This article explores some of the ways in which questions of identity are caught up in issues of performance. It describes the emergence of two distinct traditions in this regard – one which considers the enactment of a ‘self’ in terms of performance as a kind of deception; and another, which considers all descriptions of identity to rely on representations of performance. It goes on to examine representations of nationalism and ethnic identity in post-Apartheid theatre, and contrasts these with attempts at a syncretic theatre which avoids concretising identity in terms of ethnicity. Finally, the article discusses the theatre as an ideal site for investigations into the cultural negotiations required in the delineation and transformation of identities, with reference to a number of recent South African plays.
In South Africa…the crisis of legitimacy has been replaced by a crisis of identity, which has allowed space for intense debate and the flowing of new creative works by those with their eyes fixed on the post-apartheid culture.
(Liz Gunner 1994:1)
Twelve years into democracy, two of the most frequently heard buzz words still bandied about are ‘transformation’ and ‘identity’. Considered from a particular tradition, these might sound like contradictions. For example, in the Posterior Analytics, when Aristotle writes about qualities which define substances which are identical to each other, he refers to an essentialism which is rooted deeper than transitory ‘differentiae’. Identity, for Aristotle, is described as withstanding superficial change (1952:97).1 This is a conception of identity which is similar to the formulation Erika Fischer-Lichte notes in eighteenth century Europe when she shows how in Letter to Monsieur d’Alembert (1758) Jean-Jacques Rousseau refers to identity as a static concept. She notes that for him a ‘change in identity is out of the question; change can only be experienced and lamented as a falsification of that which is authentic, as a loss of identity’ (2002:1).
If we are to believe this construction, it means that it is not possible for identity to be transformed, and a key project then becomes discovering and reinforcing the basic state which has been identified. In Performance (2003) Marvin Carlson lists a number of philosophers who have written against the idea of a ‘false self’ which performs various roles (39-40). These include Plato (whose tri-partite division of the self alludes to essentials beyond social roles), George Santayana (who writes of the inauthenticity of masks), and Jean-Paul Sartre, (who condemns the idea of playing a role as representing ‘bad faith’).
This is, then, one of the traditions referred to in my abstract. It is a way of thinking which considers the enactment of a ‘self’ in terms of performance as deception, as a lie. These five philosophers, then, all refer to an essentialist definition of identity (albeit from different points of view); but there is also another school of thought which sees identity as invented and created in terms of performance, which implies that identity is dynamic, that it can never be ‘recovered’ because it exists only in the moment. In this sense, our identity consists of a collection of the habits and patterns and rituals which we reify by repetition, and which present us with an appearance of stability. Robert Park writes that:
…the word ‘person’, in its first meaning, is a mask…one is always, more or less consciously, playing a role. Our very faces are living masks which…tend more and more to conform to the type we are seeking to impersonate…
(in Carlson: 41).
Similarly, William James saw the self as a composite and claimed that, ‘one has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion one cares’ (41). And Eric Berne describes a situation in which people learn social scripts (43). (Significantly, Berne does not deny the agency of the actor, since these scripts can be altered, or even unlearnt). A number of other psychologists have also developed models of identity in terms of narrative fictions in general, and theatrical metaphors in particular. These include James Hillman (1983), R.D. Laing (1969), and Irving Goffman, whose book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) remains a seminal contribution to the field.
In some ways, the search for identity appears to be a search for completion, the grasping after an illusory image of totality, but this is an imaginary unity of self which can never be attained. As Homi Bhaba reminds us: ‘identity is never an a priori, never a finished product; it is only ever the problematic process of access to an image of totality’ (1994a: 51). My thesis in this essay is that instead of seeking to represent identity as a completed totality in terms of a particular ethnic identity, our theatre should rather embrace unstable, uncertain and insubstantial identifications which are as yet unknown, which are discovered in performance. I am hesitant to use the word ‘ethnic’, since this is originally a term of exclusion. As Werner Sollers has pointed out:
[A]n ethnic, etymologically speaking is a goy. The Greek word ethnikos, from which the English ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnicity’ are derived, meant ‘gentile’, ‘heathen’. Going back to the noun ethnos, the word was used to refer not just to people in general but also to ‘others’. (1995:219).
And yet, perhaps we are a nation of ‘others’, a nation of many nationalities. The term ‘nation’ might provide a more useful alternative to ‘ethnic’ (in describing, for example, the Zulu nation and the Afrikaans nation and so on), since it also indicates the problematic nature of attempting to create a national theatre for South Africa. It is part of the thesis of this essay that reverting to these ethnic nationalities hinders processes of transformation and prevents such a national theatre from coming about. For there are those, like Maishe Maponya, who insist that identity must be tied to ethnicity. Particularly when he says:
I don’t believe in the sense or notion of multiculturalism and non-racialism in the arts in theatre; I definitely think that is just a myth that is being imposed upon us to be able to keep control over us or to make us lose ourselves in terms of our own identity. (1996: 187).
So there is a view of an ethnic identity which claims to be essential, which hopes to be restored. On the other hand, there are other theatre makers, like Marthinus Basson, who hope to avoid this particular method of identification. For example, Basson is highly critical of festivals which attempt to promote ‘Afrikanerness’ saying, with reference to the Oudstshoorn festival (the Klein Karoo Kunstefees) that ‘[i]t should be an arts festival, first and foremost, and not an Afrikaans arts festival’ (in Solberg 2003:134). And Reza de Wet has also said that she refuses to be a ‘figurehead’ for Afrikaans, claiming that she does not wish ‘to be taken up as a symbol of nationalism or some such thing’ (ibid. 181). She gives this as the reason why she has recently taken to also writing in English.
Perhaps one of the most important things which theatre can offer us is a sense – even if only momentarily – of community. In From Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play (1982), the anthropologist, Victor Turner defines two types of ‘communitas’ – one involving the ‘confrontation of human identities’, and the other serving as an ‘ideological communitas’ (47). Theatre is able to serve both of these senses of community – providing a space in which it is safe to be confronted by other, unknown identities, and creating an ideological realm where agreement and disagreement can be played out. What is of great interest to Turner is the description of theatre as a ‘liminal’ activity. He makes the distinction between the ‘liminal’ (which aims at transforming the participant) and the ‘liminoid’ (which seemingly unites disparities in a momentary suspension of belief.) He sees the liminoid space of performance, as a ‘hybrid space where cultural styles jostle and collide; where culture wars spawn not new resentment but new cultures’ (129). In a similar vein, Erika Fischer-Lichte notes the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s descriptions of ‘rites of passage’, and finds that according to him both theatre and other communal rites have the effect of triggering
…transforming effects which change the identity of individuals, social groups and entire cultures at times of life crisis…They are bound to a highly symbolic experience of transition or transgression of boundaries…. (2002:3)
The theatre provides an ideal ground in which to explore and experiment with the transformation of identities, not least because it demonstrates ways in which identity is created in the everyday world, perhaps better than any other art form. As Bruce Wilshire has it: ‘theatre is a detachment from daily living that reveals the way we are involved in daily living – particularly our empathic and imitative involvements. Theatre is the art of imitation that reveals imitation.’ (1982: ix).
Perhaps there is something to be said for the attempt to consolidate and represent history from a particular ethnic vantage point. It does, however, also result in entrenching communities into fixed positions, which tends to isolate them from other communities. This is something which Shaun Irlam has pointed out as a feature of much post-Apartheid literature, when he writes that it has become ‘refracted into separate communities’ and that it has ‘grown more insular’:
‘Increasingly, a new literature of separate development is emerging, in which communities…explore their own histories and assert their own agendas.’ (2004: 698).
Although there is a certain freedom in being able to explore unique cultural identities, there is also the danger, as Ashraf Jamal has suggested, that we might still be ‘trapped in the multiple ghettos of the apartheid imagination’ (2000:197). Chris Weare also feels that ‘we do not have an artistic and cultural vision – only individuals and/or groups of people with very personal and /or community agendas. South Africa seems very “ghettoized”’ (198).
On the other hand, trying to subsume all identities into a common ‘Simunye’ rainbow dream, is not necessarily a desirable alternative and I am not suggesting here that we should attempt to subsume the vast range of identities into one all encompassing state sanctioned formulation. This is perhaps the opposite extreme of the cloistered paradigm portrayed here, but it is no less essentialist. Leon de Kock, for one, sees the attempt at an overall unity of identity as not only objectionable, but impossible. For De Kock, this is because he sees identity as a site of ‘unresolved difference’, and because he sees the ‘South African subject as fractured’ (2004:3). Instead of trying to subsume all of the many heterogeneous identities of South Africa into one blanket description, he would rather that we appreciate ‘the country’s brimming residual fund of identities’ (8). But what of the possibility of creating a South African theatre out of these fractured selves, a theatre which enacts the embattled state and liminal zones created by multiculturalism? Would it not be possible to forge a sense of belonging which does not rely on ethnicity, yet which also avoids attempting to dissolve all differences?
I would suggest that part of the ‘ghettoization’ Jamal and Weare refer to arises when writers attempt to restore what they perceive to be an essential, lost identification. This is an attempt at what Eric Hobsbawm has referred to as an ‘invented tradition’, which seeks ‘to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.’ (1983:1). But this also, however, implies a mythical, fictional past in which identity was once unified, whole, and complete. As Homi Bhabha says in ‘Narrating the Nation’: ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origin in the myths of time and only fully realise their horizons in the mind’s eye’ (1994b: 306). Similarly, Benedict Anderson, in coining his famous term of the nation as an ‘Imagined Community’ claims that nations ‘loom out of an immemorial past and…glide into a limitless future.’ (1991:12). In focusing on the ethnicity of separate nationalisms, this fiction is strengthened; but the vigour of South African literature in general, (and theatre in particular) lies in forging a new conception of identity, not in trying to reclaim an identity which never existed.
The problem with plays about particular ethnic groups, is that they often end up a kind of tableau about a particular culture, of interest perhaps in reinforcing the solidarity of a specific community, but also exclusive and limited, and often only of tourist value to those outside of the community portrayed. There are a number of plays geared towards the promotion of a certain cultural identity that have been produced since 1994, which, I believe, fit this model. For example, there are the plays of Mbongeni Ngema: The Zulu (1999),2 and House of Shaka (2005); pieces which focus on a very specific representation of a collective ethnic identity. In these plays, ethnicity is celebrated and fortified and uncritically read as fulfilling a normative function. A number of other plays also fall into this category of promoting a specific ethnic identity, including Deon Opperman’s epic Donkerland (1996); Renos Spanoudes’ The Apple Tree (2004) and Sonia Esgueira’s Porra! (2005)3.
Another example is the recent production Born Thru the Nose (2005), which was created by Greig Coetzee and Bheki Mkhwane. This, in my view, is an overly respectful portrayal of Zulu customs and traditions, in which one Caiphus Majozi has to deal with a clash between the ‘rich traditional world of his cultural heritage and the modern world of science’(according to the press release). Ultimately, the play suggests that it is preferable to follow the voices of the ancestors, rather than subscribing to the advice of a medical doctor who insists on a caesarean birth when Majozi’s wife’s pregnancy develops complications. It seems more important that the ancestors be respected, even if this endangers the life of both the mother and her unborn child. I believe that this is a good example of the type of insular ‘nationalistic’ thinking which can lead to closed-minded, uncritical acceptance of cultural values, simply because they are ‘traditional’. We hear similar arguments to those Cardinal Bellarmine levelled at Galileo Galilei in order to refute his discoveries – the traditional is preferable, because that is what we know, because that is how our culture has always operated.
In contrast to this type of theatre, which hopes to reinforce one particular ethnic identity, there are many other playmakers who have been striving more and more for a fusion of different ethnic communities, and whose interest lies in exploring and critiquing ways in which cultural identities are created. One of the ways in which this can be done is by showing how the clash between traditions leads to the possibility of creating new forms of culture. This is a style which has variously been called ‘cross-over’ (Hauptfliesch, T. 1997:66), ‘syncretic’ (Balme, C. 1999), and ‘hybrid’ (Graver, D. 1999:7). It is an approach which favours a notion of identity as composite, fragmented and undecided. Instead of reaching into a mythic past for certainty, it revels in the hesitations and ambiguities presented by the performances which forge new ways of description. These are plays which produce identity, rather than attempting to ‘rediscover’ it. And this is the sort of theatre which can be transformational.
I would like to conclude with a brief survey of a few recent plays which are transformative in this capacity. For me, some of the theatrical works which are interested in exploring and transforming cultural identities include other works by Greig Coetzee, as well as the plays of Brett Bailey, Zakes Mda, Reza de Wet, Sylvaine Strike and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom.
In Happy Natives (2003), Grieg Coetzee provides perspectives from three different ‘nations’ – Zulu, English and Tamil. Eight characters, played by two actors, confront each other, presenting effective contrasts in terms of a wide matrix of identity structures (young/old; rich/poor; educated/illiterate). In having the same actor play out a number of diverse roles, Coetzee is able to pitch a wide range of cultural and economic identities against each other and, in so doing, shows how these cultural identities consist largely of a series of habits and acquired patterns of behaviour, rather than essential properties. In the various clashes between characters from different ethnic identities, each character is also permitted a moment of justification, to present the version of the world which supports their convictions, and yet, the characters who resist adaptation and who remain inflexible, inevitably suffer as a result. Also, Coetzee uses the characters of Xaba and Chenaye to satirise the flattening out of identities which are subsumed by opportunistic economic interests. So Xaba and Chenaye’s multicultural explorations – her attempts to learn Zulu, and his use of an imperial English register – are less signs of a sincere effort at understanding, than ways in which they identify themselves with global capitalism.
Brett Bailey’s first three plays – Ipi Zombie (1997); Mumbo Jumbo (1998) and The Prophet (1999) – seem to rely on a range of what might be construed as essentialist spiritual practices of the Xhosa tradition, but his methodology is far from purist. Here is his description of his ‘method’ in The Plays of Miracle & Wonder (2003):
METHOD: Take township traditions and styles, throw them in the blender with rural performance and ceremony, black evangelism, a handful of western avant-garde and a dash of showbiz, and flick the switch. (9)
Instead of presenting a unified cultural vision, these plays depict embattled, fragmentary selves struggling within the uncertain terrain of the liminal as identities of both performers and characters are caught up in crises of transformation.
In Zakes Mda’s The Bells of Amersfoort (2002) the exilic consciousness is explored, and the contrasts between European and African concerns are highlighted by means of Mda’s innovative staging which represents a zone between different worlds, a space where nationalistic identities collide, confront and eventually consume each other.
Then there is Black and Blue (2004), a collaboration between Sylvaine Strike, Helen Iskander and James Cunningham. The dialogue of this piece would hardly fill two pages, instead, the presentation of the piece focuses on a symbiotic energy between the two performers, involving a fine attention to physical details of voice, movement and gesture. It is a strangely light piece, which comes across as almost frivolous, even though it deals with themes such as suicide, mourning, loss and recovery. It poses as a children’s pantomime whilst addressing deep-seated fears in the South African psyche. This is not only a new story about the transformations of both white and black identities, but it is also a new way of telling a story. It is the type of physical theatre which Mark Fleishmann has endorsed as a viable means of transformation since it is not restricted to cultural interpretations embodied in a particular language. Instead, it uses the body as a site for transformation. As Fleishmann says:
We in South Africa have to learn to re-invent ourselves in a most active way and the theatre has a part to play in this process. Our challenge is to present images of the body in various forms constantly re-invented and transformed. (in Davis. 1996: 182)
Then, the remarkable plays of Reza de Wet use dreamscapes which subvert their own probing into identity formations. Her plays take place in a world which is eerily similar to – though which can never be wholly identified with – South Africa and her plays represent an imaginary realm rather than attempting to portray a lost reality. The ‘mindscapes’ they present leave viewers confronted by a sense of their own subjective awareness of history and value, rather than prescribing an adherence to a group identity. For example, Breathing In (2004) takes place in a setting which bears a strange resemblance to the Boer War, but where magical and mythical qualities transform the setting into an unreal and uncanny space. This is not the settled dream of origin, this is not the confident space of the unfolding of a collective ethnic reality; this is an erotic nightmare, a form of blood-letting, rather than a fortification of identity.
Finally, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom’s Relativity: Township Stories (2005) is a work which explores the ways in which contemporary identities are shaped by attitudes to sexuality; as well as by the violence which is endemic to the new South Africa. His play reveals that cultural identity is neither ‘natural’ nor given, but that it is, as his title makes clear, relative.
In conclusion, I feel that theatre provides an ideal space in which a community can recognise and confront its own transformations of identity. The stage is a place where the parameters of senses of self can be questioned and, possibly, transformed. Given these conditions, I do not, personally, feel that it is useful to attempt to consolidate identity around issues such as ethnicity or race. I feel that these categories are ultimately restrictive, and that, despite their best intentions, plays which attempt to do so tend towards creating fundamentalist principles which are not seen accepted as being the fictional constructions they are.
What are the differences in subscribing to these different forms of identity construction? The first tradition elaborated by this essay sets up rigid structures which cannot be questioned by outsiders, which is exclusive, and refuses to change because it believes that transformation is not possible. The second is flexible, open to adaptation and arises from the realisation that there is no essential identity to which one might hope to return. It is thus characterised by a sense of openness and improvisation.
Natasha Distiller and Melissa Steyn introduce Under Construction: ‘Race’ and Identity in South Africa today (2004) by stating that ‘…every act of description is an act of creation’ (2004). Creating new identities, which are temporary, which are fleeting, seems to me a far more worthwhile project than trying to maintain and concretise our many diverse senses of self into particular ethnic constructions. So I feel that we should make room for the strange, for the new, for the uncanny, for representations of selves we have never before imagined possible. We need to break out of the model of identifications determined by exclusion, and rather open up new definitions and new ways in which we can speak about ourselves and our encounters in a multi-national society. The only national theatre possible for South Africa is one in which multiculturalism plays a key role, and in which no single ethnic identity is endorsed as natural or permanent. Only in this way could our constructions of identity become experiments in freedom.4
Notes
1 ‘…[N]ot every differentiae precludes identity, since many differentiae inhere in things specifically identical, though not in the substance of these, nor essentially.’ (1952:97).
2 The dates given indicate the first performance of a play. Where play texts have been published, these have been listed in the bibliography.
3 Donkerland is slightly different to the other productions listed here, in that it serves as a critical examination of the Afrikaner identity, whereas the other plays mentioned do not reflect critically upon the configuration of the cultural identities they seek to embody. Abduragman Adams’ play Angels Everywhere (2005) also tries to portray a collective identity shared by those living in the Cape Flats, but here this identity is constructed in terms of a mishmash of languages, religions and practices. The identification of a culture at the intersection of these matrixes is thus a different process than the consolidation of an identity in terms of the reification of particular, exclusive practices.
4 In this essay, I have questioned the value of writing purely from a single ethnic, or nationalistic perspective, and have mentioned plays in Zulu, Afrikaans and Xhosa. However, if we consider these three language groups (which are also the three largest ‘cultural’ groups in South Africa) as identifying particular nations within the state, where does this leave the English mother tongue speakers who do not share a particular set of traditions or customs in the same way that the speakers of Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa do? Surely English speakers would no longer wish to identify themselves with the colonisers and the imperial regime of a hundred years ago. So more and more, I’ve been wondering whether or not my indictment against ethnic theatre might not be a case of sour grapes, in realising that English speakers have no coherent national identity to speak of. Although English has won out as the most important communal language, it has been able to adopt this envied position only because it lacks the specificity of the indigenous tongues and because it continues to be influenced – and quite possibly dominated – by the massive global Anglo block.
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The Performing Arts Network of South Africa presents a staged reading of
