Bilimankhwe visit the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam

Kate Stafford on a visit she and Amy Bonsall had to the Afrovibes Festival 

Amsterdam, early October 2015.

We are sitting in the upstairs room of a lovely theatre, the Compagnietheater. Everywhere the Afrovibes Festival roars around us - in the few days we have been here we have been in a maelstrom of intercultural performance. We have seen high energy, urban dance, Afrikaans/English rap; verbatim theatre documenting South Africa’s recent upsurge in xenophobic violence and some wonderful clowning. There are visual art exhibitions, performances in English, Dutch and Xhosa and lively discussions with artists from hugely diverse backgrounds.

But now we are meeting with the organisers of this festival, to talk about bringing our production of Brothers in Blood to Afrovibes 2016. And the opening remarks? “I saw a pitch for this play in South Africa some time ago. I didn’t like it”.

Oh dear. But I am hear to report, gentle reader, that by the end of the meeting we are pretty much agreed - the Bilimankhwe-UK Arts co-production of Brothers in Blood by Mike Van Graan, directed by Amy Bonsall, will be performed in Amsterdam next Autumn. Our show will be current, exciting, dynamic and explosive and we managed to blow away the memories of whoever that other company was that pitched the play so badly!

London, mid October 2015

So back in London the work begins. We must put together the UK tour, apply for funding and do all the other production work in order to make this happen. I am sitting at my computer procrastinating when a notification pings. Brett Bailey has sent an update from Rio:

‘Shit hit the fan last night here in Rio, when a debate around Exhibit B and associated issues was taken over by shouting, furious members of the audience. no debate. no discussion. A huge amount of anger and frustration and absolute fed-upness with the injustice dealt to black society in this country which saw the import of 4.9 million slaves, in which racial inequality is rivaled only by South Africa, in which police brutality towards black people gets scant notice, and around 77% of the victims of all homicides are black youths. All this got focused on me and the festival which intends to host the work next year. Again I'm a racist motherfucker.

I gotta really weigh up, even if the relevant festivals decide to go ahead and run the work, whether I have the energy and will to enter that kind of maelstrom again. perhaps its just not my battle.'

As regular readers of this blog will know, I saw Exhibit B in Paris last year, and think it is an extraordinary work of extreme power. I would be sad to see it cancelled again - but let me post this response from Ismail Mohamed, the Artistic Director of the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa, as he says it so much more eloquently than I can:

'As the Artistic Director of the National Arts Festival I engaged with the proposal for this production for a long while when it landed on my desk. My initial response to the proposal was hugely negative. I engaged privately for long hours about how a White artist would be appropriating history and pain of the "other". I was concerned that the work would make an exotic museum piece of the "other". I thought of almost every single reason that has been presented by those who are determined to prevent the work from being staged. After days of contemplation, I decided that despite all my concerns the work needed to be staged. I knew that it would evoke pain. I knew that it would stir guilt. I was prepared for any anger that it might unleash. When it was staged it did evoke all those emotions and much more. It made White audiences feel guilt, remorse and even anger for the pain, humiliation and destruction that their forefathers brought to Africa. It gave White audiences an opportunity to cry and to look at the first "other" person they saw in that "theatre" with a deep sense of humility. The work gave Black audiences a spiritual connection with their past and an opportunity to feel affirmed that the struggle is still far from over. There were audiences who also hated the work; and they had every right to do so. The purpose of presenting good art is not to make the artist feel loved. It is to push the artist out there from our comfort zones and to stir us from our inertia. To unearth those bottled emotions. To play havoc with our minds. To push us into those dark spaces that we hope will get forgotten. To let us walk on our own way and to inspire us with the energy to triumphantly celebrate the human spirit. To leave us for days on end pondering, questioning, confused and arguing with ourselves, the artist and the art. EXHIBIT B did all of that in Grahamstown. For that reason alone I would stage the work again and again and again.'

To which Brett replied: “thanks, Ismail”. Yes, thanks Ismail, for standing up against the shouting and furious rage, and expressing what many of us feel. 

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.

The Epic Adventure of Nhamo the Manyika Warrior and his Sexy Wife Chipo

Off to the theatre last night - the press night of a new play by Denton Chikura at the Tricycle Theatre. I was really looking forward to it, as I have loved Denton's work as an actor and theatre maker (most notably in Two Gentlemen of Verona which played last year at The Globe) and worked with him during the research and development of Jack Mapanje's new play. Also this was to be the directing debut of Lucian Msamati, Artistic Director of Tiata Fahodzi and one of my favourite actors.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the theatre ... I so wanted it to be good, as I would see both Denton and Lucian there and I am a bad liar!

Luckily, this was a fabulous evening. I haven't laughed so much in ages, and in spite of being seated right at the top looking down at the stage, I had a really brilliant time. While the ensemble of four actors worked beautifully and they were all splendid, Nyasha Hatendi as Commander Specimen still managed to steal the show with a perfectly timed comic performance which was truly masterful. The rest of the ensemble, Don Gillet, Ery Nzaramba and Tanya Fear also had their moments of brilliance and the lovely simple set by Ben Stones was beautifully lit by Paul Keogan.

This was a really successful intercultural show - with a cast drawn from Africa (Rwanda and Zimbabwe) and Britain, a Zimbabwean/British writer, a Zambian/British director and an Irish Designer, it was truly global and made full use of the opportunity to draw from differing cultures. Western cultural references jostled with Zimbabwean goatherd jokes, and on the press night the diverse audience at the Tricycle joined in enthusiastically when given the opportunity to 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the outrageous performances.  This was an upfront, over-the-top celebration of humanity: I laughed my socks off. Don't whatever you do miss it!