Lack of a Last Laugh - Dialogue in Socially Critical Performance

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LACK OF A LAST LAUGH:

Dialogue in Socially Critical Performance

By Mateo Hinojosa

Senior Thesis for Comparative Literary Studies

Advisor: William Murphy of the Department of Anthropology


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Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

May 8, 2005

ABSTRACT

Anchoring my argument in my experience of contemporary performance in Cameroon, I

argue that dialogue in socially critical performance art plays a crucial role in social change through

the exposure and contestation of hierarchies of discourse and space. Different positions of social

centrality/peripherality, determined by dominant discourse, may be reconfigured during

performance through dialogic interaction between artists and the public as well as through dialogue

between performers or the performances content and cultural, historical, geographic, and material

contexts that frame the creation of meaning in performance. I utilize Mikhail Bakhtins literary

theory of dialogism in order to examine these processes; I also incorporate the anthropology of

performance in ritual, theater, and everyday life, and the political theory of the public sphere.

Individuals and groups may not be able to immediately change systemic structures of inequality,

but through tactical responses to unjust situations controlled by dominant strategies and systems,

people have always survived and enjoyed themselves despite the unjust structures within which

they live. Gradually, through the positing of creative dialogue and open critique as central to

societys functioning, performance may shape dominant discourse in order to subvert structures of

inequality and lead to the opening of society that necessarily accompanies open-ended dialogue.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSMy most sincere thanks to

Bill, for the guidance, encouragement and critique that have brought rigor and depth to my

musings.

Jacob, for the editing, for the advice, and of course for bringing theory, performance and social

justice together with great style.

Tim, for bringing my feet back down to the earthy ground and showing me the importance of

space.

Helmut and the Comp Lit department, including the students, for the accompaniment and

encouragement during this work.

The community of Northwestern University, whose support and dialogue have spurred me on to

invaluable insight.

Achille, for the skepticism, reality-checks, and excellent quote.

Petra, Tafor, Patrick, and Alex, for the collaboration and friendship without which there would be

no play.

The Cameroonian art community, for giving so much inspiration and information.

Dr. Kinni, for all the wisdom, contacts, and use of the Afhemi Museum and its art.

The School for International Training faculty and staff, for all the assistance in getting to knowCameroon and such wonderful people.

Tous mes frres, surs, mres et pres camerounais, particulirement la famille Madola, pour tout

leur soutien et comprhension pendant ce projet.

Gaby, Pat et la Compagnie Ichango, pour la pice fantastique.

Bingono Bingono, for all the help at CRTV Radio and Kwasen Gwangwaa, for all at CRTV

Television.

The American Embassy in Yaound, especially Jennifer and Gladys, for all the support.

The University of Yaound I faculty, for the intellectual and technical support as well as the much-

needed resources.

The Blue Leaders, for their excellent play.

My parents, for the invaluable editing and love.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION....1

Organization of Analysis and Narrative......7

PRELIMINARY RESEARCH.8

HISTORICAL, LINGUISTIC AND POLITICAL FRAMES IN CAMEROONIANPERFORMANCE......11

Movements, Precedents and Usage of Theater in Cameroon....17

Problems in the Interaction between Artists and the Public...........24

MATERIAL AND TEMPORAL FRAMES OF PERFORMANCE.........27

Spatial Frames and the Use of Props........27

POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS FOR PLAYING WITH CONCEPTIONS OFCENTRALITY/PERIPHERALITY......34

Just Making Do?........................37

From Carnival to Rational Public Sphere to Socially Critical Performance ...41

A Short Excursus or a Quick Gestus......44

CONCLUSIONS...46

WORKS CITED....52

APPENDIX: INTERVIEWS CITED........55

NOTES..57

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Art is always subversive.

Art and Liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal to be used against the

established order.

- Pablo Picasso

Civiliser! Privatiser !

- Petit Pays - Longue Longue

INTRODUCTION

The actor approaches a seated audience member, extends a Polaroid camera toward her, andvery politely requests that she take a few pictures during the next few hours. Umm, okay,she responds. Periodically throughout the performance, flashes of bright white illuminate

moments of apparent importance.

* * * * *

Onstage, the actress wails, then flings herself into the public, dancing wildly up the aisles asaudience members cringe away from her flailing pain.

* * * * *

Its on me! the actor hollers. Enticed by the free beer, a dozen individuals rise from theirseats and take to the stage, where disco lights and booming bass soon set them to dancing.

The preceding passages depict performances in which communication initiated by

performers elicits a response from the public. This reaction, as much as the gesture that acts as a

catalyst for this dialogue, creates for the public and performers a moment of shared meaning.

However, this exchange, one example of the oft-examined breaking down of the fourth wall, is

only one among many moments of dialogue; the performance can be seen as a reaction to some

stimulus in society or in the environment shaped by society, and the public, surely affected by this

interaction, will continue other dialogues that carry on the connotations of this moment. Thus,

links of dialogue extend immeasurably from the past towards the future, like interdependent forces

in a climatic system. One could argue that a similar dynamic exists in all communicative action.

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However, dialogue in performance art, through its form and content, especially enables social

critique and change. While inviting audience members to take photographs, drink beer and dance

onstage may not be revolutionary, this type of dialogue in performance at the very least asserts that

performers create meaning in collaboration with the public. This decision-making and meaning-

making process contributes to a discourse that leads to an evolution towards a more open and equal

society.

Live performance art, as it will be treated in this paper, consists of the consciously styled,

real-time presentation of a work of art, such as theater, dance, music, or storytelling, in which a

public and instigating artist(s) interact within a given space. Performance, as with similar

discourse1 in other art forms, does not simply represent society butperforms acts that modify and

constitute society. At its most socially critical, performance art acts to create a greater sense of

agency, to connect the public and the artist, and to expose and contest generally accepted

hierarchies. Performance can expose and subvert dominant conceptions of which discourses are

central/peripheral2 in society through dialogue. By dialogue I mean communication and

interaction with existing discourses, with the frames within which performance is situated, and

with the public present at the moment of performance. This critique through dialogue, while not

necessarily instantly effective in terms of rearranging power structures or systems of inequality,

serves two crucial purposes: it allows individuals to live better with situations of inequality and

injustice, and it positions creative dialogue and open critique as central to societys functioning,

which brings about a change in cultural consciousness over the long term.

Performance artists and the public engage in a dialogue that acts critically both within and

in regards to society. These are the two senses in which I write the subtitle to this paper: socially

critical performance refers both to the criticism leveled at existing sociopolitical structures or

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discourses, and to the critical (in the sense of crucial) role of such performance for just societal

functioning and development.

In order to better examine exactly how and where this type of dialogue in performance

occurs, I will ground my argument in the concrete situation of performance in urban Cameroon,

particularly in Yaound. In this setting I will examine the various frames of performance, frames

that include the following contexts in which performance is produced and received: cultural (e.g.

politics, linguistics, genre, etc.), physical (e.g., space, props, etc.), temporal, and virtual (e.g.,

TV/Radio production, reproduction, etc.). Performers play with the dominating, dominant and

apparent conceptions of these frames. By dominating I mean coming from a social position or

situation from which an actor or group of actors dictates the position, situation or action (including

discourse) of other individuals and groups. By dominant I mean the most common conception

of the position, situation or action of other individuals and groups. By apparent I mean ideas

that are perceived to be true but that are not necessarily so. For example, ideas that support the

status quo are often shaped by dominating discourses in such a way as to make them appear far

more prevalent than they are. Additionally, apparent or ostensible may be employed to

describe structures of power whose domination is asserted but whose actual capacity to control

depends heavily upon the publics temporary acceptance of this assertion.

Dominance is always performative and never wholly hegemonic, even though certain

dominating discourses implicitly claim hegemony through their attempt to monopolize

interpretation, meaning, and power. Dominating discourses most often come from those asserting

a position of political or economic dominance and attempting to extend their control to the realm

of all cultural production and symbolic exchange. Often such dominating discourses are able to

bring their style of discourse to the forefront or center of societys attention through their extensive

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control of media and space this control, however, is primarily performative or normative and

only secondarily physically repressive.

Power may present itself coercively or violently, to be sure. This study, however,

presupposes that the vast majority of the time power perpetuates itself through a presentation of

discourse that reinforces the existing hierarchical social systems. The delivery of this discourse,

however, requires a performance that will inevitably provoke response, whether the performer

requests one or not, such as in the case of a dictators televised speech that prompts parody.

Artistic performance, then, has special potential for social critique: it can meet power on its own

terms (which are performative), then resituate power within a world of the performers choosing,

and finally supplant (with the cooperation of the public) dominating discourse with dialogic

discourse in order to contest authoritarian tendencies.

Creative dialogue, such as in the case of the dancing described in the narrative above,

transgresses rigid boundaries and restrictions. This dialogue can be seen in the light of Mikhail

Bakhtins conception of the dialogic. In my discussion of dialogue, I will be drawing heavily

from Bakhtins ideas on dialogism, particularly as represented in Problems of Dostoevskys

Poetics.

Dialogism, as Bakhtin conceives of it and as I will use the term throughout this paper, takes

on the following forms:

1. In particular speech3: Double-voicedness, or the presence of two distinct voices in one

utterance. May signify the intertextuality of genre or style in which the voices of distinct

texts respond to and anticipate each other within the culture as a whole. Example: The twoone-word epitaphs to this paper, in which Cameroonian performers adopt colonialist and

neo-colonialist mantras and frame them within their own parodic discourse.

2. As a general attribute of language or as an apparatus for communication: The mixingof intentions of speaker and listener through addressivity, the word with a sideways

glance, or the penultimate word (Vice, 45); in other words, the directing of

communication towards a public that is implicated in the co-creation of meaning in that

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they are expected to respond and continue the dialogue. Example: every word that hopes

for a response from the people with whom one communicates.

Dialogism will be used to shed light on my analysis of the clash of different discourses as they

jockey for position in dominant conceptions of hierarchies. However, I have taken care to refer to

dialogism only when speaking of Bakhtins theory, whereas I use dialogue more broadly, to

designate various types of multidirectional communication.

In discussing dialogue, I extend my analysis of performance art in the community of

Yaound to performances role in social criticism throughout the world. Concretely, I ask: how

can dialogue in performance be employed as a concept with which to analyze public reaction to

political discourse and how does performance politicize ostensibly apolitical discourse? In order to

contrast so-called peripheral performance with the performative discourse in the central West,

I will analyze the carnivalesque and heteroglot discourse surrounding the alterglobalization

movement, focusing on how this discourse was represented at the European Social Forum in Paris

in 2003. The extremes of politicized horizontality and participatory performance that the Social

Forums reach and the objects and direction of their diffuse attack will serve to better understand

how other types of entertaining critique in performance might situate itself on a global scale.

Despite this final move towards universalizing my insights, throughout the development of

my argument I stay firmly grounded in the specificities of performances in Cameroon, particularly

in Yaound. This researchs broader impact draws much of its force from the geographic position

of the study. As a central African country home to approximately 125-250 indigenous languages

(depending on how concepts of language and dialect are defined) and with English, French and

Fufulde as more recently (and forcefully) introduced languages that now serve as lingua franca

that carry different weight depending on geographic and social situation, Cameroon sets an ideal

stage for the investigation of central/marginal discourse.4 As a nation on the Gulf of Guinea rich in

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natural resources, it is currently an important site of a global power struggle in which France, the

United States, and multinational companies are contending (the latter two to whom power is

shifting), thus ideally framing discussion of performance treating power dynamics and the

performative nature of political power. As an impoverished sub-Saharan African country,

Cameroon has a colonial past and neo-colonial present that frame the reception and creation of

formal theater, in that this Western tradition offers a background for postcolonial and potentially

dialogically anthropophagic5 discourse from which unique contemporary African performative

traditions emerge. As the capitol of a country that is currently approximately fifty percent urban

and rapidly urbanizing, Yaound forms an ideal stage for assessing performances role in the

dynamic cosmopolitan urban milieu.

Organization of Analysis and Narrative

The plan of this paper conforms to the following structure. In this section I make some

opening remarks on structure and stylistics. In Preliminary Research I describe the fieldwork and

writing that acted as the precursor to this paper and briefly mention my findings. In the following

section I discuss how colonial history, linguistic diversity and political rigidity, as well as various

performative traditions, movements and techniques set the backdrop for performance and public

reception of performance. Subsequently, in Material and Temporal Frames of Performance, I

analyze the various frames that inform performance and that affect public reception, such as

geographic space, architecture, activities surrounding performance, and the situation within the

political economy. Then, in the first subsection of Potential and Limitations

Centrality/Peripherality, I present specific cases of dialogue in socially critical performance in

Cameroon and discuss their relation to the contexts previously mentioned. In the following

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subsection, Just Making Do?, I anticipate possible counterarguments by analyzing discourse

from young beggars in Cameroon and Bolivia (which is questionably socially critical). In the final

subsection, From Carnival Performance, I discuss how the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jrgen

Habermas and Victor Turner can be applied to my arguments claim concerning performances

crucial role in broad societal change. Habermas analysis of the increasingly open and rational

dialogue characteristic of an emerging political public sphere can be seen to parallel Bakhtins

vision of the transformative role of social criticism in the carnivalesque of the Middle Ages.

Turners discussion of the shift from pre-industrial to industrial forms of entertainment will

similarly shed light on societys potential to question or subvert the prevailing social order.

Finally, I will consider the possibilities and limitations of considering and utilizing dialogue in

contemporary socially critical performance as a tool for social change.

While this is a formal academic work, in order to adhere to the possibility of Bakhtinian

dialogism, I will experiment significantly with the narrative form. For this reason, I will

intersperse formal analytical prose with a freer-form narration of personally experienced events.

Readers of this work are encouraged to engage this text much as one participates as a member of

the public in interactive performance critically motivated and moved. The space within which

this work operates, as it engages in academic discourse, is nearly virtual, a fact that clearly changes

the relationship between myself, the artist, and the reader or the public. Despite this, I hope to

strike a delicate balance between in-depth analysis and the open-ended suggestion/ambiguity of

novelistic prose that will recreate this experience and creativity, albeit to a limited extent. The

events narrated in narrative prose (as opposed to the analytic prose represented here) should be

interpreted as the resurrection of memory in the Proustian sense, which places an emphasis on the

re-creative, redemptive possibilities of memory over its factual recollective properties; this

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corresponds with the way that many Cameroonian artists and individuals use collective memory

and imagination to reappropriate their historical past, which has long been dominated by

hegemonic discourse.

A short caveat: this is not an attempt at analyzing all performance art in Yaound, much

less all performance (considered art or otherwise) in Cameroon. The types of performance art

and the individual performances that I have chosen to analyze have been chosen for their relevance

to my argument.

PRELIMINARY RESEARCH

In April of 2004 I conducted research on how public-artist interaction affects the creation

and reception of socially critical performance particularly theater in Yaound, Cameroon. I

chose Yaound as my project site, mainly considering its advantages as a cultural center and as the

center of much political and economic power. Arriving in Yaound, I found various factors that

both facilitated and impeded my project. My broad experience in performance art (as actor,

organizer, writer, light/sound technician and member of the public) and proficiency in English and

French helped me to understand artistic and public viewpoints and to offer some of my own

experience and ideas to my informants, creating more solidarity in the researcher-informant

relationships. This insider position was offset by my outsider characteristics: I am a well-

traveled academic, and to Cameroonians I am wealthy, white, and Western (though the latter two

of these labels are often perceived as practically synonymous). Due to time constraints, I focused

my study on artists and public in Yaound that frequent the circles revolving around the few types

of performance I studied in such performance spaces as the French and Cameroon Cultural Centers

and the University of Yaound I.

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My primary methods of research were participant observation and semi-formal and

informal interviewing. I conducted interviews with and observed performers at rehearsals and

performances, interested in processes of creation, performance techniques, performance content,

and the power dynamics between director-producer-writer-actor-public. Similarly, during

performances, I observed how audiences are controlled by artists, and vice versa, and how they

may react to this control, or lack thereof.

I concentrated on performance (mostly theater, though also dance and live music) which

depicts the abuse of power and reactions to this abuse, and which itself attempts to be a reaction to

this abuse. Public participation in this kind of performance is key, since one of its primary

objectives is to agitate for change, to involve the public in the production of art so that through

communal creation the public invests itself to continue the work for change in their daily lives.

Dialogism of all kinds is utilized to combat the tendency for rigid, authoritative interpretations of

events. As Susan Bennet discusses in her analysis of theater audiences, I conceived of reception as

a politically implicated act where the emission of dialogic discourse elicits a response on the part

of the public that reframes and reinterprets this discourse (86).

Upon making contact with four engaging, intelligent and experienced artists, I decided to

co-write, co-produce, and act in a play in an ensemble setting. We created a bilingual play that

incorporated a high degree of interaction with the public, You Catch Me? / Vous me pigez?

(Hinojosa, 2004a). This decision was born primarily from the realization that in order to best

understand this sort of theater, which at its best attempts to leave nobody on the sidelines as a

spectator, I needed to practice it extensively. We used traditional Western drama with African

dance and comedy, also integrating photography, radio and local languages in order to appropriate

and subvert any monological6 discourse and encourage polyvocality7(despite Bakhtins claims that

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theater cannot be truly polyvocal). We performed our play live and in its entirety on two nights at

the state-owned Cameroon Cultural Center and performed an excerpt live on national television on

Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV). Additionally, I and my co-creators gave a half-dozen

interviews for national and local radio as well as for a newspaper. Thus, I was able to get a cursory

feel for the difference between having a phantom publics removed presence and having a live,

immediately present public that had a direct, instantaneous impact on the performance as it

happens and who may take a more active role in the creation of the work.

At the end of my fieldwork in Cameroon and in my paper Just (Inter)acting, I concluded

that in order to most effectively connect performance art to broader social action, one must

encourage collaboration between the public and artists in order to invest all parties in a sustainable

process of creating meaning. Additionally, I claim that a balance between two attributes in

performance aids in effectively bringing justice to the larger society. Firstly, performance that

grounds itself in familiar traditions and discourses allows the public to take deeply rooted meaning

from comforting conventions. Secondly, through scaling down powers and structures of

oppression to a manageable size on stage, performance may facilitate feelings of agency and self-

efficacy, especially when combined with audience participation.

This paper further bolsters these claims, and then extends their insights. Thus, this work is

part of a continuing process of creation and reflection that began in April of 2004 with research on

and the practice of performance art in Yaound, continued with the academic research and

retrospective reflection that have occurred at Northwestern University from the Fall of 2004 to the

Spring of 2005, and concluded with minor revisions in 2006.

HISTORICAL, LINGUISTIC AND POLITICAL FACTORS

IN CAMEROONIAN PERFORMANCE

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I will now roughly sketch some of the cultural, historical and political situations that affect

the types of performance treated in this paper and that will be considered in my analysis of these

performances role in society. My objective here is not to catalogue or categorize the totality of

Cameroonian performance or even the type of performance that I will be discussing here, but

rather to convey both a sense of the kind of cultural connotations that different types of

performance carry for the public. This will allow an informed analysis of the commentary made

by performers and public and its possible effect on dominant discourse.

Cameroon is a nation of over 16 million inhabitants.

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In Yaound, most Cameroonian

ethnic, religious, linguistic and social groups are represented, though the Southern, Christian, and

Francophone populations dominate. Bakhtins concept of heteroglossia takes on interesting

implications in Cameroon, where, through phenomena such as pidgin and urban slang, languages

intermix on a regular basis, and where both local and colonial languages play such an important

role in the formation of identity. The Anglophone minority has long threatened secession from the

Francophone zone, partly because of the disdain with which English speakers are treated outside of

Anglophone regions. English and Pidgin English, as lingua franca that are widespread yet

considered marginal9, have long been used in university settings for controversial political theater

(see Ambanasom). On the other hand, in rural areas the use of indigenous languages in

performance can be seen as subversive as it contrasts with dominant governmental authorities

constant denigration of ethnic identities in favor of a single national identity. Also, it eludes

control, considering the small population that such discourse reaches and the impermanence of

primarily oral language.

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Dominant discourses definitions of marginality do not necessarily determine marginalized

discourses use of supposedly peripheral venues of performance and supposedly marginal

message-bearing media to subvert the social order; in fact, at times such subversion can be

expedited by being labeled as marginal. For example, the use in performance of local languages

and of such marginalized media as rural community theater can facilitate social solidarity and

local action that is difficult to control on the part of the powerful, who are mainly concentrated in

urban areas and who mainly belong to a few ethno-linguistic groups. Attempts on the part of the

powerful to monologize discourse in the same way that they attempt to monopolize economic and

political transactions are thus doomed to fail.

The tactical use of different linguistic currency depends on the performers perception of

the value that potential receivers of the message place on different currencies, such as specific

languages, registers or ideological discourses. I hypothesize that emitters generally balance the

advantages of having the largest possible audiences with the disadvantages of weakening the

message as it diffuses across more members of the public and space due to farther-reaching and

thus more impersonal media; also, they must gauge the danger of misinterpretation as it becomes

more likely to be misunderstood by those unskilled at interpreting the message, or those unfamiliar

with the process of converting the currency into useful meaning. For example, the language of

formal, Western-style theater may be avoided if it is seen as engaging in a dialogue with a colonial

past or a neo-colonial present. Or, the language of provincial areas will be avoided by urban

residents in order to avoid the perception that they come from peripheral regions.

Emitters also must keep in mind the danger of angering people in power, as the

governments recent forced closings of critical radio stations in Yaound have proven. 10 One

might postulate that the necessity or expediency of political clandestinity will cause people to

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purposefully code messages and place them in particular media (i.e., those based along linguistic,

technological, speech genre, geographical lines, etc.) in such a way as to strategically include or

exclude certain parties from the comprehension of the intended message. 11 Performance occurs on

the smallest, most immediate scale as well as in the most widespread, mediated forms; the

dynamics of political control and resistance differ significantly according to the scale and general

availability of the form of communication. An analogy taken from the realm of material

economics may clarify these dynamics. Timothy Earle claims that prestige goods are most easily

controllable on the part of dominating parties when the materials are not locally available and

require a large amount of training and skill.

12

Similarly, writing in a colonial lingua franca offers

more opportunities for control by the powerful, considering the mediums relative rarity (compared

to oral language) and level of necessary skill (which generally requires formal schooling). This

situation lends oral, local language an especially elusive and potentially subversive property. The

tactical use of certain coding (i.e., the use of a language targeted at a very specific public that

cannot generally be understood) during public performance becomes politically charged as the role

of determining exclusion/inclusion changes from the supposedly dominant to the supposedly

marginalized.13

In Cameroon, the current president, Paul Biya, ultimately holds final say in all

governmental decisions, which generally benefit a very small amount of people, but are quite

generous to the very rich, Westernized members of the Francophone, southern, ethnically specific

elite that surround Biya, and the multinational corporations and governments, primarily France and

the U.S., that reap the benefits of Cameroons natural resources. Biya was appointed to the

presidency in 1982 by the previous dictator. Despite his early attempts to consolidate his power

and garner popular support through such policies as the "New Deal," his position has been often

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challenged: for example, by secessionist Anglophones, by democratic reformers, by other

opposition forces, and by two attempted coup d'tats, the more serious one in 1984, supposedly

organized by Northerners. These various challenges to his rule display some of the more salient

political rifts in Cameroon. The predominantly Muslim and Sudano-Sahelian people of the North

complain often of Biyas favoritism towards predominantly Bantu Southerners, especially Btis, as

well as of his unapologetic propping up of brutal local chiefs, orlamidos, in the Greater North; the

Anglophones in the Northwest and Southwest often critique the government for Francophone

exclusionary practices and the general lack of funds for Anglophone development despite the

comparative wealth of resources in the region.

The wholesale of government positions coupled with flat-out negligence to apply laws for

those who support the regime began the corruption that runs rampant even today. In 1985 Biya

restructured the sole political party to his own liking, calling the new structure the Cameroon

Peoples' Democratic Movement (CPDM), which according to the opposition some is a non-entity

today used to keep up the semblance of democracy. This apparent faade seemed to approach

reality in 1992 with the democratization that soon turned out to be little more than rhetoric. In

reality, Biya's state is known to support free speech until the critiques talk about real change or

accuse the government too vehemently, in which case extra-judicial detentions and torture are

common.14 The election in November of 2004 prompted elections watchdog organizations to decry

numerous violations of protocol, despite the American Embassys unequivocal approval.15

Additionally, there has recently been a drastic deterioration in the freedom of the press and of

speech, as the government has recently forcibly closed numerous radio and television stations.16

Even when truly coercive violence does not intervene, a sort of practical censorship arises,

where one may legally say anything but no one will hear it unless it is condoned by the powers that

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be; this functions in many media, from live theater to the printed word to television. Funding

becomes especially scarce for any performance considered politically volatile. This becomes an

especially large problem with socially critical performance in Yaound, since so many of the funds

and performance spaces that make theater possible (as well as the media that reproduce

performances) are controlled by one government or another (primarily Cameroon, France, the

United States, and Germany). Even private organizations will not publish certain pieces for fear of

often unofficial yet effective reprisals from the Cameroonian government, as was the case with

Professor Gilbert Doho's Au del du lac des nenufars, a play that Editions CLE refused to publish

on the grounds that it could land them in serious trouble since it covered the polices murder of

students during the 1992 student strike in Yaound.17 This same play never made it to the stage in

1994, when the author attempted to mount it at the University of Yaound I; the warnings of other

faculty eventually scared off the artists who had planned to collaborate. 18

Despite this general atmosphere of intolerance, repression, and marginalization of anything

but the dominating discourse, artists have considerable freedom of expression when compared with

other cultural critics, such as radio or television commentators. Much artistic performance in

Cameroon incorporates humorous elements, allowing even the most scathing of social critique to

pass as mere entertainment; in many situations this use of humor may be the only option when

open, rational, and directly critical dialogue is constantly repressed. In the supposedly free liberal

democracies of the West, recourse to what is generally considered purely entertaining can be

interpreted as a tactic employed in order to attract and captivate an otherwise distracted, apolitical,

consumption-oriented public.19

No matter how institutional and governmental forces respond to critical performance, the

actual effect on cultural consciousness and dominant discourse depends equally on the publics

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reception of and reaction to this response and to the performances themselves. In order to better

assess these dynamics of reception and production, I will first detail some of the frames through

which critical members of the public and performers experience performance in Cameroon.

In the following section I describe the cultural baggage with which Cameroonians

approach performance, particularly theater, although I treat this frame not so much as an inhibiting

weight but more as a weighty arsenal from which performance may draw, responding to the setting

and to previous discourses as well as anticipating upcoming responses, which may be

counterattacks. I then illustrate Cameroons cultural climate through the performances that I

discuss.

Movements, Precedents and Usage of Theater in Cameroon

According to an article distributed by the Ministry of Culture in 2002, the two main current

tendencies in theater are the traditionalist and the neo-dramatist, the latter of whose most important

representatives are the postmodernists or the free creationists (Bingono). This framework is

simple; however, in the interest of time I will use this artificial dichotomy, of course allowing that

the boundaries are usually blurred between these categories and that different categorical

organizations could be equally well applied. With the traditionalists, the audience is engaged and

moved through deeply engrained cultural references that invoke the regenerative power of the

ancestors through techniques that dialogue with tradition such as recounting legends or wearing

masks. In the best of the postmodern, techniques of communication and interaction are designed,

as Jean-Germain Gros explains, to make the audience part of a collaborative process and involve

it in the creation of meaning (92). Although this collaboration has only relatively recently

become explicit in Western-style theater where the fourth wall has fallen, African performance

and informal performance everywhere have long brought audiences into the equation, allowing and

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encouraging them to make or break a performance by laughing, clapping, publicly giving money,

shouting, heckling, talking over performers characters or simply remaining unresponsive or

inattentive. If people are involved in the creation of a message, if they invest in it personally, they

are more likely to recreate it for others and live it out if they perceive that creation to be a healthily

(re)generative process, as in ritual performance.

Actors in costume upon a Western-style lighted stage may remind viewers of the ritual

appointee of the community in sacred tradition, where a chosen individual represents the collective

in the renewal of the cosmos. When Wole Soyinka describes the ritual stage, one sees clearly

the parallel with modern theatre in their demarcation of a performance space: Sound, light,

motion, even smell, can all be used . . . [in ritual] to define space (39). This delineated space

symbolizes the cosmos, which allows the miniscule human actor to confront on a manageable scale

what would otherwise be overwhelming forces (40). One might see this creation of formal, ritual

space as a form of setting apart the theater world from the world of daily life, elevating what is

acted out to a separate level of interaction. Costume and masks are extremely important, often

considered in ritual to change the essence of those that don them, turning them into ancestors,

judge gods, or giving them royal power. In modern performance, costumes, masks and set designs

are all similarly aimed at identity transformation and the creation of a world. This resonates

especially powerfully in socially critical performance, which seeks to provoke a transformation in

social actors and recreate a more balanced world.

Music and song invoke the diverse traditions used for everything from ritual magical

healing incantations to light-hearted play to history-telling (e.g. griots), and also hearken to the

current diversity of music that reaches Cameroonian ears and has a great variety of functions,

including wildly fun dance (e.g. zouk) and political critique (e.g. Petit Pays). During the most

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important ceremonies in much of Cameroon, the griot (singer-storyteller) will improvise long, epic

tales to honor certain people or to criticize certain problems. Generally, the griot, born into the

profession, will create the story and sing out lines to which the crowd will respond. Often,

however, particularly during funerals of the Bamilk (an ethnic group from Western Cameroon), a

family member or friend will spontaneously take on the role of griot, at times imitating the

deceased and speaking for them. The style often takes a tragic yet humorous tone, where one

laughs and cries simultaneously.20 This bittersweet mixture and spontaneous interaction appears

constantly in Cameroonian theater, and is explicitly espoused by numerous artists and academics

that evoke the griots style when discussing their own.

21

Dance brings into the equation commemoration in such practices as the funerailles dances

as well as the significance of the festive celebration and release of energy in urban dance clubs.

In the funerailles dances and concerts, everyone participates (even foreigners that cant keep a

beat!). Even in the largest concerts with internationally renowned musicians, audience members

are invited onstage to dance and, if pleased, to bestow upon the artists forehead a banknote of

approval. I once witnessed an extremely clever reaction to this on the part of the comedian Robert

Bikele, or Kaiser, who, in the midst of a stand-up set on corruption, received a bill on the

forehead from an audience member and immediately pointed his finger at the generous audience

member and hollered Voil la CORRUPTION! Kaiser was implicating the audience member as

complicit in the system (or co-creative in his critique) of corruption by pointing out that this

informal, untaxed exchange, much like corruption, directly paid someone for a service performed:

a clever and hilarious social critique.

Indirect and after-the-fact participation of the public is also found alongside more direct

interaction in one-person comedy, according to such practitioners as Bikele and Daniel Ndo (a.k.a.

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Oncle Otsama). Both of these well-loved comedians express the effectiveness of comedy in

making people remember and pass on messages, extending dialogue in the form of easy-to-

remember jokes.22 These jokes stick with people so that audience members will perform and re-

present them after they first experience them, perhaps because of the way that humor livens up the

public, literally moving people, bringing them to laugh. Daniel Ndo explained to me that if theater

is not amusing les gens restent comme si ctait un cours,i and at this crossed his arms, which I

interpret as a sign that in those cases they remain inactive (also implicitly critiquing the lack of

interaction and engagement in the education system). One of the comedic greats in Cameroon, his

style helped to create a truly Cameroonian style of theatrical humor, with a villager dialect and

jokes peppered with expressions aimed at the common people could relate to. Like an old

storyteller, his performances, mocking everything from corruption to disloyal friends, engage the

audience by taking le public comme temoin,ii constantly asking their opinion, soliciting and

inciting dialogue.23 Bikeles comedy takes a more direct approach at critique by imitating public

figures voices and thus satirizing their actions; his jokes on corruption and on President Biya are

known throughout the country. Ndo describes this style of comedy as dangerous, since he singles

out actual politicians, which indeed can be risky in Cameroon. Bikele defended his technique, and

explained why he has not been censored: On blesse [avec la critique] et au mme moment on

caresse [avec lhumour].i

The use of comedy in order to communicate a message that would otherwise be difficult

for certain parties to hear has a long tradition in Cameroon, with such writers as Ferdinand Oyono

and his novel Le Vieux ngre et la mdaille. The director and actor with the Thtre National in

Yaound, Ali Mvondo, calls this style lhumeur rvoltant.ii This indirect, humorous way of

i people end up as if it were a classii the public as witnessi One wounds [with critique] and at the same time one caresses [with humor]; Interview.ii revolting humor; Interview.

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sending strong messages helps to avoid what Mvondo considers to be overly direct art, which he

believes can lead to someone believing that there is a vrit inataquableiii: a dangerous

proposition, suggesting monologism. Humor can also reach a public that will not pay to see drama

and has no interest in more intellectual arguments. This style allows people to listen to messages

that otherwise they would never hear.

Another increasingly popular way that performance artists dialogue closely with the public

is through community theater,24 where artists attempt to bring theater to the level of the people,

rendering a near-complete popularization of theater in terms of place, players, production and

subject matter. This approach strips the message of most of its high Cultural pretensions,

allowing it to be accessible to the large portion of the public with little formal education.

According to one model, artists trained in community theater principles go out into rural areas and

workshop situations with villagers, using theater to address pressing problems, such as HIV/AIDS,

as in the recent work of the American theater professor, Cynthia Henderson. In this work,

Henderson and her colleagues followed Augusto Boals formula, improvising in scenarios put

forth by the public (comprised largely of HIV/AIDS patients and workers) with the artist as

facilitator, thus communally writing the play within a week. Their troupe of impromptu actors

performed their play in Ndop, the town of original creation, and then each new artist returned to

their villages, mainly in the Northwest Province, in order to act as facilitator and begin the process

anew. In this way, they sent out their own sort of virus.25 The setting of this theater both moves

the center of artistic production to areas that are generally considered peripheral, and also positions

sections of the public generally considered to be marginal in control of creative performance.

Apart from the individual artists mentioned above, a plethora of social and political

organizations in Cameroon have seized upon the potential of performance. Traditional theater

iii untouchable truth

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troupes, such as those at University Yaound I, have sent out political shockwaves by performing

controversial plays such as Bole Butakes And Palm Wine Will Flow or Bate Bessongs Beast of

No Nation, which directly confront government corruption, resource exploitation and minority

exclusion. Debate on issues of linguistic marginalization in Anglophone performance has been

particularly heated in recent years; theater emphasizes through its form and placement the

controversial effect of using a peripheral language such as Pidgin English placed in centers of

intellectual debate such as the University, or Yaound in general.26

NGOs have also made waves in the international community by battling against AIDS with

their innovative theatrical displays and role-playing education programs (Hestor). The US

Embassy even took the cue and produced its own educational theater, such as The New Era, also

informing audiences about AIDS but going a step further and advocating womens rights and

democracy.27 Not to be outdone, the Biya government has for years funded Le Thtre Nationale

in Yaound, which has produced plays in line, of course, with the administrations social policies. 28

Despite the governments intent to eviscerate any serious political critique, the nature of the

corrupt and negligent government structure allows for performers to slip in quite political critical

messages under the radar, working in the interstices of the space dominated by organized

strategy (to use Michel de Certeaus terminology).

With a more ostensibly social focus, radio programs have long included fables, comedy

and satire in their repertoire.29 Their use of theatrically delivered narratives, however, is often the

most effective (as well as safe and therefore sustainable) way of criticizing the powers that be,

offering stories that people can relate to instead of lifeless facts and sterile analysis. Theatrical

radio in native languages has been a powerful tool for minority cultural valorization, often

implicitly criticizing the status quo, such as when the marginalized Dii began a few years ago to

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broadcast stories in their own language on the first non-Fufulde, non-French language radio station

in the city of Ngaoundr. Plays representing the valorization of cultural history may be seen as a

political tool as they respond to the denigration of certain aspects of the past by those in control of

most visible historical discourse. This is the case with Le Grand retour,i a play about the exile and

return of a Foumban king who was resistant to French rule.30

Clearly, dialogue of various kinds permeates the production, reception, framing and

reframing of Cameroonian performance. However, this process neither serves a single purpose nor

has easily distinguishable effects even when the purpose has been identified.

Problems in the Interaction between Artists and the Public

The wonderful yet problematic unpredictability of the publics reactions can be easily

observed during any live performance in Cameroon, where the interaction between the public and

the artists during performances can be either extremely constructive or terribly disruptive to the

artists or even most of the publics desires. All performances that I witnessed had in the public at

least one or two people within earshot that would add their running commentary to the script, often

humorous and theatrical. This can become especially disruptive when the performance treats

serious subject matter with a dramatic style; the humor and sarcasm that often result can be seen as

the publics way of cutting the artists down to size, telling them not to take themselves so

seriously. Other public challenges to the artists control can include clapping sporadically at

inappropriate moments or mocking vocally or corporeally what the artists perform onstage. From

the publics perspective this may be justified in a situation where the artist does not do justice to

the performance; however, the problem with this logic is that in no performance will the entire

public feel satisfied and this may lead to constant disruption. Clearly, however, audience-artist

i The Great Return

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interaction may also add considerably to performance, creating a dialogue that takes artists work

into the public and brings the publics wants and needs center stage.

To return to the theoretical apparatus postulated by Bakhtin, can this dialoguebe considered

truly dialogic? In Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics, Bakhtin denies any true dialogism for drama:

The whole concept of a dramatic action, as that which resolves all dialogic oppositions, is purelymonologic. A true multiplicity of levels would destroy drama, because dramatic action, relying as

it does upon the unity of the world, could not link these levels together or resolve them. In drama,

it is impossible to combine several integral fields of vision in a unity that encompasses and stands

above them all, because the structure of drama offers no support for such a unity (17).

However, perhaps one might find the unity that encompasses and stands above in the

framing of discourse by the spatial, historical and socio-political contexts in which the

performance takes place. I have demonstrated that performers and members of the public enter

into the performative creation in constant dialogue with: past traditions (e.g. specific performative

genres, such as the griot); widely circulating discourses (e.g. well-known ongoing debates, such as

corruption or linguistic hierarchy); the immediately present public (e.g. a participative live

audience); and micro-spatial and geographic placement (which I will discuss in the following

section).

All this dialogue requires a certain amount of shared cultural knowledge for the various

interlocutors to understand each other. Despite this, there is certainly no authoritative unity that

stands above or separate in either the space, which implies different things to different people, or in

the publics relationship to the artists, which is also constantly shifting and that does not stand

above the action but rather in and amongst it. However, for the purposes of analyzing the type of

dialogue that moves society towards creative critique and open debate, even if one discounts live

performance from Bakhtins original conception ofdialogism, many of his ideas on dialogism can

be applied to the dialogue fostered in performance framed by shared cultural traditions, discourses,

spaces, and publics.31

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These frames, however, are constantly being negotiated and reformed in practice, even

those that appear to be quite permanent, such as space.32 The professor and playwright Bole

Butake, is of the opinion that one must form the publics understanding of performance, that even

if people are unaccustomed to serious and didactic drama and would prefer pure entertainment, one

must attempt to teach the public to interpret performative frames. I found that other Cameroonian

artists hold similar viewpoints, such as Issek, a painter from Ngaoundr, who said Lart est une

littrature, un langage... il faut tre initi au langage [pour comprendre] .i His painting requires

that the public be formed and informed by the art forms traditions and at times even the artist

himself in order to understand the significance of the obscure symbolism. Indeed, Butake even

described the work of his colleague Bate Bessong as a series of tableaux that contain at times an

extreme degree of symbolism that requires significant training to understand. On the other hand,

Butakes own work often displays a rather straightforward political and social ideology, despite

being placed in an often-allegorical traditional framework; yet still the public, generally preferring

light comedy, must be formed to accept this at times brutally serious drama, even when there are

few abstract elements.33 International and particularly Western styles on the stage can have trouble

finding acceptance with much of Cameroons public, though the elite and the intellectuals

generally appreciate some degree of mixture of indigenous and foreign influences. Both Bessong

and Butake take a high degree of their inspiration from traditional African art but also incorporate

Western styles and techniques.

This balance of external and internal traditions that both take inspiration in current public

frames of reference and seek to form the public, collaboratively moving through dialogue towards

a new creation, finds its parallel in what some opposition politicians claim to hope to do with the

government in Cameroon. Adamou Ndam Njoya, as the founder and current head of the Union

i Art is a literature, a language you must be initiated into the language [to understand]

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Dmocratique du Cameroun (UDC), as the mayor of Foumban, and in attempting to organize the

opposition coalition in the 2004 presidential election, stressed the need for politicians to

communicate to their constituencies in a language that they understand and with locally rooted

ideas. Additionally, he has explicitly linked his support for a participatory political agenda (where

the people have significant say in the distribution and application of resources) to the types of

participatory methodology used in the creation of socially critical performance.34 The idea driving

both this political ideology and the ethos of participatory performance is that all production must

play out on a stage with a foundation whose construction the public has invested in and which the

public has strengthened through dialogue with shared cultural traditions, discourses, and spaces.

You must engage and involve the public in a meaningful dialogue or all creation will end as soon

as you step out of the supposedly central political or theatrical spotlight and you realize that you

lack the necessary broader public base in what you supposed was the periphery, which you now

need in order to follow through with the ideas that you have expressed and the work that you have

started.

MATERIAL AND TEMPORAL FRAMES OF PERFORMANCE

The tires hit the ground with a pothole-punctuated whine, echoing off plastered walls that growsteadily taller as we head towards the downtown and its haughty high-rises. Despite thiseventual destination, the exact course that the taxi coupe takes depends on who has sufficientcurrency to make the taximan diverge from his current trajectory. Words signifying profferedquantities and destinations are swiftly tossed through momentarily slowed windows, greetedeither by a rapid yes and a stop or by a tacit rejection as the car speeds away to seek thenext passenger.

Another morning in the capitol, and two francophone radio commentators from a private radiostation feast upon last nights televised address from the President. Audio samples of thespeech are interspersed throughout the two-man discussion; each sampled section is discussedand then a call is taken from the public. As I strain to piece together all the broadcast voicesreferences to current events, I am constantly distracted by the urban landscape, whose bustlingsidewalks, roadside bars, and shops are accompanied by the bass and multilingual lyrics of thelatest hit songs blasted from audio shops lining the street.

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One of my three fellow passengers grunts at a reference to the improvements in thedemocratic system and asks, Who runs the National Elections Observatory? In response, thetaximan, apparently not interested in debating (except tacitly), reaches to the radio and pushesa pre-set button. Surprised, I distinguish Biyas voice again, but exaggeratedly deep soon Irealize that this is not Biya, but rather an impression of him. Soon the entire taxicab is full ofshoulders rubbing from laughter. One of my fellow passengers asks me what I thought ofBiyas speech. I respond that I dont know about many of the issues but that I certainly thinkthat Biya is a good source for comedy.

Spatial Frames and the Use of Props

At the very least, the occupation of the stage, formal and informal, by performers, official

and unofficial, includes opportunities to comment on the structure of society that surrounds the

performance. In comparing the spatial layout of urban areas surrounding performance spaces, one

can assess the relative monumentality to roughly indicate the centrality/marginality that these

spaces represent within the dominant structuring of society. The buildings that house political

power such as a chiefs pointed metal roof in villages or towns, skyscrapers housing

governmental ministries, and President Biyas formidable fortress perched above Yaound act as

social and political markers on a map upon which performance is situated. In Yaound, the highest

profile venues for concerts and plays, such as the Hilton ballroom and the French Cultural Center,

are surrounded by monuments of political and economic power, such as ministry high-rises, the

French supermarket Carrefour, and the American embassy. Placing ostensibly peripheral and

openly subversive messages on display on such stages involves considerable risk, but considering

the possibilities of mass communication, it may be worth it for the performer. Messages may be

socially provocative but not necessarily politically risky; for example, the thematic of the Blue

Leaders play Trsors Cachsi concentrates on homeless trash-pickers, positing as central to the

publics attention a social group that habitually falls through the cracks of public perception

i Hidden Treasures

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despite their ironically ubiquitous physical presence in downtown Yaound, where the play was

staged. The placement of this performance clearly lends power to the critique.

Just as the performers crafting of their message will be informed and directed by the space

in which they plan to present it, the publics reception of performance will depend heavily upon

the space that they inhabit leading up to and following the actual moment of creation. Clearly,

many will not be able to arrive at out-of-the-way venues if they live in the center and many from

the periphery will not be able to attend centrally located locales unless they have the expensive

means of transportation. Those that do arrive will pass through environments that will shape their

reception of the official show. The activities that surround performances take place in spaces such

as homes, bars, the street and the performance venues waiting area as the public takes part in an

elaborate production prior to and following a performance. As Susan Bennet discusses, the

soire of a show often includes socializing and the public show of wealth, for example in the

buying of drinks and in the display of clothing in the foyer (when it exists) while waiting for the

hall doors to be opened (125). Bennet posits that the public is usually an already constituted

interpretive community and also brings a horizon of expectations, and the pre-performance

experience of the public is vital to understanding how this community is constituted and the overall

effect of the performance within their horizon of expectations (139).

Performances position and framing within the political economy not only displays its

situation but also supports or undermines certain ideologies in both form and content. Props and

stages are visible material that, in performance, are inherently other-oriented, and thus can be

analyzed as communicative indicators of the access to wealth; with broadcast and live

performance, the time of day and day of the week when the performance takes place fairly

accurately indicates access to resources. The same could be said of the sophistication of television

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or radio special effects, lighting, film quality and broadcasting equipment. Rudolf Colloredo-

Mansfields research on the conspicuous consumption practices apparent in the construction and

display of residences in the Andes is useful when applied to the architecture constructed and props

used to frame performance. The production and maintenance of homes and the reception of these

processes not only represents and reflects, but also creates social, economic and political relations.

Colloredo-Mansfield has argued that effective signals must be difficult to fake and force full

disclosure from others in order to be reliable social indicators of wealth; in the performance world,

such as in theater or music, the access to rare props or to expensive instruments displays the

performers resources and economic dominance or at least prominence, also implicitly suggesting

(willfully or not) that the failure of others to reveal the same resources in their performances

displays a lack of access to adequate resources.

This unfakeable access to cultural capital may have made my performance of You Catch

Me? / Vous me pigez? look like a slap in the face to many performers. Some observers probably

saw the following: I simply waltz in there in typical Western fashion,35 get well-known actors and

directors, appear on national television and radio, use a half-dozen priceless pieces of art borrowed

from a museum run by an academic, interview some of the largest cultural icons, and then I dare to

assert that more people should engage in dialogue. It is easy for me to dialogue when the slightest

investment of my own effort to voice my opinion brings back such an enormous return because of

my connections and cultural capital. Hopefully, our performance called attention to this inequality

and attempted to use this capital justly, partially through subverting the type of messages emitted

by structures that permit this disparity to exist.

As structures explicitly designed tofacilitate cultural display, particular attention should be

paid to the messages born by the architecture meant to house performance. For example, in

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Yaound the French and Cameroon Cultural Centers have been built in a distinctly functionalist,

Western style that reflects the middle- to upper-class public that they mostly cater to, and surely

also creates this public for itself by attracting those drawn to such architecture. The elevated

proscenium stage and the layout of seats facing the performance area in rows both indicate a

conception of theater where the public plays little part in the creation of the work. Dr. Fongot

Kinni, Professor of Cultural Anthropology and former actor, stressed the problematic nature of the

Cameroonian theater artists general disconnect with the public, in terms of ignoring both

traditional and contemporary cultural practices in order to continue a colonial heritage of theater

that separates the public from the actors.

36

This disconnect becomes more understandable when

one surveys the forbidding architecture of performance venues. Wole Soyinka, in Towards a

True Theater, rails against the creative restriction of a theater that appears to him to be a

miniature replica of a British provincial theatre, asserting that the structure controls, even

manipulates the artist (5).

However, much of the formal performance that people experience in Cameroon, as in much

of the world, increasingly arrives to them through mass media such as radio and television media

that control and manipulate artists and audiences perhaps even more than physical structures,

considering the possibility for producers and editors to radically change original messages.

Perhaps more importantly, media such as television and radio, which do not require a literate

public, are far more carefully scrutinized by the Cameroonian government.37 Regardless of content

and regulation, these virtual spaces affect people in a very different way when compared to

physical spaces, considering the extreme physical separation of the emitter and the receiver of

messages. The scale of mass media makes it quite difficult to accurately gauge who controls the

emission of messages and even who listens to or watches particular emissions and where they are

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situated, or even if they receive more of the performance than a few decontextualized fragments

(consider, for example, the rapidly-changing backdrop for our experience of the radio programs in

the narrative above). One can assume, however, that unless the program takes phone calls, direct

dialogue with the performers is not invited. This can be utilized for purposes of restricting protest;

for example, Biyas speeches are always televised without a public, presumably to stop the sort of

hecklers that disrupted President George W. Bushs second inauguration speech. When one

considers performances in which parties other than the performers control the media, such as in the

mass-medias presentation of street protests, editing, commentary and other framing techniques

can dramatically shape the publics perception of the message.

38

However, the omission of details such as visual info in radio can have certain advantages

for the performer. The stand-up and radio comedian Kaiser has gained much of his fame due to his

imitations of figures of power. The fact that the vast majority of this material is heard on radio or

cassette allows his listeners to further dissociate the voice being used from the performer himself,

allowing the individual voices to appear to truly belong to the imitated. When I saw him, he

played the Pope as a weak, tired man, and President Biya as a strong and extremely assertive man,

but assertive only in claiming je men fous!i Robert Bikele donned the title Kaiser in order to

with this title make fun of chiefs.39 At the beginning of his radio programs and on some of his

recorded material, he speaks with an exaggeratedly deep, slow and powerful voice, proclaiming

that he is the Kaiser and all must listen to his message. This immaterial situation exposes the

dialogic nature of this encounter in its double-voicedness. Listeners generally know the voices of

the powerful (or at least their typical discourses) and are able to contrast them with this

appropriation, which in this case attempts to lay bare what the performer sees as their hidden

natures through occupying a virtual space often used by the powerful.

i I dont give a damn!

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Thus, the use of different media and the display of material symbols frame different social

actors and messages on center stage in the production of discourse; the situation in macro-level

geographic and micro-level staging spaces and the utilization of specific objects as props shape the

way in which the public may access and be affected by performance and the ideological content of

these performances. This frame, however, does not determine individuals reception of

performance, rather it informs it, setting the stage for a critical response by providing a set of

material indications of where in the dominant order each particular communication takes place.

Michel de Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life, argues for the agency of the individual in the

use of geometrical places structured by dominant or dominating elements of society, transforming

space in practice through tactics that allow individuals to glean meaning and power, poaching in

places deemed under the control of dominant or dominating forces. Social relations are

constructed physically in space, but deconstructed and reconfigured in actual use.40 How

effectively this deconstruction or reconstruction changes societys dominant order of meaning

beyond the moment of the poachers performance is a problem that I will address in the next

section. I will first concentrate on the process before I continue to analyze the effects.

POTENTIAL AND LIMITATION FOR PLAYING WITH

CONCEPTIONS OF CENTRALITY/PERIPHERALITY

Frenetic bass-lines and raucous shouting greet me as we approach the packed, bar-lined mainavenue skirting the grounds of Yaounds little Olympic village, constructed for the annualUniversity Games. My friend and I stroll through the crowds, passing out flyers for our play.

Here we have an emissary of the whites come all the way to the University Games! Hey, whiteman! A young, hunched-over performer with white powder in his hair and across his face likea beard points a clowning claw at me as he bellows, exaggeratedly low-pitched into themicrophone, What do you think of our games?

Barely slowing, I return the volley, speaking quickly into the mic, deadpan and dead serious:Im sorry but you mistake me, Im actually brown. After having been called white so many

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times in the streets of Yaound, and having been mocked because I wasnt white enough formy middle school peers, I just cant play along, not this time. The old man doesnt give up,sweeping at the air with his comically clutched hand and calling me to approach. I notice thatthis mic isnt just being amplified in this immediate area: a placard to the side of the performersproclaims that this was being broadcast over the radio. I approach, give my brown mansblessing to the proceedings, and beat it before I can be asked any more questions.

We continue on our meandering through la foule folle, the crazed crowd, wild with booze,ecstatic with victory or defiant in defeat, mad with youthful intensity, riding this festival spirit asfar as it will carry them. They reach for freedom with hands clapping to the driving beat, theystab towards the horizon with gazes from eyes still squinting from the last dry season, they grinat inequality, leveling it flat underneath the generosity of a free glass of beer that they extendto the foreigner carrying it incorporated into his body nourished on far-off fought-for wealth.

This anecdote narrates an instance in which performers play with general cultural

assumptions reconfigure situations of inequality. First off, the common style of a young man

donning white hair and the mannerisms of an old man suggests an appropriation of the traditionally

authoritative voice of the elder. His reference to the whites as if they were a country that can send

representatives manipulates national boundaries, which from the standpoint of the central African

are indeed quite artificial, considering the colonial past with Europeans arbitrary carving up of a

continent and the neocolonial present with the dominance of supranational corporations and

powers. Additionally, the suggestion that an official emissary has been sent in order to give his

opinion on how the inter-university games are going, along with this carnivalesque atmosphere,

implies that this event is quite central on the world stage. Indeed, the performer may have truly

thought that I was a reporter of some sort and indeed, because of his performance, here I am

dutifully reporting.

My unwillingness to respond in character, despite my immediately ensuing regrets and

late-coming dialogue represented here, also reveals an important dynamic in such performance.

The performer must attempt to accurately assess the discourse that the public is willing (and able)

to deal in. Also, if I had completely ignored him, offended by being called white, his joke would

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probably have fallen flat, especially for his radio audience. Similarly, had I refused the offer of

drinks from students who almost surely have much less access to resources than I, the performance

of this generosity would have met with an insurmountable obstacle that would have denied those

performing the act the respect that they demanded through showing themselves capable and willing

to kindly offer a gift to a stranger.

One performance that dexterously called into question conventional assumptions about

centrality/peripherality: Travers by the Compagnie Ichango. This performance incorporated a

moment of classic African storytelling that problematizes linguistic divisions and notions of space,

which is scaled down at first through local intimacy and then blown up later through brutal global

reality. In the rehearsal that I observed, one player, at the extreme front of the stage, lit a match

and the rest crowded about like villagers around a fire. The player in the center announced Tonn

tonn! and the rest responded Tonn! This illocutionary act41 signals in the beginning of a story

in Ewondo. One might initially interpret this as a valorization of a local languages ability to light

a fire to begin the creation of a new narrative. However, one listening player soon complained

that if he is going to tell a story to all of them, [il doit] le conter en franais!i This highlights the

linguistic difficulties in an area of such diversity, which often do require a common language to

take center stage, even if it necessitates the use of a violently introduced one.

So the storyteller began again: Il tait une and the rest holler fois!ii As the actors

huddle around the player in the center, leaning in to listen to the story, the public can be seen to be

placed in the artists position, waiting for what comes next, the end of the phrase that they can all

supply and the beginning of the story that they feel confident they will recognize. I noticed myself

leaning forward too, bringing my presence closer to the performers as their presence approached

i [he must tell it in French!ii Once upon a and the rest holler time!

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mine, blurring the barrier between us. Only, when the story began, the narrative continued, Il

tait une fois dans un pays qui sappelle lAfrique! Il y avait du misre, de la guerre, de la

dictadure!ii: indeed a well-known story, though it was surprising to hear it in this form, which

usually covers local, parabolic, fantastic or legendary narratives. This brutal and surreal rupture

juxtaposes the intimacy of the local community to the brutality of the fairly universally oppressive

system of countries in Africa. At the pronouncement of this litany of societal ills, the performers

sped about the stage, stiff and with heads down, occasionally bumping into each other and then

making exasperated and threatening gestures at each other before continuing their harried ways.

From our position in the hurried metropolis, I interpreted this as a critique of the misdirected

consciousness of the modern urban political capitol, where people are so rushed with immediate

concerns that they are unable to recognize and react to systemic atrocities.

Clifford Geertz asserted, Any expressive form works (when it works) by disarranging

semantic contexts in such a way that properties conventionally ascribed to certain things are

unconventionally ascribed to others, which are then seen to actually possess them (226). Just

such disarrangement and rearrangement is exactly what Travers displayed. However, not all

performance art, much less all performance, tactically acts on conventional orders of meaning in

such an explicitly critical way.

Just Making Do?

Dust swirls about in eddies that collect in almost imperceptible dunes of neglect. An idle, bonyfinger stretches itself from a long-empty palm to poke craters into the dunes. Contorting, thissame finger twists and slides about as it caresses these collected particles into the shape of ahuman face a happy face. A childs visage, the color of an ebony mask after months of lyinguntouched in a basement, smiles in a gesture of solidarity with his creation.

ii Once upon a time, in a country named Africa! There was misery, war, dictatorship!

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Then this smile goes slack as the boy spies, out of the caked corner of his eye, someone hesuspects must see this or at least see him. He advances hastily, glancing warily about foradversaries, his hand extended, first seemingly a pointing digit of accusation, then a beckoningwelcome and salutation, then a pleading, open palm of desperate hope.

In contrast to discourses that place the dominant conceptions of the peripheral in the center

of a reconfigured worldview, some performers, such as beggars, will emphasize their marginality

in order to elicit a charitable response. I wrote the above narrative in Rhumsiki, a small village

perched atop a mountain that swoops into a valley ringed by dramatic crags and creases in the

earth. Tourists have begun to come in force as much as anywhere in Cameroon drawn by

hiking and the picturesque countryside. Artisanry can be purchased in the valley as well as from

peddlers on foot in the street. A fortune-telling medicine man advertises his services in such a way

that outsiders hear about them. When we passed through as a group of 20 or so outsiders, most of

us white foreigners, the children spent most of the day hanging around our hotel gate, waiting to

call to us, inviting us on a tour about their area, asking for money or for a spare plastic bottle. One

child gave me a rock and then asked for a gift in return. Others told us of the local history and

legends from the area, which we were eager to hear, especially from such charming storytellers.

Upon returning from a hike, a dozen or so young children had gathered in choir formation at the

end of the trail, the oldest and seemingly the conductor of the affair appearing to be no more than

twelve years old. They sang and chanted for us, beautifully.

All of these little performances were staged intelligently and earnestly, but many of us

were left uneasy. Many asked, why arent these kids in school? Some of them were begging for a

pencil and paper. Some people gave quite generously, others refused on principle. Still others

reciprocated only gestures obviously meant to initiate some sort of exchange, however unequal.

We all applauded the choir. Subconsciously at first, I myself often find myself wondering in such

situations, Is this authentic? These instruments, are they traditional? The medicine man, could

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he really have any healing or prescient power if he just sells his goods like any other commodity?

The kids, would they have been taught these songs if there were not wealthy visitors to pay them

for it? Of course, the answers to these questions are not simple. The people of Rhumsiki have

definitely adapted in authentically local ways to their needs and their shifting economic and

cultural situation. The fact that they use the parts of their authentic cultural trove that are

attractive and prized by outsiders for mutual benefit does not make their actions inauthentic.

The power of the wealthy outsider in such a situation to determine the economic orientation

of a town, however, is enormous. Perhaps they were able to build a school with the increased

revenue of the town, but if the children spend their days begging in the street, the gain seems

bitterly ironic. However, these kids are not simply passive forces in their survival and

development as people. Instead of being provided for through institutions, such as school or

government, that would regulate their activities, they are able to make their own living, contribute

to their family, meet people from far-off places, memorize the stories of their people, learn the

secrets of the land in order to act as guides, become shrewd heartstring-pullers, and creatively craft

the words, posture, and attitude with which to endear tourists to their wares, their services, and

themselves.

While in Rhumsiki, I was reminded of the bitter irony that

Lack of a Last Laugh - Dialogue in Socially Critical Performance

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