(upbeat music) Hello, hello. Welcome, good day to you wherever you are. If you are watching us now or you're gonna be watching us later, thank you for coming. My name is Taiwo Afolabi, I'm really excited to be having this conversation again today. This is the second episode
of "Decolonizing Dramaturgy: "Theater makers in
Conversation from Africa." I'm so happy today and that's because we
have three amazing guests and I'm gonna be introducing them shortly. But I'd like to first of all say I am di
aling in today
from Regina, Saskatchewan. And I'd love to acknowledge where I am and I want to acknowledge
those in the past and present and future. I would like to mention that wherever you may be coming
in from or dialing in from, that we'd like to thank
you for being here. Also special thanks to HowlRound
and of course our partners, Pan-African Creative exchange, Safeword, Theater Emissary International and the University of
Regina here in Canada, for bringing all this together. Real excited
about this
conversation today. Thanks to Brandon, Brandon
is there behind the screen co-producing this with me,
and Sarika our interpreter and Adam our captioner. Thank you so much. Today, which is the second episode we're considering dramaturgy
and dramaturgical processes from Egypt, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. And that means that have three
amazing theater practitioners from these three
countries, which is great. I'd like to introduce
quickly Wole Oguntokun. Wole Oguntokun is theater director, a pla
ywright, a dramaturge,
a theater practitioner and it's really a privilege
to have him with us. He's worked internationally and I know he's gonna
speak more for himself. It's just a privilege to Wole with us. I call him Oga Wole, so you permit me to
continue calling him that. Also, Adham Hafez. Adham is a theorist, an artist, curator and Adham writes on
contemporary art history outside of Western paradigms. On choreographic systems, climate change and postcolonial legacies. I also wanna add that
Adham is a PhD candidate at New York University's
Performance Studies Department. Adham is gonna speak more, Adham is gonna speak for himself. But I wanna say something about Adham, is that I'm really amazed
by the work that Adham does. And the fact that we have representation also from that region. When we were talking earlier on I did say that many times when we talk
about the African region, there is always that
inclination to gravitate towards West Africa, East
Africa, South Africa. And many
times there is that voice that some of us are yearning
to hear from North Africa. I'm homogenizing North Africa obviously, but I'm just saying it is really beautiful to have present on the
series and on the episode, on the series from that region. Finally I want to
introduce Lloyd Nyikadzino, a friend, a brother. I've known him for over five years now. He's from Zimbabwe,
he's a theater director, a playwright and actor, and also Lloyd is the founder and the principal of
Zimbabwe Theater Academy
. He's also the curator of the
Mitambo International Festival and really exciting to have
the three of you with us today. Thank you for taking this opportunity. We're gonna go straight
into this conversation. 'Cause I think earlier on
before we even started, we started talking about
really critical issues that I'm hoping that we're
still gonna go back to them. I'd like to start with Lloyd. And I think my question goes
to all of you obviously, is that how do you conceive dramaturgy? What does tha
t mean to you and what's your journey
into the land of dramaturgy? Lloyd we'll start with you. What does dramaturgy mean to you and what's you're journey into that? How do you conceive it, how do you think about
that in your own work? Over to you Lloyd. Okay well, what we can also do is that in case it might be network there and lagging and all of that. I'll just go over to
Adham, the question to you and then anytime Lloyd is back, we just allow him to chime in. Go ahead Adham. Thank you Taiwo.
Well, I first got introduced to dramaturgy when I started working
outside of North Africa. I was in Europe and working
with performance artists, some theater makers and
dramaturgy was the buzzword back end of '90s, early 2000s. And I kept thinking is this something that we do anyway back home and it just happens a different name here or is this yet another new
thing that we're gonna have to learn about in order to be
included in the art markets with its dynamics and it's politics? And for us bec
ause the company
I work with HaRaKa Platform, we create work that does
not always necessary depend on text. So very early on we defined
dramaturgy for ourselves as basically it doesn't have
to be a person doing it. So dramaturgy is the process
of generating meaning and making sure all the different
aspects of the production are in conversation with one another, allowing this meaning that
we are trying to work with to emerge. And then when we start
working with a dramaturge as a role and as someo
ne
fulfilling this function, it was clear for us
also from the beginning that it's someone who his
takes are the actual work that's being made. So it's not the light
designer or costume maker or video artist who do have other stakes in the production. But actually it's someone
whose sole function is working with the quote
unquote, dramaturgy. And throughout the past 17,
18 years of the productions that we've made, the person
that fulfills the role has changed greatly from one
person to multiple
people. LLOYD: Thank you so much
Taiwo for this opportunity. (crackling drowns the speaker) I think it's the network. He spoke a long time ago and it took a while to get us. Lloyd, Adham is wrapping up, let's allow him to finish and then pass it back to you, all right? LLOYD: Okay. Go ahead, go ahead
Adham. Sorry about that. No, so just wrapping up
that's my interest later then was how different people
can fulfill this role. So we worked with a
psychoanalyst in that role, we've worked with a pol
itical scientist, we've an architect, and artist. I can talk more about this later but I'm interested in how
different kinds of people from different background
can fulfill this role away from a theater tradition, away from the Gotthold Ephraim Lessing kind of the story of origin of what dramaturgy in the field of study has historically meant in
a Western kind of sense. Interesting and we're
gonna come back to that because your definition is the
process of generating meaning and how other folks
in other disciplines can actually fulfill that role who do not necessarily
identify or have the profession that we can call them theater artists. Is that what you, yeah? Yeah. That's interesting, we're
gonna come back to that 'cause I think that's interesting lens. Let's go back to Lloyd. Lloyd if your internet permits, do you want to speak to the question, what do you consider dramaturgy? How do you conceive it? And then what's your
journey into dramaturgy? Lloyd are you there? LLOYD: Yeah than
k you so much Taiwo. I hope you can hear me clearly now. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now, go ahead. LLOYD: Okay, thank you so much. I would say for me because I'm coming from
a devised background in terms of creating work. For me it will be the provocative, whoever is provoking the exploration in the creative process of analyzing and probably packaging a play into a dramatical theatrical experience, would be dramaturgy to me. Because we use the body and to provoke whatever that ne
eds to be, so other than probably other approaches where you have to submit
a written two-page, sit dow, analyze it within the historical, political and social context, we are saying can you
place the body in space (crackling drowns the speaker). Who wrote this thing, so ours is coming from
devising, collaborating, kind of community-based
approach to writing and also the dramaturgical
processes or process then becomes a (crackling
drowns the speaker). Okay, I would try to kind of, I think what I
'm hearing him say is that his coming from
a devised background and so he works collaboratively. So for him how he conceptualize or what he conceives as
dramaturgy is whoever that has the prerogative
of provoking the creation and the structure and
the processes of making that collaborative creative process to all come together into a performance. I hope I did justice to summarize that. I'll hand over to Oga Wole now, to hear his thoughts in
terms of what does that mean, both from a professional
lens 'cause I know that he's a playwright and he's done a lot of that. Over to you. How do you conceive dramaturgy and what's your journey into that land? I think for the interpreter Taiwo, it means good to say Oga means boss and I don't know why
Taiwo is calling me boss. So Lloyd said some
interesting things there. He said it's about putting our work, putting a piece of theater in context whether socially, politically, culturally that would be the work of the dramaturge. If we use the textbook
definition, it says dramaturgy is the
study of dramatic composition and the representation
of the many elements of drama on the stage. For me, it is calling a specialist it's calling a specialist to come adapt a piece of work for stage. That is how I see it. Now before this fancy term
came, before eggheads like Taiwo and (indistinct) brought dramaturgy to us, I had a practice. My entire cast often acted as dramaturgs. We would sit and we would
put the play in context, we would read to understand
it, to make it workable. When we adapted Chinua
Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" for the stage, the entire cast
acted as dramaturgs for it. Well, I would be the lead
dramaturg in that matter, but it's how I see it
because there is no point in putting up a work if
you have no understanding of the roots, of the cultural inferences, of it's cultural angles,
of its historical angles. That is how I would say that, for me, that's my working definition. Interesting. Well, saying Oga is just, it's just me
going back to my
cultural inclinations here. Interesting way of looking at it though and maybe that's gonna
pose another question. 'Cause then you're taking it away from the lens of an individual to that collaborative process
that Lloyd was talking about. Yes. What does that look like? Maybe in that example you cited, could you give us an example
of how that process went from you know, the dramaturgical process? Let's take a play. Professor Wole the Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka's
"Mad
Men and Specialists." I was blessed with a highly
intelligent cast at that point. It was a repertory body. We picked up work, we made it ours and we delivered our own
interpretation of these things. When we did that play,
"Mad Men and Specialist," we had to break it down
to its true meaning. We had to break it down
to it's true meaning because for those who might have read it, it might be one of the most
complex things ever written out of Africa. But because we had able cast members, I would giv
e my thoughts, I would give my thoughts
on what the cultural or social context was. But it was a beautiful thing
to have people who had, we had cast members who would not enter into the world of actors until
we finished the dramaturgy. People like (indistinct) who was the best directing
student of his class in the University of Ibadan. (indistinct) of the Lagos
State of University, (indistinct) Lagos University. They were actors, they
were brilliant actors but they were dramaturgs as well. And s
o we sat and we would break it down, we would come to an understanding, an explicit understanding of the work and then we would make it happen. If you enter some things half-baked, not ready for the script, for the work, it never comes out right. Interesting. I'd say that's our reflex with-- That is about interpretation and meaning making and that
provocation happens together as a collective.
Yeah. I'm gonna come back to that idea. I want to hear Adham's thoughts about that process for Adham, wh
o says there have been other folks, who are necessarily not actors but they have taken on that role. What does that mean? Adham over to you. Well, I mean as I said earlier, when we started using the term dramaturgy, maybe I will start the story
differently from another place. When I first tried to translate the term dramaturgy to Arabic and translate text that deal
with dramaturgy in arabic we had a problem because
we don't have a term such as dramaturgy in
Arabic that I can use. So we started,
there was transliteration so you just say dramaturgy
and you write it in Arabic, the way you say computer and
you write computer in Arabic. And I was thinking maybe that's enough, maybe sometimes you just
take the word and do this but then we like, in
our company in HaRaKa, we like getting into these problems, we like getting into a place where you cannot translate something and you cannot easily explain
it to the practitioners who are doing it. Like explaining dramaturgy
to people making theate
r and have been choreographers for decades. And it's there that we start to wondering is this some foreign practice
that truly is foreign? So it's like explaining
classical ballet to someone who has never danced classical ballet. Or is this something
we've always been doing under different names, but this is just another
way of formalizing it? But of course the minute you start using the word dramaturge or dramaturgy, it invokes the history
of the Western practice. It invokes the fact that in Eu
rope, theaters, a theater
building would have someone who is the dramaturg of that theater of the national theater of whatever. The very first job given to someone as a dramaturg of a theater
was in the 18th century, given to Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and that was in Hamburg. And he wrote this book called
" The Hamburg Dramaturgy," which is seen as a founding document in understanding of what dramaturgy means. And his position changed, title so in the beginning was
called, "The Dramatic
Judge." (Adham speaks in a foreign language) In German. And then from "Dramatic Judge,"
it became the dramaturg. If this was happening in the 18th century in an affluent, European colonial power, what was happening in the 18th century across the sea in Egypt. We cannot assume that we all went through the same parallel genealogies and that we all share one art history because it's not true, it is false. What is happening is that many different other theater and performance practices that cannot b
e contained
even in the word theater or in the word performance
as in performance art have been happening and
are still happening. And therefore when I use the
term dramaturgy or dramaturge, this is why I take it with a grain of salt because I take it thinking
of its very specific institutional Western
history that was developing at such a moment of colonial affluence, and I take it while thinking
of the many specific genres and conventions some of them
don't even consider themselves to be art.
Like when you think of
a practice like zar, which is a form of dance and theater but it's also, it deals with exorcism and it deals with spirits. When you ask the practitioners who are some of the best musicians and theater performers you'll ever meet, they don't consider themselves artists. They think this a thing
that serves a function, which is talking with spirits. So they're not even, they don't see their practice
in the context of the art. So when you see people working with the aesthetic
regime of power, who do not define themselves as artists, of course you have to ask yourself what the hell does this
term dramaturgy mean to these people? And if you're working with them, what does it mean to engage
in a dramaturgic process? For our specific needs of dramaturgy, I can give you anecdotes. So when we worked on a performance that was dealing with psychosis and I did not want to create a performance about psychotic disease, we wanted to really delve
deeper and understand, so the dra
maturg was a psychiatrist. We worked at a hospital with a doctor, and the doctor was walking us
through what does this mean. We worked with patients
under the doctors supervision and other nurses and for
us this was a dramaturge. Another time we were working with how between urban planning
happens quickly in a city, how we move changes. If a street is cut shorter
and have to turn around, you physically change movement. So we hired an urban planner and the urban planner was the
dramaturg for this
production. So this is what I mean that
for us I focus on the function and how this person can, like contrary to the older ways
of understanding dramaturgy, it is about making a text
adaptable to a certain moment in time or certain group of actors, because we don't start from
a text in our creations. For us, this is why I'm talking
about meaning in dramaturgy in this sense of someone that
is serving a certain function. I'm not sure if I answered
that question quite. No, thank you. I think you'v
e said and
raised a lot interesting ideas in terms of unsettling, unpacking the (indistinct) around the term itself. So that we move beyond the
nomenclature dramaturgy to really go deep into
starting talking about really bigger issues and
we're gonna come to that. One of the questions you need to ask is is this a term, Western term
or is it that this thing itself is something we were doing
before this term was invented? And then these are bigger issues that we're gonna come to those things. Beca
use the purpose for all of this is for me it's are there
other issues or big ideas that this is giving us as a into to actually have that conversation. Before we come to that, 'cause that's gonna like the
other half of our talk today but before we go into that I
would like to ask the question for the three of you in terms of, for you Adham, you've worked in Egypt and now you are in the U.S. Lloyd is in Zimbabwe. Oga Wole has worked in Nigeria and some other places in the world. What is the role
of the
place you have worked at or currently working in? What role does it play
in how that function, in how you define the function
of dramaturgy comes to play? What role does that
place-based practice of yours, the three of you, what role
does that play in performing, or whoever that is performing that role of interpretive, provoking, generating meaning and things like that? I'd like us to start with Lloyd if his internet would permits, we'd like to start with him and
then we'll shift to Oga W
ole and we'll come back to Adham. Lloyd, are you there? LLOYD: Yeah, I am there. I think the place plays
for me a significant role as Adham was speaking
about that in Arabic, they would not the term dramaturgy. But then they're taking
their bits and pieces of what they define dramaturgy as, to then translate to actors. So for me dramaturgy or the
place or where we are based which I linked to the
culture of our people who we're probably working with, then set the foundation of
understanding the c
ontext of the play or the words. So maybe in Zimbabwe, if you say, let me give a name (indistinct) to our locale people would know this. Karishna spoke about the local pedagogy or the local understanding,
is that locally I will sound, as strong to what we want to speak about. So if it is in the political,
socioeconomic realm, the place then is setting us
to have a strong foundation. So that even if you go
to Nigeria, to Egypt, to United States, the
dramaturgy does not save only the aesthetics of
the presentation. But then the inherent, important meaning of what we want to convey, one not only to the
public but to ourselves. (crackling drowns the speaker) for me it's not just about
the aesthetics of the show that it's paid in, the actors
that coming are believing in the work that they are going to produce as they need to have been
provoked in this exploration to understand that this is
based in the space they were in. I did my training in the US, in California, there is a small place up
there in Northern
California, it's Blue Lake. And the reason why they put the training is that it's so far
away from urban settings because their pedagogy is strongly in putting people in
nature and close to nature as all of our activities are
connected back to nature. So I'm saying a place like
Harare being an urban city affects the way and the work
that I'm going to produce. So I think place has a critical role. If I was going to do a show
that I'm doing called "Zandezi," in America, it's goi
ng to
have different meanings if I originated there
even if I was Zimbabwean. But now I'm local, I understand
the Zimbabwean prison system or the people that are in
prison and out of prison here. I think we've lost Lloyd
again but that's fine. I hope that we've been able to you know, his perspective is the fact that, again I'm trying to summarize here that the role of that
place the locality plays in the entire piece around it around functioning as a dramaturge within the context of production.
I'd would like to come to Oga Wole now, to really speak to this question and maybe also put in mind
as you discussed dramaturgy in the context of production, to also speak about the institutional understanding of dramaturg. Because I know also, for
Oga Wole and for Adham also, you're not just in the
realm of production alone, but even in that institutional sense of audience, education,
programming, curating festivals and things like that. Those are the things you have also done, the three of you
obviously. So over to you Oga Wole and then will pass it over to Adham. Thank you Taiwo for this
particular question. Firstly, I have some background in law, I have a Masters degree in law and I have been called to the
bar but what I do is theater. That is what I am known
for, that's what I practice. Now, I want to say something,
the reason I spoke about law is because as an African lawyer, you have to learn law in Africa and also learn the law
of the developed world. It is the same with litera
ture. We learn our literature and we learn the literature
of the developed world. We learn our literature in English often, literature in English then
we do English literature. The 400-year-old man Shakespeare is still relevant today
because they make us study him. You want to go to Shakespeare's Globe, there's a Shakespeare play you take there. Now, some institutions
have living dramaturgs they have dramaturgs who
work for the theater. I don't know, maybe
some of these festivals, I don't know,
Stratford here in Canada, Stratford Festival or
maybe the Shaw Festival, they might have living dramaturgs but we know people have this. But it is impossible
for a Canadian dramaturg to practice his dramaturgy
on an African play. I'm being bold to say that. I was dramaturg for "Death
and the King's Horseman" here put together by Soulpepper
and the Stratford Festival and I knew there was no how a Canadian could have been a dramaturge in that play. It was so specific culturally,
it was so localize
d. One of the greatest plays
ever written in my opinion, "Death and the King's Horseman." (speaks in a foreign language) It was so localized that you needed to understand the
culture to profess on it. Same as another one I'm a part of here, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." If you don't come from a certain area, so my boldness now is that the African because he practices from
both sides can be at dramaturg for a westernized production but it doesn't flip the other way. I cannot be a dramaturge on
Arab culture, it's impossible. I do not understand the
cultural inferences, I don't understand the angle, I do not understand the little meanings that make up the whole. So when we say the
institutionalized dramaturge or the dramaturge that
comes with the institution, can there really be such a thing
even of others practice it, can there be such a thing? Because if I speak about
the Yoruba culture here, probably only Taiwo can
ask me questions about it, questions of meaning. Can say maybe I thi
nk. Because this is where I come from, this is what I was born in,
this is what I was immersed in. So that is my view of the
institutionalized dramaturge and the dramaturge engaged
for certain productions. There are some things you
cannot blanket dramaturgy on, that is what I think about that. I don't know if there is another part of the question I have not touched on. Interesting. Well by Canadian, just to put a caveat, I think what you are referring
to is I can't be a Canadian and be dramaturg
e to a Nigerian play So what you're referring
to just to put a caveat is that what you're
referring to by Canadian is to someone that is not cultured in that African sense of culture, right? It could be an American,
that's what I mean. If you're not immersed in that culture, it is impossible for you to
profess dramaturgy on that work because you do not have an
understanding of even the names. Talk little of the
significance of the names, talk little of the songs, talk little of even the
signific
ance of meeting at a place where four paths meet. You have no idea about it. So thing, all the
connotations that are there are lost on you. Thank you for that thought. I'll pass it to Adham and Adham, maybe also in speaking to this I want you to also chip in, Oga Wale kind of started us on
that institutional dramaturg and the limitation of what that
means within the context of, is it even possible at all and all that I would like you to speak to that in contrast to that place
based that we're co
ming from, 'cause the original
question is place based. What is the role of the
locality, the culture, the place that you're in
playing in that whole function of the dramaturge? Over to you Adham. Well, I mean I agree with
everything Wole just said. And as I'm thinking of
place and what that means, some people believe that the place matters and others believe that
the doesn't matter at all. So when I look at how my
practice has dealt with when it is framed as Egyptian work or it's framed as a Ar
ab,
which is nothing else, and then its framed African when there is an African festival and they want a North African maker. Or then as Mediterranean, because Egypt is part of
the Mediterranean world, Egypt is also part of the Muslim world, so then there's that. You're a Muslim artist
and so on and so on. And every time this frame,
this curatorial frame is put on the artist and artwork, a place becomes the protagonist in story that matters the most. That this is what they look for, they are loo
king for the
Egyptian-ness in the work and the African-ness in the work and the Islamic dance in the dance. This is interesting because it doesn't happen
the other way around when is a Spanish choreographer or a Swedish theater maker coming to present in our countries, no one is expecting their Swedish-ness. I don't know, it sounds very banal when you say the other way
around but it sound very typical. Like I don't expect a
Swedish person to talk about the forest and
make meatballs on stage, but
then we are expected to
talk about the politics of food and (Adham speaks in foreign language) and the Palestinian issue and
sand and deserts and camels. Our places are charged and
the work by people like myself and like others in the panel today are seen as national and
ethnic representatives to a formation of things
that might have happened and things that actually
maybe don't exist at all. So there is the fact that sometimes you are asked to represent the
fantasy that does not exist, or aske
d to represent a country
that truly ceased to exist, it doesn't exist anymore. What people think you
might represent today might be something they saw
in the news 10 years ago. And in today's world,
10 years is a century, things move very fast. So when I moved to New
York seven years ago, or more now, I can't even
remember how many years, but let's say seven years
ago I was at a conference without naming the conference. And the expectation of me to represent everybody in a country that has 100 m
illion
citizens was unbelievable. I don't understand how one person with their practice could
represent 100 million. So that's one part of the problem but then the other more important and more insidious part of the problem is you have people that believe the space where they are does not
matter to their practice and that their practice
overrides any geopolitics. I find it very alarming
when there is one man as the dramaturge of a theater, say a theater in Berlin,
major theater in Berlin and the
re was one person as
the dramaturge in this theater. This is the person that claims they have an understanding
of anything basically. Of a company coming from Nigeria, a company coming from Algeria. And it's this person who
might be Spanish or German or British or whatever but they believe they can
have the dramaturgic insight. And then it makes me wonder, do we believe there is
such a thing as theater that is purified from any national and political and geographic
information at all? It's like
saying chemistry
or saying biology, even science itself is rooted in politics and political consensus. There is no scientific
or artistic consensus without a political
consensus to start with. But then find it alarming because Europe is creating an image of itself
as a monolithic culture. That one German dramaturge can
work with a Spanish company, even that Spain itself,
between the Basque and Catalan and Madrid, there's many countries. But on our side, and this is not we are better than you or
we're better than us,
it's just a colonial history. Like Wole was saying, you
study theater in Africa, you study your theater and you
study theater of the other. When I grew up studying
dance and theater in Egypt, I studied Shakespeare
but also studied Syrian and Egyptian and Moroccan playwrights. It's funny how the story gets written because then we're constantly
the ones that need to learn, we're constantly the
ones that need to look up to Western theaters to be updated and catch up with
moder
nity and postmodernity as if it is a train that will pass us by and we have to run to catch up. While in fact the story is wrong because we know more about
the history of both places and the practices of both places than a strictly Western practitioner does. But how stories get written
is another conversation that we can keep her another question. Thank you Adham. I'm happy both of you you've started us on an interesting course here. 'Cause you're unpacking and unsettling that idea of
institutio
nal dramaturge. The limitations, the realities, the inherent fairness of the idea itself and the political realities
that surrounds it. I think my question to both of you, and I know that Lloyd, we
might be back at some point and apologies for the Lloyd his going back and forth
just because of the internet. The realities of working
in this part of the world. My question to both of you then is, what are those big ideas? And by saying big ideas now, I'm not necessarily looking
in the context of si
ze. But those ideas that the idea
of decolonizing dramaturgy can help us to start talking
and thinking about it. You started bringing them
up one after the other and I know we had an interesting session before we started our live stream today. What are the ideas from your own work, and both of you and of course with Lloyd, you have traveled internationally and worked internationally. What are those things, those subjects, those issues that you think that the idea of decolonizing dramaturgy call
us into, to start rethinking what that means in the context of your work. We'll just allow you to answer to that and then we come again after that. Maybe Oga Wole you can start us with that. Okay, I could use a play, I could use, "Death and
the King's Horseman," as an example again. So this play is specific
to a geographical area. It's specific to the Oyo kingdom in the area now known as Nigeria. It has a king, the king when he dies, is supposed to be buried
with another high chieftain, the Eles
in. That play, except you're
immersed in that culture or except the dramaturge
has traveled there and has gone to learn, you cannot do dramaturgy
on it via Bluetooth. It's impossible. It can't be done long-range,
you have to be there. So like Adham said, you have one man who thinks he is all omnipotent and can... It's like being a dramaturge
for a play that's written, let's imagine a play is
written with Islam at its core. I can't work on it. I can't work on it because I
do not have an understan
ding, an in-depth, learned
understanding of that religion, therefore I would make a mockery of it. That is my contention,
that's my contention. But if I can do Shakespeare, it means I have the upper hand on you as an African dramaturge. If I can do George Bennett Shaw, because I was made to read
him, I have an upper hand. I can fix both sides is what I'm saying. Whose dramaturgy are we decolonizing? It is the view of the Western world that dramaturgy stems from it. In my opinion, it is the
view
of the developed world that it is the source of dramaturgy for the rest of the universe. That's impossible, that's impossible. Because if you come into my culture, I will tell you, child, be silent, you have no understanding
of what's going on here. It does not matter how many
years of experience you have. I read something by Wilbur
Smith a long time ago, and this man dressed as a spy somewhere in the desert in Arab land. And when he urinated in the desert, he urinated facing the east and that i
s how they knew he was not real. I would never have known that. It's impossible. How do that if you are not,
if you're not immersed in it. So that's what I'm saying,
things like that then, if they're written in a piece of work, are lost on the
institutionalized dramaturge. You have to... Now, I'm also gonna say this,
the reason I do not profess the reason I do not profess to be an authority on
African American work is because I have no
walked in their shoes. I do not understand the concept of a
policeman pointing a gun at you. It is alien to me. When I'm in my country,
I'm king of my country. Policemen do not point guns at me therefore I cannot tell
that story with empathy. I might know it, I might feel the horror, of seeing a man kneel
on another person's neck but I know it can never happen
to me where I come from. Therefore if I try to tell that story, if I tried to tell that story, I would be telling a non-truth. That's me, that's done. Thank you for that, over to Adham. I just wann
a say thanks to our audience 'cause we're engaging. Brandon is getting us all the chats, thanks Brandon. We're gonna engage with
the last chat on dramaturgy and curation, we'll come to that. But let's address this first, this question and of course
the question whose dramaturgy are we decolonizing. Over to you Adham. I think a muted, no, I'm not muted. It's not just dramaturgy. I'll tell you another funny story, funny and sad story. When I was doing my postgraduate
studies in Amsterdam, and I wa
s studying choreography in a contemporary dance program. And then I was surprised that
as someone coming from Egypt, everything we're studying was European, maybe one or two North American references but everything else was European. And no one from the
professors was factoring in the fact I am the man
from Egypt who's making work that is specific to that place. Sitting there truly baffled. I didn't understand why the
program is just called dance when it is specifically
Western European dance. W
hy don't we give things their names? Why isn't it called the Western
European dance department? It's just called dance. But then when I do my
dance, then it's marked, then it is called Arab
dance or North African or African or Middle Eastern and so on. So why do we have to be
treated with specificity but then the work that
was created by the Western and West is such a big word
but you know what I mean. My colleagues from Serbia and from Spain and from the Netherlands, their work was just dance w
ithout any word that comes before it. It's not called Serbian or
Spanish or Catalan dance, it's just dance but my
work has to be marked. So this was one of the first things and then I spoke with them and I said, "I don't even know if I start
teaching in this university "what I would teach. "I mean, I don't know why I
would need to teach this." And then they said, "Well
we should introduce you "to the director the
African Dance Program." I mean, what is African dance? So they sent me to this thin
gs thinking because I'm from Egypt I would understand about African dance automatically and I don't even know until
now what African dance means because what I see in
an institution like this is a kind of dance that is a
mishmash of different things that is presented primarily
to a Western context. And if you are in Africa,
in any African country and you say African dance, what? This is meaningless, this
doesn't mean anything because how many dances
exist in every African nation to just take all
these
hundreds and hundreds of dances and put them under one term
and call it African dance. The way that we say African theater and African dramaturgy. So I am not sure, like Wole said who are we decolonizing or what are we trying to decolonize here? I generally have been having a hard time with the word decolonize itself, because it sounds to me
almost as if something is over and finished, an event that
happened and it's long gone and now we are just decontaminating. It's a party that finishe
d and we're just cleaning
the house after the party. But I don't think the event is finished, I don't think colonialism is finished for us to decolonize it's impact. We are engaged in an active,
anti-colonial struggle. Colonization is ongoing in many ways and it just keep transforming
in a very treacherous way. But it's practically ongoing whether culturally or economically, or in terms of the
sweatshops that are owned and run in places and countries like mine and other countries in the
Middle E
ast or in Africa. And that's why I hesitate a lot when I use the term decolonize like I think it's important to highlight that the act colonizing and of sustaining colonial
empirical interests and interventions, to use a nicer word and the words we should actually
be using is still ongoing. As I said earlier, we
can think of the place because we are made to think of the place and it's so easy for
things to be confused. Like Wole was saying it's so easy to think that if you are an African man, th
en you can speak also on
the African-American cause, or the other way around if you're an African American writer, then you are speaking
about blackness in general. But it's different being African immigrant and being African American. It's very different being black in America and being black in an African country. These are not the same thing or being white skinned
in an African country. So this nuance, maybe
this is the dramaturgy that we need to think more of. This dramaturgy of nuance or a
dramaturgy of curiosity and humility, which I am practicing and I
really think it is an exciting and a generative place to be. A place of curiosity
and a place of thinking also of specializations like I was saying. For me I'm less concerned
with a dramaturge that comes and looks almost
like this magic person that knows everything and dramaturgy is
apolitical, non-geographic, it's not specific and it's
almost like car mechanic coming to just do things. I don't think there is such a dramaturge. Bu
t for me it's a very specific person, that I need some of
that understands better about neurology and psychoanalysis then that's the dramaturge
for this project. Or I need an urban
planner or an architect, then that's the dramaturge
for this project. I appreciate the nuance that you both are bringing into this
now and the complexity and unpacking of whether
decolonizing itself and dramaturgy itself. I'll come to Lloyd. I know that the fifth episode is around dramaturgy as
a curator and programme
r, we have a comment here again going back to institutional dramaturgy and the fact that the
principle of shared leadership comes to mind and I'll read
all of that at that point. Without going much into dramaturge as a curator and programmer, this is for Lloyd, I
wanted to ask you Lloyd, in terms of your work at Mitambo Festival, what is the impact of your, what's your curatorial approach to that within the context of dramaturgy? That even if you think about it from that stand point anyways, but
is there anything you wanna share? 'Cause I know the Mitambo
International Festival in Zimbabwe has been ongoing on for two years now and you are the curator of that Lloyd. And also you've been
part of other festivals and seasons and all of that. Do you wanna speak to that Lloyd, in terms of you being a curator and a programmer for a festival? LLOYD: Yeah, thank you for
that, sorry for breaking up. Yeah, I think this year is
the third year we did it and it was quite interesting because we made
eight African guests from eight different African countries. And then one of the participants said, "You know what? "I loved so much the place this time." And I said, "Why did you love the place?" They were like, "Because
they were not Western. "They spoke about probably
things that I could relate to "as an African." But you know we put in international within the Mitambo
International Theater Festival. So I think it was only this year we were enlightened about the importance and significance an
d power
of coming back to the basics of knowing who we are
and speaking what we know and probably not just
work based on imagination. So in terms of curating, over the years we wanted
to mix in perspectives and also stories from all over the world, how they meet in a part and then people share their
different perspectives. As you know, we're bringing
everyone from Europe, Asia, America to be part and parcel of this. So I think has not really
been one of our priorities to say we really want to sp
eak to this, but I think after this year's comments, I'm think we should have a
segment, an African segment which is specifically
dedicated to our work. Also if you want to
talk about decolonizing, I know Wole, I just had
the last parts was saying and also Adham, what are we
decolonizing ourselves from? And who is it? But for me looking as an
example of the academy, it's decolonizing from the Western culture and that some of our students
who go into universities are taught that this is
the struc
ture of a play, this is a well-written play, this is how you should speak. You cannot speak your
own language in a play because the international
audience might not understand. So I think decolonizing
ourselves from these approaches and structures and also thinking
that you can't (indistinct) with a play that is half
your local language. Wole spoke about the various things and I remember thinking
that in terms of gestures, there are certain gestures
that are peculiar to Zimbabwe that are so impo
rtant,
that if I put it in a play, not only the people
playing are so comfortable in the vision of the play
or whatever that it is we are trying to portray
in this performance, but they are so important
that we need to keep them and to preserve them wherever we go. So I know I missed a lot of things because I've been breaking in and out, but in terms of curating in the festival, we are curating it so we're in charge, so whenever we feel this is
the right moment to drive, probably let me seem
pol
itical, the African Agenda then we are going for it. It was not what we were
feeling in that point in time but we're not mandated to only do Africa but because it's an
international festival, so as need different international
dramaturgs if there are, who come with their point of view to this particular festival. Thank you, thank you Lloyd. I will just read some comments here and then hopefully again
the three of you listening, what ideas come out for
you just respond to them. So the first comme
nt, and some the comments
we've have addressed them, some question, some are yet to. Great conversation. I feel this concept and these
ideas also relate to curators, basically any gatekeeper. The principle of shared
leadership comes to mind. More and more platforms, venues
and festivals are looking at more guest curators to bring
down a single point of view. Perhaps this is also
something to think about with regard to institutional dramaturge. Lloyd and, sorry, Adham and Wole and Lloyd any of yo
u, if you have any
thoughts to any of the comments just let me know. I'm just gonna read them,
please just let me know and you can chime in, let me know. The second comment. Very true Adham. Just think about the colonization happening right now online. So many digital platforms
are heavily colonized. The colonized is inverted comma. Comment, thank you for this
conversation, it is so deep. Another comment, dramaturgy
of nuance is a great term. Can we extend to
contextualization in presentation an
d how is this important in (indistinct) performance exchange. I don't know what that is but wat I said earlier on
that dramaturgy of nuance and that's what the three
of you are really saying. Is that we need to stop boxing ourselves into these idea of this is what it is and knowing that it's
not just one straitjacket and understanding the complexities
of some of these things. So the three of you, the question is dramaturgy
of nuance is a great term, can we extend to
contextualization and present
ation and how is this an important
thing in all African exchange? Maybe both of you, maybe the
three of you can speak to that. Can I say something? Yes please. So someone put a comment
and said, how can there be, I'm going to read now, it just came up. How can we think of decolonizing art when the largest African
political institution has not one African official language? I'm talking about the African Union. Now (Wole chuckles) so there
are three of us here now. There's Adham who's from North A
frica, there's Lloyd who's from the South, and there's Wole who's
from the West of Africa. We do not share languages. The language we share
is a colonial language. And someone actually thinks
that us not having one language, I hope it's a metaphorical
language that is referred to, someone actually thinks
that not having one language makes us less legitimate. This is our uniqueness,
this is our beauty, this is how we are massive,
this is how we are who we are. The fact that we are different
is th
e magic of Africa. Nigeria has 250 languages, 250. That is the magic of Africa. Why do we need one language? If they interpret Spanish
and whatever to people, interpret Africa as well. The truths, what's happening
in the American institution, these truths are universal. The truths are universal. They are the same across the world, they are the same across the world. Inhumanity, a man kneeling
on another man's neck is the same all around
the world, it is murder. A man saying countries in
Africa a
re shithole countries is the same all around the world. It's bigotry, it is racism. It doesn't matter what
language is being spoken. When I see Mo Salah in
football it is one language, it is Africa. So we do not need one language. The difference in our tongues is not a difference in our humanity. It is not. And so when I saw I thought, why does the African Union need, have you not seen the
dressing of these people? I was thinking of something,
I bought a second TV because my son troubles me. So
I got a smaller TV for him to watch and by some chance, Al
Jazeera came with it and I could not believe the difference between the news being
told by Al Jazeera and CNN. We are talking about colonization
that is colonization, what CNN tells us is colonization. The rest of the world is legitimate, Africa should have a place, we shouldn't have to defend ourselves. I will quote from, "Death
and the King's Horseman." "Child, I am not here to
help your understanding." Africa does not have to explain
itself. You take the languages,
you take us as we are. You take the Ghanian,
you take the Zimbabwean, you take the Egyptian,
you take the Nigerian, as we are. And this is what we say
about decolonization. The fact that you do not understand something does not mean you
have to be afraid of it. This is who we are as a people and this is what we fight about every day. So Adham says that the fight isn't over, this is what we have to face
every day, all the time. Hidden in nuances, but
it's there all
the time. The person who says
African theater is fused, therefore it cannot be real theater. Who made you the Lord and judge over us? Who made you? We are the ones who feel the rhythm. Who made you? Okay (Taiwo laughing) I can
see you really reacting passionately to this comment because I know there is another comment that I do not mean this,
I mean not one language, only colonial languages and all of that. But I think it's also important, the place of language, culture and the whole idea of ho
mogenizing. I think it's really critical. Two, is that understanding
that nuances should be allowed at every point in time in human existence. And I think that the more that we think that people's culture
is less than the other or the more we think that
their language does not because they don't speak
the general language and that intellectually
they're not up to standard and things like that. I think that all these ideas
coming together are big ideas that I think that has given
us way into this
conversation. Over to you Adham. Do you want to, maybe
the language, maybe not, maybe the dramaturgy of nuance and recontextualizing
that in presentation. Any thoughts to this comment and of course we'll come to Lloyd. Over to you Adham. One of the comments was talking
about colonization online and I just will quickly jump to that. Because I work a lot with
different technological tools as ways of practicing dramaturgy. One of the performances we were doing we wanted to examine texts
from the A
merican court in relation to Arab and
Muslim immigrants to America from the late 19th century
until the mid-20th century. So that's a lot of texts. How can you explore all these texts in a way that truly pulls out
certain moments in history and politics of words and
certain terms that are used. So what we did is we decided
to take all these texts and put them in data analysis programs and use language parsing
tools to figure out what was the most common
word that was said, and what was the most
pairing of words like when you say this
word, what comes after it and from there we start with dramaturgy. And so we started the performance thinking we are creating a work
about Muslim immigrants coming to America and
how, just a brief history from the 19th century until 1940's, it was illegal to be
both Muslim and American and Arab and American. You could not. You can immigrate, but you cannot have the
American nationality because the law does not allow Americans to have Muslim faith and does
North African's to Americans. So this is where we started the project. Now, long story short is when we start using this technology, something funny happened was that the word that was most commonly used
was the term white person and the least common word
that was used was Muslim. So Muslim appeared only eight times in 60 or 70 years of history. And the term that was there
all the time was white person, so by utilizing this technology our dramaturgy became upside down and we realized we're
actua
lly making a performance about the creation of a category such as white man and a white person and what goes to create
and sustain whiteness as an important part of
the American identity. In away while technology
is always used against us and when coding is made it does
not imagine an African face or an Asian or Arab face it
imagines a white male face when you talk about face
recognition and so on. And in some way I'm like,
I'm happy face recognition does not think about people like us when it's
being designed. But there's also ways of using technology to flip it on itself and use
it to discuss the hegemony of a certain race or hegemony
of a certain regime of power. At the same time, something
really interesting happening now is now a lot of people are
turning to the blockchain as an alternative technological solution in order to create an
organized decentralized communities online that
are truly decentralized as in there's no one
company that owns the data, things happen between
all t
hese supercomputers spread around the world. It's denationalized so it doesn't belong to a country or another. And there's already African artists that are creating a
blockchain base platforms that is just for African
and black artists. I'm working as the creative director of a platform called Wizara which is specifically
looking at the meeting between Arab, Asian and African artists. So we're really interested
in this shift of perspectives and how we bring people into conversation. So there are
initiatives here and there where people are trying
to look specifically at the colonial power that
technology has historically had and it's of course colonial and capitalist because they are both
related to one another today and from there trying to
create something else. I think there is interesting
things that could happen. Thanks Adham. I also wanna say that
thinking about nuance, I don't want to overcommit myself here. I think really bringing in
the dramaturgy of nuance is really something
that's really interesting because even when we talk
about digital platforms and technology, we also need to change to understand that the
idea, this thing itself it's not just a white person sitting down to do it alone now. We have best brains in the world, who are necessarily not white. They are of different nationalities and all of these things
that we have today, is not just one single person. It's a brainwork of different people regardless of their nationality also. So I think those are also
ways
to really start rethinking all of these ideas that it's
not just one white person sitting down to just create all this. It's a constellation of
ideas from different brains all over the world regardless
of where they come from. Let's not go into this rabbit hole. Let's come back to this also
and say two comments here. I guess this idea of nuanced dramaturgy, as well as dramaturgy of place becomes particularly
interesting to further explore when we look at international exchange or presentin
g work internationally. Since then, two cultures come together either from different
artists, collaborating or artists from one culture
and audience from another. Here's the question I think, do you feel that two
dramaturgs from both cultures should come together
as well to collaborate? What is your experience in
these regards with dramaturgy? Any of you, the three of can pick that up. I know Wole talked about
your work here in Canada with Shaw festivals and other festivals, Adham also, and of
c
ourse Lloyd in Zimbabwe. What do we think about
collaborative dramaturgy? Dramaturge coming together to collaborate from different cultures. Have you had experience like that before and what does that mean, what's the dramaturgical process
in that entire arrangement? LLOYD: Yeah, maybe I will just share a bit that I think the word that has been used is quite good, collaborate. So I think within the
context of decolonizing, sorry to just put you back again, (indistinct) who said there
was never t
heater in Africa. It starts from there. So the idea of collaborating, who is initiating the collaboration. That's my point. Are you Taiwo in Canada telling us, "Lloyd there's a guy is
coming for you to work with." Or is it us initiating
that there is this thing that we have developed and
we are working towards. So there is an idea of
imposing and collaborating. There's a very thin line there because you might say it's collaborating and there's a superior being or force that is coming to then ove
rsee
or mentor or give advice because it has been done. So for me, it can be done
but it's also contextual in the different context to
see where is it starting from, how much time is being put. You know, you can't do that
in a month or two weeks, like collaborating, on what? That's a lie, that's putting
names to a particular project for us to give it relevance. So as brother Wole was saying it doesn't start just from the paper but it's a lived
experience that I'm sharing in this encounter. So it
cannot be just said within two minutes of us meeting together. It should have been like way before. So I just thought of popping in that in terms of collaboration. Thank you. Oga Wole do you wanna speak to that? In terms, maybe from
your experience working across these regions. Yes please, yes please. I'm curious as to how two people can be dramaturgs on one project. Like Lloyd just said, one has
to step down for the other. So one is actually, they
might be saying collaborating but there will b
e a voice
that drowns the other out. so okay maybe some institution
has its own in-house thing and they say let's bring in a specialist, someone has to back away. One of my most horrendous
experiences was trying to write a play with a French writer. A writer from France who
would use Google translate. We spoke different languages. And even though they used
the term generously writer, it leaves, I feel nauseated sometimes when I think about how
stressed I was with it. So I do not think two dramat
urgs can work on one project like Lloyd said. Whose project is it? Who's project? Who's the one who's lead dramaturg there? Who's the one who understands the nuances, the one who actually is the dramaturg? We like titles on paper, and saying this is a collaborative work. And like the gatekeepers like
that kind of thing as well, so they tell us gatekeepers being, let me offend Taiwo a bit here. British Consul, (indistinct),
French Cultural Center. You are not offending me. I'm just saying, I'll c
all their names. Gatekeepers, people who say you are the ones who say we can get through. This funnel, this bottleneck, we're the one's who are permitting. So they say this is
the system we want now, we want a combination, a collaboration. If a play is coming
from Britain to Nigeria and they say they want
me want me the team, it is either I am leading the team or I am not leading the
team, you understand? Let us not pretend
collaboration in dramaturgy. It's either I'm there or I'm helping out an
d understand there's nothing
the matter with helping out but that collaboration thing, people make awkward marriages. Thank you, thank you Oga Wole. Adham what are your thoughts? First, I just wanted to
pull out an old comment from the messages to clarify
a little misunderstanding. The person that was speaking about the African Union
languages clarified and wrote saying he or she or
they don't mean one language only for the entire African Union, but they meant to say
that the African Union only
uses the colonial languages and does not use any of
the languages of Africa. And the African Union
claims that its using English, French, Portuguese
but also Kiswahili and Arabic. But actually when you go on their website, the Kiswahili and Arabic
functions do not work. So you end up reading everything
in English and French. So in a way yes, while they do announce that they are using other
non-Western languages and here only Arabic and
Kiswahili out of the thousands of languages possible, you
en
d up only getting the text either in English or French. Maybe sometimes in
Portuguese when the meetings have to do with a certain
locality in Africa. I understand Wole's passion
and I fully support it but the person just wrote a correction for us to understand what they meant. Thank you for that Adham, thank you. Sure. As for can you have two or
several people doing dramaturgy, it really depends on what you are doing. As I said, I don't think of making theater or making performances as
this mono
lithic experience that can be reproduced exactly
the same every time we do it. And therefore yes, I've
had moments where there was more than one dramaturge
involved in the process, each fulfilling a certain function. And again, like you can
think of the dramaturge, if you wanna think
dramaturgy is this abstract, apolitical thing that
happens like electricity, then the dramaturge is just a mechanic that comes and fixes things like in a car. And if you think of
something more specific to what you'
re doing
and therefore specific to a given moment in time
and space and culture, then of course they also
have to have the nuance and the understanding
of these specificities. But then you can also as I
said, think of the fields of knowledge you want to
invoke with your practice that maybe you don't have access to and that's why you need a specialist. And then it's really, it's about scientific knowledge sometimes and it's about a certain philosophical or political knowledge or
understanding som
etimes. I can't say yes or no, but I personally have
worked in one production with more than one dramaturg
working collectively towards something. It's not black-and-white that's yes or no. Thank you. And I think also perhaps
we're talking, we are coming at this conversation at different, some of us are coming at it
from a geopolitical perspective, geopolitics rather perspective. Some are coming from
international collaboration, also from an institutional standpoint. I think the word I'm
putting
on the table today is really that idea of nuance dramaturgy or dramaturgy of nuance. That it boils down to really understanding the context where coming from
and how that really plays out within the political,
within the aesthetics, within the humane components of that. I know we have just seven more minutes to bringing this to an end. I would love to give the three of you to ask yourself questions. And if there are still
questions from our viewers, please put that in, it will
get to us thanks
to Brandon that is doing that for us. Adham, do you have any question
you want to ask Oga Wole, Oga Wole do you have any
question you want to ask Adham and to Lloyd. I'll allow the three of you to do that if you have any questions or any thoughts as we start to bring this to an end. I'd like to say that that
thing about the African Union, my response was not directed
at the writer of that thing. It was a general response. You know I said, I hope it
is a metaphorical language I was referring to.
But it is the very idea of
us, of course we shouldn't be, I mean English and French we
know what they've done with it. I get very passionate about this. I get worked up. Any question, Lloyd, do
you have any question for Adham or Adham any question for Lloyd and to Oga Wole, any question? LLOYD: For me it is not a question, but I think just a great, I'm thinking of, the two ways decolonizing
dramaturgy or starting from where. If we go down again, we are decolonizing from the
gatekeepers before we
even got, so for me it's quite interesting how also Adham and Wole
were trying to unpack this. That it's not just a small ball that we can start
bouncing and pulling back and then these are quite several balls that are in this sack that we are shaking and
trying to rearrange. But we know they are there, but I think it depends on
how we want to address it and articulate it or decolonize it. Just a point I wanted to put out there. I have a question for Adham. So my question is, in
the collaborati
ons Adham, was there a lead dramaturge? Was there someone who
was the lead dramaturge or were there different departments
in which each dramaturge was a lead for specific areas? I'm curious as to how it worked, having different ideas come together. Well, it was a very long process and in general, most of the work we do takes a very long while. Like it takes two years to
make one piece average time. Partly because we like to spend time really thinking and
researching and digging and partly becaus
e it takes a lot of time to raise the kind of money that is needed to put a production today
especially when you're working with people living in different countries and in different migrational routes. But time is one thing, like I
think spending time together allows things to settle and work. And another thing, I think
difference is that these people truly come from very
different perspectives. And in that sense, each
of them knew what to say and do that is specific to their knowledge and the
others did not
have that knowledge, so they were curious
and they would listen. And I don't know, i think
because we've done work that requires us all to collaborate and have a shared authorship in a way, we sort of accept it in the process. We've had difficulties with people that have not worked with
us come into the group. so we have been working for
around 17 or 18 years now. And when we invite someone
that has not been part of the group from outside to come in and fulfill a certain function,
sometimes it immediately works, they plug in and everything is beautiful. And sometimes they come in and
they are totally destabilized with this very collective authorship. And once, it a funny story
but it's actually true, once they said, "So how
do you write the credits "when you're writing in the program notes? "Do you just say everything by everybody?" And we said, you know what? It would be lovely to actually
say everything by everybody because a lot of our work
is really created this way.
But then there comes moments
and it's very technical that the person that is really a musician is the one that finishes the sound score and she's the one that
signs that sound score. The person that knows how to create film is the one that creates our media score and then it's that person
that signs the media score. So the signature of authorship
that happens at the end comes from a technical knowledge and a practice-based perspective
rather than an ownership in the sense of this is
my intellec
tual property. And I don't know, I really
think it's about spending time, a lot of time. Thank you Adham for that,
for giving us more context because then that sort of
also help us to understand where you're coming from. Thank you for that. 'Cause then thinking about collaboration within the context of
what you're talking about, you're working with someone for 17 years, obviously I feel like that
kind of collective journey can automatically come together versus just having someone to come on and
then in two weeks you
have to produce something, that as you have two,
three years to get it done. I'm very mindful of our time here. We only have one minute and I wanna stick to
ensure that we're on time. Just in a few seconds, any last thoughts from Oga Wole to Lloyd to
Adham, any last thoughts and then that will it bring us to an end. Any last thoughts about what
we have talked about today, your dramaturgical process
or decolonizing or language, I think we were kind of talking
about so many
things today. Any last thoughts we'll be happy to, you can chime in quickly. Lloyd do you wanna go? Any last thoughts? LLOYD: Yeah, let's continue
decolonizing dramaturgy in however way, we defeat and interpret. Thanks Lloyd. Oga Wole. Oh no, I'm good, I've
enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, Adham. Well I wish we could all meet in person and I wish that we could
all meet within one or the other African
country of the countries that we work with and come from, yeah. Well we have strong folks in
this series, so maybe I might reach out to all of you and say, "Hey do we have
anything to plan together "and all meet," 'Cause it would
be nice to connect together. I want to thank you to the three of you. Thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation with you. And I think for me one
thing I'm going back with is the idea of nuance dramaturgy
or dramaturgy of nuance and what that means as we
think about decolonization, as we think about working across different geographies,
specific g
eographies and locations and cultures and
different things like that. I want to say thank you
to all our partners, Pan-African Creative Exchange, HowlRound, Safeword, the Theater
Emissary International, and the University of Regina. And thank you to Sarika, to Jay, and to Brandon over there and Thea and of course to
(indistinct) and to everyone. Hopefully you can also
join us next week Wednesday for the third edition,
for the third episode. From me here, I wanna say thank you and thank you so mu
ch for connecting and for being part of this today. Thank you so much, bye everyone. Thanks everyone. LLOYD: Thank you Taiwo.
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