Love for African theatre

THE STANDARD, Monday, August 31, 1992

By Gethiga Gaceru

THEY came from New York with love. Love of the continent and the black man’s (and woman’s experience). This was in the form of the performance they staged at the Paa ya Paa Gallery about two weeks ago.

The show – The Rivers of the Black Man – turned out to be quite an elation for the attentive audience.

Composed entirely by Janie and Scott Kennedy, most of it portrayed the black man’s experience in the United States. Occasionally, they would however, transgress to other parts of the world such as Paris (where both have lived) and Kenya where they make an annual visit.

A writer of a book on African theatre, first published in 1973, Dr. Scott Kennedy, a professor of Theatre Arts at the city University of New York contends that African theatre must be “seen, heard and given witness to. It can’t really be treated solely from the world or from a literary point of view.”

It is his view that since theatre mirrors the human experience, black theatre should be looked at as the art of communication and expression of the black experience set forth in a dramatic theatrical manner.

“Just as the oral traditions in oral literature come alive through the drama of their presentations, so African theatre must be seen and heard in order to be realised.”

“It is music – it is much like jazz music,” Kennedy says. “And you know talking about jazz or reading about jazz is a poor substitute for the real thing.”

In the course of the discussion, Kennedy recalls what he heard about Africa and the black man in general, early in life.

“Africa was off the beaten track. Africa is uncivilized. Black Americans are ex-slaves – before then, they were beasts. They were good for making love and all that stuff. But they didn’t think well. They had no power of reasoning and they never used logic for everything. They never had any art. They were born imitators.”

The above sums up his early impression about Africa and about his own black race in the United States.

But during the same period, his mother became the counter-source of the positive side of Africa. “My first memories of Africa take me back to my mother’s knee. She often read stories to her children. Stories about the ancient kingdoms and glories of Africa.”

She also told him about the works of Carter G. Woodsom and Dr W. E. Dubois. From then on “I vowed that one day I would return to Africa in reality.” And it later happened.

Before that, however, he had to “brush against Africa” through an African, Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in New York in 1958. I was highly impressed by the wit, intelligence and perception of Nkrumah. “The most dynamic visionary.”

But his real contact with the continent happened eight years later, when in 1966, he and his wife Janie were invited to attend the “First World Festival of Negro Arts” in Dakar, Senegal.

“This was the first time for me to witness the splendor and the spectacle of African theatre.”

Later, in 1969, they were in Algeria for another invitation to the “First World Pan African Cultural Festival” in Africa.

Since then, both have always had constant contact with Africa. They have, for instance, lived in Ghana for three years when Scott was the head of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Ghana.

On black theatre, Kennedy argues that, to understand the black experience, “we must learn about their culture, history and heritage.”

Conversely, according to him, the black races must be taught to communicate with white since normally, “blacks think from a black view point and whites think from a white view point.”

Kennedy attributes much fo the misery and racial classes that have occurred between blacks and whites to this lack of understanding.

The owner of a theatre company operating in New York, Kennedy’s further contention is that black American theatre and the African theatre are “blood brothers.” They have a “dramatic consciousness coming out of the sense of the experience of these people who are called African people or black people.”

His contention is that African theatre springs from a unique cultural traditional experience while black American theatre stems from a social experience and expression. “Both theatres, however, have a common heritage link and utilise similar modes of expression and communication.”

Black theatre or theatre of the contemporary Black world must therefore be perceived from a cultural, social and dramatic theatrical perspective, says Kennedy. “It must not merely be perceived from a ‘fine arts’ or art for art’s sake view.”

Kennedy says that this is one of the reasons the black theatre in the United States had re-emerged.

“For years, blacks were denied their existence as human beings. They were stripped of their cultural heritage and enclosed in an invisible wall.”

It had to re-emerge at the time it did, he says, because of the white world’s resistance to the black man’s culture and existence.

It also, he adds, came at this particular time because of the black man’s desire to stage a last attempt to communicate, in human terms, with the white man and thereby establishing a workable white-black relationship.

Kennedy, however, concedes that there is a basic difference between Western and African theatre. “African theatre is for instance, concerned more directly with the property of life and its rhythms and life cycles, whereas the essence of the current concept of Western theatre is clash or conflict.

In the West, for example, he says, one goes to the theatre to escape. African theatre, on the other hand, is participatory – “a unique relationship exists between the audience and the performer. It utilises all elements of the art forms and non-verbal and communication.”

He contends that in any given time, any of the art forms may tell the story or enhance the dramatic or theatrical experience.

“Classical African theatre is loose. Like jazz, it is free to be opened up and fully realised on the spot. Rarely does this theatre act as something separate from social life.”

Kennedy, however, concedes that the conventional African drama or theatre is often very similar to Western theatre.

Kennedy, who got immersed in theatrical activities quite early in life is now convinced that, despite the widely held notion about Greece being the cradle of theatre, theatrical activities have their origins in Africa.

To back up his arguments, he cites the play Osiris Passion Play which is said to be the first scripted play and performed in Egypt about five thousand years ago.

His wife, Janie, who co-acts with him most of the times is also an actress of long standing. She is also a playwright and an entrepreneur. Her main preoccupation, as she says, being to introduce new concepts of people through theatre, television, radio and journalism.

Though, like her husband, she has been in theatre for a long time, she intends to continue writing, performing and producing programmes for cable television.

Re-printed for research purposes. Copyright remains with the original holder.