Firstly, apologies for no posts recently, but a school production has swallowed me whole and just spat me out at the end of the run. More about this later.
Today I want to return to a topic I’ve blogged about before, the roles for women in theatre, both on stage and off. The all-female Julius Caeser I mentioned a few months ago has opened in London to rave reviews, one of which you can read here.
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However, it has reignited the debate and I want to share some of articles that have been written in the last few days. Firstly, a piece called Women in theatre: why do so few make it to the top? written by Charlotte Higgins in which she asks leading figures why women are still underrepresented at every level of the business – and what needs to change. It is UK-centric, but the discussion and arguments are universal.
Finally, a great interactive graphic that explores women in Shakespeare, bringing us nicely back to the all-female Caesar. Click on the image below to take you there.
I was going to keep this post until tomorrow, but I can’t wait.
Pulitzer prize winning American playwright Bruce Norris has been forced to remove the performance rights for his play, Clybourne Park from Berlin’s Deutsches Theater after he learned that they planned to ‘black-up’ a white actor to play the role of an African-american – in a piece that that explores race as one of it’s central theme.
Clybourne Park takes place in Chicago, in 1956 and 2006 and deals with the aspirations of black Americans in both of those times. It has toured the world and has been widely celebrated. I can’t quite believe that in the 21st Century it still might be considered appropriate for a white actor to be cast in a role, whose skin colour is central to the experiences of the character and context of the play as a whole, and then be expected to ‘black-up’.
You might think that such a trick should be unthinkable in a nation with the historical racial sensitivities of Germany – and, indeed, it would be unthinkable in most countries. However, ‘blacking up’ remains a relatively common practice in German theatre and is often justified on the basis of directorial prerogative. Indeed German director Thomas Schendel, commented that “blackface is a part of the theatre tradition”.
Norris has said:
Normally I don’t meddle in the cultural politics of other countries, but when my work and the work of my colleagues – other playwrights – is misrepresented, I do.
However Norris has now called on others to boycott productions of their work by German theatres that continue this asinine tradition. A zero-tolerance position is the only position to take.
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You can read more here. A quick search of the blogosphere will throw up even more comment. This is not the only case that has been highlighted this year in Germany, The Schlosspark theatre did the same with a production of I’m Not Rappaport by Herb Gardner. This production featured a white actor in black-face in the role of Midge Carter.
You can read Norris’ open letter to the Dramatists Guild of America here .You might even sign the petition.
My post yesterday about the casting controversy in the UK has elicited some interesting responses and became a focus for discussion for one of my TA classes this morning.
I have been digging deeper and have come across a comment piece by Anna Chen, a writer and performer who lives in the UK, entitled Memo to the RSC: east Asians can be more than just dogs and maids: The Royal Shakespeare Company’s casting for The Orphan of Zhao seems to hark back to an age of British imperialism.
I have reproduced an edited version here:
It’s no fun being bred out of the cultural gene pool. Watching TV, theatre or film, I’m on constant alert for a glimpse of someone who looks Chinese, for the slightest resemblance to an estimated 499,999 others like me living in the UK.
So it was with a sense of “here we go again” that we learned that the esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is mounting the classic play The Orphan of Zhao in the way prize trophies usually get mounted: gutted and stuffed. This 13th-century Yuan-dynasty masterpiece may be the first Chinese play, to make it to the hallowed RSC, but the only parts given to actors of east Asian heritage are two dogs. And a maid-servant. Who dies. Tragically.
Yes, out of 17 roles in the classic known to Eurocentrics as “the Chinese Hamlet”, a grand total of three have gone to Asians. Another dog is played by a black actor, making you wonder exactly what the RSC is trying to say.
All director Gregory Doran came up with is that the blizzard of complaints is a case of “sour grapes”, and that the critics should “get real”; not the most eloquent response you might expect from the intellectual heavyweight described as “one of the finest Shakespeareans of his generation”. Any finer, and he might appreciate why casting Asians as dogs and a maid – the latter dying in the most tiresome Madame Butterfly tradition – might elicit consternation. Quite rightly, “blackface” was long ago laughed out of court on the grounds that it not only challenges credulity but is also both ludicrous and demeaning to all parties concerned. Yellowface, however, apparently remains acceptable and credible. Why?
Had Doran remembered the lessons learned by director Peter Brook when he cast a range of ethnicities in his well-intentioned 1980s film and stage adaptations of the Indian epic Mahabharata and was forced to face his own ideological assumptions in the ensuing row, he might have trodden more sensitively instead of crashing in like a 19th-century colonialist after our tea and silks.
Only last year in the US, La Jolla Playhouse felt compelled to hold a public debate after it was caught having cast a mere two of the roles in the Chinese story, The Nightingale, as Asian, and one of them was a bird.
Cheekily, the RSC targets Chinese audiences (and their growing disposable wealth) in their marketing – with adverts in Chinese and a poster featuring a Chinese kid who looks nothing like the actors playing the main roles in the show – so we know it can make the effort when it wants to. Playwright David Henry Hwang of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition which fought in the Nightingale battle, says: “By producing The Orphan of Zhao, the RSC seeks to exploit the public’s growing interest in China; through its casting choices, the company reveals that its commitment to Asia is self-serving, and only skin-deep.”
Once again: why? The RSC casting is something of a litmus test, indicating how a failing superpower asserts its cultural dominance when its economic base is disintegrating. It may no longer operate under cold war rules to consciously exclude representations of the upstart Chinese, or feel pressured to depict us as Fu Manchu monstrosities . But, as George Orwell pointed out, you don’t need a whipped dog when a well-trained one will do.
Such minds are hard-wired to eliminate an entire group’s cultural representation, and they don’t even realise it. Amanda Rogers of Swansea University, says: “As a national company they have a responsibility to represent all sectors of British society. There is a real paucity of east Asian representation in this country, and when we do see it, it is usually confined to minor or stereotypical roles.”
One danger is that, the more a minority is presented as a blank canvas, the easier it is to project all sorts of rubbish on to it.
It’s a shame that James Fenton, with his progressive track record, allows his adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao to be cast along colonialist lines. As a component of the establishment’s entertainment wing shaping our perceptions and feelings, the RSC continues to airbrush us out of the picture, ready to be re-inserted into the frame only when villains are required. Whipped dog, well-trained one or puppet: you have to ask the old question: cui bonio?
The La Jolla Playhouse Chen refers too (and referred to in some of the links yesterday) is based in Los Angles and suffered the same fate earlier this year when it mounted a musical called ‘The Nightingale’ set in ancient China with a cast of 12, only 2 of whom were of east Asian decent. You can read more here in the LA Times. However, La Jolla’s reaction was more immediate than the RSC and they held an open, public discussion which was generally well received for opening up the debate about cultural casting. You can watch the opening 10 minutes of the debate (and then the rest of it) here:
Fascinating. Theatre and cultural politics – never too far apart!
For the last few weeks I’ve been following a really interesting debate that has been getting the theatre world chatting right across the globe. The Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK are about to stage a production of the the Chinese play The Orphan of Zhao. The play, from the 13th century, is often referred to as the ‘Chinese Hamlet’, and the RSC production is a new translation by James Fenton.
Fenton writes here giving a wonderful background to the play.
However, controversy has arisen because out of 17 actors cast in the piece, only 3 are of South East Asian origin and they play two puppeteers and and a maid. The debate and back lash has been harsh and forced the RSC on the offensive about their casting policies.
What I find even more interesting is that the ‘blogoshere’ has joined the debate in a very vociferous and intelligent way and I wanted to share some of that too: Madam Miaow, Dangerology and Theatrical Geographies all write passionately about the debate. The latter blog is particularly interesting and worth a read. Even Twitter and Facebook are not immune to the uproar.
I’ll let you read through and make your own mind up, but I have to say it is the first time I have come across the term yellowing-up and it is disturbing.
Finally, I want to include an interview with the director of the show that was made before the storm hit.
This is an image taken on 16th September of British theatre producer, David Cecil. He was appearing in court in Kampala, Uganda, after having been arrested. What had Cecil done? Well, he dared to stage a play about homosexuality in a country that is currently debating a law that could possibly make being openly gay, punishable by death. Currently you can be imprisoned for life in Uganda for being gay. Cecil was, in fact, released on bail, pending another court appearance in mid-October that could see him put behind bars for 2 years.
His actual crime was to stage the play, The River and The Mountain, by playwright Beau Hopkins, without gaining authorisation from the Ugandan’s Media Council. The National Theatre of Uganda refused to stage play because some government officials objected to it. The play tells the story of a corporate businessman coming to terms with his sexual identity in a climate of oppressive homophobia. The protagonist, Samson, is a good man and a gay one. When his mother learns of his homosexuality, she tries to cure it by hiring a pastor, a private dancer and finally a witch doctor. The play ends with his murder at the hands of his co-workers.
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If click the image above, which is taken from the play, you can read an interview with Okuyo Joel Atiku Prynce who played the lead role of Samson in The River and the Mountain.
Theatre has played a significant role in the last 50 years in bringing about the legalisation of homosexuality right across the world. Only yesterday in The Observer, British theatre critic Michael Billington wrote a lengthy piece about Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof entitled Tennessee Williams’s southern discomfort. For those of you who don’t know the play, it deals in part with the suppressed homosexuality of one of the lead characters, Brick.
I have nothing but the utmost respect for people like David Cecil and the cast of The River and The Mountain who dare to challenge what they belive to be morally unacceptable. Only last year a gay rights activist in Uganda, David Kato, was brutally murdered after a tabloid news paper printed details about his private life.
Theatre has a long history of inciting fear in governments and other powerful people, that results in banning – look back as far as Molière and even farther. Molière, a French actor and playwright, wrote Tartuffe in 1664 and that was banned after being performed at Versailles for attacking and exposing the hypocrisy and deceit of the upper classes. People were afraid it would affect change, and wham, it was gone. And as you look through the history of theatre, you begin to realize that a playwright wasn’t tackling enough daring subject matter if they hadn’t been banned in some theatre somewhere. Theatre-goers have historically been a riotous bunch, so you can see where the fear would come from.
A modern audience member really recognizes the power of work on the stage to change the course of politics and daily life off the stage. Playwrights like Bertolt Brecht based their entire body of work off that power. Plays like The Laramie Project (about the murder of Matthew Shephard, a show that brought the discussion of hate crimes and trials to a nation) were written to directly engage with politics and to change the mindset of the culture around them, to explore territory that had not yet been explored.
The story of David Cecil and The River and The Mountain is not over yet.
Today I want to go back to a post I made in May about Juliano Mer-Khamis, a founder of the Freedom Theatre in the West Bank, Palestine, who was assassinated outside his own theatre. To put the post in context, both in terms of the Freedom and the regional politics the film below is excellent (and I warn you, at times, difficult to watch).
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Now, the co-founder of the Freedom Theatre, Zakaria Zubeidi, and the artisitic director, Nabil al-Raee, are both in Israeli prisons and on hunger strike. No charge has been brought against Zubeidi and al-Raee has been charged with some very spurious offences.
This isn’t a political post, although you can probably guess what I think from the mere fact I’m blogging about the situation. It is about the power of theatre and the belief in this power to bring about social, cultural and political change.
In the course of the last year, at least six members of the Freedom’s board and staff have been arrested by the Palestinian Authority. What is it that a tiny little theatre like this can do that causes one of the most heavily armed nations in the world to persecute it in this way? No one has yet been charged for the killing of Mer-Khamis.
Below are a series of articles, the most recent coming first, that explore the last 18 months in the incredible story of the Freedom Theatre. I urge you read them all and make your own mind up.
By clicking the image on the left you can watch to Juliano Mer-Khamis talking about the importance of drama as a means of coping with Israeli occupation.
You can also listen to Mer Khamis talking in another interview from 2005 about a film he made, called Arna’s Children, which you can watch below.
Finally, I repost the video from May about the Freedom Theatre and the immensely important role it plays in helping the people of the West Bank live under Israeli occupation.
Today I am sharing an interview from the Huffington Post, between Katherine Brooks and Maria Tri Sulistyani, founder of Papermoon Puppet Theater, from Indonesia. Papermoon is not your traditional Wayang kulit theatre and the content of their work is even less traditional. The company uses puppetry to highlight social and political injustices in Indonesia’s turbulent past. What is also interesting is that the article talks about ‘cultural diplomacy’ – the idea that in order to truly understand someone from another culture, you also need to understand their traditions, history, language and general way of life.
Indonesia’s Papermoon Puppet Theater is taking an art form we often associate with children’s stories and turning it into a vehicle for addressing the country’s dark history. The company, started by visual artists Maria Tri Sulistyani and her husband Iwan Effendi, (left) uses whimsical puppets and multimedia performances to recreate personal accounts of the mass jailings and executions that took place in Indonesia in 1965. They are harrowing stories, meant to shed light on the emotion and complexity of a time period often glossed over in contemporary history.
Papermoon’s performances reveal intimate moments of Indonesia’s past, but the company maintains that a discussion of politically driven atrocities is something accessible to international audiences. And the U.S. State Department agreed, recruiting Papermoon for its Center Stage program that will be touring throughout the country this year. Sulistyani and Effendi will be showcasing their work, “Mwathirika,” alongside ensembles from Haiti and Pakistan, sharing their brand of art as an initiative of cultural diplomacy.
We asked Maria Tri Sulistyani about her beginnings in the world of puppetry, the heavy themes she’s chosen to present and how she thinks art can interact with diplomacy in an email interview:
Can you tell us a little about traditional shadow puppetry in Indonesia? How does your style of puppetry compare?
Wayang kulit (Shadow Puppetry) has been an important art form – especially on Bali and Java – for almost 1,000 years. Its stories of good and evil, of love and death and transformation are most often taken from the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. A single dhalang (master puppeteer) manipulates all of the many two dimensional leather puppets from behind a screen (to cast shadows). He also voices all of the characters. It is a virtuoso performance! While reaching back in history to tell his tales, the master puppeteer always makes reference to current happenings. Traditional puppet theater has played an important role in communicating values to communities.
There is also another kind of puppetry – Teater Boneka – that is generally just for children and it is a much less formal. Inspiration for the stories and the puppets come from lots of different influences – even Sesame Street.
The interesting part is that people in Indonesia had never connected these two types of puppetry before. Papermoon makes that link, and this is something new. Our pieces are performed on stages, like a theater play. Several puppeteers are on stage manipulating the puppets. Mwathirika, the piece we are presenting on tour, is really for adults, not kids and is a story told without words, without speaking. But we are telling stories about values, too — about moral choices and conflicts and relating to everyday life. Our stories are really personal and focus on individuals. From there we can see the bigger issues. Though Papermoon is not really creating a performance in the traditional form, we too want to share and talk about the values and ideals and choices of Indonesian people’s life.
Your earlier work, “Noda Lelaki di Dada Mona (A Stain on Mona’s Chest),” used puppets to convey a politically and sexually charged story. What was the reaction in Indonesia to such a performance?
It was very interesting because Papermoon had created performances for children since 2006, and “Noda Lelaki di Dada Mona” was the very first time we created a piece for an adult audience. That was also the first time we sold tickets to a performance, 300 seats, and it sold out!
People were shocked with what they saw. Not just only about the theme, but also by the kind of puppets we performed with, how realistic they were, and how we combined puppets with the actors who spoke as individuals, which had never been seen by people in Yogyakarta. Together with our audience, we started to realize that puppet theater could reach many people, including adults. Instead of having one puppeter verbalize all the voices, we decided each puppeter will speak for his own puppet. I would say that “Noda Lelaki di Dada Mona” was a kick start for Papermoon to do more performances, based on social themes, to communicate with many different types of audience.
In “Mwathirika” you have again focused on more serious accounts, this time of imprisonment and violence. Do you think the use of puppets makes it easier to express these heavy themes? Or easier to digest on the part of the audience?
Yes. For us, puppets are the perfect medium to bring an unexpected moments or difficult subjects to the audience. Puppets always have the image of cuteness, happiness, sometimes scary, but mostly FUN. So when people come to the theater, with a certain expectation of puppetry, they can be surprised, because what they see is totally different from what they thought.
Many people feel like the story of 1965 is already over, it’s expired, helpless, over-researched, or it’s never been heard. By seeing a poster of two little boys with a red balloon, people will think about something sweet. They don’t have fear to come, they feel relaxed, they are open. It’s perfect.
You spoke to a number of people – parents, grandparents, neighbors – who provided their stories for “Mwathirika.” Could you tell us about one story in particular that sheds light on the historical situation in Indonesia?
We asked them about what they felt at those moments in their lives. There was a lot of data, books about the 1965 tragedy, but very few could give insight into their feelings. And by interviewing those people, we could see their eyes, and what they really felt in their hearts – uncover their personal stories.
One of our company member’s uncle, told a story about how he, a 12 year old boy, had to take care of his little brothers and sisters, after their father was taken away by government officials, and didn’t come back for 13 years. He had to catch frogs in the rice fields, for his family to eat. And how the family grew in the middle of these chaotic moments, with children with no parents, and no one in the village dared to help, because if they helped they might be caught by the army too. In Mwathirika, we are not pointing fingers; we are not saying that one person is right and one person is wrong. But we tell a story about the impact of political turmoil on those who lived through those terrible times and the huge effect it has had on the next generation.
Your project has now become a tool for cultural diplomacy, helping to foster greater understanding in the US in particular. How do you view art in the greater scheme of international cooperation? Do you think that art has the potential to bring people together in a way that other diplomatic tools can not?
Yes. What people know about other countries or cultures, is mostly from the media. And it’s usually about all problems of economy, technology, war, conflict, and how to deal with that on a big scale. Of course people need to do big things, but sometimes people forgot how important it is to build a personal solution for the problems. And for us, Art is a personal thing. It’s about how we can reach out one person to another. When people meet, exchange their cultures, see another art from those who live in another country, then they see a different thing, they learn to respect each other. If people can share, talk more about their culture, the respect will go deeper, and hopefully an understanding of each other will be built there. Like we said, Art gets personal. This is where those big actions made by government might not reach.
Last question: Indonesia has become one of the region’s largest markets for contemporary art. How has the art scene changed in Indonesia since the 1960s?
When Indonesia became an independent country in 1945, art was seen as a big strength and unifying force for the country. The government put a lot of attention on the development of the arts. Sometimes, art was also used as a political tool.
In 1965, the art scene was changed by the political turmoil, lots of critical artists were jailed, silenced, disappeared in the violent political battles between the government and the Army. There were three years of chaos. When General Suharto took power in 1968, the government centralized the arts. Artists that had not been caught, and were still active, could develop their careers, but always had to support – promote –the government. And though things loosened up little by little over time, that was really the case up until the 1990s. The government was still very oppressive, and they didn’t want people to say bad things about them.
In 1998 when there were riots in the streets all over the country because of the falling economy, Suharto resigned and things began to change again – to open up and become less centralized. Since then, the art scene is changing (very quickly) again, because of the openness of information through internet, etc.
The video below is about their production Mwathirika.
This is the beautiful deco Bolivar Theatre, in Quito, Ecuador, which opened in 1933 with an audience capacity of 2,400. Whenever I travel I try to visit these grand architectural icons as they often say much about a country’s society and culture, and I was stuck by the grandeur of this one.
Sadly, this is what it looks like on the inside now. In 1997, after a few years as a cinema, a lengthy restoration process took place, which succeeded in recapturing lost audiences. In 1998 the theatre dedicated itself to promoting culture in Quito, becoming The Theater of the City. 70 events, both national and international, were presented in 1998 and the first half of 1999, bringing more than 70,000 visitors. The future was bright. However, on Sunday, August 8, 1999, a gas leak caused a fire to erupt in the kitchen of the multinational chain Pizza Hut, which was occupying a business area on the ground floor of the theatre. The fire consumed over 70% of the building.
And why am writing about it? Well, as I travelled around Ecuador I was delighted by the lack of international franchises – not a Starbucks to be had, or the greasy stink of a MacDonalds to be sniffed. The Ecuadorian government clearly has a very tight rein on allowing these companies in.
However, there was a notice on the door of the Teatro Bolivar (to give it is proper title) that explained what had happened, but also went on to say that Pizza Hut refused both to accept responsibility for the fire or help fund or take part in any of the restoration. So much for corporate social responsibility!
The day following the fire, the Theater and Hotel Enterprise of Quito planned the Process of Restoration for the Bolivar Theater that would include a number of principal actions, including initiating legal and public actions to put pressure on Pizza Hut to recognize their responsibility for the fire and to continue to produce cultural events in the Bolivar in the process of rising out of the ashes. The restoration process is clearly a slow one, but the members of the Bolivar Theater Foundation and the Bolivar’s audiences are determined to return their beloved theatre to its original prominence, as one of the most important cultural venues in South America .
The places in which we make theatre can be as important as the performances themselves and represent the significance of creativity in and to a culture. So when one is destroyed by an international corporate giant that then refuses to accept its role in that destruction, it makes me especially angry.
So next time you pick up the phone to order your pizza, please think again and choose a company other than Pizza Hut.
I first encountered Caryl Churchill when I was doing my A Levels, many moons ago. It was her play, Cloud 9, that captured me and her writing has held me enthralled ever since.
It was the structure of the play, not just the content, that caught my attention, although it would be fair to say that the politics it spoke about shouted at me loudly. Act 1 is set in British colonial Africa in Victorian times, and Act 2 is set in a London park in 1979. However, between the acts only twenty-five years pass for the characters. Each actor plays one role in Act 1 and a different role in Act 2 – the characters who appear in both acts are played by different actors in the first and second. Act 1 parodies the conventional comedy genre and satirizes Victorian society and colonialism. Act 2 shows what could happen when the restrictions of both the genre of comedy and Victorian ideology are loosened in the more permissive 1970s. The play uses controversial portrayals of sexuality and obscene language and establishes a parallel between colonial and sexual oppression – and it made laugh!
Also it was developed inconjunction with Joint Stock Theatre Company who were taking the British theatre world by storm at the time with a new way of working, developing plays with well-known playwrights, in the rehearsal room. The company is no more, but has given birth to Out of Joint, which was founded by Max Stafford-Clark, one of the original members of Joint Stock........
And why am I reminiscing about the play today? Well, Churchill (pictured above) is about to open two new plays at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Her writing career has spanned more than 50 years and her influence on Western theatre has been significant, and for me, satisfyingly controversial. You can read about her work and the two new plays in a fantastic article, Caryl Churchill: changing the language of theatre.Therefore it also seems fitting that I should return to a post I made in June, “there aren’t bloody well enough parts for women” which bemoaned the lack of roles for women in theatre. Well, Churchill has gone a long way to address this in her career and it caught my notice that an all female version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as about to open at the Donmar Warehouse in London. One writer commented that “The Donmar’s gender switch of Shakespeare’s play could turn a dusty GCSE set text into something much more Pussy Riot”.
An interesting thought!
Today I want to share an adaptation of a play, Kursk, to film. It is from a growing genre, that of Immersive Theatre, where the audience are required to experience more than something just created with words. The film version attempts to capture some the plays’ experiential attributes.
In the year 2000, a Russian submarine, the Kursk, suffered a huge explosion that ripped the bow apart and sent the vessel to the seabed. Inspired by this tragic event, this production takes the audience on the imagined journey of a British Submarine sent to spy on the Kursk. The audience is subsumed in the submarine space with the performers, silent observers to the events as they unfold, complicit in their world of secrecy and codes, witnesses to the last minutes of the Kursk.
The piece puts the audience at the heart of the story using a novel and highly engaging staging that embraces both the epic and intensely personal. Using cutting edge sound design that creates the sonic equivalent of a virtual submarine, Kursk is an authentic and emotionally rich voyage into the icy depths of the Barents Sea and the dark recesses of the imagination.
Kursk received quite amazing reviews, two of which you can read here and here.
Thanks to a new initiative in the UK, The Space, the play has been reworked for film and you can watch the whole thing by clicking the image below
The producing company, Sound&Fury is a collaborative theatre company whose artistic interest is in developing the sound space of theatre and presenting the audience with new ways of experiencing performance and stories by heightening the aural sense.
Also on The Space is a fascinating documentary, Writing Kursk, about the making of the piece and is well worth a listen.
I am a real fan of this immerse theatre as I think it can challenge audiences in a very visceral way. Mind you, not everyone agrees. In her blog, journalist Lynne Gardner explains why she has issues with it; Immersive theatre: take us to the edge, but don’t throw us in, she asserts, saying that it can replicate terrifying human experiences, but this type of theatre is best when it maintains some perspective.
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Theatre Room Asia 