Tony Nappo and Maev Beaty continue their discussion on The Africa Trilogy Blog of the issues and ideas that have arisen through the process of workshopping the trilogy with a post titled: Theatre Versus Rice and Beans.
Click The Africa Trilogy Image to go to the blog and read the whole post.
Binyavanga Wainaina, author of Shine Your Eye, describes the ideas that motivated him to explore the relationship between Africa and the West through The Africa Trilogy.
Africa Trilogy assistant director Deanna Downes has been ruminating on the project from her secret lair in Philadelphia.
Africa Trilogy Set for a Smooth Landing in The States?
by Deanna Downes
David Mamet’s new play Race is playing on Broadway. A New York Times review calls it “a play that examines the self-consciousness that descends on American white people when they talk about, or to, black people.”
Fela, a play about the revolutionary creator of Afro-pop, Fela Kuti, is also on Broadway. When talking about his production of Fela, director Bill T. Jones says Fela’s life brings about, “questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality, history, race, power.”
It would appear, the theatrical runways are being paved for a smooth landing of this multi-national but Canadian birthed trilogy about Africa and the West.
Left to right - Josette Bushell-Mingo, Ross Manson, and Liesl Tommy are each involved in separate presentations in Toronto this weekend.
Trilogy directors invade Toronto this weekend
Through sheer coincidence, all three directors of The Africa Trilogy are mixing it up in the T-dot this week:
After directing the RSC/NAC original production to widespread critical acclaim, Bushell-Mingo has been mentoring directors working on Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad as part of Nightwood Theatre’s Directors Summit.
The public presentation of this work occurs November 15 at 3pm and 6:30pm, Dancemakers Studio Theatre.
Having toured Rwanda with Volcano’s Edinburgh Fringe-winning production of Goodness, Manson presents a retrospective of the experience at University of Toronto.
November 15th at 7pm, the George Ignatieff Theatre, U of T campus.
Fresh from the New York Times declaring her production of Eclipsed running at the Yale Repertory Theatre a “harrowing portrait of women fighting to retain their dignity and a sense of self-worth under extreme duress”, Tommy appears on two panels and teaches a Master Class also as part of Nightwood’s Directors Summit.
The Director’s Toolkit, Master Class: November 16 and 17, 10-1pm; The Agony and Ecstasy of Staging New Work, Panel: Monday November 16th @ 6:30pm; Staging Africa, Panel: Tuesday November 17th at 6:30pm.
For full details on price and location of Nightwood Theatre events visit their webpage.
"The map on the seat-back screen. I realized that I was flying over places i had never heard of before..."
Volcano AD Ross Manson on touring Goodness to Rwanda
An Africa Trilogy purist could quibble that this is not strictly an “Africa Trilogy” related post. This quibbler would point out that Volcano Artistic Director Ross Manson blogging about his experience touring the Edinburgh Fringe-winning production of Goodness he directed to Rwanda, is about an entirely different production and creative team (save for Manson himself).
Fair enough, but the stated dramaturgical goal of the Trilogy is to create a piece of theatre that examines the relationship between Africa and the West. In this regard, the detailed and passionate record he has been keeping about touring a Western-created play on the nature of genocide to Rwanda is pretty much a perfect fit.
You can read the blog complete with comprehensive photography here:
You can listen to him be interviewed about the experience here:
Ross Manson’s interviewed from Rwanda on CBC’s As It Happens
(Click play on “Listen to Part 3 of As It Happens“)
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God – Maev Beaty and Tony Nappo #1
This post is the first of several discussions that took place over email between Africa Trilogy actors Maev Beaty and Tony Nappo. Click here to read the introduction to Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God.
The Human Problem of “What Do I Do?”
Maev:
Mr. Nappo, a pleasure to be having this “e-discussion” with you. Let me ask the first question…we’ll start light. We’ve done two workshops of this play now…has your perspective on the West’s relationship to Africa changed?
Tony:
I am not sure whether or not my perspective has changed. It’s just expanded, I suppose. I think at the heart of this play, there seems to be some kind of statement about our choices as human beings to get involved or not in any kind of human crisis. Are we obligated morally to help if we can, and will our help, ultimately, make any difference at all after a crisis reaches a certain point-and, at what cost to us as the individual?
It makes me think, historically, about the Holocaust and, contemporarily, about the Tamils. It seems that people want such atrocities to stop or never to have existed, and rightfully so, of course, but the natural instinct to survive and self preserve would dictate that one doesn’t actually physically get involved which becomes easier the farther removed, geographically, one may be from any given situation. So is desire for change strong enough to create a pull towards action?
It’s one thing to be appalled by what is happening and quite another thing to do something about it when something isn’t directly affecting your day to day. Like Bono sings in that Christmas song- “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.” That is one of the truest, saddest lines ever sung. And that sadness seems to permeate Roland’s piece. So, I am thinking, and answering, I guess, in more human terms than factual or political terms. But I am playing Frank, who makes the choice not to help but live his own life- as the actress playing Carol, you must have had to search for the part of yourself that would go- would have to go and at least try to make some difference. What surprised you or didn’t about yourself in this regard?
Maev:
Yes, Carol is a puzzle, as far as the original impetus (or courage?) to go and ‘help,’ but now it seems she’s left with a dismal sense of futility and loss and, I sense, some resentment. It reminds me of a book that Josette mentioned in our Glo workshop which I am now eager to read titled Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way for Africa. I here confess that I had, of course, heard arguments that aid was not getting to where it needed to go and that it was often sucked up in corruption. But I had always, in my gut, believed it must still be ‘helping.’ From what I’ve read about the book, the author claims aid has made things much worse on the continent.
Carol’s journey feels a bit resonant of this (particularly in relation to Annie – and theatrically, Annie as a metaphor. Did she, in fact, exacerbate the cruelty of Annie’s circumstances?) This relates to the human problem of “what do I do?” And of course, this is theatre, so we are only going to ask lots of questions – not provide answers. But I DO think A3 has a responsibility to open up the questions to everybody. I’m really hoping there will be a way for audiences to immediately (like, in the lobby) respond to the work, ideally on computer (who even remembers how to write with pencil and paper anymore?), with live posting capability. And I hope there will be lots of resources available for some ongoing relationship/dialogue to the issue.
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God – Roland Schimmelpfennig
As the Africa Trilogy Series continues, there will be a number of conversations between Maev Beaty and Tony Nappo, two actors who have been involved in the project from the intial workshop in 2008. To have a full understanding of what they will be writing about, this post describes the show they have both been working on, Peggy Pickit Sees The Face of God, and some ideas from the playwright, Germany’s incomparable Roland Schimmelpfennig.
Set in an unidentified Western city, Peggy Pickit begins with a white married couple arriving at another white couple’s house for a reunion. All four were best friends at medical school. All are now 41. Two have just returned from crisis work in Africa –escaping a particularly violent flare-up. They have been gone for six years. The other two stayed at home, had a child, and made a lot of money. Each couple looks at the other with envy. Both marriages are in trouble. The returning couple left behind a local child in Africa that the other couple was sponsoring. The fate of that child is unknown, but we learn she is dependent on drug therapy, and without treatment, she will likely die.
The evening turns into a post-colonial version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf . Accusations, pain, anguish and bitter comedy are used to explore damage/guilt in the West. The title refers to a small plastic doll intended as a gift for the African child – a child whose only representation on stage is a small wooden carving.
Says Schimmelpfennig:
Glo workshop video
Video by Deanna Downes
Josette Bushell-Mingo, Artistic Director of Tyst Theater in Sweden, speaks about the Spring 09 workshop of Glo by Christina Anderson. Glo is one of three plays being produced as part of The Africa Trilogy by Volcano Theatre for the Luminato Festival in Toronto in 2010.
After much thought and talk about the lack of content about content on this blog and several others, this series will be an attempt to create an online discussion about the process and product of a massive theatrical undertaking. It is my hope that this will translate to something approximating content about content:
Volcano Theatre’s Africa Trilogy
With some funding from the generous folks at Theatre Ontario, I will be training with Volcano as an Artistic Producer on this project. It’s a really great opportunity to see and share how something of this magnitude goes from an inception to incredibly ambitous production.
Ideally, this series will follow the project to its conclusion for the next year and a half and will have multiple authors representing many of the different perspectives the trilogy will encompass. Volcano Artistic Director, Ross Manson, has been generous enough to be all for me organizing something like this. Thanks Ross.
Volcano’s website describes the project as:
“An international trilogy of plays that will focus on the West’s relationship with Africa.
The three playwrights come from three regions: Africa, Europe, North America. The directors come from different countries within these three continents, thus making the project a six-country, three continent effort.
The theatre artists joining the project are relatively young, and formally experimental – mid or early-career innovators, already with national or international reputations. The starting point is the 2005 series of Massey Lectures given by Stephen Lewis, United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from 2001 to 2006.”
Binyavanga Wainaina is the winner of the 2002 Caine prize for African literature, and the founding editor of Kenya’s only literary journal, Kwani?. He is one of the most important literary figures of his generation in Central Africa.
Roland Schimmelpfennig is the winner of the 2002 Vienna Nestroy Prize, and the Schiller-Gedächtnis Prize (awarded yearly in Germany for an outstanding literary contribution by a young dramatist). He is one of the most prolific and heralded young dramatists in Europe.
Christina Anderson was identified by American Theatre magazine as one of only fifteen US artists under 30 “whose work will be transforming America’s stages for decades to come.”
Liesl Tommy grew up in a township in Cape Town, South Africa. She studied at Oxford and the Claire Davidson Drama Centre in London, then earned her MFA from Trinity Rep Conservatory in the USA. She has been hailed as “eccentrically imaginative” by the New York Post, and a “standout” by the New York Times.
Ross Manson is a Dora and KM Hunter award-winning theatre director based in Toronto, whose work won the 2006 “Best of Edinburgh” prize at the world’s largest theatre festival. His international award-winning company, Volcano, has been identified by NOW magazine as the “best independent theatre company in Toronto”.
The entire team is currently working with a cast of 10 workshoping the first draft of their three scripts at the Lower Ossington Theatre in Toronto. These workshops are actually the fourth stage of the process following a planning meeting at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel in November 2007, a research trip to Rwanda and Uganda in March 2008, and a weekend of follow up meetings with the playwrights in New York City in June of 2008.
There is another workshop to follow in the spring of 2009 at Theatre Passe Muraille, and likely much more work between then and when it opens as part of Toronto’s Luminato festival in 2010.
So there should be lots to talk about. Stay tuned for more posts on this project from many different collaborators.
