and more on Exhibit B ...

Now that we've had our say ... this was written by theatre director Nadia Latif:

Exhibit B

Kate Stafford writes:

Last night I had tickets for the opening night of Brett Bailey's installation EXHIBIT B at the Barbican. Only I didn't see it, because it was closed down by a reportedly violent mob of protesters, due to concerns that the safety of both audience and performers could not be guaranteed. I feel ashamed to be living in a country where this could happen. After engaging with some of the protesters on twitter, it became clear that this issue had become polarised, not least because the argument was being conducted in bite-sized chunks, 140 characters long.

And of course the argument is largely between people who support it - but haven't seen it, and people who oppose it - but haven't seen it.

When (Associate Artistic Director) Amy Bonsall was up in Edinburgh this year, she did see it. And I have seen Brett Bailey's work in South Africa. We are also white and working in African theatre, as is Brett Bailey. So it occurred to us that we may actually have something to add to the discussion.

So last night we started a conversation, which I am reproducing here. At the end I have added some links to further opinions, reviews and discussion pieces.

Firstly I asked Amy for her response to the show. This is what she wrote, off the top of her head, late at night:

Exhibit B.

I am a White woman. I am a middle class white woman. I am a dyslexic middle class white woman. I am a mother. I am a wife. I have knowledge of some things I have no knowledge of others.

I was born in Scotland, I have spent most of my life in England. I work in Theatre. I work in Theatre that prejudices Southern and Eastern African work. And Shakespeare.

I say all of that because context is both essential and irrelevant.

I saw Exhibit B at the Edinburgh Festival. I saw it because Jan Ryan of UK Arts International who produced it knew that I wanted to see it and she made sure that I was able to. I don't know Brett Bailey and nor have I seen any of his other work. I had seen some controversy about it, about the way the work was presented on the Scotnites forum. But had only seen this in fragments.

I sat downstairs waiting for my number to be called. I didn't hear all the instructions and so felt ill at ease, that I was going to mess up the piece for everyone else by getting it wrong. My number was called and up the stairs I went. Formal and silent, directed by solemn ushers as to where to go. The first performance is that of 2 people, naked from the waist up. Their vital statistics in a book, open - a live re-creating of the appalling practice of treating human beings as possessions, to use, to trade.

I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed to be white.

I made myself read each and every statistic and to look at each body part so as to treat that person as a person and not glide over them as though they were an object. And it was uncomfortable, and challenging and I felt ashamed.

I tried to do the same at each other 'exhibit'? see, that seems wrong because they are performances, they are directed performances and the people volunteering are actors. They may not be professional actors, they are volunteers, but they are actors in the context that they are performing of their own free will. And each 'performance/exhibit' has a story and has characters. Each of the stories is factually correct, and is horrifying. 

Some of the stories I had heard of, and some I had not, I guess it was about a 50/50 split between the two. The depiction of stories from modern times back through hundreds of years of colonial barbarity illustrated how appalling humans are to each other. How appalling some white people were and are to people of colour and black people, and people of other races, sexes and it made me feel sick. It made me feel like I could not nor should not look. It made me feel ignorant, it made me feel that dialogue is essential. It clearly illustrated how racism is alive and happening, and though I was aware of this before, the performances presented stats and figures in a visceral and horrendous way. And not only stats and figures, of the experiences of people I know and people who I have heard about. It was all there, in that room and it was inescapable and I felt culpable. 

My family were working in mills for a pittance at the turn of the century. So who was responsible. And we know who was. It made me think even more clearly about what we do about it, how so so much more must be done. What is my responsibility in that? The white marble heads looking down over the scenes they could be indirectly responsible for was disturbing.


The conversation between Amy and I continued into the night:

KS: I have been reading some articles and reviews written in response to the work, in South Africa and Europe. Everywhere the reviews have been extraordinary. It seems that this work opens up a painful wound, forcing us to look again at our attitudes and how society treats race. So I am incredibly sad that although I had tickets, I was unable to see this work, to be challenged by it and experience it. I think that there is a real misunderstanding by many people of what it is really about: there has been a hysteria around the assumption that because Brett Bailey is a white South African, then his work is inherently racist. As I say, I haven't seen this. But I have seen another of his plays.

I saw iMumbo Jumbo in a township in the outskirts of Grahamstown back in (I think) 2004. It was challenging, aggressively anti-colonial and scary. As a white person in a largely black audience in a black township (they bussed the audience in) I felt insecure, and the rage of the people who had lived under apartheid was palpable.

Anyone calling Brett Bailey racist is seriously misunderstanding where he is coming from, and refusing to listen to what he has to say.

AB: The reason why I am so angry about this is because in the UK we have freedom of speech, we do not have censorship, And that is were I start from. Freedom of speech is not, as has been suggested to me time and time again about this a wishy washy neo liberal construct. it is absolutely essential in preventing this terror happening again, and indeed in highlighting it when it is happening now. because it is happening now.

KS: To stop his voice, his expression, is a dreadful thing to do. I truly believe that people want to shut him up because of the colour of his skin. Which is ironic, really, don't you think?

AB: Many of the reactions against Exhibit B seem to be against the lack of diversity at the Barbican in its management structure and programming and community engagement and ACE and the same charges. And I would agree with all of those. But that is not the fault of this piece.

And so so many are basing their opinions of the piece on what they have read in the media and on petitions. They have not seen it. And that is absolutely their right , but they do not have the right to stop a performance. That is censorship. It goes against everything an equal and free society should be.

KS: It's a shame that when one of our national cultural institutions do finally showcase work addressing race, colonialism and our attitudes to immigrants, the popular media manage to somehow turn it on it's head, and call it racist.

AB: I can not agree with statements that imply that black people can only work on black art and white people on white. that is offensive to all, and the world does not work like that.

KS: All of us can only respond truthfully to our own experience. Whatever our background, race or culture. And another irony is that having read a lot about the piece, I'm fairly sure I would have hated it. I read a blog by Selina Thompson who saw the piece, absolutely hated it, and I think I may well have had a similar reaction. But of course the opportunity is now not there for me.

AB: She has seen it, and while I have a different experience and opinion from her, we both have the right in a democracy and country of free speech to pay our money if we wish and to see it.

KS: I just wish that people would see the work, and then respond. the woman that started the petition talked about how she couldn't take her 12 year old daughter to see such terrible depictions of black people. Well of course she couldn't! That would be entirely inappropriate, because a child would not be able to understand the context, what the artist is saying.

AB: I have not said it isn't racist. I have never been able to get that far in discussing it because the argument has overwhelmingly focused on a white man directing black actors. Many have accused the Director of being self indulgent. Can you not throw that at every single artist who shares their art with an audience? If he had no cast there would be no play - if there was no audience there would be no play.



The day before EXHIBIT B was closed down, Brett Bailey released a statement. The closing sentence was:

"Do any of us really want to live in a society in which expression is suppressed, banned, silenced, denied a platform? If my work is shut down today, whose will be closed down tomorrow?"

Lee Jasper: Barbican shut down Bailey's offensive 'Human Zoo'
Selina Thompson's blog
article in The Guardian

Post by Third World Bunfight.

Welcome to George - just in time for Afrovibes!

Artistic Director Kate Stafford writes:

Bilimankhwe is expanding, and finally, after a long time looking, we have found the perfect Creative Producer. Georgina (George) Bednar is currently working for the Barbican; however, due to her freelance producing career taking off, she is now available to help us at Bilimankhwe to fulfil our potential as leading practitioners in African theatre. Hurrah!!

George is the retiring Artistic Director of Muju, a Muslim and Jewish theatre organisation based at the Tricycle. Which is a lovely bit of serendipity, as our autumn project, a tour of playreadings by Mike Van Graan, includes Brothers in Blood, a play about Muslim/Jewish/Christian relations in Capetown, South Africa.

So the Arts Council grant has come in, and we are almost cast for the play readings which are being produced at Afrovibes2014. We're going to be reading the two plays in London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester and Newcastle so there's a lot to organise. More info is on our website here: http://www.bilimankhwe-arts.org/#!afrovibes-2014/c1rsg

There's a lot more in the pipeline ... so expect rather more regular blog updates. I'm hoping that both George and Amy (Associate Artistic Director) will be contributing interesting, entertaining pieces for your delectation. So watch this space, and follow us on twitter @bilimankhwearts

In Battalions Festival

Amy Bonsall, Bilimankhwe’s Associate Artistic Director, attended the In Battalions one-day festival on the 4th July, which was held as part of a three-day new writing festival at Drama Centre London. The idea behind the festival, the brainchild of playwright Fin Kennedy, was to bring together culture professionals (theatre-makers, journalists, politicians and academics) ‘to share innovative ideas and practical ideas for maintaining a vital theatre ecology in the UK’.

A tall order, given the current climate of austerity and cuts in investment in the Arts, I would have thought.

Anyway. Here are Amy’s thoughts:

What an important day it was: emotional, sometimes vicious, informed and enlightening. Firstly a huge thank you to Fin Kennedy, co-Artistic Director of Tamasha and the creator of the In Battalions movement, for his incredible work. What became clear as the day went on was that cuts were deep and cuts were hurting. The state of new writing seems perilous; without the nurture and experience of companies to encourage, develop and produce new work we are risking losing a generation of plays.

The day began with the usual rather awkward but rewarding ‘intro chats’ with new faces, those who seem familiar and those better known. Indeed the event was very well attended and I was pleased to see some Bilimankhwe friends there, including Rebecca Gould from the Soho Theatre and later Stella Duffy. It was heartening to see theatres such as The Gate, Slung Low, Eclipse Theatre, Theatre Centre, Northumberland Theatre Company, Yellow Earth, Theatre 503, London Bubble, Theatre Absolute, Coney, Park Theatre, Finbrough Theatre and Neil Darlison (ACE Director of Theatre) all taking part in panel discussions.

What was a total disgrace however (especially when you consider that In Battalions was born as a result of a discussion about new writing with Ed Vaisey MP) was the significant lack of a single solitary representative from ANY political party. Not one, not even UKIP. (Cancelled the day before apparently). Now that speaks volumes as to where the Arts are located on the Political Agendas.

The excellent Keynote speech by Taryn Storey, The Arts Council and The Politics of Risk: Funding for New Writing in a Neo-Liberal Age, was chilling. The changes in the function and the purpose of the Arts Council and its politicisation paved the way for the current funding crisis; and as I heard time and time again, for many it is a crisis.  This set the tone for the rest of the day. The format was 3 rooms with 3 different panels in each one; attendees were able to switch between any of them at any time.

Throughout the course of the day I attended two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

The morning session, National Portfolio Organisation Analysis was a fascinating discussion with companies who were new recipients of NPO funding and companies who had been NPO funded but lost it.

During the morning I found myself pondering various issues. Specifically: why is there no facility for Whistle Blowing at the Arts Council, for people involved with projects/companies in receipt of funding who are concerned at misuse of funds? Surely we must do all we can to protect the small amount of public money we do have!

Even more importantly, I feel that there is an argument that there is a creeping censorship by lack of funding to particular groups. Not all artists from all communities are in a position to ‘make the work anyway’ and so those voices are essentially silenced.

There was still a sense from those in the audience that the National Portfolio is still a closed ‘Club’ and that there is a significant issue around Arts Council officers not being able to see artistic work.

During this session there was a comment that minority issues being discussed did not include ‘women’. I feel it is essential to include this in any discussion about contemporary Theatre and it was sadly missed from the otherwise essential and engaging debates. I trust that this will be rectified at the (fingers crossed) next In Battalions Festival.

Building the Battalion was a more fragmented, but no less interesting afternoon. We heard from Maddy Costa and Jake Orr, founders of Dialogue Theatre Club and the unstoppable Stella Duffy, founder of FunPalaces (which will light up the Theatre landscape of Britain in October 2014). There was much inspiration to be found; the message was to be brave and to make work without funding and without mainstream approval. I don’t disagree with this, but there has to be a balance in state subsidised artistic risk-taking to promote a healthy and vibrant theatre and new playwriting landscape. If artists cannot afford to live, then only those with ‘means’ or those who are willing/able to subsist and make art will be the ones whose voices have a chance of being heard and that neglects swathes of the general population.

The day provided a unique opportunity for individual professionals and companies to come together and discuss common goals and issues as a collective. This is something rare in what is an extremely competitive industry. There is a huge pool of business, funding and management expertise within the industry and it was wonderful to see links being made for the overall good of the profession.

I sincerely hope that this will become a regular event, and that in future we will have the policy makers there as well as the theatre makers. It is quite clear that we are not ‘all in it together’, but we can all come together to find creative, innovative ways of carrying on our work in this state-imposed ‘Age of Austerity’.

Notes:

The In Battalions report, published by playwright Fin Kennedy and researcher Helen Campbell Pickford in 2013, received widespread coverage and formed a significant part of the recent debate about arts funding cuts, in particular around theatres' capacity to take risks on developing new plays and playwrights in an age of austerity.

The 2014 follow-up, the In Battalions Delphi study, brought together 36 innovative solutions to this problem, sourced from and voted on by theatre professionals. These proposals suggest new ways for theatres and theatre-makers to work with the Arts Council to protect creative risk-taking on new work.

Read Fin Kennedy’s blog here: http://finkennedy.blogspot.co.uk/

More information on the In Battalions Delphi Study: http://www.writersguild.org.uk/news-a-features/theatre/492-in-battalions-delphi-study

More Shakespeare musings

This month has been an exciting and interesting time with several new initiatives and ideas progressing to the next stage. Most notably, I had a fab meeting with artist Hazel Albarn. I met Hazel through her daughter Jessica (whose solo exhibition 'Resurrection' opens at the Lawrence Alkin Gallery in London this week http://www.lawrencealkingallery.com/events/resurrection). Hazel works with organic materials to create beautiful, earthy sculptural pieces; her work in paper was of particular interest, given the theme of magic and books in The Tempest, which is likely to be the next major Bilimankhwe project. I am so incredibly excited to announce that she has agreed to join the creative team for The Tempest to create a set design which can be adapted for use both in Malawi and the UK. Her experience of working outside the UK, most notably in Africa (although she also did some very interesting work around books and paper-making in Japan) will be invaluable. She is however mostly known for her theatre design work with Joan Littlewood at Stratford East in the early 1960s and her famous artist/musician son Damon, for whom she recently made a moko jumbie puppet. She is currently fascinated with puppets and masks which I hope will also form part of the design for The Tempest.

So the game is most definitely afoot! I have just come back from a very interesting and energising lunch with Dr Sonia Massai of King's College London, in which we talked about various Shakespearean productions we had seen. A lovely wide-ranging chat which always gets my creative juices going! Of course the conversation inevitably turned to The Tempest, and the various merits of colour-blind, and in a term coined by Jude Kelly, 'photo-negative' casting.

When I first started thinking about The Tempest, I had a conversation with Muthi Nhlema in Malawi (he was my assistant director on 'An African Dream' back in 2005, and now a writer whose opinion I very much respect). We were talking about the colonial themes, and how we could make that clear in the casting: my idea was to have Caliban and Ariel played by black Malawians as the original inhabitants of the Island, and the Colonisers (Prospero and Miranda) as white. He was keen to switch these, to challenge the stereotypes and make people think about how humanity organises itself into the oppressors and the oppressed.

Sonia reminded me of the American production of Othello, directed by Jude Kelly, which did exactly that: Patrick Stewart's Othello was the only white cast member, the rest being played by African-Americans. While this was largely a successful production, Sonia thought that casting a play so simplistically, reversing 'white' and 'black' roles might be seen as a gimmick, a tokenistic approach to a serious topic. In her words, there may well be a collective shrug, a 'so what?' in response.

This is very interesting. Casting a play about colonial oppressors with the white people as the subjugated indiginous people would be a hugely political statement in Malawi. But here in the UK it might be seen as simplistic, tokenistic. Is this a reason not to do it? I think not. the plan is to start this production in Malawi, to rehearse and open the show there in 2015. Then in 2016 to bring it to the UK as part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Perhaps we should first gauge the reactions of the Malawian public and then take a risk with UK theatre-goers.

We are just at the start of this journey, and already the conversations we are having are incredibly rich. Exciting times ahead.

Malawian Politics

Interesting times in Malawi. An election was held. Declared invalid by the incumbent President to an outcry from the opposition, who could smell power. The courts got involved ... a re-count was ordered but there wasn't enough time so everyone shrugged their collective shoulders and let the original count stand. So welcome Prof. Arthur Peter Mutharika, and commiserations to the losing candidates, Rev. Chakwera (the closest challenger), Joyce Banda and the Young Pretender Atupele Muluzi.

This election has got me thinking though. What is it about political dynasties that everyone likes so much? Are we really hard-wired to have a monarchy so that we revert to it as a default position? However able the new president proves to be, I can't help thinking that he got in on a 'better the devil you know' ticket. Even though his brother Bingu led the country into the worst economic, political and diplomatic crisis in decades and was deeply unpopular, somehow the collective memory has been wiped, and the majority of voters want to see the DPP return.

Unless of course Joyce Banda was right, and the DPP were guilty of electoral fraud.

I suppose we'll never know, now.

My friend Seodi White, an intelligent and highly educated lawyer who lives in Malawi, is a supporter of Mutharika and was an outspoken critic - famously so - of Joyce Banda, the outgoing president. I respect her opinion, and am really hoping she's right this time. But I am watchful and wary of this new-but-old administration.

Fingers crossed.