“Home Away from Home”: Diasporic Consciousness and Everyday Third Places in Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming (1985) and Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles (2017) Moonyoung Hong (bio) For much of its history, the geography of modern drama has been that of “home.”1 But the ideas of home and belonging have increasingly stirred political and cultural debate in the age of migration, globalization, and transnationalism. As the concept of home evolves and complexifies, so do dramatic expressions of it. Home is no longer the domestic interior of the bourgeoise, as popularized by the naturalist dramas of Ibsen and Chekhov. This article explores non-domestic dramatic spaces—the Irish pub and the African barbershop—as culturally specific “third places” in two plays: Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming (1985)2 and Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles (2017).3 In the context of diasporic studies, both spaces exemplify what Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur have described as the “nomadic turn in which the very parameters of specific historical movements are embodied and—as diaspora itself suggests—are scattered and regrouped into new points of becoming.”4 Both plays deal with the experiences of their representative diasporic communities, revealing the complex connections between host-homelands and overseas communities. A comparative study of the two plays challenges conventional categories of nation and identity, and demonstrates how these everyday third spaces can become sites of contestation against the hegemonic and homogenizing forces of neocolonialism and globalization. “Third Place” is a term applicable to coffee shops, hair salons, internet [End Page 256] cafes, public libraries, amusement arcades, and many other spaces. As in the case of the Irish pub, it designates locations that are “not work and not home,” “typified by their open, democratic nature, informality and ubiquity.”5 The very idea of a “public house” is in a sense an oxymoron, combining contrary terms: public, defined as communal and open, and house, often concerning private, individual, and exclusive habitation. The pub is one of the most frequently visited leisure venues, where most people may be “regulars” of their “locals.”6 Elizabeth Malcolm explains that, unlike English pubs, Irish pubs were not purpose-built, and their fittings were strictly functional; they were named after the present or past publican, highlighting the fact that one individual ran the house.7 The pub’s homeliness, which derives from its unique origin as a converted house, is a trait evident in Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming. Inua Ellams’ eponymous barbershop is comparable to the pub in that the barbershop blurs normative distinctions between private and public, enabling men to discuss private feelings openly. It is a refuge from a racist post-imperial culture in London. As Ellams puts it, barbershops “for British black men, are a safe, sacred place where they can go to relax, escape racism and talk freely with no fear of being stopped, questioned or moved on by the police, which is a common experience in the world outside.”8 He continues: It’s where men hang out. Barbershops here serve a particular purpose in that there are not many places where black men can gather in large numbers without scrutiny from the police. Quite a few years ago, there was this “sus” law, which meant that the government could stop black men if two or three were gathered and just ask them to move on.9 Ellams’ barbershop is set in contrast to the pub, seen as the socially equivalent but nonetheless privileged space for white men. Winston, a character in Barber Shop Chronicles, remarks: “How many of you go pub? Right! Least there’re couple Jamaican ones. But Africans, nothing! That’s why you fill up the barber shop. This is your pub. Yu na drink!” (44). Another character, Tanaka, refutes this by disclosing the historical fact that in South Africa the Tot system (or “dop,” meaning an alcoholic drink in Afrikaans) was used by wine farmers to pay their workers: “white farmers paid coloureds and blacks barrels of wine instead of money. Generations [End Page 257] later, they’re still pissed” (44).10 Even though the South African parliament outlawed the dop system in 2003, problems of...
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Dec 10, 2022
Nurhayati Khair + 2
Open Access
