AFCON DE DIASPORA!

Samuel Eto’o will forever have the respect of the continent for being one of the most remarkable footballers Africa has ever produced. He is also to be commended for how he has expressed his commitment to the development of football in his home country Cameroon, both administratively (he is now President of the Cameroon Football Federation) and financially, using his own resources to bankroll expenses that should indubitably be made by the local Football Association. His words carry weight. It was therefore interesting for him to have made some comments about some of the Cameroonian players after the disappointment of their first-round defeat that seemed at the time to be signaling their exit from the tournament (they eventually rallied to qualify for the knock-out stages).

Eto’o had reportedly said:

“Dear brothers, I understand you. Many of you were not born in Cameroon and have never played for a club in Cameroon. The advice of a Cameroonian coach is beneficial to a footballer from the start of his career until the end. You who were born there have too many rights over the leaders. Cameroon taught me that I am a soldier within the National team. I will die with this spirit. Cameroon has just gone through humiliation just because love for the Fatherland is not 100% there…We made a mistake bringing you in to play for the flag. But after the AFCON, things will change. We are going to do a patriotism test before having young Cameroonians play in the National team…”

Like several African countries, Cameroon has in the recent past tapped into a reservoir of the country’s Diaspora to entice players who are second- and third-generation born abroad, to play for the country. There is a clear logic to this, as so many of these players have been schooled in the academies of previous colonial powers hence are of high technical, nutritional and conditioning standards to enhance their home-based contingent.

What is particularly interesting about Eto’o’s comments is how he is scapegoating these players, attributing them with ‘not getting Cameroon’ and therefore not as committed to the cause as those who were home-born would be. We can probably make allowances for Eto’o that he had allowed the raw emotions of his disappointment to occlude his logic. However, a brief perusal of social media quoting or reposting his message reveals that this is indeed a view shared by many across Africa.

Then there’s the sheer absurdity of what may constitute a ‘patriotism test’ – what would that even ask, or if asked, prove? I am imagining in Nigeria, they would ask you to sing the national anthem, or recite the pledge? That’s a memory test, not proof of patriotism. How many bowls of pounded yam can you consume? I have friends from other countries who can down bowls of the food. How many Afrobeats songs you can sing? Then half of the world nowadays would pass the test. Ask if they would be willing to go to war for the country? Given the current economic circumstances, most of the young people in the country seeking and using ever-more desperate attempts to escape to Europe would probably reply “Hell, No!” to that one, distinctively narrowing the pool of patriots Eto’o would have to choose from.

Yet, this Eto’o misspeak is but further evidence of what has been a long-standing trope and misunderstanding of the Diasporic Dilemma. Second and third-generation born children of postcolonial subjects tend to find themselves in a weird ‘in-between’ identity space, where they have had the rooting of their parents’ culture infused into them from birth, and the stemming of shaping and forging identities of belonging in the environmental spaces they traverse outside of their parents’ front door. This results in a sense of uneasy acceptance of the multiplicity of their identities and a freedom to traverse these as suits.

In recent times, the pervasive soft-power influence of popular culture has seen the ingraining of a strong sense of Africaness in Diaspora communities, which is manifesting itself in more children than ever strongly identifying with the culture and ethnic nationalities of their parents’ while retaining the civic nationalities of their countries of birth. Hence Bukayo Saka can easily play for England one day and ruck up in Lagos in an agbada the next, or Anthony Joshua can fly the British flag in the ring one weekend and happily be pictured prostrating before the governor of his mother’s home state in Nigeria the following one.

In the ongoing AFCON, the lie of Eto’o’s statement is easily revealed when you cursorily study the composition of several of the teams. The Defending Champions Senegal have almost half of their team born outside of Senegal. DRC, Cape Verde and Equatorial Guinea about 75%. Nigeria’s team consists of a rock-solid defence of Ola Aina, William Troost-Ekong and Calvin Bassey – and with Ademola Lookman, another Diasporan, they have been the team’s best players, performing with a conviction, pride and passion that fans of their Premier League teams are probably struggling to comprehend.

The most remarkable Diaspora story of AFCON so far though is that of young Malian striker, Nene Dorgele. Nene scored a magnificent goal in the Quarter-final match against Cote D’Ivoire, but rather strangely refised to celebrate the goal. Reason? – The 21-year-old was born in Kayes, Mali to Ivorian parents and spends most of his time during vacation in Abidjan. This is an unusual Diaspora case, as we are more used to discussing this as if it is something that only happens with people who have migrated to Western countries. One can only imagine how mind-blown Eto’o would be if this had been a Cameroonian player.

A recent report by Africa No Filter ‘Being African: How Young Africans Experience the Diaspora’ bear this out, finding that “diasporic African youths have a unique double heritage that makes them proud of African languages, food, music and history, while also strongly relating to the language and culture of their host country”. What this and few other reports have done though is fully consider the perceptions and attitudes towards Diasporans by their peers on the continent and the impact that this has on them. While absurd statements like Eto’o’s fuels this sense of opportunism, not really belonging and insufficient patriotism attributed to them, it is only hoped that a better balance will be seen when looking at all the other countries that have demonstrated how strategically mobilising and embracing the Diaspora has resulted in them being better teams.

We should all do this – the Diaspora is set to become an even more massive contributor to Africa’s future beyond remittances than ever before. Football is just an indicator of this. We all want the continent to be successful and the Diaspora is a key ingredient of that success.

And I still love Eto’o. :-)

©Olu Alake 2024.

Second Chances: Supporting the Emergence of Emerged Artists

Recently, I had the poignant experience of meeting a brilliant artist. He is in his 70s. He had come to the UK from an African nation in the 1970s, a grateful son of empire who had found safety and a semblance of security in the embrace however grudging of the ones who had once been the oppressor. He didn’t have the networks, the know-how, the connectivity social capital or the presentational confidence to sell himself and thus, his work. There was fleeting interest by one of the national arts institutions in some pieces of his work and even an acquisition. But there was no follow-through. He fell into every day part-time non-arts occupations to make ends meet. And decades passed. Then, he was sitting in front of me, layers of dignity laid bare as he pleaded for an opportunity to earn not a living but something, anything, from his work. And I could offer nothing.

Just over a year ago, I shared the story of a brilliant 92 year old Caribbean lady whose poetry had moved seasoned arts professionals to tears. Sadly, Eula Harrison passed away before I found a way to realise our shared dream of having the collection of her poetry published.

Another recent encounter was with one of Latin America’s foremost musical prodigies of the 70s and 80s. Today, he is making ends meet by driving a London bus.

When we refer to supporting emerging artists, our default psyche type is of the next brilliant young thing. Yet, strewn all around us are human embodiments of artistic dreams deferred, creative juices placed on permanent ice while life gets in the way. What happens to the soul of frustrated talent, unexpressed brilliance, and unarticulated creative genius?

In 2024, I will do what I can to shine more light and use my little leverage to platform and support this hidden genre of emerging artistic talent, especially those of African heritage. The next best thing may just turn out to be a very old man. And if not, well, the stories we will be able to tell…!
hashtag#artsandculture hashtag#arts second chances hashtag#matureartists

Building a Better Dialogue between Artistic Freedom & Cultural Rights:

Reflections on Artistic Freedom

By Members of the International Programme Advisory Committee (IPAC)

In the lead up to the 9th World Summit on Arts & Culture held in Sweden in June 2023, the members of the International Programme Advisory Committee (IPAC) were asked to each share a short reflection on an urgent issue of concern related to artistic freedom. I had the privilege of Chairing this wonderful Committee and this was my contribution.

• Building a Better Dialogue between Artistic Freedom & Cultural Rights by Olu Alake
• Art and tech will join forces for artistic freedom by Alfons Karabuda
• Decolonising Success as a Form of Freedom by Pamela López
• An African Worldview by Farai Mpfunya

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Building a Better Dialogue between Artistic Freedom & Cultural Rights by Olu Alake

By Olu Alake

While there seems to be an emerging consensus of what artistic freedom is, there remain several areas of contestation mainly around the question of how absolute that right to artistic freedom should be? This contestation comes into stark relief when there is the encounter of artistic freedom with cultural rights, especially when cultural rights are deployed as a defence mechanism against cultural exclusion and marginalisation.

This was at the heart of a recent furore where the casting of a Black man in a leading role of London’s Frozen The Musical resulted in some audience objections. While supporting the artistic freedom of the actor, some members of the Sami community, descendants of nomadic peoples who had inhabited northern Scandinavia for thousands of years, made the pertinent point that the show should have originally cast a member of that community in the role, especially considering the recognised endangered status of their culture and under-representation in mainstream arts.

Thus, the show’s exercise of artistic freedom brushed up against the assertion of the cultural rights of a cultural community, especially in the context of representation with authenticity and due respect. This demonstrates that the right to artistic freedom also requires a responsibility to recognise cultural rights, respect diversity and honour subjects with authenticity and dignity. Such considerations require communication, understanding, humility, sensitivity and discipline without compromising the artistic integrity of the work. Some may argue that this is itself a form of censorship, akin to the contemporary phenomenon of cancel culture. Alternatively, it can be recognised that the responsible discharge of artistic freedom includes a need to manage impulses the same way we manage the discharge of other rights – i.e. there are always limits to what we can do, say or show in society.

Discussions of cultural rights within the artistic freedom discourse can sometimes be particularly tricky, as the act of creativity is an expression of culture subject to different interpretations, claims of ownership and malleable boundaries policed by differing motivations. When developing tools for protecting the right to artistic freedom, it is vitally important to also consider how to exercise responsibilities of access, participation, and social cohesion. While this is particularly important for minoritised communities, the benefits of so doing will resonate for all of us.

No Win RACE: Derek a bardowell’s heartaching treatise on race through a sporting lens

Turning the last page of Derek A Bardowell’s book will leave different people in different places: the level of sadness, rage, discombobulation or incomprehension will probably say a lot about the reader’s direct experience of the main issue under discussion – race and racism in the UK, particularly from a Black (African/Caribbean perspective). For this reader, the overwhelming sense was a pasticcio of all the aforementioned emotions; a miasmatic untethering of memories carefully suppressed, reimagined and sometimes, conveniently forgotten, that had been occurring over the duration of 300 pages found release. And even as they took tentative orbit, they invited into their temporarily vacated spaces a myriad questions.

Several of these questions Bardowell had raised and sought to answer for himself and did so safe in the knowledge that his was not an exceptional story but indeed, was told recognising the ‘shared experience’ constituted a key part of his identity as a Black Briton who had lived all of his adult life trying to prove or disprove himself as ‘belonging’ even when he categorically felt anything but.

Leadingly subtitled ‘A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport’, No Win Race is Bardowell’s ‘personal exploration of the complexities and biases implicit in being Black in Britain, told through the prism of sport’. A keen sports enthusiast all his life, Bardowell’s account traces his experiences as a follower of sport in both passive and active roles, from TV spectator to stadium fan, from protected son to protective father, from journalist to philanthropic administrator. In all these roles, the one constant is the inescapable crush of the racialised identity he is lumbered with and has to negotiate life with in never-ending Sisyphean efforts.

Bardowell is upfront with both the key questions and his unapologetic answer right from the introduction: Does sport mask society’s deep-rooted rejection and ignorance of Black-Britishness? Can Blackness and Britishness ever be compatible? Answers: Yes and No respectively, with little equivocation. But he has a son, an innocent whose father knows that while “he does not see colour, other people see his…” and this is bound to have implications on his life chances. The rest of the book is a tracking of key sporting incidents in Britain’s recent sporting history and how these were experienced from a Black British perspective and collectively formed an ultimate ossification of a stratified identity.

Very few people who are racialised as white would have thought too much about the multiple dimensions of the incidents Bardowell dissects here. Starting with the first time he had to confront race as an issue that would be the parting of the red sea of belonging for him, was the Alan Minter v Marvellous Marvin Hagler fight of 1980. Minter was the Brit. Hagler was the American. Minter was white. Hagler was Black. Bardowell was English, so “obviously” supported Minter. But he then discovered that Minter had allegedly said “It has taken me 17 years to become champion of the world. I’m not going to let a Black man take it away from me“, a statement not exactly denied as his later explanation was that he “didn’t mean it the way it might sound“, and which set the tone for what was widely described as a most unpleasant, racially charged atmosphere for the fight. By the time the referee stepped in to save Minter from pulverisation by Hagler in the third round to a near race riot by the jingoistic Wembley crowd, the first layer in Bardowell’s stratification had occurred.

Subsequent incidents took in the sense of pride in Blackness that the dominance and decline of the incomparable Muhammad Ali and the all-conquering 1980s West Indian cricket team wrought, the personal connection with the criminally under-respected British basketball scene, the confusion that earnest quests for belonging that saw fighters such as Lloyd Honeyghan and Frank Bruno strategically (and futilely) use their boxing personae to invite acceptance of their Englishness, to the cheerleading through the tenuous path that Black English footballers had to tread from the ‘Three Degrees of West Brom’ to John Barnes which eventually find unapologetic, magnetic wholeness in the dynamic personae of Ian Wright in the early Nineties. Each of these incidents was played out not in isolation but in a socio-political context Bardowell describes, thereby clearly locating sport as, if not an enabler of racism per se, certainly a canvas on which these sentiments find clear and sadly, often safe (i.e. with no or minimal consequence) expression.

The most poignant part of the book for me were the back-to-back chapters of the ‘Greatest Week Ever in Black British History?’ and ‘A Poor People’s Olympics’. A week in 2008 that started with the election of Barack Obama, also saw the ascension of Lewis Hamilton as first Black Formula One racing champion. The Olympics was awarded to London in 2005 with the City’s multiculturalism successfully sold to the world as a powerfully positive national asset, and the subsequent games which saw the sun shine on London culminating in the most magical 44 minutes in British sporting history when Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah won gold medals to send the stadium and presumably the nation absolutely euphoric. Bardowell reflected soberly on how the magic of the moment was tainted quickly, firstly by the shooting of Mark Duggan that set off the Tottenham riots the very next day, then the eventual realisation that the London Olympics had not actually been the British Olympics and the sense of euphoria, belonging and hope that had been assumed was far from shared from Cornwall to the Shetlands.

No Win Race explains a lot for those who don’t understand things like why Black British people felt uncomfortable seeing Linford Christie wrap himself in the Union Jack after winning his gold medal 100m race in 1992, or why there is such a divide in how Black Britain and mainstream media experienced Lewis Hamilton. Or how important was the stance taken by Eniola Aluko in calling out the racist behaviour of the then England football coach. It also validates and reflects the experiences of many, probably most, Black Britons over the past 40 years. While my background was markedly different to Bardowell’s having spent my formative years in a majority Black country and belatedly learnt the ‘codes and tiers’ that form the framework for survival in a society that systematically and institutionally minoritises Black people, the experiences resonated even when not directly shared. My own Alan Minter moment came when England played Cameroon in the 1990 World Cup quarter final. Although I was just a few months back in England after spending my formative years in Nigeria, I knew enough for my heart to will Cameroon to victory but for my head to hope England won, for no other reason than the likely racism that would indiscriminately be unleashed on all Black people should Roger Milla and co wiggle their way to the semi-final.

While Bardowell tries very hard to end the book on a hopeful note, it is easy to read that his overwhelming feeling is one of enduring sadness and frustration. As the book was written in 2019, I wonder how differently he would have felt in the writing had it been just a year later, and he had had the opportunity of experiencing and processing the Black Lives Matter inspired protests that saw Lewis Hamilton iconically adopting a leadership position far more important than the fact of his equalling Michael Schumacher’s seven world titles, or Marcus Rashford single-handedly taking on, reversing and influencing government policy, or footballers taking the knee en masse in solidarity to the point of walking off the field in the face of a racist comment from an official; or Anton Ferdinand finally responding to the John Terry racism incident in a devastatingly sad documentary? One suspects that like many of us, he would welcome the moment and cautiously work on and wait to see how much momentum it gathers to bring about the real change that would enable him to feel the sense of ease in his Britishness that was lost in the hateful baying of the 1980 Alan Minter crowd.

But that will be another book.

© Olu Alake 2021

STANDING STRONG BY TAKING THE KNEE

Sometimes, you see it happening: the fluttering of the butterfly’s wings that result in the tsunami half a world away. It’s usually imperceptible, but on the odd occasion, the huge significance of the small moment is apparent. There was one such moment on Tuesday 8^th December at Les Parc des Princes stadium in Paris in a Champions League match between Paris St Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir. A coach took offence to an alleged racist comment by the fourth official. A short melee and then both sets of players walked off in protest – and refused to go back out to play as long as the same official was involved in the game, resulting in its postponement to the next day.

This incident is remarkable for a number of reasons: both sets of players walked off in solidarity. The match was not an insignificant friendly, but a competitive match in the world’s most prestigious club competition. The accused person was an official. For years, the battle against racism in football has been a story of incessant and ever-growing one frustrations of many Black players and a cross-section of largely liberal media about the often insincere, certainly unserious tokenistic remonstrations of the football authorities especially at UEFA and FIFA.

There is a long catalogue of shame here, and with what seems to be an increasing regularity in recent years: players abused from the stands by fans, players abusing each other, club officials making ill-judged remarks and even more brain-dead responses in their efforts to mop up the mess they created – The authorities betrayed either a refusal to understand or an appetite to  tackle the issue head-on, and would issue perfunctory fines that barely paid for the cost of watering the pitches on which the racism had occurred – time after time, all across Europe, this happened. Protests against racism were usually left to the assaulted Black players, usually ploughing a very lonely furrow in making their protests, and often ostracised or certainly made to feel victimised as a consequence. At times, to the point of having not just their humanity but even their sanity questioned: the treatment of Mario Balotelli over many years in Italy springs to mind.

Then – Black Lives Matter happened. Borrowing the Colin Kaepernick gesture of taking the knee was initially controversial but swiftly universally adopted in football (unlike say in Formula 1 despite Lewis Hamilton’s best efforts): fans have become used to the sight of players taking the knee for a few moments before the start of matches in the Premier League,  a powerful symbolic gesture supported by the TV broadcasters.  A honourable mention to Liverpool football club, whose players tweeted a picture of all in training taking the knee arguably precipitated adoption of this action by the entire Premier League.  

After a few months, there were signs that some were beginning to think that this gesture had run its course: Queens Park Rangers refused to take the knee any longer, with their widely respected Director of Football Les Ferdinand stating that “…the impact of taking a knee had been diluted” and it was “never going to bring about social change”.

Ironically, just a few days before the Parc Des Princes match, there had been controversy about taking the knee at Milwall, when the club celebrated being allowed to invite only 2,000 socially distanced fans to their stadium for the first time in 9 months only to discover that they had managed to find some fans who thought it was appropriate to welcome themselves back by booing the players taking the knee. And the team that would be playing them at home next? Why, none other than QPR, who decided to take a knee in solidarity with Millwall players who had unequivocally condemned the errant fans. And this on the same day as Neymar and co walking off the pitch in Paris.

It is clear that the gestures of solidarity shown by all sets of players would not have happened a year ago. Rather than Pierre Webo and Demba Ba’s protests being supported by the entire squad of both teams, we would have had more sad lonely gestures as other Black personnel have had to endure. UEFA were obviously caught on the hop by this as well – and made the most tone-deaf offer of relegating the fourth official to the video booth for the match to placate the players – who were having none of it.

The lesson is that symbolic gestures become powerful moments of perceptible activism when they are backed up by clear, unnegotiable, assertive and immediate action. Now that the precedent has been set, it should now become the norm: any incidents of racism from the stands, on the pitch or around it should be met with both sets of players informing the ref and the authorities that they are walking off, regardless of the stakes of the match. In a world where nothing else seems to have worked, who knew that the butterfly wings of taking the knee would usher in the tsunami of change?

Olu Alake

December 2020.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: raucous, vibrant, brilliant and thoughtful theatre.

Readers of Lola Shoneyin’s brilliant 2010 novel about gender politics, sexual dynamics and the uneasy traversing of the contemporary – traditional social continuum in modern Nigerian (specifically Yoruba) marriages, might have received the news of a stage adaptation with some apprehension: would a simple story with such complex underlying narratives and colourful characters translate readily to the stage? Having seen the job that has been done under Femi Elufowoju Jr’s masterful direction in Arcola’s main space, all such fears were very quickly abated. This is one vibrantly enjoyable evening of theatre that adds vivid colour to London’s stage scene.

Baba Segi is Yoruba patriarchy personified: larger than life, materially successful, well-respected in his community, – so much so that he is gifted wives in lieu of debts by appreciative parents, – Baba Segi’s life changes inexorably when he decides to acquire a fourth wife, the irrepressible, university-educated Bolanle. When what still seems to be the ultimate “disaster’ strikes and Bolanle is still ‘barren’ after two years, a web of deceit and secrets unravels, catching everyone in its threads.

Patrice Naiambana is at the top of his game as Baba Segi, aptly dominating the Arcola stage in the round with his billowing agbada as much as he does the spaces and bodies of his three other wives, Iya Segi (Jumoke Fashola), Iya Tope (Christina Oshunniyi) and Iya Femi (Layo-Christina Akinlude). The new arrival Bolanle (Marcy Dolapo Oni) who threatens the entente cordiale of the other wives by her mere presence, a beautiful injection of modernity disrupting the accepted traditional equilibrium of the household. All the actors exhibit fantastic comic timing and musicality, riding the percussive rhythms led by drummer Ayan de First and original Yoruba songs in wave after wave of raucous delight. Elufowoju Jr’s dexterous direction of Caine-prize winning Rotimi Babatunde’s stage adaptation ensures that the pace is even and unforced, and the 2-hours without an interval fly by.

photo credit: idil sukan

In this era of #metoo, Lola Shoneyin’s story is a most welcome contribution to the debate about women’s agency in combating patriarchal institutions, reflecting from a modern Nigerian woman’s perspective on heavy issues (rape, masturbation, sexual fulfilment, the hypocrisy of new-wave Pentecostalism, definition of family) in a light manner. Her views of masculinity, especially as depicted by the Naiambana characters, reflect not just the priviledge of the penis, but also how the price of that priviledge can be suffocating for men as well. It is no wonder that Baba Segi literally has gut wrenches under stress, and in Bolanle’s closing monologue when she describes her “fellow inmates”, you strongly sense this is not just referring to the wives.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives will entertain, delight and provoke you – everything fantastic theatre should do.

On at the Arcola Theatre from 7 June – 21 July.

 

The Black Russian – From Deep South Slavery to Moscow Impresario

Thanks to the advent of Amazon and other online shopping platforms, browsing for books has become a bit of a dying art. As one of the growing number of people who has turned their backs on the rather limited and macular degenerating delights of Kindle, this is now something that I am happily rediscovering – wandering into musky bookstores and wandering through rows of tomes, seeking that indescribable magical something you find in a book, on a random page opened, or a compelling cover image. Or a bold, brash title. The Black Russian caught my eye not just for its allusion to a particularly pleasant cocktail I once had in a distant sunnier clime, but for the cover image as well – a young Black man, certainly of early 20th century, smoking a pipe and staring into and beyond the gaze of the camera lens, overlaid on a diagram of an old European city – maybe this really was a book about a Black Russian, I thought? Intrigued, I opened the book, read the first page…and 45 minutes later, I found myself deep in Chapter 3 and a very impatient Welsh bookstore owner brusquely asking if I intended to buy the book or sleep here, as she had to get home to her dinner.

Imagine a man born to slaves in the late 19th century Deep South, who managed to find his way halfway across the world, traversing all across Western Europe from UK, to France, Germany, Italy, and went on to become proprietor of Russia’s swankiest restaurants and entertainment venues; then after the revolution moving to repeat the feats, starting with nothing, in first Odessa then Constantinople, thus being in the front seat of some of recent history’s most compelling moments …? The true story of Frederick Bruce Thomas is one of those truth-stranger-than-fiction jobs which has been meticulously and almost obsessively researched by the author, Vladimir Alexandrov, himself a Yale University don. In turn inspiring, shocking and sad, Thomas’ story is always amazing, and in today’s world of contested identities, it is intriguing to see how one man wrote his own rules of how he would adapt to unfamiliar environments and thrive regardless. Highly recommended read. (And if you haven’t joined us in abandoning that accursed machine, you can download it for free on to your Kindle.)

Workshop Negative – Mhlanga’s controversial play remains vitally relevant

When Cont Mhlanga wrote Workshop Negative soon after Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, he obviously didn’t expect it to have a life beyond making an immediate impact in his native land. After touring Zimbabwe in 1986, Workshop Negative was banned by the government (for ‘discrediting the office of the president’, no less), Mhlanga was imprisoned and narrowly escaped having his writing fingers amputated as punishment. His travails nevertheless precipitated the development of Zimbabwe’s post-independence township theatre form which has engendered other masterful pieces and fostered the nurturing of a generation of actors and musicians.

There is therefore a measure of appositeness that the London premiere of the play in 2016 is being staged during one of the the most politically turbulent weeks in UK’s living history. And that the play is being presented by Tangle, a small South-West England based company that ‘promotes the work of artists of African, Caribbean and more than 50 other heritages‘, directed by a white woman, the irrepressible Anna Coombs, obviously appealed to Mhlanga’s sense of mischief and propensity to creatively disrupt established thinking modes in an effort to enable his wider message of universal humanity. The story of how Coombs acquired the play is itself worthy of Hollywood  – as the original play had been destroyed (these were the days before computer hard-drives and cloud-based storage, young people!), Coombs embarked on an elaborate effort spanning Africa and Europe to recreate the play, finding a page here and there in the hands of various people, till eventually Mhlanga was tracked down and contacted to fill in the gaps.

Workshop Negative is set in a tool-making workshop in the immediate aftermath of Zimbabwe’s independence. The workshop has been recently acquired by Mkhezi, a Black businessman who used to be a hero of the resistance movement who still happily addresses rallies calling for the masses to dedicate themselves to socialism while he practises the most pernicious form of capitalism (ignoring workers’ rights, under-paying and under-resourcing staff), while acquiring all the material trappings (two Mercedes, two Jaguars, countless shareholdings and executive chairmanships). He employs two craftsmen to “push his production” – Ray, a white man, and Zulu, a Black man and former comrade in the movement, who recognise each other from when they locked horns in battle during the resistance for independence. And that’s how the fun starts…

Coombs masterfully (and shouldn’t there be a word such as ‘mistressfully’?) draws out the complex embedded themes of race, belonging, legitimacy of identity, political hypocrisy, the difficulties of reconciliation and class warfare. By staying as true to the original subject matter as she possibly could, resisting the urge to update the material to cater for today’s world, Workshop Negative authentically resonates with a palpable sense of urgency and ends up saying more than it otherwise would have about issues which we are still almost hopelessly grappling with.  Cont Mhlanga does not do subtle in this play, giving the impression that he would not hesitate to use a sledgehammer in his hand to crack open a walnut rather than faff about for subtler instrument. This is understandable when one considers that Mhlanga was inspired to write the play while working in a similar workshop and observing the white and black staff’s challenges to forge a new relationship.

The performances of Jude Akuwudike, Danilo Antonelli and John Pfumojena are inspiring: the form of the play is intensely physically demanding, and the piece relentlessly crackles along to its fraught conclusion. Interspersing the hour-long (no interval and you won’t notice) break-neck narrative is some epic singing – ‘Tshotsholoza’ is particularly spine-tingling. The intimate space of the Gate Theatre is maximised by the clever design of Colin Falconer to convey an almost claustrophobic sense that the protagonists will relentlessly and inevitably rub each other up the wrong way.

I had the pleasure of hosting a very lively post-show discussion on its second night, which demonstrated beyond any doubt just how relevant the play is. The audience made the natural connections of the play’s themes to the contemporary political situation and state of race relations in the UK, as well as contributing some powerful reflections on the enduring role of theatre to provoke passionate response, challenge established hierarchies of thought and reflect ourselves as we are, as we imagine ourselves to be and as we are working towards. Like the play itself, this was not always a comfortable conversation, but it is vitally necessary for us to understand the world we live in and the work we need to do to develop what Mhlanga calls “a new plan that will unite us”.

Kudos to the Gate Theatre for having the nerve to stage this. Given the sensitivities of the subject-matter and Arts Council England’s seeming inability or lack of willingness to actively encourage a greater diversity of offering amongst its theatre-receiving portfolio organisations, it is unlikely that this play will be on tour to anywhere near you soon, so go see it during its ridiculously short run.  Workshop Negative is on at the Gate Theatre till Saturday 9th July 2016. For more information on Tangle, see here.

 

Bricks and Pieces – A beautiful exploration of love and loss

Cutting straight to the chase: Charlene James’ new play, the result of an inspired collaboration between Tiata Fahodzi and RADA, is a brilliant, sensitive and beautiful piece of theatre. Subtly exploring a pocked landscape of love, loss, denial and identity, Bricks and Pieces takes the audience on an emotional rollercoaster ride to the most heart-rending of crescendoes. The story is of two lovers building a life suddenly tragically pulled apart, leaving the one in a place of stultifying emotional and social paralysis; a cousin with a noble mission and no sense of direction; and a loyal friend who stands in faith to be his brothers’ keeper in a way family cannot.

With the issues of identity, sexuality and ethnicity that the protagonists are variously contending with, in less skilled hands, the writing could have easily reduced to cliché. But under the direction of Tiata Fahodzi’s Natalie Ibu, these are made merely incidental, and she successfully reframes the work to being a simple story very well told of an emotional universality of love, loss and loyalty. That there were hardly any dry eyes in the house by the end was indeed due testament to this. When all is said and done, love is love, and loss is loss.

One could in fact quibble with the de-emphasis of the cultural specificities in the play: British theatre is after all, still sadly nowhere near being prolific enough in telling the stories of the many strands of the kaleidoscope of our society, and there remains a bewildering level of ignorance both within and outside of various ethnic groups about certain social issues. One can however also understand the frustrations that arts organisations with the specific remit of telling the stories of a ‘community’ as complex in its own innate diversity as Tiata Fahodzi’s British-African base, in being pigeon-holed to having that sole responsibility which should rightly be every publically-funded organisation’s. The message that this play, and indeed from Tiata Fahodzi under Ibu’s leadership, is that the emphasis of theatre should first and foremost be on good storytelling and not the source or target community. Work as strong as Bricks and Pieces certainly makes that case very eloquently.

A word to the actors, all of whom are third-year students at RADA and with whom the writer and director workshopped the play before writing it – Abraham Popoola, Evlyne Oyedokun, David Jonsson and Jamael Westman were all fantastic. Oyedokun’s comic timing was precision, Westman was understatedly elegant and Jonsson superbly depicted the quiet, calm authority of a man driven by faith to do what is right. A special mention however has to go to Popoola; as the grieving Tobi, he doesn’t just grab you by the heartstrings, he mines great depth to pierce a hole through the chest in the process.

Charlene James follows up the award-winning success of Cuttin’ It to great effect here, revealing herself to be a writer of immense talent and promise. There were tears of laughter and tears of sadness everywhere I looked in the audience over the well-paced 75 minute piece, and THAT is good theatre.

Bricks and Pieces is on at RADA Malet Street London till June 4, then at Latitude Festival. Charlene James’ Cuttin’ It (2015 winner of Alfred Fagon award for best new play), directed by Genesis Fellow recipient Gbolahan Obisesan, is on at the Young Vic until 11 June and then transfers to Royal Court from 23 June – 13 July.

MORE THEATRE TO LOOK OUT FOR:

• Soul: Roy Williams’ exploration of the last days of Marvin Gaye is on at Hackney Empire from 15 June – 3 July.
• Workshop Negative: The UK premiere of Cont Mhlanga’s relevant, controversial and banned Zimbabwean play, at Gate Theatre, 6 to 9 July.

• Blue/Orange: a modern classic, on at Young Vic till 2 July.

• Showboat: Exuberant revival of the legendary Kern & Hammerstein musical, at New London Theatre.

• Wakaa! The Musical: the first Nigerian musical to tour London after a phenomenally successful run back home, focussing on the lives and challenges of a group of young Nigerian graduates; at the Shaw Theatre, London July 21^st – 25^{th .} 

 

 

If All Lives Truly Matter…

When there was a terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo last year, the internet quickly filled with the memes of the tricolour in solidarity and support of the victims . this was an uncompromising public statement in defence of the civil liberty and freedom of free speech. ‘I am Charlie’, they all said.

Then more recently, there were the barbaric bombings of Paris, murdering over 120 people and eliciting more outrage, sympathy, defiance and the ever present meme, Facebook profile pictures overlaid with the tricolour : ‘I am Paris’, they all said.  Interestingly, there was more of a backlash to this though – apparently struck by the rhetoric and herd instinct which is the bane of ‘clicktivism’, many started asking the questions of the motives and underlying assumptions of the people who are either led by or leading the media into the quasi- colonial notion of Western lives mattering disproportionately more than the other several hundreds of people lost to terror activities worldwide. Do only Western – white – lives deserve commemoration and celebration on social media?

And then, the cruel hand of fate pointed towards Europe’s eastern-most neighbour and desperately seeking to become a EU member, Turkey. (The country’s application to join the EU is so contested that many in the UK are saying that they are more likely to vote for a BrexIt if Turkey’s 77 million citizens are welcomed to the Pan European project.)

When suicide bombers unleashed their murderous impulses over the weekend just gone,  over 35 people lay dead. That is more than 3 times the number who died in Charlie Hebdo. One would therefore hope that within 24 hours of the atrocity, the internet would be filled with the supporting memes and I should not be able to log on to my Facebook page this morning without having to heave my way through a phalanx of ‘I am Ankara!’ memes and messages of solidarity. I should not be able to recognise most of my Facebook friends and acquaintances for the superimposition of Turkey’s red flag on their profile pictures? One would think so – but it hasn’t happened, at least not on any appreciable scale. I wonder why? 

This same weekend, there were 16 people killed in Cote D’Ivoire as a terrorist group opened fire on a hotel in a UNESCO heritage site town. No, you didn’t miss the hashtags in solidarity of these either. There were none, at least none widely shared outside the communities of the directly affected. It doesn’t help that even for those who want to, Facebook was not allowing you to change your profile picture to the Turkish flag.

As we saw in US with the reaction of many to the #BlackLivesMatter campaign which some spectacularly misjudged and deemed so divisive it elicited the #AllLivesMatter response, it seems that there is a Western media defined kinship recognition comfort level which legitimises the empathy for and inclusion of suffering peoples. If they are ‘like us’ or are affected in one of ‘our places’, then their suffering is worthy of a widely shared hashtag. If they are frankly, killing each other, (Kurds killing Turks? Africans killing Africans? Nothing to see here, it seems)…  maybe we just report it for a day on the news channels and then swiftly move on.

Even when there is coverage,there are marked differences which highlight the different value placed on human lives of the ‘Other’ by western media. Google Ankara Terror attacks and you will get several pictures of the dead. Try Paris terror attacks and you will see picture after picture of the aftermath and impact. The dead are accorded more dignity.

Surely, there should be no hierarchy of suffering, or league table of human value. For all lives to matter, then we all matter or none of us matter. Suffering is suffering from Paris to Miami and yes, from Sambisa to Grand Bassam to Ankara. If the Michael Jackson/Lionel Richie-penned opus for the 1987 Ethiopian famine is to be given a 21st century reboot, we should just all #WeAretheWorld. Anyone got a meme for that?