{"id":471,"date":"2016-11-29T16:51:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T16:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/14\/?p=471"},"modified":"2023-06-03T08:07:36","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T08:07:36","slug":"at-bitef-europe-confronts-its-post-colonial-legacy-and-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/14\/at-bitef-europe-confronts-its-post-colonial-legacy-and-the-other\/","title":{"rendered":"At Bitef, Europe Confronts Its Post-Colonial Legacy and the \u201cOther\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitef festival, Belgrade, Serbia, October 2016<\/p>\n

Martin Morrow<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n

For this critic, the 50th-anniversary edition of the Belgrade International Theatre Festival began, not with a bang, nor a whimper, but with the unnerving whine of a wood-chipper.<\/p>\n

It accompanied a truly startling coup de th\u00e9\u00e2tre <\/em>in the middle of German playwright Wolfram Lotz\u2019s (b. 1981) The Ridiculous Darkness\u2014<\/em>presented by Vienna\u2019s Burgtheater in the festival\u2019s Main Programme\u2014that saw one of the show\u2019s four female actors approach a tall flat upstage, which had hitherto seemed a solid wall of wooden boards representing a dense forest, and knock it over with a crash. Then, she and her cohorts donned safety goggles and began to feed the pile of lumber into the maw of the aforesaid machine, raising clouds of sawdust onstage. Beyond doubt, it was the best dramatic use of a wood-chipper since the Coen brothers\u2019 film Fargo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Stefanie
Stefanie Reinsperger (left) and Catrin Striebeck in a scene from the Burgtheater production of Wolfram Lotz’s
The Ridiculous Darkness<\/em>. Photo by Georg Hochmuth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The scene, which ended the show\u2019s first act and continued through the interval, proved a potent symbol of the ravages of colonialism coming midway through Lotz\u2019s ironic riff on that classic of the colonial era, Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness<\/em>. It also turned out to be the highlight of Czech director Du\u0161an David Pa\u0159izek\u2019s (b. 1971) lively but troublesome production, which, like Lotz\u2019s play, sets out to satirize the exotic nightmare of Conrad\u2019s story, only to lose its way.<\/p>\n

The Ridiculous Darkness, <\/em>winner of Bitef\u2019s Mira Trailovi\u0107 Grand Prix, was one of three shows I saw at the festival that dealt with the post-colonial legacy and\/or the concept of the \u201cother,\u201d which were among the unifying themes in this year\u2019s programming. All three works\u2014the others being The Ambassador <\/em>and Freedom<\/em>\u2014were clever and provocative, but also problematic.<\/p>\n

My problems with them mostly stemmed from the fact that, while highly critical of the European treatment of the \u201cdeveloping world\u201d and while involving, in the case of The<\/em> Ambassador<\/em>, participants from outside Europe, the shows still came from a distinctly white European perspective. Certainly, the best way to demolish the myth of the \u201cother\u201d is to let that \u201cother\u201d speak; but, while we did hear their voices and get their viewpoint from time to time, these works proved better at mocking European stereotypes of Africa and North Korea than they did at replacing them with complex realities.<\/p>\n

Lotz\u2019s play, originally written for radio, begins promisingly enough with a funny, sympathetic monologue by a Somali pirate, being tried in Hamburg, who reveals that he and his accomplice were fishermen who turned to crime after bigger countries over-fished Somalia\u2019s waters. But, then, Lotz shifts his focus to a muddled parody of Conrad\u2019s story as well as its most famous adaptation, Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Vietnam War epic, Apocalypse<\/em> Now. <\/em>A couple of military officers are sent into the heart of Afghanistan\u2019s rainforest (yes, in Lotz\u2019s absurd vision, arid Afghanistan has a rainforest\u2014all the better to tie in more recent aggressive Western excursions into enigmatic lands), their assignment being to \u201cterminate with extreme prejudice\u201d a rogue lieutenant-colonel. Along the way, just like Martin Sheen\u2019s Capt. Willard in the Coppola film, they encounter a variety of oddball characters.<\/p>\n

Before long, Lotz and Pa\u0159izek are serving us a grotesque, comic-book version of \u201cdarkest Africa\u201d worthy of Tarzan<\/em> or Tintin<\/em> in<\/em> the<\/em> Congo<\/em>, in which the white actresses smear their faces and bodies with black greasepaint and sing that a<\/em> cappella<\/em> favourite \u201cThe Lion Sleeps Tonight.\u201d But while the intent may be a gleeful skewering of clich\u00e9s, it backfires. Up to then, we have enjoyed seeing Pa\u0159izek\u2019s talented all-female cast\u2014Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Dorothee Hartinger, Stefanie Reinsperger and Catrin Striebeck\u2014appropriating an all-male adventure story; but we balk at watching white performers, regardless of sex (or talent), blacking up and doing racial parodies. The only way this scene would succeed is if black actors were appropriating and ridiculing such offensive images.<\/p>\n

\"Eric
Eric Parfait Francis Taregue, centre, as Sierra Leone dictator Valentine Strasser in a scene from
The Ambassador: A German-African Singspiel<\/em>. Photo by Knut Klassen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a relief, then, to find both black and white performers joining forces in another German work, The Ambassador: A German-African Singspiel<\/em>. This witty, woolly mix of frenetic musical theatre and shambling jam session, from Berlin\u2019s seasoned Gintersdorfer\/Klassen troupe, had German artists (including well-known actress Anne Tismer) teaming with their counterparts from C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire to tell a post-colonial tale of tumultuous modern West Africa as seen through the eyes of well-meaning but often helpless European diplomats.<\/p>\n

The show, directed by Monika Gintersdorfer (b. 1967), designed (with delightfully clownish costumes) by Knut Klassen (b. 1967), and collectively written, composed and choreographed by its eleven performers, chronicles the tenures of German ambassadors to C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as they try to bring domestic attention to those strife-torn countries and deal with their violent, charismatic leaders. The latter include Sierra Leone\u2019s Valentine Strasser\u2014portrayed here like a hedonistic young rock star, Guinea\u2019s Moussa Dadis Camara and Liberia\u2019s Charles Taylor. It was Taylor, the former rebel and warlord, who bullied Liberians into electing him president in 1997 with the blood-chilling slogan, \u201cHe killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.\u201d Here, that slogan is turned into the catchy refrain of a country-and-western song to both funny and horrifying effect.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s eclectic score bounces from country to cabaret to hip-hop, from punk to electronica, played live onstage by the ensemble, who are musicians and dancers, as well as actors. The dance sequences are especially exhilarating; \u201csexy,\u201d \u201caggressive,\u201d \u201cfluid,\u201d \u201cserpentine\u201d were among the adjectives I scribbled down in my notebook. The textual material is drawn from historical research, but there\u2019s an added frisson<\/em> of real-life testimony from Ivorian actor-dancer Franck Edmond Yao, who shares his memories of having to perform, as a boy, at one of Taylor\u2019s lavish birthday parties.<\/p>\n

Still, despite that brief glimpse through African eyes, The Ambassador<\/em> is ultimately about Africa as the white European experiences it: political chaos, reigns of terror and colourful megalomaniacs. At one point, the German ambassador\u2019s duty is described as \u201cpushing the African people gently in the right direction.\u201d It\u2019s just this sort of smug superiority (also found in northern Europe\u2019s dealings with its poor southern relatives) that Africa doesn\u2019t need. And what exactly is<\/em> \u201cthe right direction\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"Olga
Olga Dimitrijevi\u0107, centre left, and\u00a0Maja Pelevi\u0107, centre right, with guides, document their North Korean journey in
Freedom: The Most Expensive Capitalist Word<\/em>. Photo by Dimitrijevi\u0107 and\u00a0Pelevi\u0107<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you think it is Western-style capitalism, then Maja Pelevi\u0107 (b. 1981) and Olga Dimitrijevi\u0107 (b. 1984) ask you to think again. The two Belgrade-based playwright-performers are out to puncture that assumption in their North Korean travelogue Freedom: The Most Expensive Capitalist Word<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This amusing but unsatisfying piece takes the form of a presentation with slides in which the pair recounts a trip to the much-reviled \u201chermit kingdom,\u201d the last holdout among old-school communist totalitarian regimes. Their heavily-supervised tour includes visits to a waterpark built by the late \u201cdear leader\u201d Kim Jong-il and an orphanage full of talented tykes, as well as a surreptitious glimpse at what may be one of North Korea\u2019s infamous prison camps. The personable duo regularly break the narrative flow for \u201cshopping time\u201d intervals, in which they offer to sell the audience souvenirs, ranging from a bathing suit to an axe, ostensibly to raise money for a NGO.<\/p>\n

North Korea, with its personality cult and bad hairstyles, is a regular source of Western derision, and Pelevi\u0107 and Dimitrijevi\u0107 play into that a little, but only to lull us into a typical response. Then, they pull the rug out from under us, bringing into question the veracity of what they have told us and making us realize that we may be victims of propaganda as much as the North Koreans.<\/p>\n

This final twist does not work, however, and it is not the only miscalculation. After Dimitrijevi\u0107 and Pelevi\u0107 give us the lighter, absurd side of North Korea\u2014where a citizen at one point assures the lesbian Dimitrijevi\u0107 that homosexuality does not exist, they, then, seek to conjure up its bleak aspect via video footage of a bus trip into the countryside. The video, accompanied by a haunting sound collage, is effective at first; but, as it goes on interminably, the impact dissipates. No director is credited for the production and this is evident here.<\/p>\n

You also wonder if a comparison with North Korea is the best way to suggest the fetters of Western capitalism. Yes, we are not as free as we imagine ourselves to be, we may have been brainwashed by our own consumer-based societies, but that is hardly the same as the total suppression of freedoms in North Korea, a country where many people live and die in vast internment camps.<\/p>\n

The theme of this year\u2019s BITEF was \u201cOn the back of a raging bull,\u201d which alludes both to Europa\u2019s wild ride in Greek mythology and to the upheaval being experienced in Europe today, from the huge migrant crisis to the relentless terrorist attacks. Now more than ever it\u2019s imperative that white Europe\u2014and the West\u2014engages with the \u201cother\u201d and tries to understand its point of view. These three shows don\u2019t quite get there, but they\u2019re headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n