This New Eurafrique Magic

Global influences and Ivorian personal reinvention meet in the ferocious theatre of Koffi Kwahulé

An interview by Randy Gener
Translation by Chantal Bilodeau

The French-African playwright and novelist Koffi Kwahulé says he never really understood why his first play, Le Grand-Serpent (The Big Serpent), a Kafka-inspired satire about an African dictator—written in 1977 when Kwahulé was 20 years old—was censored by the Ivorian authorities after one performance in 1981.

"I remember when the officials called me in—they asked me, in the purest Stalinist tradition, to tell them why my play was dangerous," Kwahulé recalls. "I told them I didn't know; it was up to them to explain to me the reasons for the censorship. I think it was partly because in the play, Grand-Serpent is abandoned in a dump. Now, among the many legends that were circulating about Côte d'Ivoire's then president [Félix Houphouët-Boigny], one was that he had also been abandoned in a dump. His name Houphouët means 'dump' in the Baoulé language. Still, we need to remember that, at the time, everything was being censored."

It should be noted, too, that African playwrights of that era—Bernard Dadié of Côte d'Ivoire and Guillaume Oyono-Mbia of Cameroon, for example—had openly dared to denounce the vices, injustices and corruption of African dictatorships that emerged from the ruins of colonialism. This satirical and engaged theatre, in which Africa fiercely mocked itself, expressed these writers' dissatisfaction with political realities, as well as their disillusionment with failed national projects and collective efforts. No doubt, young Kwahulé's Le Grand-Serpent reflected the anarchic spirit after Côte d'Ivoire declared its independence in 1960.

Born in Abengourou in 1956, Kwahulé studied at the National Arts Institute of Abidjan until he was 23. At that point he moved to Paris to study at l'École de la Rue Blanche and the Sorbonne Nouvelle, where he earned his doctorate in theatre studies.

By the 1990s, French-speaking theatre from Africa, which had relied on return-to-African rituals and folkloric traditions (the concept of Négritude), began to embark on a different course of theatrical action. Along with Kossi Efoui of Togo, José Pliya of Benin, Koulsy Lamko of Chad, Caya Makhélé of the Congo and others, Kwahulé belongs to a new generation of African-born dramatists who, in tandem with their French-Caribbean brethren, have embraced postcolonial ruptures and hybridization, freely appropriated Western forms and ideas, and repeatedly rejected the notion of "Africanness" and authenticity. These playwrights, memorably dubbed by the drama critic Sylvie Chalaye as "the enfants terribles of Independences," have shattered inherited colonial models, taken on incongruous European detours and widened their horizons to explore diasporic themes and globalized culture.

While critics have complained that these writers have abandoned their African origins, Kwahulé argues that his recent major works, Jaz (1998), Blue-S-cat (2004) and Misterioso-119 (2005), seek to defy "cultural fundamentalism." He explains: "The work I have tried to do was to complicate the report of the African, to show he has a shifting identity. I wanted to create doubts, flaws—to make sure people come to doubt the idea that they are Africans, so they can recognize our ability to be in the process of becoming."

Though he is one of Africa's most internationally acclaimed dramatists, and certainly one of the most potent and angry in the European theatre, Kwahulé remains unknown in the English-speaking world. In the U.S., that is about to change. With a majority of the financing coming from French government and sponsors, about $132,000 has so far been spent in commissions, residencies, readings and workshop productions aimed at introducing Kwahulé to America. In 2003, Montreal-born playwright Chantal Bilodeau was commissioned to translate Jaz and Big Shoot by New York City's Lark Play Development Center (with support from Étant donnés, the performing arts component of which was created in 1999 by the French Embassy to encourage French-American cooperation), Association Beaumarchais and the Grand Marnier Foundation. The plays were given readings at the Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis and Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in April '04 and workshop productions directed by Michael Johnson-Chase at the Lark the following month. In 2005, Étant donnés offered the financial means for Bilodeau to translate Misterioso-119, with director Liesl Tommy leading the residencies and readings at the Lark, Massachusetts's Berkshire Theatre Festival and New York Theatre Workshop, as part of the Act French Festival.

This year, Étant donnés is funding another translation (commissioned by the Lark). The 2009 hotINK International Festival at New York University commissioned one more. "We are still looking for funding for the remaining two translations," says Bilodeau. These seven plays—including Cette vieille magie noire (This Old Black Magic), Bintou, Blue-S-cat and El Mona—are slated to appear in an anthology in 2010 published by NoPassport Press.

Deliriously livid, polyvocal and collage-like, these plays represent the evolution of Kwahulé's jazz aesthetics. Apart from African stories, his influences are mostly musical (rhythm-and-blues, and, later, jazz) and cinematographic (Hollywood films). "My first plays explored overflow, abundance, even grandiloquence," he says. "Since Jaz and Misterioso-119, my writing tends to limit spectacle as much as possible by using an economy of everything—narrative, plot, character, words. These plays are meant to be performed without any set and without any direction. The actor and the pulse of the language should be sufficient. The ambition is to 'load' the language with all the energies usually carried by the story, plot, set, costumes and direction." Because of his linguistically jouissives explorations, his work's bareness and open-ended identities, Kwahulé has been called Africa's answer to that other so-called francophone, Samuel Beckett.

RANDY GENER: What is the situation of Ivorian theatre today? Are you able to work in Africa the way you can in France?

KOFFI KWAHULÉ: Let's say the patient is now stable. Starting in the '30s, Ivorian theatre had been one of the most dynamic in Africa. The first French play ever written by a black African was written in 1933 by the Ivorian Bernard Dadié, who is still alive today. You can see how young Franco-African theatre is: Its history unfolds within a lifetime. We are witnessing today a decline of theatre in Côte d'Ivoire, first observed in 1980. It is virtually impossible to perform a play more than three times. Until the end of the '70s, plays could be performed more than 200 times; there was a real theatre life then. Today, all the theatres (movie theatres, too) have either been bought by the evangelical church or been abandoned.

Add to this situation the fact that, upon seeing the refusal of African authorities to shoulder their responsibilities, France had initiated in 1981 a cultural cooperation to encourage artistic development in Africa. What should have been a form of solidarity was preempted by a network of civil servants and artists from Paris. French directors were sent to Africa to teach Africans how to do good theatre. The initiative itself is not reprehensible—it is even excellent insofar as art thrives mostly on encounters and exchanges. The problem is that these directors, generally on the decline in France, used Africa like an experimental lab; little by little, the concern was not to bring their experience to Africans anymore but to put together shows, with the money theoretically reserved for Africans, and bring them back to France. These shows were considered in France to be "African theatre," as if the imaginary world of a nation could be fabricated for them. Africans who had succeeded in putting up shows opted for forms with song and dance, which were considered "authentically African" and were the only theatre that could be exported to a Europe still hungry for exoticism. Many shows that were developed in Africa were never performed in Africa. The result: Young Ivorian writers and directors lost their "mirrors."

In the last few years, there has been a theatre renewal in Africa, because the new initiatives today issue from the Africans first; then France and the European Union get involved. Festivals are multiplying in Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal. During the '80s, writing had been banished from the theatre because it was suspected of being "white and intellectual" and the only important playwrights were living outside of Africa. We are today witnessing an emergence of interesting African writers.

Why have you been a harsh critic of francophonie as a neocolonial institution? Have your views changed?

I am happy you are asking this question. I have nothing against francophonie itself. I even think it is an excellent initiative insofar as it can help to maintain a multipolar world. Côte d'Ivoire's official language is French, and I am very happy to speak and write in French. French is my language, and I am francophone. That said, it is the notion of the "francophone writer" or "francophone artist" that I find suspect, especially since it doesn't concern white French writers. West Indians, who have been French for centuries, are still labeled "francophone writers," while it is normal for a French writer who has originally come from Russia, Norway or Romania to be considered a "French writer." The term "francophone literature" implies a minority literature, the antechamber of the great and beautiful French literature. Francophonie is an artificial border that protects the presumed purity of the French language.

I find it unfair to associate the works of these francophone writers with a political concept. It is as if their work's ultimate goal was only to defend the position of the French language and culture in the world, a new Maginot Line against English—a goal which wasn't assigned to French writers even though the ontological responsibility of francophonie as a concept belongs to them.

France has the strongest record of continued involvement in Africa, though some of its initiatives have invited criticism, and is the largest single source of foreign assistance there. Would you agree that a closeness to Africa is part of French identity?

That Africa is today part of French identity is a given. But for reasons that escape me, France continues to maintain invisible boundaries. Foreigners who arrive in France are often surprised by the dichotomy that exists between people of all origins who mix on the street and the very "white" image that French television, for example, shows the world. At the theatre level, a few theatres and festivals are dedicated to "others," effectively keeping them apart. In other words, France is willing to spend a lot of money as long as the others stay in their corner. Yet the Jacobinic tradition imagines a France beyond communities; it tries to make it possible for us to live together—with the risks but also the riches that all these forms of otherness involve. At least, that's the France I know. On the other hand, I feel that despite the efforts French people are putting into creating these "living together," institutions continue to sustain the idea of a France as primarily "white and Catholic."

Any history that involved Africans and French people has long been left out of school programs; it's only very recently that this aspect of our history has started to be taught seriously, maybe because we have finally realized that we can't live healthily with corpses in our closets. It's mostly in the name of this interlinked identity—and also because France likes to see itself as a great power—that France creates its identity in Africa, too.

Your recent works (Misterioso-119 and Blue-S-cat) are not realistic and have no obvious connection to Africa. But you also do not disassociate your work from your sense of being an Ivorian.

Indeed, most of my plays don't try to demonstrate how Ivorian I am. Identity is not a given but a shifting notion. In the beginning, I was criticized for not writing "African." Which means those people knew what "African" was. But for my part, I don't. Writers or artists who try to be "African," in reality, accept being fixed in a dated expression of themselves. Africans, like any other human beings, are in a state of becoming. I was born in Côte d'Ivoire, I went to a French school, and I was fed with Hollywood cinema and African-American music from when I was six. All these influences flow through me. When I write, I can't deny these parts of myself just because they're French or American. This said, I have written works—plays like Le Grand-Serpent, Bintou, Village fou and my novel Babyface—which "authenticity hunters" consider "African."

In Côte d'Ivoire, my theatre is being embraced as an aspect of the Ivorian imagination unfolding somewhere else—that is considered normal for someone who has been living in Europe for 30 years. More and more, my plays are performed in Côte d'Ivoire and other francophone African countries. Judging by the press clips, they are very well received; they are even seen as African in their preoccupations. Jaz emerged from the story a woman who was working for UNICEF or UNESCO told me. She had been working in Bosnia, after the genocide. Most of the women who were coming to see her would tell her about the rape of a sister or a friend, until she discovered they were telling her about their own rapes. When the play was presented in Rwanda in 2006, the entire audience was convinced Jaz had been written for Rwanda.

The plight of women as targets of violence has been deeply important in many of your works. I understand that you have worked as an art therapist. How did this inform your views?

Sometimes, my theatre is indeed perceived as feminist, but it is not. I am like most men—someone who has been raised to believe he is superior to a woman. I know that's an aberration, so I try to make my relationship to women—in terms of authority and humaneness—one of equality, even though I don't always succeed. I also often run writing workshops, preferably reserved for women. In December '08, I will go to Burundi to run a workshop for women. This workshop is part of a project about the phenomenon of rape since the beginning of the neverending civil war that has been ripping that country apart. The distinguishing feature of this workshop is that all the participants have been raped. The text that will emerge from the workshop will be crafted into a show.

In reality, my theatre mostly deals with black issues, even when all the characters on stage are white or yellow. Behind my female characters, we have to see blacks. If I summon the shape of a woman, it's because the "racism" that women suffer stems from the same causes as Negrophobia: the body, the sex. Negrophobia and sexism, unlike other forms of exclusion, originate essentially from the uncontrollable pressure that these bodies/sexes exert on the other. Understanding what happens to women is understanding what happens to blacks.

Can you share one or two of the most revealing experiences you encountered when you were still learning art therapy as a professional modality?

I don't believe theatre can heal. I even think the opposite; the primary function of theatre—as a funeral ceremony during which living persons (embodied by the spectators) attend their own funeral—is to make us sick, or more precisely, to reveal to us how sick or "charged with life" we are. Healing belongs to the decisions we will make individually or collectively (as organizations or states) in real life, with a clear mind. Theatre doesn't heal and doesn't resolve anything. It simply offers us an opportunity to discover that we need healing.