English theatre at The Crossroads

>> Black Theatre Workshop goes bilingual with African play

by AMY BARRATT

In the past six months, we've seen English plays from Toronto at the The#201;#233;a#226;tre de Quat'Sous, and Robert Lepage's company, Ex Machina performing a show almost entirely in English at Usine C. Meanwhile, we've seen English companies like infinitheatre and I Spy A Theatre Company take bold steps into bilingual theatre (the former with Endgame and Farce and the latter with the wonderful Novembre).

What's going on here?

Are we seeing, as one colleague muttered during the Lepage press conference, "the bilingualization of the theatre?" And is that, as her tone implied, a scandalous thing?

Kate Bligh, artistic director of the traditionally anglo Black Theatre Workshop, doesn't think it's scandalous at all. "It's wonderful," the British expatriate enthuses. "The sooner the better!"

Next week, Bligh puts her money where her mouth is when BTW opens The Crossroads/Le Carrefour, by African playwright Josue#201;#233; Kossi Efoui. The simultaneous English and French versions--with the same cast--will be the North American premiere of this play, which has received numerous honours elsewhere.

It has been five years since BTW's last foray into French-language theatre (a rather ill-fated version of Ntozake Shange's For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide--When the Rainbow is Enuf) and Bligh is determined to do it right this time. The Crossroads/Le Carrefour represents a new, bilingual mandate for the almost 30-year-old company.

"There are 140,000 black people in Montreal and more than 50 per cent of them are franco-phone," Bligh says. "So if it carries on calling itself the Black Theatre Workshop, then just simply in order to serve its constituency, it must be a bilingual company.

"Non-white people under 40 are the most bilingual people I know in the city, so again, it's simply reflecting reality."

One of those people is actor-musician Chimwemwe Miller, who plays The Prompter/Le Souffleur in the play. Born in Malawi, he has lived in Montreal since the age of seven, doing virtually all of his elementary and secondary schooling in French, then attending an English CEGEP (he studied theatre at Dawson).

"It's great working with both the English and French texts," Miller says, "because I'm getting things that I didn't get in the English from the French and vice versa. If we had just had the English script I think we would have been at a disadvantage--we would have lost things, the infused power of the words."

The cast also includes Roberto Blizzard, Naila Belvett, and Omari Newton, and the dance sequences will be performed by the formidable Delphine Pan De#201;#233;oue#201;#233;.

Political dynamite

These days it seems every second playwright gets described as "Beckett-ian" (the other half are "Brechtian"), but in the case of Kossi Efoui, a PhD in Philosophy, the nod may actually be deserved. A native of the tiny, troubled West African nation of Togo, Kossi Efoui wrote this play at the age of 26 and soon thereafter exiled himself to France. His play was considered political dynamite despite the fact that the setting is quite general.

"There's no direct reference to being in Togo," says Miller. "The Crossroads is African by virtue of the characters being African and I guess the subject matter is immediately African, but it's also something that anybody, anywhere can identify with. There's a universal kind of recognition. In that sense, it's timeless and placeless.

"Haitians have read it and said 'Oh my god, I think this play is about Haiti'," adds Bligh. "And other Africans have read it and said, 'Oh my god this play is about--wherever.' It's dealing with a model of a self-government gone horribly wrong."

As it's a one-act play, both versions can, and will, be performed in an evening. That's particularly fitting since the characters, like those in Waiting for Godot, constantly feel that they're repeating themselves, that they're stuck.

Bligh and company are trying to do a lot on very little money.

"My really clear goal this season, my first season at BTW, is to raise the artistic level of the company. It's been pretty low for a number of years and our funding's been cut because of low artistic standards and we need more money. This year we're trying to raise the standards on less money than the company's ever had before.

"The point of a company like BTW is access. We're not necessarily there to cure racism. The curing of racism will be affected when everybody has full opportunity of expression and full parti-cipation. BTW is not there for white liberal audiences to feel bad about racism."

As for the "bilingualization" of BTW?

"I can't see it as a loss," says Bligh. "To me theatre is beyond language. I'm interested in good theatre. The language is not really useful or interesting. The best theatre I've ever seen in my life has been in Japanese and German--and I don't speak either of those." :

The Crossroads/Le Carrefour May 3-13 (except May 7 & 8), first performance 8pm, second 9:45pm, at the Monument-National. Call for Details; tickets $15-25