African and Caribbean Theatre History

In my own research of South Africa’s apartheid system, I learnt that the idea of Apartheid itself was a carbon copy of Canada’s Reservation model. Immediately that struck a musical note in my Trinidad director’s head. Canada’s first nation people’s heritage is part of the Canadian cultural scape and is therefore available for artists to take its essence to make art. When I encouraged the movement choreographer on the play to arrive at a motif inspired by First nations culture in the movement of the young upcoming actor, dbi young and the co actor, Dan Forcey who were cast as the chorus of conscience, she vehemently refused with the fear of not wanting to ‘appropriate’ the first people’s culture. It became very clear to me then that I would have an uphill battle as a director here for actors and designers to understand my approach to playmaking and directing. If your art is not inspired from a historical and cultural response then you are playing doll’s house.

Children who stutter face enormous challenges: from bullying and peer rejection to embarrassment, shame and despair. Often these young people shut down and retreat into silence. The Stuttering Association for the Young (SAY), a non-profit organization in New York City, is dedicated to improving the lives of children who stutter (CWS). SAY uses the performing arts as one of its tools to create community, nurture the individual, and advocate for CWS. This article examines SAY's method and asks whether it could be used a model for other stuttering treatment programs for CWS.

An overview and interpretation of the play "Sequeira, Luís Lopes, the Wondrous Mulatto" (1993) by the Angolan playwright José Mena Abrantes, which deals with the early years of Angola's colonial history and the ambivalent figure of the mixed-race hero Luís Lopes Sequeira.

Paper given at Society for French Studies 59th Annual Conference, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, 4 July 2018.

Part of self-constituted panel 'Sexing the French Colonies':
‘Sexing the French Colonies’ sets out to explore various articulations and implications of gender in French-language writings from colonial and postcolonial periods, covering spaces under French domination and influence, from the Far Eastern French Indochina and contemporary Vietnam to the Maghreb and the Caribbean. The four papers discuss writings by ‘colons’ as well as by postcolonial writers, both male and female. The panellists examine a wide range of literary genres (from theatre, fiction, war memory to poetry) that engage with the historical preoccupations, philosophical interrogations and aesthetic practices of their time.

'The Female Body in the Plays of French Caribbean Women Playwrights'
Colonial literature has been analysed as conveying an image of a feminine landscape to be conquered, explored, and mapped out by a male coloniser. The female body has often been depicted as a site of struggle between male colonized and colonizer, one of the consequences of which is the colonized embracing a hypermasculine ideology to reclaim the body of the colonized woman. These ideologies still shape and influence the perception of women from former French colonies today. Caribbean women writers such as Maryse Condé have denounced the exoticisation and eroticisation of the Caribbean female body.
Theatre is an ideal vector for Caribbean women writers to challenge exoticist and gendered stereotypes. In plays by writers such as Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé and Gerty Dambury, the female body is plural and changeable. Plural, because the plays depict a wide range of female characters, including elderly women. Changeable, because the same characters move between ages and states, and one actress may often portray older or younger versions of a character, establishing a link and common concerns between different generations of Antillean women.
Embodiment is one of the key reasons these authors turn to drama to give ignored or marginalised Antillean women a voice. These women are embodied by a living performers, and this places the audience in dialogue with or in contemplation of the experiences of contemporary Antillean women. The stage is also a liberating space for these female characters, as the authors portray independent, strong-willed characters who express themselves freely. The theatrical space also allows a reconceptualization of traditional representations of gendered space with characters positing their own alternative occupations of space social and patriarchal constraints.
This paper proposes therefore to analyse the various dramatic devices used by French Caribbean women writers to explore, criticise and rethink the representation of the female Caribbean body.

Paper given at Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies Conference, 19 November 2016.

The status of French Caribbean studies within Francophone Postcolonial Studies can be problematic. Former colonies turned French administrative regions, Martinique and Guadeloupe cannot be said to be entirely postcolonial. The islands are not solely Francophone, but also Creolophone. Nevertheless, the region has produced key figures of Francophone Postcolonial literature and thought. This indefinite nature of the French Caribbean renders the study of its cultural production tenuous yet fascinating.
Guadeloupean writer and theatre practitioner Gerty Dambury believes the French Caribbean has lost its ‘contradictory discourse’ questioning the islands’ relationship with France, despite the legacy of purveyors of that discourse such as Aimé Césaire or Franz Fanon.
This paper examines how Dambury articulates this contradictory discourse in two plays written after the 2009 strike in Guadeloupe protesting against living costs and dependency on the metropole.
Les Atlantiques amers (2009) depicts the views of or involvement in the strike of Guadeloupeans living on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Des doutes et des errances (2014) portrays Guadeloupean actors working on Les Atlantiques amers reminiscing about the strike. Dambury returns to her 2009 play after five years to reflect on the repercussions of the strike today,
Both plays explore multiple perspectives of 2009 from characters of diverse backgrounds that nevertheless share a common place of origin: Guadeloupe. The relationship between art and politics is also manifest in the portrayal of thespian characters. Dambury’s plays constitute a ‘travail de mémoire’ but also a voicing of the contradictory discourse Dambury believes Guadeloupean contemporary society lacks.