Theatre is essential; like water refreshes! Interview mit Stafford Ashani. Research Paper. Susanne Schwinghammer-Kogler

Transcription

1 1 Theatre is essential; like water refreshes! Interview mit Stafford Ashani Susanne Schwinghammer-Kogler Research Paper der Gesellschaft für TheaterEthnologie Wien, 1998

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3 Stafford Ashani ist ein professioneller Schauspieler, Regisseur und Autor, wenngleich er sich nicht als solcher definiert. Er betreibt auch eine Filmbeziehungsweise Videoproduktionsfirma, die primär auf Musikvideos spezialisiert ist. Sein eigentlicher Name ist Stafford Harrison. Er nahm den afrikanischen Familiennamen an, als er sich zu Rastafari bekannte. Das Interview wurde am in seinem Haus durchgeführt. 3 Stafford, do you think that theatre can change socio-cultural awareness? My definition of art is that it changes the awareness of perception. If it doesn t change or transform awareness or perception in any way, it is not art; it is just craft. Somebody has the skills to do so. So theatre being an art form, yes, I definitely believe it can change awareness, and especially because it acts on reflection, and it acts intellectually involved in the process. It s not just a sensual thing. It also acts on consciousness. But I don t believe that theatre can make revolution. I believe that it can affect revolution. When I do a play, I do not expect a revolution. When I was younger, I thought maybe the play could initiate something. Do you think that theatre can provide cultural identity? My definition, theatre is not limited to a stage, to a play. It is performance in a wider sense. Well, theatre in that sense can make revolution. This theatre is part of the revolutionary process. Revolution is change. But everything has a process and a culture that is evolved around it, and in that process, culture has to bother about revolution and change, meaning to eliminate murder and disaster. Not really that people decide to change. In fact, all of that is theatre. So when they kill each other - that s theatre. And cricket, too, is theatre. It s the theatre of colonialism. Do you think that the established conventional theatre bares any impact on society? Well, the so-called established theatre in Jamaica is really a community theatre of different people, and they have a lot of money and media. This theatre becomes

4 4 standard. Like Broadway. What is it? It s the theatre of Manhattan; it s about their expectations and dreams. But it has a lot of money and it becomes world standard a tourism thing. So a good percentage of people come to watch this. It becomes world standard of theatre, and people like us, here in the Caribbean, believe this. Well, it seems that this is what theatre really is. But it isn t. You understand? There s no mainstream theatre. When you talk about mainstream theatre, you are talking about European theatre. Is there any form of theatre existing in Jamaica opposing that tendency? Yes, of course! It s the theatre of Reggae music; it s the theatre of Cumina, church, the theatre of discursive politicians and their big cars. The theatre of the uptownpeople and their big houses 1 in the hills. That is something that comes out of colonialism. There s the theatre that comes because we were brought here by English people; which is the tradition of Shakespeare, Pantomime; and you have the tradition that comes from Jonkonnu 2 and African people, doing their rituals within the confines of what white people allowed them to do. Theatre comes out of this weird half thing, where the Africans resemble Europeans but essentially doing the African thing. So we have that theatre. Now, somewhere between the thirties and the sixties, the two of them came together. Between the Little Theatre Movement, the LTM, and people like Ronnie Williams and Louise Bennett, because the infrastructure and the money was there. The Ward theatre and the LTM existed. The English theatre tradition started absorbing some of the Jamaican elements. So you had some type of synchronism. But that has evolved in a very strange way. We have three sorts of theatre now: a mixture of the European and the African; which is the Pantomime without the music, but the same structure, Anansi and all of that comedy and laughter around it. Then the questioning people like we-self have right now - I think Dennis Scott is a result of that outtake that we have from Europe and from Africa - tried to make something new, that expresses our lives more adequately. Then you have the roots-theatre, which is essentially the musical Pantomime, Tim-and-tam thing, 1 2 Hierbei wäre zu erwähnen, dass Mr. Ashani ebenfalls ein Haus in einer der besten Gegenden von Kingston bewohnt und stolzer Besitzer eines MGs und eines Motorrades ist. Dennoch ist seine Gesellschaftskritik begründet, wenngleich er sich selbst, als gut verdienender Angehöriger der Mittelschicht, nicht ausschließen sollte. Mr. Ashani jongliert hier recht frei mit Theaterformen, die weder ausschließlich der englischen noch der afrikanischen Tradition zugeschrieben werden können. Sowohl Pantomime, als auch Jonkonnu, synkretisieren, jamaikanisieren, englische wie afrikanische Elemente.

5 surviving in the economy of the eighties and nineties. The biggest problem we have here now is that we don t have the infrastructure for questioning people like myself. I recently wrote a play about a Jamaican folk-hero, a musical, with Reggae and so on. But I need a theatre that seats about 1500 people or at least 1000 people, somewhere up-town, to put it on as an economic project. The reality is that the only way to put on a play is to have a sponsor. But they concentrate on Scott and Walcott. So there s a lack of infrastructure in terms of theatre buildings, because most of them just hold about 500 people. You cannot make any money there. So these are some of the major problems we face to bring out new stuff. You might say, the new stuff doesn t need a theatre, but the new stuff still has actors, a director and other people involved who want to get paid. So we need infrastructure. The society has a national stadium, a national swimming pool, we have cricket fields and an arena, but we don t have a suitable performing art centre. 5 Do you think that theatre can be a challenge? I don t know if it is a challenge when people see themselves. Maybe it is a challenge. There seems to be this need for the initiation of life. But also or especially black people in their neo-colonial situation need to see themselves. Everyday I turn on the TV, and I see white people kissing and hugging each other, and see their stupid dayto-day concerns as if it were my concerns. It is very important for me to see my concerns and myself in the media especially because of the neo-colonial situation. So I definitely believe we need it. In that sense, does theatre provide identity? There are a lot of good things that theatre does or can do. It can help to find identity. It can help to repair insured sides. It can help to define a language and a culture. It can help to define the feelings people of a culture have, because of their experiences. Theatre does all of these things; but this is essential; like water refreshes. That s why I do it and love it. But do we need it, does it always do it, why doesn t it do it - all these questions I have been squeaking around. Because in our society, theatre supports power structure, what theatre always has done. But we have to look on both sides of the coin to complete the picture. Even though we have radical and left wing art, we still support the power structure. Therefore, theatre never

6 can be revolutionary. But it can add to the revolution. And the next question, you have to ask, is: Who needs revolution? This French guy Rousseau proclaimed equality, liberty and fraternity. People all over the world adopted it as universal rights. But we have no rights we can defend. So even radical art then, left wing art, is supporting a power structure as someone sponsors it. Now, in Jamaica or places like Jamaica there s a small chance that you get sponsored. In Jamaica we have about 49% of the society to be left wing. It s just how the chips fall on the table, but the table doesn t have anything to do with reality. 6 How do you see yourself in connection with the contemporary Jamaican theatre? I am not into Jamaican theatre. I write plays and I do theatre because I love it and I was trained for it. The last shoot I was in was a foreign production, where I went to the audition and got a part. That s the only time you hear about an audition, when a foreigner is looking for some actors. So if there s no part for a Rasta, they re going to call me. The film people know me because they see me on television. 3 But my playwork, I hardly do any here; because Jamaican people don t do the kind of stuff I want to do. Now, the type of theatre I like, I put in my plays. Of course, I am writing them with the intention to put them on stage. But then I decide not to do it, and write the next one. I am not going to run around, trying to get these people to do my plays. I will not write plays to be done, if it means sacrificing the techniques, the style, and the structure that I want to use. In other words, if I wrote them with a small cast, I could get them done. Do your plays reflect your own experiences? All the plays I wrote document the life as a Rastafarian, they centre on the Rastafarian case. When they made Anansi appear with locks, it was one of the most important things that happened in the society in the sixties and seventies. And I think there should be some record of what the questions were, and this is why I started to write. In the meanwhile, I wrote six or seven plays, all dealing with different aspects of Rastafarian life-style. But they all have different structures to support the story. 3 Mr. Ashani spielt einen Part in einer beliebten jamaikanischen Fernsehserie.

7 7 In what way did your training in New York bare an influence on your work? When I went there 4, I had to realise that the Experimental theatre they were trying to portray was my folk-theatre. And I was in fact studying them, studying me. The whole Experimental Theatre Department would go over to Third-World-countries to see how we perform, to apply it to their traditional theatre. I never learned anything on that level, except how to apply certain ways of thinking. The most important thing in that context is neo-colonialism again. They have lost many things in their own culture, and they look at our culture to see what they could infuse. There s no such thing like the experimental theatre. It s not an absolute thing. That s another problem with theatre here, because people always assume this European things. It s just one way that people have used theatre. 4 Mr. Ashani absolvierte ein Ausbildungsprogramm an der New York University, wo er sich auf experimentelles Theater spezialisierte.