samedi 12 mai 2012
vendredi 16 mars 2012
State of Denial: In memories of grandmothers who lived to tell
Sunday, March 11, 2012
First-Person - Rahul Varma on State of Denial
© Rahul Varma, March 11, 2012
State of Denial
is about Sahana, a Turkish Muslim woman in her nineties, who has
devoted her life to assisting Armenian survivors of genocide, and about
Odette, a twenty something Rwanda-born Canadian filmmaker, who travels
to Turkey to investigate stories of genocide. These two women differ in
their nationality, ethnicity, religion, cultural background and age –
but they have one thing in common: A well-kept personal secret, which if
uncovered, will change their life forever. Initially, the two women are
suspicious of each other. They question and quiz, comply and compete,
and challenge and contradict each other – and in so doing, they become
the best of the friends. On her deathbed, Sahana reveals her chilling
secret to Odette and Odette promises to make Sahana’s secret public at
any cost. On her mission to make public Sahana’s secret, Odette ends up
revealing her own. With that a denial ends and a new life begins.
In
the late eighties, when Teesri Duniya Theatre was denied state funding
due to the prevalent Eurocentric bias, emerging artists donated their
labour to create the company’s productions. In 1988, while I was
directing a play called Equal Wages, an agitprop about the age-old problem of lower wages for women compared to men – an Armenian actress Nadia Agopyan asked me, “so when are we going to do a play about Armenian genocide?”
I must confess that I knew little about it even though I thought I was
well aware of world events. The Armenian genocide was not taught in
schools and the media did not talk about it. Nadia’s words stayed with
me. She challenged my ignorance, as well as reminded me what the
Diaspora remembers of their past and how their past shapes their present
and future in Canada. Six years ago, I got involved in Prof Steven
High’s remarkable research called Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by Genocide, War and Other Human Rights Violations. This research project had
over 50 community partners and 7 working groups such as Cambodian,
Holocaust, Rwandan, Oral History and Performance etc. There was no
Armenian working group. Teesri became part of the Oral History and Performance
working group headed by Ted Little who is also the Associate Artistic
Director of Teesri as well as the editor of the company’s theatre
quarterly alt.theatre – Canada’s only journal dedicated to
cultural diversity and the stage. As a part of the Oral History and
Performance working group Teesri organized a public event called Untold
Histories in 2008. Artists from South Asia, Iran, Armenia, the African
continent and from the First Nations presented their stories through
spoken words, dance, music and films. The seeds of State of Denial were being sowed as I heard the stories and testimonies of survivors and exiles.
But
to write a play based on these testimonies or stories, I had to take
into account several issues: (a) is the story new and untold, (b) what
does it mean to the subject of the story and the storyteller and (c)
what does it mean for the society?
It was in one of my conversation with an Armenian scholar and friend Hourig Attarian that I was made aware of Fethiya Çetin’s recently published memoire in which her grandmother revealed an untold truth – a truth that changed everything Çetin knew about her grandmother. That revelation didn’t only tell Çetin
how her grandmother survived genocide but who she actually was and who
she eventually became in order to live. Why did this grandmother keep
silent for such a long time? What did breaking this silence mean to her
personally and publically? Listening to Hourig I froze. She asked me, “What happened?” I said, “I just got the idea of the play.”
I titled the play Unusual Battleground, which later became State of Denial. Now it was time for me to tell my friend Nadia Agopyan that I hadn’t forgot her question to me.
Central character or the central story
Now
the question was, will it be this grandmother’s story or a story
inspired by her? I knew her story must be told but, by telling her
story, what message would I be giving to many others whose stories are
not told? Are they not also important? What if there are those amongst
us who fear telling their stories in order to protect their privacy and
families left behind. I also had to think about who has an appetite to
hear these difficult stories and testimonies? Finally, I had to figure
out how the story could be best told: documentary, autobiography,
imagined, plot-driven, reenactment, or in some other form?
I
shied away from biographical, “personal,” and documentary plays, not
because I wanted to undermine their values but because I preferred to go
beyond biography and the personal. My goal as a playwright is not to
present facts but to reveal a truth and instigate further inquiry. That
is why my earlier plays such as Bhopal and Truth and Treason, although based on true historical events, were plot-driven fictional plays. Taking the same approach, State of Denial,
although inspired by a grandmother’s story, is not a biographical
docudrama. It is a fictionalized multi/intercultural play about a global
historical event expressed locally. State of Denial explores the
truth behind historical events, in this case genocide and war, in which
female bodies were used as the battleground for sexual abuse and
gendered violence. It became a play about hidden identity, silence,
survival and the need to counter denial. It became a play about a
recurring yet relatively unaddressed theme.
Multicultural Aesthetic
I
am a playwright of colour and I am uncomfortable with the dominant
culture’s understanding of cultures other than their own. The dominant
culture resists recognizing that the 20th
century was marked by mass migration of people from the countries they
were born in, to some other country where they live now. And now that
people have moved in, the social challenge of the 21st
century is to do things in ways that will allow everyone to get along
with each other. You walk down the streets of Montreal and you cannot
ignore the cultural diversity in every walk of life. Yet, the artistic
richness of diversity is unmistakably absent from our stages. Quebec’s
perception is that multiculturalism is a way for the ethnics to sustain
their traditions, orthodoxy and reminisce about the past. To a small
extent that may be true, (don’t the Anglo-French cultures do the same?) –
after all, multiculturalism is a way to tell stories of cultural
minorities that have not been told.
For
me, multi and interculturalism are inseparable and constitute the
aesthetic basis of modern playwriting. This fact is reflected in the State of Denial,
which extrapolates events of the Armenian genocide of 1915, (which is
still contested by some) with the Rwandan genocide of 1994-95. It is the
potential of multiculturalism that a global issue is told as a local
story because it is told through the experiences and memories of the
Diaspora now living in Canada.
The play in Summary
The
above said, here is a short description of the plot. “When Odette, a
Rwandan-borne Canadian filmmaker, travels to Turkey to investigate
stories of genocide and hidden identity, she interviews Sahana, an
elderly and respected Muslim woman who has devoted her life to assisting
Armenian survivors. On her deathbed, Sahana confesses a chilling secret
to Odette - a secret that challenges a long-standing state of denial - a
secret that Odette must promise to make public at any cost.”
Challenges of Going beyond the Personal
As you can sense from the description above, State of Denial
is not a documentary but an imagined play consisting of multiple
personal stories woven into one and told through characters that come
from different continents. I read many books and biographies of
survivors from Armenia, Rwanda, South Asia and Balkans, and I spoke to
their descendent now residing in Canada.
The
challenges of going beyond the personal are many. How do we challenge a
personal story without offending the person whose story it is? How do I
contrast a personal story of a survivor with that of her oppressor who
is not approached to speak? What do we do when the cultural sensitivity
of a story would not permit any discussion of class, gender, nationality
and other determinants? It is therefore, that I have opted for an
imagined plot rather than a biography. I have gone beyond the personal
but the personal and political are inseparable. In State of Denial,
I have tried to tell not one but a composite of personal stories in the
hope that it will connect the audiences to larger causes, new
questions, and appropriate social action…
Story had to be told
Writing
a play about genocide, war-rape, sexual humiliation, and ethnic
cleansing, I must admit, that I can’t comprehend, what possesses men to
unleash such horrific crimes, and I am more bewildered when I see that
the world knows about it and does little. All I can say is that in the
face of such shameless denial, awareness is our only hope. As one of the
survivor said, “When I was in the camp, I just wished I would die.
But I kept thinking of all those who didn’t survive to speak afterwards.
I lived to tell the story.”
Acknowledgments:
I
would like to acknowledge Hourig Attarian who gave me the basic idea of
the play. I would like to acknowledge Sima Aprahamian, Arianna
Bardesono, Deborah Forde, Steve High, Ted Little, Lisa Ndejuru Linda
Levesque, Emma Tibaldo and Emilee Veluz for their wisdom and support.
And the cast and the crew that gave State of Denial a voice. I
acknowledge the assistance of the 2011 Banff Playwrights Colony – a
partnership between the Canada Council for the Arts, The Banff Centre
and Alberta Theatre Project. I am grateful for the dramaturgical
assistance of the Playwrights Workshop Montreal.
In State of Denial, Deborah Forde directs a multiethnic cast featuring Davide Chiazzese, Rachelle Glait, Matthew Kabwe, Helen Koya, Olivier Lamarche and Natalie Tannous, and a talented production and design team of Montreal artists; Noémi Poulin, Eric Mongerson and Stage Manager Luciana Burcheri.
March 16 to April 1, 2012
Wednesday to Saturday 8:00pm
McCord Museum 690 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal QC H3A 1E9
Box Office: 514 848 0238 Adults: $22, Seniors: $20, Students: $12
Teesri Duniya Theatre www.teesriduniya.com
lundi 13 février 2012
Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO)
|
A NATIONAL VOICE IS NEEDED
Introduction:
The face of Canada is changing.
This is most evident in our communities and in the arts. There are more of us living here,
having children, and contributing to the growth of our communities. At the same time, there are more of us
involved in the arts as writers, actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists,
storytellers, directors, choreographers and other arts professionals. Together,
we’re changing the face of the arts in Canada and creating new senses of
Canadian identity through our contributions in the arts.
Our artists and our communities are an integral and indispensible part
of Canadian cultural identity. We
contribute much to the growth of our communities through the invaluable
contributions we make to articulating through the arts the Canadian
experience. Any detrimental impact
on our work will be a loss for Canadian culture and society and will diminish
our sense of who we are on this land and the uniqueness of the Canadian project
in global history.
Further, while Aboriginal and racialized peoples and artists make up a
significant component of Canada, when combined with other equity groups (e.g.,
persons with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning
communities), we are clearly the majority.
These issues have certainly been recognized by arts’ funding bodies as
well as by artists of all backgrounds and those who are now working in arts
forms whose origins and contemporary expressions come from racialized
communities. These are important
developments as they indicate the increasing recognition of racialized peoples
contributions to Canadian identities and the arts in Canada.
However, recent reports by Hills Strategies on the incomes of racialized
artists are telling us what we already know – we make less than others. Also, despite increases in the number
of our arts organizations and artists that are receiving grants, we still seem
to lag well behind most other communities in terms of grants received. This severely limits our efforts to
create and contribute to the cultural life of Canada and to express through the
arts the strength of Canada’s diversity.
Also, we have reviewed the recent report Equity within the Arts Ecology:
Traditions and Trends prepared by the Centre for Innovation in Culture
and the Arts in Canada commissioned by the Canadian Public Arts Funders network
and released in October (http://www.cpaf-opsac.org/en/themes/documents/CPAFEquityWithintheArtsEcology-FINAL-EN_000.pdf). This report confirms a number of the
same concerns we have and why we’re coming together to address these
issues. In its concluding section,
the report states that:
While it is important to acknowledge the concrete steps that have been
made to advance equity in a range of areas and for several groups, the painful conundrum of equity work is
acknowledging that the systemic gaps that led to the imbalances and
discrimination that Abella identified over 25 years ago remain and continues.
This indeed has traditionally been a blind spot, as well as the most
pragmatically difficult issue to deal with in any equity context: first
noticing and identifying the problem and then conceiving of the often-radical
changes required in thought and practice that will transform the communities
engaged in, addressed and served by artistic work (p.12)
For example, based on our own perusal of various arts’ council’s recent
annual reports, we are aware that:
A) In British
Columbia in 2006, immigrants accounted for one in four (or 25%) of the
population. Despite this, of the total budget of BC Arts Council
grants ($9,164,527) in 2009-10, funding to Aboriginal and racialized groups was
only at $1,142,590 (12.5%);
B) While close to 20% of
Ontarians self-identify as racialized, it would seem that less than 9% of OAC’s total grants budget was
directed to these artists.
C) In Quebec, racialized
groups comprise 8.7% of the provincial population. Despite this, the CALQ funding appears to only provide 0.6% of its funding to
racialized artists.
Three Issues:
First, given the importance placed on equity and diversity in the arts
and, subsequently, the importance of Aboriginal and racialized peoples to the
arts of Canada, it is astounding that we’re still waiting for levels of funding
and other resource support that will enable our organizations and artists to be
supported in ways that are truly equitable.
For example, although the Ontario Arts (OAC) has been increasing its
resource and funding support to Aboriginal and ethno-racial artists,
comparatively, it is nowhere near the commitment needed to say Aboriginal and
racialized artists have achieved equitable results. Also, the OAC has recently announced the hiring of its new Executive
Director who will be in place by the end of the year or early in 2012. We are not clear as to what criteria
regarding equity and diversity has been used in this search nor how it will figure
into the continued work of the OAC in its commitments of its Strategic Plan.
As with the Canada Council, we lag far behind other communities and are
not sure what plans the OAC, or Canada Council, has to support us in reaching
equitable outcomes.
Second, we are concerned that a vital national initiative, the StandFirm
Network, has lost the support it has had for the past decade from the Canada
Council for the Arts. StandFirm provided a key resource for racialized artists
and arts organizations through which we had
access to funding for professional and organizational development and,
importantly, the opportunity to share our views, concerns and initiatives. Now, even though we as a community are
at the peak of growth yet nowhere near equity in funding and resources, our
support for the StandFirm Network has ended.
Furthermore, those
organizations which have been successful at receiving support from the Canada
Council’s Equity Office (Capacity Building Grants) have just been informed that
our voluntary StandFirm Network will no longer be directly resourced by the
Canada Council. We have also
recently learned that the funding available through the Equity Office grants
programs is under review and can only commit to funding activities for the next
three years.
Third, we’ve learned that all provincial/territorial funders and the
Canada Council for the Arts recently met and discussed their approaches to
equity and diversity. We have no
idea what was discussed, where the points of consensus might be and what to
expect as a result of this meeting.
This is surprising as we would hope that Aboriginal and racialized artists,
and others, would be informed of such a meeting, its agenda, discussions and
results. We have heard
nothing. And we are concerned
about the way they seem to be approaching the notion of equity. Our concept of equity takes
consideration of individual and community distinctiveness based on historical
and contemporary contexts.
For example, we are aware that there is data shows significant
under-funding of Aboriginal artists based on population; however, we understand
that the more important issue for Aboriginal artists concerns the fiduciary
responsibility of the federal government to the First Peoples of Canada – a
point of view very difficult to integrate with concerns of racialized artists
because it is entirely specific to the reality of people living under the
Indian Act of Parliament, without exception. It is Pikangikum First Nation that
has the highest suicide rate among youth in the world. It is the
Aboriginal Canadians who were forbidden by law to practice their culture for
decades in Canada. It is the Indian Reservation system that has kept the
communities physically isolated from one another and unable to build their own sector. These circumstances are unique to
Aboriginal peoples and, therefore, raising Aboriginal arts funding allocation a
few percentage points will not bring equity of outcomes; nor will approaching
Aboriginal artists in the same process as racialized artists.
As well,
we are aware of the lack of data related to funding for persons with
disabilities in the arts as well as with other historically marginalized
communities, e.g., women, the LGBT communities, etc. Certainly, these issues too need to be addressed. However, in
the arts, we believe it is absolutely essential to name the Eurocentric
paradigm that has forcibly eclipsed the voice and perspectives of Aboriginal and
racialized peoples. This is
decidedly different than looking at issues related to regionalisim and the
inequities in funding distributed to urban centres compared to rural
communities.
It is for these, and several other reasons, that we are circulating this
position paper. We are concerned
that there will be significant erosion of the contributions made by racialized
and Aboriginal peoples in the arts across Canada, particularly given scenarios
of budget reductions that some funders are facing. We know all too well that the last on the boat tend to be
the first tossed over when times get rough or, to be more blunt, we know all
too well what is meant by the ‘last hired, first fired’ and we are determined
that this legacy be changed. And
changed now!
vendredi 3 février 2012
Do Black Dance Companies Hit a Glass Ceiling?
Posted January 31, 2012 | 1/31/12 09:26 AM ET
"The platforms for black dance are so narrow," states acclaimed Australian independent choreographer Bernadette Walong-Sene.
It was a sentiment that echoed over and over in the panel discussion I attended at the 2012 International Association of Blacks in Dance (I.A.B.D.) Conference that just ended Sunday, January 30 in Toronto...
lundi 21 mars 2011
La Mani-Fête, 24 mars 2011
L'évènement aura lieu dans le cadre de la Semaine d'actions contre le racisme du 21 au 25 mars 2011. Visitez leur site internet et téléchargez la programmation officielle.
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