Photo: Victoria Onélien/Special to the Christian Science Monitor.
An immersive experience, “Dechouke Lanfè sou Latè” is performed within the audience and features formerly incarcerated women as well as actors to bring home the brutal reality of Haitian prisons. The Quatre Chemins theater festival took place in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from Nov. 21 to Dec. 3, 2022.
Man, the resilience of the human spirit! Or maybe it’s stubbornness, not resilience. Doesn’t matter. Let us now praise whatever keeps people going in impossible circumstances. In Haiti. for example.
Websder Corneille reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “On a sunny afternoon, some 60 people gather in the small courtyard of Yanvalou Café, the unofficial home of Haiti’s theater scene. It’s the opening of the 19th annual Quatre Chemins (Four Paths) theater festival, but the fact that there’s a full house was never a given.
“For the past three years, Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, has been overrun by criminal gangs. They’ve increasingly terrorized citizens, … blocking freedom of movement since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. Many citizens have fled their homes in recent months, seeking safety elsewhere – in some cases camping out in public parks because their neighborhoods have become so dangerous.
“ ‘This city is scary these days,’ says Évens Dossous, an educator who came to see the reading of ‘Port-au-Prince et sa Douce Nuit (Port-au-Prince and Its Sweet Night),’ a new play by award-winning Haitian playwright Gaëlle Bien-Aimé. Before leaving home this afternoon, ‘I asked myself, “Is it really worth traveling? Will I be kidnapped?” ‘
“Art, and specifically theater, have a rich history of political resistance in Haiti. Although the unprecedented climate of insecurity has more to do with a vacuum of leadership – there have been no elections since 2016 – than with the overt oppression and censorship that citizens faced under dictatorships in the past, the crowd at Yanvalou today is a reminder that theater remains an act of defiance.
“ ‘You know, life can’t just be about insecurity,’ says Mr. Dossous.
“Colorful murals of well-known artists and thinkers cover the cement walls at Yanvalou, including singer Nina Simone, Haitian dancer Viviane Gauthier, and national anthropologist Jean Price-Mars. The audience at the opening in November makes its way from the courtyard into the restaurant, where chairs are set up facing two lecterns.
“The reading focuses on the lives of two young people, madly in love, in a home in Pacot, a wooded, formerly upscale neighborhood in the heart of Port-au-Prince. It underscores many real-life challenges, like the fragile state of the capital and the difficulty of leaving the house to get food, travel, or go to school or work. But it also dives into bigger questions, such as how to love – oneself and others – when a city is collapsing around you.
“ ‘Theater helps me ask questions about my life,’ says Ms. Bien-Aimé, the playwright, who was the second Haitian in a row to win the prestigious RFI Theatre prize, awarded to emerging Francophone artists. Theater ‘is a living art,’ she says.
“Since the assassination of President Moïse, armed gangs have taken control of some 70% of the capital. … Some 20,000 Haitians are facing starvation, according to the United Nations, the vast majority of whom are located in the capital.
“The insecurity, which includes using sexual violence as a weapon, has led to widespread displacement. Kidnappings increased by nearly 45% in Port-au-Prince in the second quarter of 2022, according to the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, a Haitian nongovernmental organization. Many believe the gangs are protected by police, politicians, and business elite.
“ ‘The state has agreed to retreat so that armed groups can control the society,’ says Sabine Lamour, a Haitian sociologist at the State University of Haiti, citing research by Haiti’s leading human rights organization, the National Human Rights Defense Network. …
“Micaëlle Charles, the actor reading the lead role of Zily in today’s play, says a lot has changed in Haitian theater over the past three years. She and the entire team putting on today’s show take security precautions she never considered before, such as sleeping over at the rehearsal space. ‘This helps me to hold on, despite the problems in the country or any other problems life might throw my way,’ she says of her passion for the craft. …
“Using theater for social or political commentary isn’t unique to Haiti, but it has a long tradition here. Theater is ‘a weapon of mass awareness that gives the spectator the means to free themselves,’ wrote Félix Morisseau-Leroy in 1955. He was one of the nation’s first writers to create plays in Haitian Creole. Under the Duvalier regime, a father-son dictatorship that ruled Haiti for three decades starting in 1957, Mr. Morisseau-Leroy and others were targeted and exiled for their social commentary and what was perceived as anti-government messages in plays and literature.
“The Duvalier reign was characterized by violence and the suppression of free expression. One of Mr. Morisseau-Leroy’s most prominent works was his Haitian Creole translation of the Greek tragedy ‘Antigone.’ … It was an act of resistance for its message – and its use of the language of the masses. …
“Joubert Satyre, an expert on Haitian theater, told the Christian Science Monitor [that] theater in Haiti plays an important role in social and political struggles. He said, ‘It is this liberating and critical side of the theater that has made it, and that still makes it, suspect in the eyes of autocrats.’
“Not that the government is paying much attention to the arts in recent years, says Ms. Bien-Aimé. She’s firmly engaged in a ‘theater of protest,’ she says, but isn’t sure her artwork frightens the government as much as her outright activism. … ‘Today, the state doesn’t even go to the theater,’ she says.”
More at the Monitor, here. No firewall.
Meanwhile, in war-torn Ukraine, theater has gone into living rooms. See a New Yorker story about that.
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