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Postcolonial Plays
This collection of contemporary postcolonial plays demonstrates the extraordinary vitality of a body of work that is currently influencing the shape of contemporary world theatre.
This anthology encompasses both internationally admired 'classics' and previously unpublished texts, all dealing with imperialism and its aftermath. It includes work from Canada, the Carribean, South and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia. A general introduction outlines major themes in postcolonial plays. Introductions to individual plays include information on authors as well as overviews of cultural contexts, major ideas and performance history.
Dramaturgical techniques in the plays draw on Western theatre as well as local performance traditions and include agit-prop dialogue, musical routines, storytelling, ritual incantation, epic narration, dance, multimedia presentation and puppetry. The plays dramatize diverse issues, such
*globalization
* political corruption
* race and class relations
*slavery
*gender and sexuality
*media representation
*nationalism
This anthology encompasses both internationally admired 'classics' and previously unpublished texts, all dealing with imperialism and its aftermath. It includes work from Canada, the Carribean, South and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia. A general introduction outlines major themes in postcolonial plays. Introductions to individual plays include information on authors as well as overviews of cultural contexts, major ideas and performance history.
Dramaturgical techniques in the plays draw on Western theatre as well as local performance traditions and include agit-prop dialogue, musical routines, storytelling, ritual incantation, epic narration, dance, multimedia presentation and puppetry. The plays dramatize diverse issues, such
*globalization
* political corruption
* race and class relations
*slavery
*gender and sexuality
*media representation
*nationalism
488 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 9, 2022
Pink, by Judith Thompson: This is a very short monologue play, and while I'm generally not a fan of monologue plays, this one is good. Part of what works for me here is that the play is so short--part of my problem with monologue plays is that it is hard to sustain character development over a long period with only one speaker. But Lucy, the 10 year old white South African narrator, is an interesting character developed basically in a thumb nail sketch kind of way. She is a character deeply embedded in the ideology of apartheid South Africa, but not yet old enough to understand it, and so the references that to her seem quite casual and unimportant take on significant resonances for the audience.
The Hungry Earth, by Maishe Maponya: I have reviewed this separately.
Ubu and the Truth Commission, by Jane Taylor, with William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company:
https://youtu.be/96v1rv3drys
The Strong Breed, by Wole Soyinka: One of the greatest dramatists/writers in the world, not just in Africa. It's hard not to like Soyinka's fabulous plays. Like many of his works, The Strong Breed is interested in the social role of sacrifice, and how the rituals we use to structure those sacrifices can fail when they run up against the very human frailty of those who need to carry them out. In particular, The Strong Breed deals with a village that sacrifices a stranger at the beginning of each new year--a stranger designated to carry all of the village's troubles, misfortunes, curses, and suffering, and therefore to usher in a clean new year. In part the tragedy of this play derives from the fact that Eman--a stranger who substitutes himself for the boy initially chosen--fundamentally misunderstands the ritual. He assumes the ritual in his adopted village will follow like the one in his native village, where a carrier carries a boat full of the village's troubles down to the river. The ritual Eman expects is symbolic. But he finds out that he has fundamentally misunderstood the situation. Regardless, his fate drives him inexorably toward the sacrifice.
https://youtu.be/VhdWwdjVkVM
Once Upon Four Robbers, by Femi Osofisan: Osofisan is one of my top five favorite playwrights, so I definitely enjoyed this play. It is a cutting social commentary on the problems of robbery and law enforcement in a society deeply marked by poverty, inequality, and corruption. The play follows a group of robbers who are ethically pitted against both a police force and a market community that supports the death penalty for armed robbery. However, one interesting point that keeps cropping up is that both the robbers as well as their opponents are victims of the political and economic systems that keep Nigerians impoverished--so while the two sides are diametrically opposed on questions like robbery and justice, one must wonder whether or not these are really two versions of the same desperate struggle against privation.
https://youtu.be/CkE7G2MvjRs
Anowa, by Ama Ata Aidoo: This play blends postcolonialism, feminism, and anti-capitalism in really unique ways. Aidoo's play tells the story of Anowa, a headstrong young woman who marries the man she loves despite her parents (mostly her mother) and the village disapproving of it. The young people go off and begin a business selling animal skins, and as they prosper and begin acquiring slaves--which she stridently resists despite him--and wealth, their relationship becomes strained to the point where they are virtual strangers in their own home.
One thing I really like about this play is the choric elderly couple, called The-Mouth-That-Eats-Salt-And-Pepper. The old woman is energetic, caustic, and curmudgeonly, while the old man is serene, balanced, but rarely asserts an opinion. Together they comment on the action of the play, taking different sides in the question of who is to blame for the events going on, and arguing issues like morality, fate, and inter-generational change.
https://youtu.be/oWEdIjMOh2k
Pantomime, by Derek Walcott: This is only the second Walcott play I've read, and I didn't really care for The Sea at Dauphin (though I don't really care that much for Synge's Riders to the Sea, upon which The Sea at Dauphin is based). But I really liked Pantomime. I see in this play why so many people have praised Walcott's command of language, because this play is run through with linguistic play, parody, playful adaptation of conventions/theatrical styles. But at the same time, the light and often playful language hides deep and ominous conflicts--personal conflicts, racial and imperialist conflicts, class conflicts, and contests over cultural hegemony. The black Tobagoan, Jackson Phillips, seems more often than not to be in control of the conversation, or at least to dominate the struggle through his parodic mimicry (in the sense theorized by Homi Bhabha) and his linguistic brilliance. On the other side, the white British expat, Harry Trewes, often has to resort to a bald assertion of authority--like calling off the pantomime rehearsals when Jackson begins to point too seriously to the problems of colonialism--in order to keep up, but then feels the need to rationalize his reliance on authority to maintain his self image as a liberal (a point he makes several times in the play). Through this clever deployment of linguistic and rhetorical conflict, Walcott develops his postcolonial critique without the play becoming didactic.
QPH, by Sistren Theatre Collective: What an amazingly powerful play. QPH revisits episodes from the lives of three Jamaican women--Queenie, Pearlie, and Hopie--who died in a fire at a Kingston Almshouse in 1980. They are ritually resurrected through a West African ritual that has become a part of Jamaican culture, and then we see flashbacks from each of the women's lives and see how they struggled to support themselves as independent women in a patriarchal, racist, and classist society. And yet, despite their struggles and their appeals for aid all three end up in the Almshouse where they face neglect, harassment from unemployed young men, and poverty.
The dialogue is largely written in patois, picking up from the language and rhythms of everyday black Jamaican speech, which makes the play a bit challenging for people who only read standard written English, but it is definitely worth the effort. Also, Gilbert provides a glossary and some explanatory notes which really help with comprehension.
Hayavadana, by Girish Karnad: This play reminds me of The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Shakespeare, because the central conflict focuses on two young men, closer than brothers, who fall in love with the same woman and pursue her to their own destruction. However, Karnad's play draws heavily on Indian folk performances and mythology, and introduces the major theme of incompleteness as an existential crisis. The play opens with a kind of low plot, featuring Hayavadana, a man with a horse's head who wants nothing more than to become a complete human being. This is our first thematic introduction to the problem of wholeness. Then in the major plot, Devadatta--a brilliant Brahmin, scholar, and poet--and Kapila--a strong and athletic laborer--make up the two halves of the beautiful (though selfish) Padmini's desires: the mind of the scholar-poet and the body of the athlete. Things come to a head (if you'll pardon the pun) when both of the men cut their heads off at the temple of Kali, and Padmini beseeches the goddess to restore them. Kali agrees, and instructs Padmini to put the heads back on the bodies, but in her joyous haste, Padmini puts the wrong heads on each body. It seems that Devadatta and Padmini have won the jackpot here, because they get his head and Kapila's body, while Kapila has his own ugly head and the feeble body of the Brahmin. But, as things turn out, the problem of incompleteness doesn't simply cease to exist because some are happy (while others are miserable)--the problem posed by the incompleteness of each man with the wrong head continues to cast its shadow over the play, right to the very end when Hayavadana returns with his problem solved, but not the way he intended.
Harvest, by Manjula Padmanabhan: From the introductory description of this play I wasn't sure I'd like it, because it sounded like a sci-fi play (which I suppose it is, in a sense), and for some reason that turned me off. However, I would characterize this as more of a dystopian play, following the traditions of Kafka and Huxley. There is a brutal sort of organ farming process, where people in the Global North find and nurture people in the Global South, paying them extravagantly and providing very comfortable lives, in exchange for their organs (sometimes even the entire body). At the same time, one means of social control--to which Ma falls prey--is the numbing effect of television, and then eventually a fully immersive entertainment system. Only the play's hero--Jaya--seems to remain skeptical and resistant, always asking for clear explanations (which never come) and then finally being the only one to demand real happiness rather than virtual happiness.
1984 Here and Now, by Kee Thuan Chye: I believe this is the first Malaysian play I've ever read, and I've definitely never seen any performed. I actually know very little about Malaysia, so I don't have much of an historical context for the play's national origin and the political/cultural situation to which it is responding. However, I do know George Orwell's 1984 pretty well (it was one of two texts about which I wrote my Bachelors thesis), and this play follows the broad outlines of Orwell's dystopian novel, though it crucially substitutes a racial divide for a class one--that is, the Party members become ethnic Malays while the Proles become ethnic minorities (mostly Chinese, but with Indians and indigenous non-Malays as other major minority groups). Another interesting change is that the "subversive" activity in this play is much more open than it is in Orwell's novel, which may be a consequence of the difficulty of staging an offense like "thoughtcrime." In prose, Orwell could give us Winston Smith's subversive thoughts, but on stage--except through soliloquy--we can't really get Wiran's thoughts, and so the action must be much more externalized (incidentally, this is why I think the 1984 film version of Orwell's novel is so bad, since so much of Orwell's brilliance in the novel is in understanding the lengths true totalitarians will go to in order to crack open and reshape the mind--we might here think of the CIA's MKUltra project--but when dealing with a largely visual medium like film or theatre, it's harder to convey that cerebral violence and to locate the true site of resistance in the mind). There are, for instance, demonstrations, magazines calling for freedom, a newspaper published by this underground, and even a recognized opposition party that functions officially (if ineffectually) on behalf of the Proles. None of this can show up in Orwell's novel, where the level of surveillance and the reshaping of the mind is much more thoroughly achieved than it seems to be here.
One other thing that's important to mention about this play, is that there is a direct appeal to the audience at the end to either save Wiran from the authorities or allow him to be taken. Kee, in other words, adopts the agit-prop technique of making the audience directly involved in a play in order to stir them to political action inside the theatre in the hope that this will translate to political action outside the theatre in resistance to a repressive Malaysian government.
Details Cannot Body Wants, by Chin Woon Ping. This play appealed to me less than most of the others so far in this collection, because it is closer to a kind of performance art piece than a traditional Aristotelian kind of narrative driven play. The piece is broken up into four sections marked by the titular categories, exploring the social limitations, stereotypes, restrictions, violences, and expectations imposed on or experienced by women, particularly east Asian women. For instance, the rigid social codes of gender performance imposed by some traditional Asian cultures, or the fetishization of the "submissive Asian woman" so central to the (male) cultural fantasy of Asia(n women), or the desire to consume that capitalism trains into its subjects. Chin's performance piece moves through these frameworks, and through different identity performances, performance styles, gestures, and allusions in ways that complicate and undercut the essentialist images of women, again, particularly east Asian women.
Inside the Island, by Louis Nowra: I imagine this is a tough play to stage, considering it involves both a major fire and a large group of soldiers driven mad by a fungus in wheat. One thing I do find really interesting about this play is the emphasis on the vast emptiness of the space in Australia. I think this must be characteristic of settler colony literature, since I've heard it identified as one of the central characteristics of Canadian lit as well. But the central family in this play--the Dawsons--have a deeply conflicted relationship with the land and with Australia. On the one hand, Lillian--the domineering matriarch--is invested in the house and mill her father built, and in the land he handed down. But at the same time, she seems to prefer England, where she was educated to be a proper lady, and where she is eager to send her daughter to gain a similar education. For her part, Susan is eager to ship out for England.The alcoholic husband George seems only slightly taken by the land, though it is continually mentioned that he came into possession of it by marrying Lillian, so he must have, at some point, desired the land, since he doesn't seem to like the wife. But he blames the land for his drinking, claiming it is too desolate to be taken sober.
Bran Nue Dae, by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles: This didn't do much for me. I think it's because Bran Nue Dae is a musical, but it just didn't really work for me. Probably if I saw this performed I would like it more, but without the music and performance it just seems a bit flat.
Nga Pou Wahine, by Briar Grace-Smith: What I liked about this play is the intertextuality of the Maori myth of Waiora with the contemporary story of Kura and her struggle to find a place in the world. Their stories mirror one another, and we're supposed to see the resonances via Maori cosmology, which privileges the ancestors and their continuing mana (or spiritual power) built up over generations. At the same time, the warrior culture of Waiora is no longer the cultural context of most Maori--instead many Maori now struggle with issues of poverty, alcoholism, cultural dislocation, ets. similar to US and Canadian First Nations peoples or Australian aborigines. Kura finds herself in a menial, dead end job in the suburbs, and intuits that this is not the life the ancestors wanted for her people.
What I don't really like is that this is a monologue play. Even though it is split between multiple characters, it is performed by only one actor who transitions between the roles. There is some degree of dialogue in the responses of some characters to others, but basically it is a series of monologues put together to produce the whole story. And I'm simply not a fan of monologue plays in general.
The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu, by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl: While I haven't been too sold on the last couple of plays in this anthology, with Kneubuhl we return to a history play, which is a genre I really enjoy. The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu deals with the queen who converted herself and Hawaii to Christianity, and the struggles she experienced in that cultural transition--at least as Kneubuhl imagines those struggles, but I don't know enough about Hawaiian history to say whether there's a good historical basis for these personal choices (though Kneubuhl has studied Hawaiian history and culture extensively, so I suspect it's pretty accurate). One of the most interesting things about this play is the rejection of didacticism, a refusal to idealize pre-Christian Hawaiian culture or to demonize the Euro-Americans and the missionaries--or, contrariwise, to demonize pagan Hawaiian culture and idealize the missionaries. I would say if there is one principal enemy here it is the patriarchal culture which was shared in common--though in different forms--by both traditional Hawaiian culture and by Christianity. But even this is not didactic. Rather the real focus of the play is on how Ka'ahumanu tries to make the right choice for herself and her people, and the ways in which our different cultural positions affect the choices we make and how we see the world. For instance, for Sybil and Lucy--the two white American missionaries--Christianity is a faith and a worldview, a morality and salvation in a world of suffering. But for Ka'ahumanu it is, especially at the end of the play, a question of political expediency. Yes, there's a faith element to it, but Ka'ahumanu is reluctant to have any God or gods which will restrict her people's freedom and happiness. But she makes the strategic decision to convert to Christianity because she sees the devastation wrought by nominally Christian men on her people, and calculates that if the Hawaiian people embraced Christianity it would help protect them from exploitation, violence, theft, and sexual abuse.
The Rez Sisters, by Tomson Highway: Highway is probably the best known First Nations playwright, but this is actually the first play of his I've read. It's pretty good. One thing I find really interesting is that there seem to be--and maybe this is just how I read the play, but not something that would show up in performance--a lot of cultural similarities between the First Nations women in the play and groups of women in Southern US plays, movies, and TV. I'm thinking of a play/movie like Steel Magnolias, for example. But the groups unity seems to revolve around certain rituals--in this case Bingo--which draw them together, and that unity becomes a source of strength in a world with little opportunity, and difficult relationships with (often bad) men. While I see these similarities, it's also clear that Highway is describing a distinct culture, heritage, and set of beliefs, even if those beliefs are changing in the modern world. The character of Nanabush is an American Indian trickster figure who appears in the play variously as a seagull, a raven, and the Bingo master of the World's Largest Bingo.
Somewhere Over the Balcony, by Charabanc Theatre Company: This is an interesting Northern Irish farce. I would say more, but I ran out of characters.
The Hungry Earth, by Maishe Maponya: I have reviewed this separately.
Ubu and the Truth Commission, by Jane Taylor, with William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company:
https://youtu.be/96v1rv3drys
The Strong Breed, by Wole Soyinka: One of the greatest dramatists/writers in the world, not just in Africa. It's hard not to like Soyinka's fabulous plays. Like many of his works, The Strong Breed is interested in the social role of sacrifice, and how the rituals we use to structure those sacrifices can fail when they run up against the very human frailty of those who need to carry them out. In particular, The Strong Breed deals with a village that sacrifices a stranger at the beginning of each new year--a stranger designated to carry all of the village's troubles, misfortunes, curses, and suffering, and therefore to usher in a clean new year. In part the tragedy of this play derives from the fact that Eman--a stranger who substitutes himself for the boy initially chosen--fundamentally misunderstands the ritual. He assumes the ritual in his adopted village will follow like the one in his native village, where a carrier carries a boat full of the village's troubles down to the river. The ritual Eman expects is symbolic. But he finds out that he has fundamentally misunderstood the situation. Regardless, his fate drives him inexorably toward the sacrifice.
https://youtu.be/VhdWwdjVkVM
Once Upon Four Robbers, by Femi Osofisan: Osofisan is one of my top five favorite playwrights, so I definitely enjoyed this play. It is a cutting social commentary on the problems of robbery and law enforcement in a society deeply marked by poverty, inequality, and corruption. The play follows a group of robbers who are ethically pitted against both a police force and a market community that supports the death penalty for armed robbery. However, one interesting point that keeps cropping up is that both the robbers as well as their opponents are victims of the political and economic systems that keep Nigerians impoverished--so while the two sides are diametrically opposed on questions like robbery and justice, one must wonder whether or not these are really two versions of the same desperate struggle against privation.
https://youtu.be/CkE7G2MvjRs
Anowa, by Ama Ata Aidoo: This play blends postcolonialism, feminism, and anti-capitalism in really unique ways. Aidoo's play tells the story of Anowa, a headstrong young woman who marries the man she loves despite her parents (mostly her mother) and the village disapproving of it. The young people go off and begin a business selling animal skins, and as they prosper and begin acquiring slaves--which she stridently resists despite him--and wealth, their relationship becomes strained to the point where they are virtual strangers in their own home.
One thing I really like about this play is the choric elderly couple, called The-Mouth-That-Eats-Salt-And-Pepper. The old woman is energetic, caustic, and curmudgeonly, while the old man is serene, balanced, but rarely asserts an opinion. Together they comment on the action of the play, taking different sides in the question of who is to blame for the events going on, and arguing issues like morality, fate, and inter-generational change.
https://youtu.be/oWEdIjMOh2k
Pantomime, by Derek Walcott: This is only the second Walcott play I've read, and I didn't really care for The Sea at Dauphin (though I don't really care that much for Synge's Riders to the Sea, upon which The Sea at Dauphin is based). But I really liked Pantomime. I see in this play why so many people have praised Walcott's command of language, because this play is run through with linguistic play, parody, playful adaptation of conventions/theatrical styles. But at the same time, the light and often playful language hides deep and ominous conflicts--personal conflicts, racial and imperialist conflicts, class conflicts, and contests over cultural hegemony. The black Tobagoan, Jackson Phillips, seems more often than not to be in control of the conversation, or at least to dominate the struggle through his parodic mimicry (in the sense theorized by Homi Bhabha) and his linguistic brilliance. On the other side, the white British expat, Harry Trewes, often has to resort to a bald assertion of authority--like calling off the pantomime rehearsals when Jackson begins to point too seriously to the problems of colonialism--in order to keep up, but then feels the need to rationalize his reliance on authority to maintain his self image as a liberal (a point he makes several times in the play). Through this clever deployment of linguistic and rhetorical conflict, Walcott develops his postcolonial critique without the play becoming didactic.
QPH, by Sistren Theatre Collective: What an amazingly powerful play. QPH revisits episodes from the lives of three Jamaican women--Queenie, Pearlie, and Hopie--who died in a fire at a Kingston Almshouse in 1980. They are ritually resurrected through a West African ritual that has become a part of Jamaican culture, and then we see flashbacks from each of the women's lives and see how they struggled to support themselves as independent women in a patriarchal, racist, and classist society. And yet, despite their struggles and their appeals for aid all three end up in the Almshouse where they face neglect, harassment from unemployed young men, and poverty.
The dialogue is largely written in patois, picking up from the language and rhythms of everyday black Jamaican speech, which makes the play a bit challenging for people who only read standard written English, but it is definitely worth the effort. Also, Gilbert provides a glossary and some explanatory notes which really help with comprehension.
Hayavadana, by Girish Karnad: This play reminds me of The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Shakespeare, because the central conflict focuses on two young men, closer than brothers, who fall in love with the same woman and pursue her to their own destruction. However, Karnad's play draws heavily on Indian folk performances and mythology, and introduces the major theme of incompleteness as an existential crisis. The play opens with a kind of low plot, featuring Hayavadana, a man with a horse's head who wants nothing more than to become a complete human being. This is our first thematic introduction to the problem of wholeness. Then in the major plot, Devadatta--a brilliant Brahmin, scholar, and poet--and Kapila--a strong and athletic laborer--make up the two halves of the beautiful (though selfish) Padmini's desires: the mind of the scholar-poet and the body of the athlete. Things come to a head (if you'll pardon the pun) when both of the men cut their heads off at the temple of Kali, and Padmini beseeches the goddess to restore them. Kali agrees, and instructs Padmini to put the heads back on the bodies, but in her joyous haste, Padmini puts the wrong heads on each body. It seems that Devadatta and Padmini have won the jackpot here, because they get his head and Kapila's body, while Kapila has his own ugly head and the feeble body of the Brahmin. But, as things turn out, the problem of incompleteness doesn't simply cease to exist because some are happy (while others are miserable)--the problem posed by the incompleteness of each man with the wrong head continues to cast its shadow over the play, right to the very end when Hayavadana returns with his problem solved, but not the way he intended.
Harvest, by Manjula Padmanabhan: From the introductory description of this play I wasn't sure I'd like it, because it sounded like a sci-fi play (which I suppose it is, in a sense), and for some reason that turned me off. However, I would characterize this as more of a dystopian play, following the traditions of Kafka and Huxley. There is a brutal sort of organ farming process, where people in the Global North find and nurture people in the Global South, paying them extravagantly and providing very comfortable lives, in exchange for their organs (sometimes even the entire body). At the same time, one means of social control--to which Ma falls prey--is the numbing effect of television, and then eventually a fully immersive entertainment system. Only the play's hero--Jaya--seems to remain skeptical and resistant, always asking for clear explanations (which never come) and then finally being the only one to demand real happiness rather than virtual happiness.
1984 Here and Now, by Kee Thuan Chye: I believe this is the first Malaysian play I've ever read, and I've definitely never seen any performed. I actually know very little about Malaysia, so I don't have much of an historical context for the play's national origin and the political/cultural situation to which it is responding. However, I do know George Orwell's 1984 pretty well (it was one of two texts about which I wrote my Bachelors thesis), and this play follows the broad outlines of Orwell's dystopian novel, though it crucially substitutes a racial divide for a class one--that is, the Party members become ethnic Malays while the Proles become ethnic minorities (mostly Chinese, but with Indians and indigenous non-Malays as other major minority groups). Another interesting change is that the "subversive" activity in this play is much more open than it is in Orwell's novel, which may be a consequence of the difficulty of staging an offense like "thoughtcrime." In prose, Orwell could give us Winston Smith's subversive thoughts, but on stage--except through soliloquy--we can't really get Wiran's thoughts, and so the action must be much more externalized (incidentally, this is why I think the 1984 film version of Orwell's novel is so bad, since so much of Orwell's brilliance in the novel is in understanding the lengths true totalitarians will go to in order to crack open and reshape the mind--we might here think of the CIA's MKUltra project--but when dealing with a largely visual medium like film or theatre, it's harder to convey that cerebral violence and to locate the true site of resistance in the mind). There are, for instance, demonstrations, magazines calling for freedom, a newspaper published by this underground, and even a recognized opposition party that functions officially (if ineffectually) on behalf of the Proles. None of this can show up in Orwell's novel, where the level of surveillance and the reshaping of the mind is much more thoroughly achieved than it seems to be here.
One other thing that's important to mention about this play, is that there is a direct appeal to the audience at the end to either save Wiran from the authorities or allow him to be taken. Kee, in other words, adopts the agit-prop technique of making the audience directly involved in a play in order to stir them to political action inside the theatre in the hope that this will translate to political action outside the theatre in resistance to a repressive Malaysian government.
Details Cannot Body Wants, by Chin Woon Ping. This play appealed to me less than most of the others so far in this collection, because it is closer to a kind of performance art piece than a traditional Aristotelian kind of narrative driven play. The piece is broken up into four sections marked by the titular categories, exploring the social limitations, stereotypes, restrictions, violences, and expectations imposed on or experienced by women, particularly east Asian women. For instance, the rigid social codes of gender performance imposed by some traditional Asian cultures, or the fetishization of the "submissive Asian woman" so central to the (male) cultural fantasy of Asia(n women), or the desire to consume that capitalism trains into its subjects. Chin's performance piece moves through these frameworks, and through different identity performances, performance styles, gestures, and allusions in ways that complicate and undercut the essentialist images of women, again, particularly east Asian women.
Inside the Island, by Louis Nowra: I imagine this is a tough play to stage, considering it involves both a major fire and a large group of soldiers driven mad by a fungus in wheat. One thing I do find really interesting about this play is the emphasis on the vast emptiness of the space in Australia. I think this must be characteristic of settler colony literature, since I've heard it identified as one of the central characteristics of Canadian lit as well. But the central family in this play--the Dawsons--have a deeply conflicted relationship with the land and with Australia. On the one hand, Lillian--the domineering matriarch--is invested in the house and mill her father built, and in the land he handed down. But at the same time, she seems to prefer England, where she was educated to be a proper lady, and where she is eager to send her daughter to gain a similar education. For her part, Susan is eager to ship out for England.The alcoholic husband George seems only slightly taken by the land, though it is continually mentioned that he came into possession of it by marrying Lillian, so he must have, at some point, desired the land, since he doesn't seem to like the wife. But he blames the land for his drinking, claiming it is too desolate to be taken sober.
Bran Nue Dae, by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles: This didn't do much for me. I think it's because Bran Nue Dae is a musical, but it just didn't really work for me. Probably if I saw this performed I would like it more, but without the music and performance it just seems a bit flat.
Nga Pou Wahine, by Briar Grace-Smith: What I liked about this play is the intertextuality of the Maori myth of Waiora with the contemporary story of Kura and her struggle to find a place in the world. Their stories mirror one another, and we're supposed to see the resonances via Maori cosmology, which privileges the ancestors and their continuing mana (or spiritual power) built up over generations. At the same time, the warrior culture of Waiora is no longer the cultural context of most Maori--instead many Maori now struggle with issues of poverty, alcoholism, cultural dislocation, ets. similar to US and Canadian First Nations peoples or Australian aborigines. Kura finds herself in a menial, dead end job in the suburbs, and intuits that this is not the life the ancestors wanted for her people.
What I don't really like is that this is a monologue play. Even though it is split between multiple characters, it is performed by only one actor who transitions between the roles. There is some degree of dialogue in the responses of some characters to others, but basically it is a series of monologues put together to produce the whole story. And I'm simply not a fan of monologue plays in general.
The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu, by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl: While I haven't been too sold on the last couple of plays in this anthology, with Kneubuhl we return to a history play, which is a genre I really enjoy. The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu deals with the queen who converted herself and Hawaii to Christianity, and the struggles she experienced in that cultural transition--at least as Kneubuhl imagines those struggles, but I don't know enough about Hawaiian history to say whether there's a good historical basis for these personal choices (though Kneubuhl has studied Hawaiian history and culture extensively, so I suspect it's pretty accurate). One of the most interesting things about this play is the rejection of didacticism, a refusal to idealize pre-Christian Hawaiian culture or to demonize the Euro-Americans and the missionaries--or, contrariwise, to demonize pagan Hawaiian culture and idealize the missionaries. I would say if there is one principal enemy here it is the patriarchal culture which was shared in common--though in different forms--by both traditional Hawaiian culture and by Christianity. But even this is not didactic. Rather the real focus of the play is on how Ka'ahumanu tries to make the right choice for herself and her people, and the ways in which our different cultural positions affect the choices we make and how we see the world. For instance, for Sybil and Lucy--the two white American missionaries--Christianity is a faith and a worldview, a morality and salvation in a world of suffering. But for Ka'ahumanu it is, especially at the end of the play, a question of political expediency. Yes, there's a faith element to it, but Ka'ahumanu is reluctant to have any God or gods which will restrict her people's freedom and happiness. But she makes the strategic decision to convert to Christianity because she sees the devastation wrought by nominally Christian men on her people, and calculates that if the Hawaiian people embraced Christianity it would help protect them from exploitation, violence, theft, and sexual abuse.
The Rez Sisters, by Tomson Highway: Highway is probably the best known First Nations playwright, but this is actually the first play of his I've read. It's pretty good. One thing I find really interesting is that there seem to be--and maybe this is just how I read the play, but not something that would show up in performance--a lot of cultural similarities between the First Nations women in the play and groups of women in Southern US plays, movies, and TV. I'm thinking of a play/movie like Steel Magnolias, for example. But the groups unity seems to revolve around certain rituals--in this case Bingo--which draw them together, and that unity becomes a source of strength in a world with little opportunity, and difficult relationships with (often bad) men. While I see these similarities, it's also clear that Highway is describing a distinct culture, heritage, and set of beliefs, even if those beliefs are changing in the modern world. The character of Nanabush is an American Indian trickster figure who appears in the play variously as a seagull, a raven, and the Bingo master of the World's Largest Bingo.
Somewhere Over the Balcony, by Charabanc Theatre Company: This is an interesting Northern Irish farce. I would say more, but I ran out of characters.
May 3, 2009
Initial reactions: there are some absolutely fantastic plays in this collection, and some that I had difficulty getting into. Part of this is certainly my Western cultural bias, which is part of the point. Some selections lack the punch that others have, and when placed back to back the weak points become clear; compare "Harvest" or "The Rez Sisters" to "1984 Here & Now" and "Bran Nue Dae." But the point is not to showcase good plays; this anthology contains a wealth of work from artists most American/Western readers have never heard of. How many Australian Aboriginal musicals have you read lately? How many Jamaican all-women's plays? How many South African plays NOT by Athol Fugard? It is precisely this kind of multicultural basis that makes the overall text worth reading.
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