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.