Masqueraders Whiplash Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine Edited
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MASQUERADERS by Stafford Ashani WHIPLASH by Ginger Knight FALLEN ANGEL AND THE DEVIL CONCUBINE by Patricia Cumper, Honor Ford-Smith, Carol Lawes, Hertencer Lindsay & Eugene Williams Edited & introduced by Honor Ford-Smith 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 1 1/9/2011 11:32:20 PM Paul Issa Publications 16 Seymour Avenue, Kingston 10, Jamaica (876) 361-0707 www.paulissapublications.com [email protected] © 2011 Selection, introduction and editorial matter by Honor Ford-Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechnical, or other means now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in an information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers, except for extracts for critical reviews. Production or public reading rights to these three plays must be requested from the individual playwrights or copyright holders and be granted in writing prior to the commencement of rehearsals. Masqueraders © 1975 The Estate of Stafford Ashani (Harrison) Original music used in Masqueraders composed by Marjorie Whylie and Stafford Ashani (Harrison) is available by request. For permission to produce this play and/or use the music please write to: Estate of Stafford Ashani (Harrison) c/o Victor Harrison, 84 East Armour Heights, Constant Spring P.O. Box 2848, Kingston 8, Jamaica [email protected] Whiplash © 1983 Ginger Knight For permission to produce this play please write to: Ginger Knight, New Vineyards Apartments (#124), 9 Rochdale Crescent, Kingston 3, Jamaica [email protected] Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine © 1987 Patricia Cumper, Honor Ford-Smith, Carol Lawes, Hertencer Lindsay, and Eugene Williams For permission to produce this play please write to: Eugene Williams, c/o School of Drama, Edna Manley College, 1 Arthur Wint Drive, Kingston 5, Jamaica [email protected] ISBN: 978-976-95248-0-4 15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1 Cover image/Masqueraders – photo by Richard Montgomery Whiplash – photo by Donald “Jimmy” Bell Fallen Angel & the Devil Concubine – photo by Owen Minott Book and cover design and typesetting by Annika Lewinson-Morgan Cover concept by Paul Issa Set in 12/15pt Souvenir with Benguiat Gothic Bk BT Printed in USA 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 2 1/9/2011 11:32:20 PM for Stafford Ashani formerly Stafford Harrison 1953-2009 Singers and dancers and players of instruments will be there: all Jah children 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 3 1/9/2011 11:32:20 PM v 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 4 1/9/2011 11:32:20 PM Contents Acknowledgments / vi General Introduction / 1 A brief note on the language of the plays / 16 Masqueraders / 21 Rasta, Respectability and the Challenge to Colonial Cultural Authority: An introduction to Stafford Ashani’s Masqueraders / 23 The play: Masqueraders by Stafford Ashani / 34 Whiplash / 129 Violence, Political Disillusion and the Image of the Violent Jamaican: An Introduction to Ginger Knight’s Whiplash / 131 The play: Whiplash by Ginger Knight / 142 Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine / 231 Playing Contrapuntally: An introduction to Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine / 233 The play: Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine by Patricia Cumper, Honor Ford-Smith, Carol Lawes, Hertencer Lindsay, Eugene Williams / 241 Glossary / 277 Bibliography / 280 v 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 5 1/9/2011 11:32:20 PM Acknowledgments The idea for an anthology of Jamaican plays from the 1970s and 80s was Paul Issa’s. We consulted on the choice of the plays and he asked me to write the introduction and edit the plays. I gratefully acknowledge his willingness to consult at all stages of the project and for his graciousness and patience with my work on the production of this manuscript which took far too long. I also want to thank Maralyn Ellis and Kimberly Palmer, my research assistants from the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Maralyn assisted with the formatting of the scripts, and the selection of words for the glossary. Kimberly commented on the introduction and followed to the letter my direction to mark up the copy like a school teacher. I am indebted to Mervyn Morris for his helpful advice on the language and to Clive Forrester and Pamela Mordecai for their willingness to discuss the issues at stake. Stephanie Martin worked with me on the complicated process of rendering the language of the plays in a form that can only be called consistent inconsistency. She diligently copy-edited the text bringing both her years of experience in publishing the Jamaican language and her remarkable ear for the many varieties of Jamaican speech to bear on the choices that had to be made. Ric Knowles and Mervyn Morris gave critical comments on the copy. Dawn Scott and Mark Figueroa clarified questions related to the occupation of the Creative Arts Centre. Buddy Pouyatt allowed us to use images from his photograph collection of Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine. Eugene Williams helped with permissions and other details and was the point person for all the negotiations for the use of Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine whose collaborators are now spread out across four countries. He and Carol Lawes assisted with reconstructing elements of the original production of Fallen Angel. Bernardo Garcia Dominguez gave useful comments on the final structure of the manuscript. Finally, and above all, I give thanks to all the creators and writers for their plays and their labour, time, generosity and trust. Honor Ford-Smith Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies York University, Toronto, Canada vi 1 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 6 1/9/2011 11:32:21 PM General Introduction Mutabaruka, Jamaican poet, recalls how he and Stafford Ashani, whose play Masqueraders opens this volume, “used to question everything. All the different belief systems, political systems, even Rastafari…” (Mutabaruka interview, 2009). He might have been talking about these three provocative, compelling and occa- sionally vulgar and irreverent plays, linked together by their engagement with the many issues of decolonization in all its complexity. All the plays are haunted by memories of the irrevocable and violent scenarios laid down in the past and are simultaneously marked by what Rex Nettleford called “the reach” or desire for complete emancipation (1995) and social justice. The plays traverse a critical decade in Caribbean society, 1977-1987, and are characterized by a search for new theatrical themes, methods, genres and modes of audience address. Here, the old is partially peeled away; there, it is overlaid with invocations and scenarios of possibility. Here, the new is compromised by a conflicted past that is always pursuing and imperfectly reclaiming a present that is struggling to outmaneuvre it and evade its grasp. Memories of colonization linger alongside the urgent challenges and visions of decolonization, the two existing simultaneously, struggling together in complicated and inseparable ways. The tensions between global and local, interdependency and dependency are evident in how all the plays deal with history and the present; and more subtly, in the ways they take up questions of community and belonging. Each play rep- resents voices, themes and motifs which not only deserve study in the Caribbean but also more broadly in the field of drama and performance as a whole. The fact that they have not been published more than twenty or thirty years since being created and produced speaks to the fact that both critical authorizing practices and the market in cultural production remain largely dominated by European and American work. One of the goals of this collection then is to speak to an audience interested in alternatives to this trajectory, and also to put this work into conversation with other African, African diasporic and postcolonial works from the period and beyond. This general introduction to the collection there- fore addresses Caribbean and other diverse audiences. I sketch the historical and cultural contexts that inform the plays, describing some of the key global vi 1 3 Jamaican Plays2010-9finalLH.indd 1 1/9/2011 11:32:21 PM 3 JAMAICAN PLAYS postcolonial and anticolonial impulses that informed the spirit of the time. I dem- onstrate how global forces intersected with local struggles in different but overlap- ping ways to shape the work of this generation of writers and performers. Before each play there is a short introduction specific to that script. In these, I attend to the themes and dramatic strategies of each play and discuss how the plays take up questions such as memory, power and authority, violence, nation, community and belonging. Postcolonial performance and its uses The term ‘postcolonial’ which informs the context for these plays is used here in at least two somewhat contradictory ways. I use the term fully conscious of its limitations and also of the rolling eyeballs that are often a response to it. First, I use it in a literal and limited sense, because all the plays in this collection were written in the period that began approximately ten years after political indepen- dence from Britain. On the one hand, this period was a hopeful time character- ized by the development of national narratives of possibility; on the other, it was marked by the awareness that the reorganization and expansion of global capi- talism was undermining them. This tension was highly productive and these plays are examples of how that process of contradiction was lived and addressed, how it brought into being new human subjects and how it also resulted in new dramatic strategies. Obviously, the period following independence from Britain did not achieve complete emancipation. Nevertheless it was certainly different from the colonial period that went before. It was also very different from the present global order which scholars have characterized as a new imperial order (Harvey 2003; Hardt and Negri 2000; Razack 2004), one which has the distinction of denying that it is either imperial or hegemonic.