8.5 Paris, London, 2006-7
Otto e mezzo (2006-2007) - in the spirit of Fellini
We recognised that we had no Francophone presence in The Fence, so we created a
special initiative to rectify this:
Acts of Translation – Paris London
at Theatre du Lierre, Paris September 28-30th
We brought together Roy Williams, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Dipo Agboluaje, Gabriel
Gbadamosi, Bonnie Greer, Lisa Goldman, Ahmed Ghazali, Koffi Kuwale, Mohamed Rouabhi,
Josip Rainer, Farid Paya, Alain Foix, Philippe Le Moine, Fred Fortas and Jonathan
Meth.
We spoke of frontiers – how some are more visible than others and we asked how to
write what cannot be written: giving voice to the voiceless.
We recognised that the collective experience drew on - multiple personalities -
Jamaica, Punjab, Zimbabwe, Guadeloupe, Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, USA,
Canada, Iran, Ireland, Catalonia.
We wondered is there a distinct border language? I write for my team, about class,
using many languages, using and for the body (politic) also at crossroads, transgressing
borders.
We said that identity is how you place your language in the world: but acknowledged
that we cant see ourselves, la tâche aveugle – the blind spot
We felt like lone wolves aligned with like-minded people.
We want to be practical - answers come when I’m doing my work - I am looking to
slap myself in the face.
Dipo Agboluaje and Bonnie Greer in Paris
We want a platform for radical expression; investing in the imagination of artists.
To co-produce new writing with a French producing house, of work by Europeans who
are not of European origin, with a return encounter, in London, at Soho Theatre
Exchange, mettisage, workshops, translation, production, residency, the bilingual
rehearsed reading.
In London, In December Roy, Gurpreet, Jonathan, Dipo, Gabriel, Bonnie, Lisa and
Philippe met to jointly reflect on Paris and outline future plans. A return visit
at Soho Theatre. Subsequently Lisa and Dipo (now writer-in-residence at Soho) offered
an August slot – but this was not ideal for the French participant.
In Paris in March 2007 Jonathan, Philippe and Alain met with EAT who were staging
a reading by Roderique Norman in collaboration with Ecritures Vagabondes. Both agencies
should be involved as the project grows.
In Istanbul in April 2007 we welcomed French participation in The Fence - Alain,
Ahmed, Dipo, Gabriel, Jonathan and Philippe participated in the 9th Fence meeting
and consolidated our commitment to each other and our plans. Gabriel and Philippe
worked on a bilingual reading of an extract of Alain’s work. Planning discussions
prioritised 1. secure a key French partner – La Vilette and Jacques Martial. 2.
Gabriel’s invitation from Goldsmiths to come and for the French writers to respond
as artists to the election within the wider social and cultural matrix of liberte,
egalite, fraternite. (Soho’s offer remains open, pending a meeting in May with Jacques,
Bonnie, Jonathan and Alain).
As Head of Arts for the British Council in Paris, Philippe remained a strong advocate
of both The Fence and Acts of Translation, but could not have such a hands-on role.
Links to the IETM remain strong through both Philippe and Jonathan who jointly presented
on new writing in Europe at the Helsinki IETM in December 2006.
h2>
Acts of Translation - Rencontres Paris/Londres
Ecriture théâtrale, différence, dialogue et engagement culturels
First Meeting in Paris
Introduction
On September 28th -30th 2006 Writernet held a 2 day inaugural encounter in Paris
at the Theatre du Lierre, of between 5 and 10 playwrights from France and between
5 and 10 from the UK to meet each other and to find ways in which to articulate
and explore the issues of inter-cultural dialogue and difference.
This is intended as a long term, bilateral London-Paris initiative focusing on playwrighting
that engages the diverse communities of our two major world cities. The aim is to
explore and learn from different experiences of our changing populations and shifting
cultural identities.
In engaging with questions of citizenship, belonging and identity – through dialogue
and difference - we aimed to draw on the French model of inviting philosophers,
thinkers, critics, translators and others in a facilitating role into the theatre
discourse.
Cultural attitudes and institutional arrangements have led to very different approaches
in Britain and France to common questions concerning our future in Europe and the
internal make-up of our societies. Theatre – and its writers in particular - can
provide us with a shared space in which to examine issues of interaction, accommodation,
integration, separatism, conflict and change.
The question for the encounter:
What it is now to be European – in London or Paris - with the playwright as interpreter
of change?
Activity
- for French and British playwrights to talk, workshop, make connections
- to bring a French presence into the debates on British new writing and vice
versa
- to consider how the communities and voices of the new Parisians and Londoners can
be heard in our theatres
- to analyse how theatre and its writers actualise the turbulence in our societies
- to explore the scope for partnership and exchange between Paris and London-based
theatres, institutions and playwrights
Following the encounter, we decided to explore options - to facilitate exchanges
among the playwrights - for them to spend time in each others’ cities, cultures,
languages and working environments – to steep themselves and learn and reflect and
respond and write.
We might also subsequently want to commission translations to improve the flow of
work between the two communities of playwrights – towards a community of interest.
Through the engagement of institutional partners, we might also want to stage productions
of plays in both cities.
Preparation
We planned, in partnership with French and British new writing organisations (see
below), a curated programme of activity which will allow for a shared language to
emerge… to mediate between the different experiences, perspectives and interests
of participants.
So as not to spend time introducing who we are and what we do, writernet beforehand
created an initial reader in English and French.
Participants
The project is led by writernet and is linked to their project The Fence, which
is a growing network for playwrights and those who make new plays happen across
Europe, with a focus on European mobility.
The project was a collaboration with the Theatre du Lierre and the British Council.
It was co-facilitated by Farid Paya, Artistic Director of Theatre du Lierre and
Jonathan Meth, Director of writernet and with the participation on Philippe le Moine,
Head of Arts ant The British Council in Paris
With the focus on playwrights, we wanted to broaden the exchange to encompass key
players in the sector: Gatekeepers Translators Publishers Thinkers. Over time, we
intend to actively solicit the input of a wide range of organisations such as Horschamps
and their publication, Cassandre.
from LONDON
For writernet
Jonathan Meth (Director); playwrights Bonnie Greer (Chair), Gabriel Gbadamosi (Advisory
Council and Hydroponic Project Dramaturg),
from PARIS
Farid Paya was our host. Theatre du Lierre, close to the Bibliotheque Nationale,
is a building-based theatre company with its own facilities for hosting events.
Josip Rainer (playwright, dramaturg and writernet’s International Associate - Paris
based);
As the new Head of Arts for the British Council in Paris. Philippe Le Moine, for
many years international associate at the National Theatre Studio, assisted considerably
with the facilitation the project.
We drew up independent lists of Francophone playwrights to join established UK writers
in this dialogue on the changing face of theatre in Paris and London.
Schedule
The first day-and-a-half was given over to playwrights from both cities. The final
half day opened up the discourse to other theatre practitioners, institutions and
interested parties
Paris
Mohamed Rouabhi
Koffi Kwahulé
Alain Foix
Farid Paya
Philippe Le Moine
London
Roy Williams
Gurpreet Bhatti
Dipo Agboluaje
Bonnie Greer
Gabriel Gbadamosi
Lisa Goldman
There were others who wanted very much to join
us, but were unable
Aziz chouaki
Hubert koundé
Tanika Gupta
Manjinder Virk
We asked two playwrights - one in Paris, one in London to set out some areas for
consideration
Acts of Translation - Rencontres Paris/Londres
Ecriture théâtrale, différence, dialogue et engagement culturels (Paris)
Extract from Josip Rainer’s initial notes and comments which formed the basis for
the project
The present document is intended as a de-facto exercise in digging up the root exchanges,
partnerships, contacts and considerations that are necessary in the embedding of
the conference as a long-term project in the evolving cultural landscape of the
European community. Defining the necessity and context of the planned event is thus
important in underlining the role of contemporary European playwrights as cultural
‘hunter-gatherers’ of multiculturalism and just how they negotiate their respective
horizons.
• What does one mean by culturally diverse playwrights? The answer is twofold: playwrights
from diverse cultural origins, and ‘landed’ playwrights, that is, those playwrights
with direct national roots but who are capable of creating characters who are culturally
opposed to their own origins… If one is to talk of contemporary playwriting as being
alert to the issues of multiculturalism, then one is forced to take into account
the realities of cultural citizenship and experiences of mixed community encounters…
• With the UK aesthetic of the text that seems to predominate the conception of
the dramatic text, the keyword is language. With French landscaping of the dramatic
text, I don’t think that we are talking about language but rather image/image-making.
If the keyword to the contemporary European performance text is language, then one
can still talk about dramaturgy, and a pleasure of the play that is entirely an
aesthetic experience as one moves through the subplots. As I understand it, contemporary
‘serious’ French plays mostly use dramaturgy in order to arrive at a direct frameworking
of image, rather than language.
• What of the palette of cultural communities that make up the contemporary audience?
Does cultural diversity in the contemporary European play text require a different
conception of consumerism in the theatre, a consumerism that is also prepared to
educate and inform, a consumerism that can no longer be satisfied with traditional
conceptions of the ‘well-made’ play? Can contemporary playwriting then be said to
be capable of recognizing that the very elements of drama – plot, action, character,
recognition, reversal, thought – are the very same elements that characterize cultural
diversity in everyday life? If the playwright’s voice is to claim any stake-holding
in a repertoire of multicultural play texts for contemporary European society, then
that voice has to realize that the consumerism that makes up the nature of a contemporary
audience relies on the paradox of that same audience’s pleasure: pleasure, yes,
a good evening out, most certainly, but there is also the need to witness painful
events. Perhaps if we are to understand the role of the European playwright in a
multicultural society, then we have to reinvent a poetics of spectatorship that
puts a special emphasis on tragedy? Tragedy here also includes tragic-comedy and
grotesque farce. Writing cultural diversity in dramatic forms means that playwrights
today have to go back to the school of tragedy, redefine the genre, and, more importantly,
finally accept that cultural diversity is not a vague template for the art of characterization.
Cultural diversity, seen through the perspective of an adequate understanding of
tragedy, is not what pulls us apart; it is the force that brings us together. Nothing
unites people like tragedy. Memory, sight and expectation are what constitute the
consciousness of cultural diversity as it exists in tragedy. It seems to me that
the particular demand of a culturally diverse repertoire of contemporary European
play texts is that it be time-efficient, that is, efficient for contemporary audiences
and society. Like the March Hare, such a repertoire would be alert to the necessity
“of being worried about being on time with the next event, the next ‘NOW’. The role
of the playwright as interpreter is to create a twenty-first century psyche that
highlights the double authenticity that characterizes the contemporary spectator
living in a multicultural society.
• Cultural diversity in contemporary European playwriting is a challenging proposition,
mainly because it means ‘imaging through words’ the different cultures in motion
within national boundaries. Cross-cultural playwriting is thus about escaping traditional
conceptions of national boundaries, in particular by transforming/ imitating performance
traditions that are ghettoised with present-day European acting/ directing/ writing
traditions. Participants must not necessarily need to be alert to these traditions,
but more relevantly, being aware of this failing within contemporary playwriting.
• Establishing a vocabulary would help eradicate the underlying prejudice that comes
with encounter with multiculturalism, that is: the ‘People like that’ expression
that underlines refusal of the other, and which permeates all spheres of cross-cultural
community living. That 'naming things' is the very basis of communication is one
thing, but that it should be capable of becoming a condition of language as we move
culturally closer, is quite another. Every culturally diverse person has a name,
but it is necessary that contemporary European playwrights be capable of creating
dramatic characters that evolve in the parallel worlds that make up contemporary
global society. In a sense, it is not a case of the contemporary stage catching
up with cultural diversity and multicultural society, but rather that contemporary
theatre practitioners are waiting for contemporary playwrights to install cultural
diversity as an unavoidable framework for life in present-day European society.
The need then lies on the dramaturgical level; being able to install signposts of
cultural diversity in the narrative and in the action of a performance text. The
contemporary play text should be capable of creating cultural clash as a pre-requisite
for respecting different cultural identities. ‘Standing back and looking in’ implies
both the technique for cross-cultural characterization and the respect for that
other culture. Dramatic illusion would have the playwright believe that they can
create a culturally diverse character from the ‘inside’. However, it has to be said
that cultural diverse characters are only identified as being real when they are
evident as being templates of a diversity greater than stereotype (skin colour,
religion, gender, sexual preference, etc.). Is cross-cultural characterization then
a political act by the playwright? I believe that the role of the playwright as
interpreter of cultural diversity in everyday life has more to do with thinking
politically than with writing plays where so-called culturally diverse postcard
characters obey the laws of political and, more so, religious correctness.
Acts of Translation - Rencontres Paris/Londres
Ecriture théâtrale, différence, dialogue et engagement culturels (London)
BME Theatre in the 21st Century?
A provocation to the sector, and Arts Council England, from Gabriel Gbadmosi
Waiting for us, the practitioners, to change it, the Arts Council England uses the
term BME (Black Minority Ethnic) to describe the creative work of artists originating
from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and East Asia. Further, BME is often contracted
to, and used interchangeably with, the single word Black. You can be Black as Japanese
and Minority Ethnic as Indian in Leicester, but you can not be BME as Irish in Kilburn,
Albanian in Finsbury Park, or Polish anywhere you happen to have migrated in the
UK. We are clearly operating in a field of colour: BME is aimed at a broad geographical
spread of non-white peoples. It is an attempt to describe, and counter, discrimination
as it occurs across British society on the basis of colour.
Unfortunately, as BME accompanies and discloses the fault lines of, effectively,
a colour bar (making what operates invisibly as discrimination visible by labelling
the people it targets), it tends not only to counter but also to reinforce a discriminatory
version of the world. One extreme outcome of this is the ghettoisation of BME funded
work: BME, non-white, black people must have some small corner of funding to cover
their minority interests and audiences – over there, among themselves. The colour
of your skin starts to operate instead of you in determining the scope and meaning
of your creative work – born of discrimination, marginal in its concerns. Such a
view closes minds and limits horizons, denigrates the work and does a disservice
to all who see the legacy to our society of the last century as its openness to
diversity – a diversity including (but not limited to) its Caribbean, Pakistani,
African, Chinese and Turkish influences.
Something is needed to break open the stifling contradictions of BME terminology
– lumping the interests and outlooks of the artist identified as Vietnamese together
with the practices and development needs of Trinidadian steel bands. How can BME
account for the slide away from fixed cultural identities in the collaborations
between Irish playwrights and African dancers, Philippino and Polish puppeteers,
black British actors and a Sri Lankan director? Does BME begin to capture the excitement
and complexity of these new encounters in our society – here, now, in Britain today
– encounters between artists and peoples drawn from Columbia and Brazil, out of
Eastern and Southern Europe, let alone Africa and the wide continent of Asia?
It is my hope as an Irish, Nigerian, British writer that our BME voices will become
as central to the future and prosperity of Britain’s cultural life as they are to
global popular culture – from hip-hop to the Hindi musical. When we speak of BME
as of the poor, the marginal and the oppressed, holding that as our understanding
of how to pay lip service to diversity, we miss rather an important trick. Both
the language and the mind-set prevent us thinking through the relationships between,
say, the multicultural and the international in scope and ambition. Who, for example,
is in a ghetto whose work opens windows on South India, the West Indies, downtown
Lagos? Analysis of the shifting demography of our major towns and cities points
already to local hubs of a globally-focused range of creative and cultural practices
– in music, certainly, but also in dance, literature, and performance. The potential
for cross-fertilisation among our artists is the great white hope of multicultural
Britain. Our diversity is the laboratory of future culture. And it involves everyone
– in that everyone is changed by it.
The success of London’s Olympic bid was built on a snap shot of our athletes and
the aspiring young people of the East End as multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-talented.
For creative artists unburdened by the narrow parochialism of British racism, to
be transcultural in Britain ought to put you up on a world stage beside our Olympic
athletes – at the cutting edge, in global competition. Yet any survey of so-called
BME theatre over the last few decades would have to conclude, at the very least,
that the sector as a whole has failed to thrive. Why that should be – and why Black
and Asian theatre, as it used to be known, has never managed to completely die out
in despite of conspicuous failure – is really a question worth asking. Though I
can imagine when a theatre that doesn’t employ you takes over the telling of your
story that you don’t like it, and you want to take back your sense of self in your
own theatre.
I ask myself from time to time, do I believe my work to have been limited by being
perceived as a BME artist in the prevailing circumstances of British theatre? Ask
a silly question… but I come up regularly with two quite different answers. Perhaps
the obvious one is yes, I should have been white. And what’s more, if I have to
be Black, I should have been Blacker than I am to profit from the ongoing, if sporadic,
attempts at positive discrimination and funding. But I’m not gangsta enough to do
that. The other answer is no, the life of a playwright is notoriously short, a kind
of mayfly that has its moment and vanishes, and I had my day. I and every other
playwright I know has had to reinvent themselves in order to keep working. The problem
has never been being Black but staying Young. The new Young playwright has often
been at it for twenty years, and nothing rejuvenates likes success. So why bother
railing about something like BME terminology, let alone the mind-set? Who cares
what the industry thinks when all bets are off with a hit? Don’t get mad, get made
in the West End. A good BME show is always a hot ticket because people feel it should
be there, somewhere.
But if success is not the solution to BME failure, what is? There appear to me to
be two positions on this. That society as a whole has exercised poor judgment in
its management of the whole multiculturally diverse thing and ought to do it more
but better. Or, it’s been a mistake from the first and society had best figure out
how to retrench in native, core British values that can then be rolled out to the
take-it-or-leave-it edges. Either way, there is some work to do. What are those
values to be for the neo-nativists, or how to do failure better for the diversifiers?
Both of these positions fail to grasp, from my point of view, the reality that our
diversity is native. Diversity subsists not in a segment of our society but throughout
it, in its very nature. British theatre as a whole has failed to reflect its society.
Following a recent Arts Council England sponsored consultation with the BME theatre
sector, Baroness Lola Young’s report, “Whose Theatre?”, recommended the development
of a network of buildings for BME work into the 21st century. I chaired the presentation
of that report to the Arts Council and the initial engagement of BME artists with
its various recommendations at the Theatre Royal Stratford East once the Arts Council
had decided to back it. Whatever else, the conversation around the issues raised
in the report is very lively and instructive. I think it’s fair to say, on the matter
of buildings – bricks and mortar, bums and seats, safe houses for beleaguered work
– some people will believe it when they see it. Some existing theatre companies
would rather shore up their own tenure on buildings. Others voices want clarity
on the inclusive or exclusive remit of the buildings in relation different interest
groups within the BME sector – who gets to use these buildings and for what?. And
some others see new occasions for infighting over scarce resources. But the sector
as a whole has said it wants these buildings and that is where the matter rests
for the time being.
My own suggestion for this network of buildings – given, among other things, the
demand for them outstripping supply among BME theatre practitioners – is to focus
on their programming. Rather than encourage yet another round of unreflective and
unproductive ‘ghettoisation’ of BME-funded work, it may be possible to solicit bids
from consortia of BME-led artists and/or producers to run each of the venues on
a rotating basis, say, for three years. Free to think outside of the BME box, the
remit might be to develop and program work that in their view reflects the diversity
of our society – their own or from across British or international theatre. It would
be the content of the work and not the colour of the skin that leads in asking what
should British theatre be doing to reflect its society? We might then have a network
of theatres that describe us now and give us a glimpse of our future.
Gabriel Gbadamosi AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow, Goldsmiths College,
University of London
Acts of Translation – Rencontres Paris-Londres
November 9th-11th 2007
Writernet, Soho Theatre and Goldsmiths, University of London collaborated with support
from the Institute Francais and the British Council to create a return leg in London
to explore what it is to be working now in our multi-cultural cities….
We saw, and discussed, readings of short plays on the theme liberté. egalité, fraternité
written in French by Alain Foix and Ahmed Ghazali, with responses written in English
by Gabriel Gbadamosi
We learned about Oladipo Agboluaje’s week’s residency in the 94th at
the Theatrales Charles Dullin with Guillaume Hasson + Maria Cristina Marcangelli
We saw Roy Williams new play, Joe Guy, at Lisa Goldman’s Soho Theatre directed by
Femi Elufowoju, jr Of Tiata Fahodzi
and Jean Genet’s The Blacks remixed, Translated by Robert David MacDonald; Directed
by Ultz and Excalibah, at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.
We (re-)met each other, continued and developed the conversations begun a year ago.
Joining us from France:
Alain Foix,
Ahmed Ghazali,
Josip Rainer,
Fred Fortas
Sandrine Grataloup at SACD
Guillaume Hasson + Maria Cristina Marcangelli at Theatrales Charles Dullin
Louise Doutreligne + Jean Luc Palies at EAT
Philippe Le Moine at British Council
(with apologies from Aziz Chouaki, Marion Aubert, Koffi Kwahule,)
Invited from the UK
Gabriel Gbadamosi
Bonnie Greer
Oladipo Agbolauje
Roy Williams
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Lisa Goldman
Paul Sirett
Jonathan Meth
Sophie Claudel at Institut Francais
Michael Bhim
ACTS OF TRANSLATION - Paris, 2006
Reflection
The Fence is a network of European playwrights established in 2003 and developed
through a series of twice-yearly meetings and exchanges at theatre festivals and
events across Europe. Curated by Writernet, the network has created a series of
international collaborations including the ‘Janus’ translation project in Finland,
Austria and Britain (2005-6), aimed at remodelling writer/translator exchanges,
and the ‘Acts of Translation’ conference (Paris, 2006) between black Paris and London
based playwrights, exploring common ground and structural differences towards closer
cooperation in rethinking the role of the playwright in our culturally diverse societies.
The objectives of The Fence were to encourage a rethinking of cultural diversity
in terms of cultural mobility. To facilitate playwrights in working internationally.
To foster relationships between playwrights and facilitators towards closer forms
of collaboration in relation to translation and production. And to explore both
multi-cultural and international contexts in relation to shared experience of and
possible innovation in dramaturgical approaches to writing within and across cultures.
In the ‘Acts of Translation’ meeting which took place at the Theatre du Lierre in
Paris, September 2006, it was argued that work which operates at a level of pluralism
across cultures can facilitate an escape from the ‘prison’ of over-burdened identity
issues. That neither in Britain nor France is theatre effectively embedded in the
movements of our changing societies. That recent concessions in France to ‘visible
minorities’ implied a blind-spot in relation to an imagined ‘invisible majority’.
And that theatre in both countries increasingly constitutes its potential but excluded
audiences as ‘out of control, dirty, feminine, savage’ – a point evidenced by Gurpreet
Bhatti’s experience of the Bezhti riots at the Birmingham Rep, during which a protest
banner read “Shame on Sikh playwright for her corrupt imagination”. In the divide
between theatres and (alienated) audiences, a certain space opens up in which the
playwright/artist operates in a ‘sacrificial’ middle ground. Though a problem, this
scapegoating was perceived as an opportunity to re-conceive the role of the playwright
in re-thinking the art-form – as a crucible for the tensions of our diverse cities.
Follow up exchanges will take place in both Paris and London in preparation for
a further meeting in London to explore potential collaborations around the playwright
as an artist embedded in and disclosing the evolving life of the city.
The initial impulse behind ‘Acts of Translation’ (which does not translate into
the French ‘Rencontres Theatrales’) was for culturally diverse playwrights to go
outside their society, to Paris, a mirror to London, to see themselves in relation
to the other. The variety of our diversities were a first marker of our differences
and common currency: Nigerian, Irish, Sikh, Jewish, Caribbean, African American,
female and English meeting our equivalents from Guadeloupe, Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria,
Morocco, Iran, South Africa and France.
A common story of finding “no texts where [we] wanted to speak” formed much of the
group’s narrative of wanting to engage in theatre in order to give ‘voice’ or articulation
to personal experience. The option of being silenced, or falling silent, was also
never very far from this engagement, leading one writer to describe himself as ‘a
doubting priest’ in relation to the value or impact of his theatre work. Finding
one’s own route to meaningful engagement, the metaphor of the journey, as a narrative,
marked more or less everyone’s account of their own work – often as an outsider,
or by adopting a trickster persona of playing both ends against the middle, wrong-footing
the ‘burden of representation’ placed on the work of ethnic minority artists.
The ‘burden’ of identity, carrying forward the legitimate issues and grievances
of an ethnic minority, provoked uneasy exchanges balanced between the need to take
one’s ‘body’ forward (as well as back) in its contestation of the power to self-actualise
in society and the perception that these issues constitute a ‘prison’ (and comfort
zone) for the artist, and society does not value that cul-de-sac. Two writers argued
their way out of this prison through strategies involving both the personal and
the (non) political: the (political) issues can be kept alive, but not at the expense
of the creative life of the playwright as a person.
The French writers spoke of the failed legacy of Andre Malraux’s ‘art for art’s
sake’ post war initiatives in Cultural provision which failed to embed theatre as
an art form in the movement and change of French society. Jack Lang’s reversal of
funding policy to establish a centralised, official form of culture in the 1980s
had nailed the coffin of any thing like theatre as a platform for ‘free, dissident
expression’. ‘Recuperation’ was the French word applied to neutralising by partial
co-option any challenge to the status quo from emerging, radical art forms such
as street rap. In addition to this situation, France is officially a Republic of
no minorities. Since the recent street disturbances in France protesting official
neglect and exclusion, a certain space has been conceded, as discussed above, to
‘visible minorities’. But what characterises the situation in France seems to be
the character of the clandestine, the unassimilated, migrant, fugitive – ‘the hidden
(transgressive) character of our age’, perhaps unwilling to be seen. In this context,
it is a political act, and a revealing one, to ‘place your language in the world’.
Discussion turned to potential solutions to an impasse in which art is conceived
as an instrument of social control rather than a tool for resistance, for the liberation
of one’s voice, for celebration. The question of how the playwright seeks an audience
and is related to a community emerged (she is sometimes of it, yet can be against
its treatment of women), whereas freedom to choose our associations – to find commonalities
between ourselves in Paris and London, for example – ended the closed session of
the meeting on a note of purpose: to engage the city, it peoples and each other.
Gabriel Gbadamosi 8 November 2006