Reclaiming
Identity and Culture
Postcolonial
theater is drama that focuses on issues surrounding oppressed peoples. A major
current of mid- to late twentieth century history was the decolonization of
English, French, Dutch, and British empires, and the emergence of talented and
exciting playwrights from these cultures has been significant. Postcolonial
literature and theater deal with the question of the “subaltern” finding his
voice. A subaltern is a person in a subordinate position, and the term has come
to refer to anyone who fights the process and results of colonialism. In
examining many different postcolonial voices, one can see many of the difficult
issues raised—including the intersections of nationalism, identity, and
race—and discern the ways in which many of the leading postcolonial playwrights
have chosen to deal with these issues.
One of the main
actions of the colonial powers was the disruption and replacement of indigenous
culture. Frantz Fanon, the great postcolonial theorist and “freedom fighter” in
the Algerian independence movement in the 1950’s, felt that the goal of French
colonization was the creation of “black Frenchmen” who were one step lower on
the social scale than whites. For example, Fanon describes how, growing up in
the French colony of Martinique (he later moved to Algeria), he never heard of
writers such as Martinique’s poet and playwright Aimé Césaire but studied and
learned all the French classics and spoke only French, thus participating in an
educational system that slowly and effectively marginalized African cultural
references. This pattern of acculturation was repeated throughout the colonized
world, from Australia to India and Africa.
Postcolonial
playwrights, therefore, have served not only as playwrights of protest but also
as figures resisting the colonization of their native cultures. In some cases,
where the process of acculturation has been thorough, postcolonial plays have
revealed elements of culture destroyed by the colonizers. Cultural revival
serves as a powerful force in the establishment and creation of independent
nationhood. By exploring the indigenous myths of a place and people before the
arrival of Western culture, postcolonial playwrights have attempted to aid in
the reclamation of cultural memory and to assert the colonized peoples as
legitimate and historical communities, that is, as true nations.
A sense of
nationhood is also deeply connected to the idea of racial identity. In many
instances of colonialism, issues of race are pushed to the forefront and used
as a tool of subjugation by the colonizers. For some playwrights and theorists,
the quest for their own racial and cultural identity supersedes the quest for
nationhood. For these writers, the desire to assert their humanity after
decades of oppression becomes one of the dominant themes in their work.
Nonwhite playwrights might feel that they must prove their worth to the world,
which often tends to identify them as less important than their counterparts of
European ancestry.
Reinventing
Theatrical Conventions
The emergence of
playwrights from formerly colonized countries has introduced a host of issues
to the theatrical world. For one thing, playwrights have been forced to choose
whether or not they will write in their indigenous language or in the language
of the colonizer. This has been a sensitive topic because some postcolonial
playwrights insist that to write in the language of the colonizer is implicitly
to endorse the actions of colonization. Others, having trained in the language
of the colonizer, find its use revolutionary. They claim that writing in the
language of the oppressors liberates the language and allows their message to
spread beyond a localized audience.
These
playwrights have also had to wrestle with issues of performance and style. Many
postcolonial authors have chosen to reject the realistic or conventional play
format of the colonizer and have instead turned to ancient or indigenous
performance forms such as dance (either tribal or religious), religious ritual,
song, puppetry, and mime. In addition, they avoid the dominant two- or
three-act structure. Often, their plays can take the form of performance pieces
with audience interaction or short staccato scenes depicting colonized life.
Many postcolonial authors use the colonizer’s forms of drama to turn the work
back on the oppressor. Many playwrights also use ancient myths of their people
and incorporate them into drama, to comment on a current political situation.
Still other playwrights, such as Césaire, use Western classics such as those by
the Greeks or by William Shakespeare. They transform the plays or recast them
in order to make direct political commentaries. In addition, the transformation
of Western classics allows the playwright to show how his or her country has
been transformed through Western acculturation.
Finally, one of
the key issues that postcolonial playwrights have to deal with is the issue of
audience. When the struggle for decolonization is going on, many playwrights
write work that is directly political in nature, and many write agitprop dramas
to rally support for the political cause. However, once liberation has been
achieved, questions can arise regarding the playwright’s intended audience.
Some have faced claims that they are too exclusionary, writing only for their
own people, while other playwrights have faced charges that they have “sold
out” their own culture for the consumption of the rest of the world.
The
African Experience
The Berlin
Conference of 1884-1885 carved up the African continent (with the notable
exceptions of Ethiopia and Liberia) among the European powers. After World War
II, independence swept the continent as colonizers relinquished their control.
New nations emerged, albeit with the old colonial boundaries. These countries
sometimes combined different mutually antagonizing societies under the control
of one government, creating tremendous instability and violence. Out of these
newly formed and struggling nations emerged several leading playwrights.
In South Africa,
in particular, the birth of nationhood did not end the oppression of the
indigenous peoples. The state system of apartheid disenfranchised the nonwhite
majority in favor of a ruling white minority. Many white South Africans joined
the black majority in protest of this system. Playwrights also joined in this
effort. Among the best known is Athol Fugard, a white South African who was
censored for working with the Circle Players, a mixed-race theater company, as
well as with the black South African actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona.
Fugard’s popularity grew until he was known worldwide, and many view him as the
dominant anti-apartheid theatrical voice in South Africa. Some of his
best-known plays include Sizwe Bansai Is Dead (pr.
1972), The Island (pr. 1973), “MASTER HAROLD” . . .
and the Boys (pr. 1982), and My Children! My Africa! (pr.
1990).
Another South
African postcolonial playwright of note is Maishe Maponya, who was born in the
Johannesburg township of Alexandra in 1951. Maponya, a black South African,
began his writing career while working as a clerk and then became involved with
the Medupi Writers Association. After the government in 1977 banned the Writers
Association, Mapoyna formed the Bahumutsi Drama Group, which produced many of
his plays but also endured forms of censorship from the government. Maponya’s
works are heavily influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s theories of social drama and
tend to be more overtly political than those of Fugard. His best-known works
include Dirty Work (pr. 1985), Gangsters(pr.
1985), and The Valley of the Blind (pr. 1987).
Another African
nation whose drama flourished after independence was Nigeria. After Nigeria
gained its independence from Great Britain in 1960, many of its native writers
turned to the ancient rituals and performance rites of the indigenous Yoruban
culture to inform their writings. One playwright who did so is Wole Soyinka,
who writes about the collision between modern and traditional cultures. Some of
his best-known works are Lion and the Jewel (pr. 1959)
and Death and the King’s Horseman (pr. 1976), and he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. Another popular and critically
praised Nigerian writer is Femi Osofisan, who has written plays that deal
directly with the effects of colonization upon local culture and history.
Asia
Asia, as a vast
continent, consists of many different cultures and countries. Despite the
presence of Asian indigenous performance forms since classical times, many
Asian cultures were nonetheless conquered and subsumed by Western colonialism.
Although colonial experiences and circumstances vary widely in South and
Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and China, these areas all share similar
concerns regarding the influence of Western imperialism on Eastern culture.
India has taken
the lead in producing colonial and postcolonial drama that is critical of its
colonizers. Before being colonized, India had numerous performance forms,
including Sanskrit performance and kathkali dance drama.
After the removal of British rule in the mid-twentieth century, Indians had to
confront the way in which imperialism had blended a widely diverse population
of the subcontinent into one single nation. One of the leading playwrights who
deals with these issues is Girish Karnad . Karnad’s early work was derived from
ancient stories in Indian classics such as the Mahbhrata (c.
400 b.c.e.-400 c.e.; The
Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, 1887-1896; also known as The
Mahabharata), which he transformed to comment on the modern political
climate. His work continues to explore the intersections of ancient Indian
culture and the modern world. One of his best-known plays is Hayavadana (pr.
1972), which incorporates an ancient Indian form of theater known as yakshagana and
brings forth intertwined plots to comment on the nature of reality and questions
of identity.
North
America
North American
postcolonial expression can be found in the work of the indigenous peoples
displaced by European settlers moving across the continent. These writers
address issues such as complete acculturation and the loss of land that they
and their ancestors endured. Like many oppressed people, these writers face
issues of assimilation versus acceptance of the dominant settler culture. In
Canada, Tomson Highway has emerged as a strong voice for the First Peoples
population with plays such as The Rez Sisters (pr. 1986)
and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (pr. 1989). These
plays explore the troubles and triumphs of life on government reservations and
often use indigenous spirits as characters to further the plots.
Australia
Like Highway,
Jack Davis, a Western Australian-born Aborigine, was concerned with issues of
assimilation among the Aborigines of Australia, whose story of land loss and
cultural destruction mirrors those of the indigenous peoples of North America.
Davis taught himself to read and write while growing up outside Perth,
Australia, in the 1920’s. He was both a political and a literary figure and
known for his poetry as well as his drama. His most famous work, No
Sugar (pr. 1985), dramatizes his personal recollections of the forced
movement of his Aboriginal community to the Moore River Native Settlement and
how these resettlements contribute to the destruction of Aboriginal culture.
South
America and the Caribbean
Postcolonial
work in South America is often written not only in response to conventional
Western imperialism but also against repressive political regimes, often
instituted with the help of Western countries, and as such, considered by some
as “neocolonial” tools to propagate Western power. Writers such as Griselda
Gambaro of Argentina chronicle South America’s unfortunate history of political
repression and its effects. In her play Información para extranjeros (wr.
1971; Information for Foreigners, 1992), Gambaro uses
environmental theater techniques to engage her audience members individually
with the process and isolation of state terror.
Writers in the
Caribbean had many of the same concerns as postcolonial writers in Africa and
Asia. Specifically, writers such as Césaire and the West Indian playwright
Derek Walcott have blended island culture with Western literature and stories.
Europe
Although many
would claim that Europe has been the colonizer and not the colonized, several
oppressed cultures in Europe have developed their own playwrights with unique
voices. Many scholars contend that the work of Irish and Eastern European
playwrights can be examined under the lens of postcolonial theory.
The island of
Ireland has a long history of oppression from its British neighbors. Although
the differences and tensions between the British and Irish have been the
subject of many plays, the mid- to late twentieth century explosion of the
“troubles” in Northern Ireland led to a great deal of reactionary and
revolutionary writing. Notable among these contributions are those of Brian
Friel, who founded the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 with writer Seamus
Heaney and actor Stephen Rea, among others. Friel’s plays are concerned with
the disruption and dissolution of Irish identity in the face of English acculturation
and the transformation of that culture in the modern world. Among his
best-known works are Translations (pr. 1980) and Dancing
at Lughnasa (pr. 1990).
As the Irish
have been oppressed with the troubles in Northern Ireland, so too have the
people of Eastern Europe suffered under the yoke of communist totalitarianism
during the latter half of the twentieth century. Out of this situation emerged
playwrights of resistance such as Czechoslovakia’s Václav Havel and Poland’s
Sawomir Mroek. Although these writers emerged from different cultures and have
different styles, their work reflects a shared concern over the effects of
political domination on an individual’s psyche and identity.
Bibliography
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and
Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London:
Routledge, 1995. Complete and thorough collection of essays dealing with a host
of issues surrounding postcolonial theory. Essays by almost every major
postcolonial literary theorist. The book has sections dealing with topics such
as identity, hybridity, history, and language. Amazingly useful and complete,
this is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in the basic texts of
postcolonial literary theory.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched
of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press,
1963. A seminal postcolonial text, this book applies concepts such as
materialism, identity construction, colonialism, and racism to the
decolonization of Africa. Fanon stresses the need to replace the false identities
of colonialism with new structures of nationhood.
Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial
Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press,
1998. Broad overview of the structures, ideas, and contexts of postcolonial
theory, with extensive discussions of such influential writers as Edward Said,
Homi Bhabha, and Frantz Fanon. The book has several sections on relationships
between postcolonialism and other literary theories such as feminism,
poststructuralism, and Marxism.
Gilbert, Helen, ed. Postcolonial
Plays: An Anthology. London: Routledge, 2001. Excellent anthology
containing several well- and lesser-known dramas, with selections from such
playwrights as Femi Osofian, Derek Walcott, and Girish Karnad. Plays range from
Argentinian to Canadian to South African, and each play is marked by a
discussion of both the dramatic work and the political situation in the
author’s homeland.
Said, Edward. Orientalism.
New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Another seminal text from the postcolonial
canon, this book explores how the West has created and marketed a fictionalized
“Orient” for its own consumption. Said illustrates how this desire to control
the “Exotic East” has led to the political and cultural clashes facing the
world today.
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