Into the Heart of Whiteness: Performing African Moon in Krefeld: Gabriel Gbadamosi in Conversation

Abstract

THE YEAR 2012 SAW THE WORLD PREMIERE of Moon by the British playwright Gabriel Gbadamosi at the Theater Krefeld/Monchengladbach. The playhouse is typical German municipal repertory theatre with permanent ensemble catering to three areas of the performing arts - opera, ballet, and theatre - and predominately serves the two eponymous cities located near Dusseldorf in the heart of North Rhine-Westphalia. Moon was specifically commissioned by the theatre department in addition to (though not part of) their 'non-European theatre' stream introduced by the director of drama, Matthias Gehrt. The production is the last venture in string of collaborations between Gbadamosi and Gehrt which started with Eshu's Faust (1992) at Jesus College, Cambridge, and continued with Hotel Orpheu (1994) at the Schaubuhne in Berlin. Gehrt joined the Theater Krefeld/Monchengladbach in the 2010/11 season after over two decades of national and international theatre work which included the Schaubuhne, the Prince Regent's Theatre Munich, and productions in Lagos, Sri Lanka, and Mexico; Gbadamosi is an Irish-Nigerian poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, researcher, and broadcaster, and Londoner. As such, he has always explored the intersections and interactions between European and (diasporic) perspectives and performance forms in his work, as indicated by play titles such as Eshu 's Faust (Cambridge University, 1992), No Blacks, No Irish (Tricycle Theatre, London, 1986), and Shango (DNA, Amsterdam, 1997). Moon is also located at this intersection, with allusions to string of European colonial narratives, above all Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness} As in Conrad's classic, the continent becomes foil for the projections of white European expatriates and travellers in the play, canvas for their dreams and desires, but also their wrongdoings and failures. Moon thus performs journey into the conscience and subconscious of the protagonists, between cliche and brutal reality, between lies and truthful confessions. For the play is above all play about the search for one's self, projected onto an 'African' space and employing - or enjoying? - the construct of an 'Other'.African Moon centres on the female protagonist, Nora, a broken heart2 who arrives at small mission hospital in an unspecified, isolated part of the continent to visit the director of the clinic, Dr Paul Koenig. Koenig - or 'Uncle Paul' - is the adored but distant uncle of Nora's late lover, Amy, and is her surrogate father figure. Amy died of cancer two years previously, and Nora is finally ready to scatter her ashes and face her lover's thwarted dreams. Amy, whose death left an indelible void in Nora's life, is an absent presence in the play but remains the driving force in the present. Nora's relationship to her lover mirrors Amy's relationship to Uncle Paul. After the suicide of Amy's father when she was nine, Uncle Paul had briefly taken her father's place, only to abandon the girl for hospital somewhere in Africa. For the remaining thirty years of Amy's life, 'Africa' and 'Uncle Paul' had turned into the canvas of fantasies and unfulfilled needs - Only ever camouflage for the real jungle of unmanageable feelings (17) - and had given rise to unanswered questions for which Nora is now trying to find the answers.Nora is traveller of emotions rather than of place and quite ignorant about tiie continent: in Africa - Africa - It's night - I'm at the airport - Everybody's black - Everybody - You should see (2). On her arrival she meets reality she had not anticipated. Instead of Amy's fantasy fairyland she encounters group of disillusioned, cynical white men and begins to uncover plot that involves vaccination programme with counterfeit medicines which causes strange illness among children. An element of crime is thus added to the overarching emotional drama of mourning and loss. Locals call the disease African Moon - because it makes them look wild, like animals with blank faces (19). …