Earlier this week, I was discussing with a friend the confusion that I feel regarding art that is political. In general, I find overtly political art tiresome. If I wanted a statement after all, I would read a pamphlet. And it feels disrespectful to me of the other, possibly more important but certainly disregarded, arena that fine art enters–that is, the ability to produce a non-linguistic experience.
Of course, to say that I do not like political art is simply false because much art that has been produced over the years has undeniable political content. At the Renaissance portraiture show currently at the Met, the political can be witnessed in the Giuliani Medici portraits that were produced after his murder as a testimony to Medici loyalty, and also as a warning to other plotters. Picasso's Guernica might have come to mind for some. I don't object to it. But I do mind Sanja Ivekovic's hyper-feminist work currently on display at MoMA. This concern on my part has me generally avoid any art, performances, or readings that are described as political, or seem to have an underlying political message that is being presented. In conversation with the friend, she tried to convince me how important political messaging is in art, how it has helped change the world, but I am bored and bothered by its lack of nuance, its emphatic rhetoric, that like hers did not change my mind about situations the way information clearly discussed can make me suddenly start donating to an Animal Welfare group, or the local homeless shelter.
With these issues of rhetoric in mind, I was hesitant to see The Convert currently at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ. That it was also running over three hours added to my consternation. But, someone I respect told me the work was excellent, so off I went to see the new play by Danai Gurira about the Shona rebellions in 1895-7, in the Rhodesia of Queen Victoria that we now call Zimbabwe. Gurira's introduction explains the conflict: "There is a grappling with home, place, space, and voice–on one side are the ardent keepers of culture and land and language and on the other there are those...glad to be free of the strictures of their forefathers...delighted to declare themselves the ambassadors of the new order, finally feeling significance and a purpose." Bafus, they are called by the Shona tribe members for having left the tribal ways: living in houses with cement floors like the Whites, spreading their Christian religion while neglecting the respect due to the ancestors, and making money incomparable to what can be made working in the mines. The Shona people are sons of the soil. The whites have destroyed that, and those blacks who have left are traitors, bafus, for forgetting or ignoring their past.
The cast of seven completely won me over. When the first intermission arrived, I could hardly believe that an hour had past. I was immersed in Jekesai's (Pascale Armand) extraordinary learning curve under the guidance of Chilford (LeRoy McClain), a young man who has left the savagery of the tribe to follow Christ's path, hoping that one day the Roman Catholic church will allow a Black to be a priest. Mai Tamba, the absolutely wonderful Cheryl Lynn Bruce, has her son Tamba, Warner Joseph Miller, bring Jekesai to work for Chilford instead of having her marry an old man. Jekesai agrees to be Chilford's Christian pupil under the name Ester (a good Christian name) and quickly memorizes long passages of the Bible, learns English, and embraces Christ's message of equal love with such sincerity that she corrects the white priest for which Chilford has to remind her that is not permitted.
Ester is so content in her new life and role that Prudence, played with strength by Zainab Jah without any of the disdain or melancholy that her character could have lapsed into having, asks what is left of Ester. Prue has come to Chilford's in search of her philandering fiancée, Chancellor, whose sexual proclivities and social acuity are entirely likeable in Kevin Mambo until he permits his character the necessary smarmy turn. Prue was also educated, a rarity for women at the time which makes her a strange creature with no place. She has chosen however to continue to speak Shona to the tribal members, managing to engage with both cultures. Chilford's adamant stance that all elements of the savage life must be destroyed does not permit Ester that same option.
Of course, the civilizing colonialism is not successful and the tribes become angry for the change in their lifestyle, the menial labor in the mines, their polygamy disallowed, and the anger of the ancestors at the presence of the colonists. The uprisings include massacres on both sides, which conflicts create conflicts for the characters that are presented on an intensely personal level. I was never watching a story about the uprisings of Southern Rhodesia in 1897. Rather I saw Chilford angry that black men would cause the death of his beloved Father, the priest whom he writes every evening, and in that anger lose compassion for Mai Tamba whose work for him does not keep her from maintaining her ties to the tribe. Ester will undergo the greatest heartbreak as she sees the ethical lessons that she has gained in following the education and religion of the Whites disregarded by them in their treatment of the Blacks, regardless of justice. Pascale Armand's concluding monologue will break your heart as you see the chaos created not by religion, or race, or politics but by the complex web of a life lived among warring factions.
Danai Gurira's play The Convert has given me faith that art can be produced which is utterly engaging on all its aesthetic dimensions, even as it negotiates with the mind-numbing brutality of any sectarian belief. Emily Mann is known for being a director who creates an ensemble, working with the every aspect of the production to create a unit whole, one that this play in particular would need. The attention to detail was such that the show brought in a dialect coach to help the actors create their own nuanced sound of the English they were taught, allowing the very sound of the play to be embodied by the decisions the actors were making for their characters. Rhetoric did not convert me to the belief that the political can exist in art, but rather by the ability of the aesthetics to handle that additional weight. The art of theatre was present in every aspect of this show, perhaps out of respect for the heavy content, but certainly there in every piece of dialogue, lighting cue, background sound, acting moment, directing decision. I am profoundly moved by this play, not only because it made me think, but also on its own terms. And that, my friends, is a great play.
*******
The Convert at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ. January 13-February 12, 2012.
(Take NJ Transit to Princeton stop, not Princeton Junction, and walk across the street.)
No comments:
Post a Comment