorically presented as the Edladleni community, is not only marred by gun violence and robbery, but also by horrendous brutality against migrants from different African nations. The play in very simple but profound terms interrogates Ubuntu by arousing the consciousness of characters such as Mamina, who is introduced in the play as a tsotsi (a criminal) and xenophobic rabble-rouser. The lack of humanity is anchored to African traditional values (see scene three), which sadly are disappearing in the society as a result of the protracted and bloody struggle against the apartheid government for more than forty years, until the policy was abandoned in the early 1990s. Masitha Hoeane creates characters such as Mama Mudu, an elderly woman who employs wisdom to caution other younger characters who perform senseless brutality against vulnerable people, and laments: We had our culture, our own system of values that shaped and made us who we are and saw us through the hardest times. But as we went searching for freedom, I’m afraid we took our eyes off the ball and the baking oven of our culture went cold. We have no ground left under our feet and are standing on a monster (25–6).

The monster in this excerpt could be imagined in the following words from her son, Keki, aka KK: Edladleni [is] a camp of shadows and scavengers; no work, no pride, no purpose, no prospects, no hope. Just miserable crowds with begging bowls to collect monthly crumbs enough just to keep body and soul together and breathe; … breathing and voting, voting and breathing, That’s all we are good for. How can a hungry man vote sensibly? (18).

This perhaps explains why he and his peers engage in violent robbery attacks, just to ‘breathe’. Yet the Headmaster

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– a barber – cautions KK that they are deprived and not depraved, and they could employ both their hands and brains to earn a decent living (see scene two). It is this mode of existence that is critiqued in the play as the characters are encouraged to turn to traditional African folklore for those values that are embedded in ethics and morality. Since the play is mainly anchored around Mama Mudu’s character, her son KK, her daughter Florina and Mamina, the relationship between these characters help the reader to capture a deep sense of disillusionment in the born-free South Africans. It is probably this disillusionment in KK’s dialogue above that intermittent waves of xenophobic attacks against Sam the kiosk owner and his daughter Mercy, who is brutally stabbed to death, are registered. The tragic death of Lulu, Mama Mudu’s grandson who is killed by a bullet, coupled with the fate of Sam and Mercy, are sadly the reality of most contemporary society that Masitha Hoeane seeks to address in a theatre of pain, fear, uncertainty and tension (see 19). The author’s application of folklore, magical realism, dream episodes, deep-seated metaphorical renditions of expressions and acronyms such as e-hill, KK (kwere kwere, derogatory term used for nonSouth Africans), e-citizens, e-grassroots, e-people, etc. and code-mixing as contextualized only goes on to unravel the economic constraints of Edladleni community. Further, the use of space (setting) and place (Edladleni) are relevant to both characterization and the narrative. Mama Mudu’s house as described in the stage directions in the prologue illustrates the category of class which if unchecked spills over into hatred against foreigners and affluent members of the community. The unity of space and place are echoed in the utterances of the characters. The unity as the play illustrates, captures the suffocating frustration of humans caught in the stasis of violence that only the spirit of Ubuntu can assuage. Masitha Hoeane’s publication of Mama Mudu’s Children is timely as it does not only reveal the fragmentation and collapse of the postcolonial nation state, but it also engages equally

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interesting subjects like patronage, religious fundamentalism, sexism, homophobia, ecocriticism, the role of elderly people in the community and the integration of participatory development in mainstream literary works. This play adds credence to the dramaturgy of Greig Coetzee, and the novels of Sello Duiker, Phaswane Mpe and Zakes Mda in their bids to re-form a new South Africa through experimental theatre and development initiatives through creative writing. It is a play that students, practitioners, lecturers of African literature and performing artists across the globe will find useful in understanding and negotiating the postcolonial space. Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong Lecturer at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, Germany

Hope Eghagha, The Oily Marriage Lagos: Malthouse Press, 2018, 104 pp. ISBN 9789785557893. Pb £18 / $14

In the Author’s Note introducing this play, Professor Hope Eghagha writes: ‘There is something ferociously lusty about the smell of crude oil that attracts both men and women; that makes people want to exploit, decimate or exterminate whole populations of human beings.’ Set in the Niger Delta, a play that starts off as a simple love story between the daughter of a Chief and a young univer­sity lecturer from another community, rapidly turns into a destructive set of manoeuvres as families negotiate the fate of their children as objects to be traded to increase their political power and influence and personal wealth. The action is vigorously and skilfully crafted and, though the plot is overwhelmingly pessimistic, the final statement, in which the heroine, ‘Maiden’ says ‘My father loved me because I was his gateway to national wealth, fame and politics … my father who I loved so dearly also commoditized me’,

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ends defiantly as she sets out to create an independent life. As an interesting footnote concerning production, the cast list for the play’s premiere at the University of Lagos in 2017, lists 19 characters plus a group of ‘youths from the community’, a cast list of over 60 actors! Clearly a vigorous production process! Martin Banham University of Leeds, UK

Ignatius Chukwumah, ed., Joke-Performance in Africa: Mode, Media & Meaning London and New York: Routledge, 2018, 290pp. ISBN 9781138060647. Hb. £115 / $140; Ebook £35.99 / $54.95

As E. B. White famously remarked: ‘Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.’ Fortunately, Ignatius Chukwumah (English, Federal University, Nigeria) has edited a volume that is interesting, and no frogs die, either literally or metaphorically. Instead, a good deal of scholarly light is shown upon an underrepresented area in the academy, even in African studies: comedy in Africa. Fourteen essays are offered in five sections: ‘Joking about the government’, Traditional forms and (post)modern con­texts’, ‘Street jokes’, ‘Gender and sex’, and ‘Stand-up comedy’. As always, some cultures remain better represented than others. Nigeria and Kenya have four essays each, Egypt three, and Morocco, Malawi and Zambia are represented in one essay each. The introduction provides context and theory, offering both personal anecdote and larger discussions of joke culture throughout Africa. As Chukwumah also notes, a recurring theme through the volume ‘is that contemporary performance-oriented African jokes embody the anxieties

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of the day’ (15). While that statement could be true of any culture, it is important to remember in the larger framework of the volume. It also shares the other major themes of the volume: these essays are concerned with joke-performance, not literary jokes or written humour and the focus is on the contemporary – even traditional joke forms are considered only so far as contemporary performance. The essays collectively follow the same structure, roughly: an introduction, a survey of related literature, description of methodology, analysis of the specific joke-performance, and conclusion. The three essays in section one, ‘Joking about the government’, display considerable overlap between nations, culture and media. When we mock leaders, there are numerous similarities, regardless of specific circumstance. Remmy Shiundu Barasa opens the section analysing The XYZ Show, a Spitting Image-type satire in Kenya that creates humour by imagining the private lives of Kenya’s leaders, a scenario matched by Morocco’s The School of the Naughty, analysed by Zakariae Bouhmala. The former presents a series of vignettes mocking the president and parliament, the latter imagines the Moroccan government as a classroom. In both cases, the source of humour is in robbing the elite of their dignity. Sandwiched in between and related to these two essays is editor Chukwumah’s contribution, a history of the influence of the ‘comicast’ on the 2015 Nigerian presidential election. Comicast is a neologism that combines ‘comedy’ with ‘broadcast’, and describes the emerging form of public performance of comedy that is recorded and then ‘broadcast’ on the internet. Yet another major theme of the volume is clearly illustrated by the study: the shaping influence of comedy on political perception and the power of the internet and other new media to shape distribution and reception of comedy. The next four essays form the second section on traditional humour in a postmodern context. Peter E. Omoko presents a consideration of Ehwe-eję, traditional joke-performance in Urhobo culture in Nigeria. Omoko also discusses how

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technology has changed performance, noting that the venue need no longer be public – CDs and MP3s mean comedy can be played at home, in the car, or in the office, without others present. Technology means what was once social can now be solitary. The next chapter, Smith Likongwe’s examination of Anganga Afiki’s video joke-performances in Malawi, likewise considers how technology allows a local Malawian celebrity to utilize a traditional joke structure to reach a wider audience. Godwin Aondofa Ikyer considers how the Tiv use three traditional forms of comedy to critique postmodern culture. Closing the section is Sebastian Gadomski’s investigation between the tradition of Egyptian satire and the development of Al-Barnameg, Bassem Youssef’s The Daily Show-inspired political satire / variety programme / chat show. All the major themes of the volume are prevalent in this essay, discussing the technology, the politics, and the link to traditional Egypt in the face of the Arab Spring. Only two essays comprise the third section on street jokes, one on Egypt and another on Kenya. In one of the best (and funniest) chapters, Wangari Mwai, Charles Kebaya and David Kimongo discuss the phenomenon of Mchongoano, a youth urban street performance much like the American ‘playing the dozens’ in which two ‘combatants’ state jokes about the opponent’s mother, family, house, financial situation, and job, attempting to get the audience on their side through humour. As the authors correctly indicate, this performance is not mere entertainment, but ‘serves as a communicative tool deployed as a means of understanding and expressing social realities … [and] embody social issues such as material opulence, crime, fear, and insecurity, among others’ (133). While the authors also take a Bakhtinian approach, the continued focus on social anxiety and social reality ground the humour in contemporary politics, echoing Remmy Shiundu Barasa’s previous essay. (Indeed, one way to read the volume is to read all essays related to a single nation together, as they do form a fascinating intertext.) Heba M. Sharobeem studies street jokes in Egypt exploring the

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relationship to historic aragoz. Literary theatre is for the elite, comic theatres are for the people and strongly encourage audience participation. Street performances were ultimately ‘empowering and liberating’ in the Tahrir Square revolution of 2011, she concludes. The next three essays consider gender and sex in African joke-performance. Felix A. Orina and Fred W. Simiyu present a semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis of shared online sex jokes in Kenya. Cheela H. K. Chilala offers a fascinating history of how the comic character ‘Dorika’ brings ‘metaphorical baggage’ and negative connotations that have nothing to do with the original character but were employed in parliamentary debates in 2015 and 2016 to attack Zambian politicians (205). As Chilala concludes: ‘The comic character possesses phenomenal allusive potency’ (221). Mona Eid Saad analyses Doaa Farouk’s humorous Egyptian texts. The final section contains two essays on stand-up comedy in Nigeria and Kenya, respectively, with Samuel O. Igomu considering satire in Nigerian performance and Khemba Josephine Mulindi and Michael M. Ndonye looking at The Churchill Show and how it employs stereotypes of  Kenya’s ethnic groups to interrogate the ideologies driving those groups. The volume thus ends as it began, with satirical Ken­ yan television. Overall, the volume holds together well, the pieces inform each other, and the whole thus is greater than the sum of the parts. This book is a superb addition to the African performance bookshelf. Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. Loyola Marymount University, USA

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J.C. Abbey, Ghana’s Puppeteer, directed and produced by Steven Feld and the Anyaa Arts Kollektif (2016) DVD, colour, 55 min, in English, Ga, Ewe, Fante, Twi with English, French, Italian subtitles. Documentary Educational Resource (2017), http://www.der.org, Institution sale $320.00. Formularbeginn, home use sale Formularende $34.95.

The fifth and to this point final film in Steven Feld’s Jazz Cosmo­politanism in Accra series (2009-2016) documents the extraordinary art and craft of Joseph C. Abbey (addressed throughout as Ataa Abbey – ‘Mr. Abbey’), a Ghanaian puppeteer whose career spanned more than half a century until his recent passing in 2017. Abbey’s remarkable work has remained largely unknown to the wider world and it is thanks to filmmakers Nii Yemo Nunu and Feld, and their colleague Nii Noi Nortey, the multi-instrumentalist and administrator of the Anyaa Arts Library outside Accra, that we can now get an impression of Abbey’s puppetry treasures. While documenting the richness and complexities of individual marionettes and rod puppets, the film at the same time narrates a subjective history of Ghanaian music as seen through Abbey’s, and possibly Feld’s and Nortey’s, eyes. This history is brought alive by Abbey’s exceptional puppets and his puppetry skills and the musical backgrounds of those involved in making the film. Beginning with Kwame Nkrumah’s Independence Speech on 6 March 1957, partly re-enacted by a Nkrumah marionette, we are subsequently taken on a puppetry tour de force of selected Ghanaian artists and musical styles, but also of some in neighbouring countries and the diaspora, true to Nkrumah’s own philosophy of Pan-Africanism. Abbey watched his first puppet show in 1957, at the age of 12, thus linking the birth of the Ghanaian nation to the birth (or at least ‘conception’) of an artist. The moment Nkrumah requests for ‘the band to play the national anthem’ at the end of his speech, we, as a contemporary audience, do indeed embark on the film’s musical puppetry journey.

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There are two main narrative strands in the film: while Abbey provides us with the story of his personal develop­ ment – his apprentice years with E.A. Hanson and Saka Acquaye at the Ministry of Education and the Arts Council of Ghana, who initially taught him ‘carving, painting, string­ing and performing puppets’, to his 1977 scholarship for the Jan Malik Puppet Studio in Prague, in the then Czecho­slovakia – Nortey is set up as the expert, and expert performer, of Ghanaian musical history which he presents in quasichronological fashion. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Abbey and Nortey begin the narrative with what might be termed ‘traditional culture’, one of the pillars in Ghana’s nation-building process under Nkrumah and beyond. What is remarkable about the history presented here is that Abbey’s re-enactment involves puppets representing the music and dance forms of regions and peoples the country has struggled to integrate. One prominent puppet, for example, is that of a Gonje player, built ‘to bring out of obscurity the importance of this musical instrument’. Nortey points to the great importance of Gonje music in Northern Ghana, named after an eponymous one-string fiddle, and acknowledges it as a major cultural symbol. The discourse on ‘traditional’ national culture is extended to a Pan-Africanist approach by the representation of a string of popular musicians from Ghana and elsewhere. The narrative starts with a commemoration of Kofi Ghanaba, the master drummer formerly known as Guy Warren who pioneered ‘Afro-Jazz’ in the 1950s, linking African-American jazz with its African heritage. Ghanaba appears as a central figure for the film’s musical narrative. We not only get to see one, but a number of Ghanaba puppets, of various sizes and clad in a variety of costumes (an allusion to the artist constantly reinventing himself?), including some live footage of Feld’s previous films which show the drummer at the end of his active career. The film evokes more Pan-African and Black Atlantic ties. Reggae – a hugely popular genre in Ghana – is represented by

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a Bob Marley puppet (accompanied by a dishevelled, rather cuddly-looking lion), with Abbey, Nortey and Abbey’s longtime percussionist Nii Otoo Annan performing Bob Marley & The Wailers’ ‘Iron Lion Zion’ (1970s) at the top of their voices. Against the backdrop of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie – ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Conquering Lion of Judah’ – the staging of the lion is rather amusing to watch. The 1970s also saw the emergence of ‘Afrobeat’, largely associated with Nigerian superstar Fela Ransome-Kuti (later AnikulapoKuti), again represented by a colourful marionette playing the saxophone to the original Afrika 70 soundtrack of ‘Zombie’ (1976). The combination of playback and live performance captures the emotions of those portrayed as puppets and also conveys the fun experienced by the crew. Overall, the music of the 1970s is given much space, possibly following Abbey’s personal musical and performative preferences – the ‘soundtrack of his life’, so to say. It is note­ worthy however that no ‘golden era’ Highlife artist puppet is featured, despite the popularity of Highlife music in Ghana around this period. Younger artists are also acknowledged. Among them is Accra Hiplife artist Terry Bonchaka whose promising career was cut short by his untimely death in 2003, aged 21. Known and remembered for his idiosyncratic dance style called poulele, with one leg raised in the air, we see his puppet perform this characteristic dance movement. If Hiplife was another Pan-African musical ‘intervention’, Bonchaka was an interesting national artist as well, crossing language and ethnic boundaries by performing in several Ghanaian languages, such as Ga, Twi, Ewe, Fante and Hausa. Throughout the film, Abbey seems to follow a mix of didacticism and entertainment characteristic of the educa­ tional shows that he developed during a ‘national and education project’ in the 1960s and 1970s: puppets relate morals and information, but they are also extremely pleasing to watch. Their quirky movements and expressions amuse, but at the same time clearly bring out the spirit of a particular

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style, an individual artist or a specific musical instrument. This, in essence, is what makes the film so enchanting; it is also because we occasionally see artists and audiences fall under their spell. There is, for example, a group of young children captivated by the four-legged Red Ant with its guitar. This puppet belongs to Abbey’s neo-traditional fable repertoire which he developed for a literacy campaign – ‘It’s never too late to learn!’ – while studying in Prague. Abbey’s long-term musical collaborator, the gifted percussionist Nii Otoo Annan, fondly remembers watching his educational shows as a child. We also witness singer Naa Amanua and drummer Sol Amarfio being presented with film clips of their own puppets. Like Abbey, Amanua and Amarfio are both Ga and both are famous representatives of their community in Ghanaian music. As lead singer of the influential ‘Ga band’ Wulomei, Amanua was an early female icon of popular Ghanaian music, again in the 1970s; Amarfio belonged to the Ghanaian-Carib­ bean supergroup Osibisa, whose ‘Afro Rock’ (or rather Afro Funk) hit the world in the 1970s and 1980s. (This brings out yet another Pan-African connection, even if Osibisa were celebrated as a group from Ghana). There is a particularly moving moment of shared giggles and joy when Amanua watches the filmed sequence of Abbey letting her puppet perform ‘Walatu Walasu’, a very popular song composed by Wolumei leader Nii Ashitey which stressed the importance of self-reliance at a time when people felt that politics had let them down. While the film commences with the highlight of Ghanaian independence under Nkrumah and his philosophies of PanAfricanism, it closes with a highlight of Abbey’s career. Attention to his remarkable work was drawn via a music video of Kojo Antwi’s popular song ‘Tom and Jerry Awaree’ (2000) which featured eighteen custom-made puppets. The video won an award in South Africa, and subsequently TV Africa director Kwaw Ansah commissioned Abbey to make ‘puppets of presidents and other politicians’ for a satirical

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show. In seven years he created 65 different puppets which, Abbey points out, ‘still reside at TV Africa today’. Throughout the film we see Abbey bring these imaginative creatures to life. Even after so many years, he still enjoys doing what he does; the way he carefully handles the puppets, his loving attention to detail such as making a costume sleeve, the way he greets them when entering his studio in the Anyaa Arts Library: ‘Good morning my people!’ Long shots and zooms make us appreciate the puppets and the art of playing them. They are finely crafted and well-articulated, and Abbey moves them with great skill. The Pan-African circle the film sets out to draw comes to a close in the ‘encore’ of the film, when we watch the puppeteer sing James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’ while playing with his Red Ant. It is a scene that seems to convey Abbey’s zest for life. A rhythm by Nii Otoo Annan is heard and the Red Ant starts to dance. Gradually, the puppet’s dance steps become synchronised with a video sequence of James Brown and his three dancers. It is a transatlantic match – and it certainly makes the audience feel good! Sadly, J.C. Abbey has passed away, but we hope that his ‘people’ stay alive and someone else starts playing them. Markus Coester and Christine Matzke Department of English, Faculty of Languages and Literature, University of Bayreuth, Germany

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AT17 21mm ppc TJI v7_B+B 19/07/2018 14:33 Page 1

ISBN 978-1-84701-187-9

9 781847 011879 www.jamescurrey.com

African Theatre

Cover: Mamela Nyamza in Hatched 2015, Film Still 10. Directed by Mamela Nyamza and Robyn Denny. Cinematographer: Ebrahim Hajee (Photograph © Mamela Nyamza and Robyn Denny, reproduced by their kind permission)

African Theatre

Contemporary Dance

How is contemporary African dance being defined? How is dance contributing to postcolonial debates on representation? How are form, aesthetics and rhythm implicated in decolonising Africans and dance in Africa? This volume asks important questions about dance and representation in relation to ethnicity and race, while questioning whether ‘writing dance’ is an appropriate mode of engagement with dance. Contributors analyse the efficacy of dance to engage audiences with disavowed issues like gender, sexuality and dis/ability both within and beyond Africa. Highlights include a dance photo essay on F.O.D. Gang’s 2017 site-specific street performance ‘Untitled’ in Lagos, a new non-themed section, and the playscript Lunatic! by Zimbabwean playwright, Thoko Zulu.

Volume Editors • Yvette Hutchison & Chukwuma Okoye

Volume Editors • Hutchison & Okoye

African Theatre provides a focus for research, critical discussion, information and creativity in the vigorous field of African theatre and performance. The series now welcomes open submissions, and through its resolutely pan-African coverage and accessible style, broadens the debates to all interested in African performance forms and the many roles they play in contemporary life. The editors and editorial board bring together an impressive range of experience.

17

Contemporary Dance