Improv, Found Space, Street… Defining Theatre

A blurb I wrote recently...



I was in the kitchen preparing lunch when I heard a cacophony of angry shouting, skin slapping, and one distinct frightened cry, which I knew, from experience, belonged to Gloria. My four year old neighbor, who just weeks ago contracted some sort of respiratory infection, fell into a coma, and woke up paralyzed on the right side of her body. The brain damage seemed severe. A once talkative, rather gregarious girl was reduced to one sound- one sporadic frightened wale that could wake you up in the middle of night, bringing tears of desperation to your eyes.
I walked to the window to get a view of the commotion. I saw a group of about four women from another part of town with cutlasses and picks in hand. They were struggling on Gloria’s left arm, while Gloria’s mother was struggling back on the right. Gloria, being tosses and turned in the middle, shouting out of the left corner of her mouth, is broken free from her mother, and the women carry her to the side of the house where I now see a large hole that they previously dug. The women dangle Gloria over the hole, as her grandfather sprints to her rescue. Gloria’s mother’s attention is now diverted to the yams boiling over on the fire. As she tends to lunch, the grandfather frees Gloria from the grasps of the women and steals her away to the safety of her room. Outstretching his limbs into an “X,” he blockades the door. By this time, I’ve left my kitchen and am standing in front of the house with a number of other spectators. The women beat the grandfather, shouting at them to allow them access to the child. One scrappy woman, succeeds in entering the room, but becomes blockaded inside, Gloria in hand. Gloria’s mother continues to stir the pot.
I turn to my landlord and say, “They are fighting,” fishing for some sort of explanation.
He replies, “Yes. Gloria’s sickness is too much. She is alive, but she wants to die. That is why she is not getting better. So, the women have come to bury her. “
Speechless for a moment, mulling over exactly what he’s telling me, “So, does the mother want them to bury her?”
“No.” I begin wondering why she then seems more preoccupied with pounding fufuo, than with her daughter who is in the process of being buried alive.
Gloria’s grandfather is yelling at the women to go home and leave the girl alone. I see a smile creasing the corner of her mother’s mouth when she sees me watching. She laughs my name under her breath, which isn’t all that atypical, but I still wonder why.
Things seem to die down. Spectators begin resuming to their homes. It seems Gloria will not face her death today, but I’m still standing there. Leaving, to me, just doesn’t feel appropriate. Standing beside me, my friend lets out a sigh and a brief chuckle of amused satisfaction.
He turns to me, “Uh hoo. I don’t know how to say it…They were playing. They were making a play. That is our tradition. This is what we do when someone is sick like that.”
It was staged. The grandfather had requested these women from another clan to come and do what they could not—to “bury” Gloria. Maybe to scare the sickness out of her—to instill the fear and reality of death in a girl who seems to have given up on life.
Many scholars contend there is no historical theatrical tradition in Africa that predates the western tradition. What theatre that does exist now is assumed a result of westernization or colonialism.
When describing pan-African culture, however, an anthropologist can hardly overlook the inherent theatrics. How can two such truths co-exist? Personally, I would contend that they cannot, but it truly depends on what you allow harbor under your umbrella of “theatre.” I prefer to maintain a rather larger, all-encompassing, perhaps multi-printed, umbrella myself. But, I guess, using an umbrella in African rains (with the exception of North Africa, which isn’t generally characterized with monstrous rains) would be like swimming in raincoat, anyhow. Why? And, who cares?
Anyway, aponche is a goat…