Isak Interview #12: Elizabeth Senja Spackman & Emily Mendelsohn

 

This interview series features original conversations with folks around the world who are in the thick of literary culture -- the passionate writers, editors, critics, readers, translators, publishers, bloggers, designers, booksellers, poets, performers, journalists, and instructors who are bringing vibrancy and joy to the world of words. More than a rehash of things you have heard familiar names natter on about before, this series will turn its attention beyond the bounds of the usual suspects and the usual issues. This series is committed to a dynamic exploration of ideas, craft, language, literature, and culture with the people who are committing their lives to it. See more interviews here.

 

    

Elizabeth Senja Spackman and Emily Mendelsohn are both Americans who are on Fulbright fellowships in East Africa, where they are part of a collective with Rwandan performers called Art Works Ink. Together, they are creating the theater project sky like sky (which you can see more about in the video below). As the collective describes it in their kickstarter fundraising pitch, the show was born out of a discussion that began in Kigali: "What does it mean to be from a nation or represent one? And what that does that have to do with being a woman?

Using movement, dance, poetry, puppets, personal testimony, and our wits, we've written a new theater piece. We explore questions of nations, bodies and borders, of what it means to be local in this messy, globalized world. We know there is more to Rwanda than gorillas and genocide, and more to America than hamburgers and imperialism. So we are taking this chance to explore the deeper potential for cultural exchange. Sky like sky pokes fun at difference, even as we search for the questions that bring us back to the human.

Elizabeth is a writer who studied philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and poetry at the University of Iowa's MFA program. Her work has appeared in, for example, Fence, and she won first place in the writing contest hosted by the Summer Literary Seminars. She has worked with the Medea Project, a theater initiative with incarcerated women, and has taught poetry in rural Washington and in Manhattan. Her Fulbright work has her now based in Kigali and Butare.

Emily is a director from Los Angeles who is now living in Kampala, Uganda. Her conversation with East African artists grows out of her five-year participation in the IGSC/CalArts/Brown University “More Life Program”; a series of summer exchanges, conferences, and classes studying the Rwandan genocide, advocating against negationism, and holding international conversation on witness, art and advocacy. Out of this came, for example, the "Cooking Oil" show at the National Theater of Uganda. Elsewhere, Emily has taught in Vassar College's Powerhouse program. She studied the "history and philosophy of science"  (which I am incredibly envious about) at Smith College and she earned her MFA in directing from CalArts.

They are part of the collective that has created sky like sky, a performance that they expect to debut in Kigali later this month, and then take to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa, in July. Their video to raise money for the trip to South Africa describes their project in more detail:

 

 

 

 

In our three-way conversation, Elizabeth, Emily, and I discuss the theater scene in Rwanda, ethical collaborations, political art, fundraising, narratives of the 'West' and of 'Africa,' and how performance in a post-genocide nation balances space for both joy and sorrow.

Here are Elizabeth and Emily:

 

 

So, what's the theater scene like in Rwanda? Or the performance culture more generally? 

EM: Rwanda has a small but talented performing arts community that is doing great work building an audience and a concept of arts as profession and contributing to the building of a civil society. Mainly now based out of Kigali and Butare.

We are partnered with Ishyo Arts Centre, a woman-run organization providing free space to artists--headed by Carole Karemera. The Centre (gives us space for) rehearsals, as well as dance, theater, comedy workshops, and classes. They make free acoustic recordings for musicians. They have a theater and host work from Rwanda and internationally. Ishyo also develops and presents its own work. Another major artist on the scene is Hope Azeda of Mashirika, a performance company that weds testimony, dance and music. Their performance "Africa's Hope" has toured internationally. And Kiki, who Elizabeth has been working with and so can tell you more about.

It seems that the theater scene grew up around finding a response to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It continues to serve this important function and in addition--beginning to address a broader range of personal, social and political issues. Themes of urban development, returning from diaspora, commissions by government for nationalisms like popularizing the new currency, more. Last visit I heard many people saying that wanted to see/tell more love stories. 

 

ESS: I've been really impressed by the talent here, and the hunger to both make professional art and seek professional training. That said, the two requests I keep hearing are for arts education and financial support. Unlike, say, Uganda or Kenya, there is nowhere here where you can get a degree in art or performance. The University Centre for Art and Drama (UCAD) at the National University of Butare has worked for over ten years at helping nurture some of the talent here, but offers no degree so students work on art projects in their limited spare time. Nonetheless, UCAD has been the incubator for groups which have gone on to their own independent successes, like Wesley Ruzibiza's impressive Amizero dance company. Rwandan artists have told me that when Amizero won the silver medal at the Festival de Francophonie in Beirut, they realized that the quality of performance here was worthy of the international stage. When Odile Katese (Kiki) was deputy director of the center for the last ten years, she developed the now-independent project of Ingoma Nshya (New Drums), a group of female drummers that had over 100 members. The women, who come from villages around Butare, challenge the idea that women don't drum, and give incredible, professional performances as they open up a new space for joy.

About that space for joy... it's one of Kiki's principles for art-making, and one that I have learned to realize should be considered as an urgent goal for art here, and important everywhere. I'd amend Emily's statement that artists here want to tell love stories to stories of love, or at least emphasize aspects of love that are broader than the romantic. Whether it be creating the space for joy from watching the charismatic women drummers of Ingoma Nshya, the exploration of the moments of human good that happened even within the genocide in Carole's new project 'We Call it Love', or hearing the peals of laughter at the standing room only show of the Knights of Comedy last Friday at Ishyo, art in Rwanda is opening up the possibility of celebration alongside reflection, which surely must be a next step in reconciliation. 

The most consistent barrier I see here to producing more art and working on audience development is access to consistent financial support in the area of arts and culture in Rwanda. I'm not sure how to fix this problem, but I really do think the role of the artists here as the keeper of public imagination is incredibly important as both the keeper of memory and as guide on the way forward. It is a role worthy of support. 

 

It's interesting to put together the point that Emily made about the theater scene gathering momentum in the wake of the genocide, and what Elizabeth says about the performance culture centering joy. How is that space between sorrow and joy balanced, particularly with the performers you work with? And what about the tension between art that's used as a political tool and art that, simply, resonates politically? 

ESS: Really interesting questions.

I don't think the performance culture here necessarily centers around joy, but I do think that Kiki has articulated why joy must be one of the serious goals of art makers. But that balance between joy and sorrow- I think it's really difficult. The performers I know here feel a deep responsibility to performance as commemorative, to finding stories of hope and to remembering the horror here. But that can also take an emotional toll on performers in the pieces that grapple with these dark moments. They are professionals and they find their way through, sometimes by creating distance between the self and character (which can be really tricky, if say, as happened recently, a survivor is playing a survivor). For me, part of that balance is the creation of a diversity of work so that there are also pieces that look forward, so that the sole function of art is not only as the guardian of sorrow.

As for the second question, it's interesting here that most artists I know will say they 'hate politics,' and certainly don't view their work as political. I think this is a question of definition: politics here seems to me to be defined as the realm of the government, the elections, the big men and women, the squabbles. It belongs to A Them. This isn't my definition of politics, so I see art that resonates politically all the time here, because it re-imagines how people might live together.

In sky like sky, we are taking questions of what it means to be a part of a nation, and breaking them apart in a way not to meet someone's political agenda but rather to really delve into what these words— nation, borders, gender— mean in our lived experience. 

 

EM: This is probably an irresponsible leap, but I wonder if this correlates to a picture of "politics" as leaders, as power, and not as systems. I know in Uganda (which is of course a different situation from Rwanda) when we speak about social change in rehearsals or with audiences, answers often address a need for good leaders or heavy-handed international organizations. And there are also some voices that are questioning this narrative as an ideology of dependence. I think there is something at stake for finding language for the investigation of the "process by which groups of people make collective decisions" (politics). Because artists are already engaged in this way (making free space for the formation of multiple narratives, etc.). More than advancing a genre, they're changing culture.

I think the tension between art as a political tool vs. art that resonates politically--it's a small field--you often have the same people making both of this work, because of issues of support. The tension seems more around, how do we articulate the need to support development of public imagination, of creativity? I think this is a global question right now. 

 

Tell me more about sky like sky. How did it take shape? What is it, exactly? What has been the experience of creating it like for you two? 

EM: Well, I haven't gotten in the room yet. Elizabeth and Natacha, Solange, and Martine - the 3 women artists that we are collaborating with in Rwanda - have been meeting to address the fundraising and to move a conversation about what gender and nation mean to them.

Elizabeth and I, as artists working in neighboring countries through Fulbright, were grappling with questions of ethical collaborations. Looking to move out of the role of "experts" and also very curious how artists are perceiving and organizing layers of cultural heritage in contemporary Rwanda. And, for that matter, how we ourselves define and complicate our heritage as Americans. What assumptions are we bringing to the room? What assumptions do we want to bring to the room?

Our first proposal for a production model was a real shoestring, out of pocket, let's see what we can get away with, idea. While the Rwandan women have been part of a movement to make art visible as a profession. So we came up with the collective-producer model, to exchange info and skills in fundraising to pay ourselves. 

 

ESS: Sky like sky started as a funny imagining and took on its own momentum. Emily and I had worked together teaching a poetry and performance workshop, and liked collaborating. Part of my Fulbright proposal was to work on a collaborative performance or poetry project, and as we started talking about making a theater piece together, Carole suggested Rwandan artists who would be interested and interesting. I'm really excited by the diversity of thought in this group, and by everyone's motivation not only to make a totally new piece of theater but to produce that piece and take it to South Africa. The 'in the room' conversations about women, nation, borders and bodies have been really fascinating, and we are just now working on turning those conversations into a script. While we want the piece to be coherent (obviously), we are really invested in making it genuinely collaborative, so there are stories and responses from each artist involved. In June, we will all be together for an intense rehearsal process, and we hope to preview the performance in Kigali at the end of June and then take it to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. 

How do you, or the group, imagine your audience? Who are you speaking to? 

EM: I'd like to think it's a diverse audience. If you have access to a television in Rwanda, or in South Africa, or in America, you are exposed to similar global narratives about the "West" and about "Africa." We want to tell stories that complicate these narratives. I think our understanding of the show will change as our audience changes. 

 

What is your next great hope? 

ESS: Hope is not something I'm very good at- it's also the subject of a short essay that I'm writing, and that I suppose I hope to finish. But right now, my biggest hope (one that's personal and manageable, rather than my ever- nagging Ms. American style true hopes of 'doing something to contribute,' 'world peace,' 'the end of hunger') is that we get the budget to take this piece, sky like sky to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. We've made enough of the money on kickstarter (for which I'm amazed and grateful) to get started, but now we have to chase money for airline tickets. And the more we've plunged into this work, the more I just feel honored helping shape the project so that everyone gets a say. And we of sky like sky have a lot to say (and some of that is about hope, and peace, and are hopes for women and humans and the work of how we get there), and I just really really want us to get the chance to do that. 

 

EM: Beyond bringing the conversation to South Africa, I hope this ensemble and way of working has a life beyond this project and that I am not the center of it. The performance scene in Rwanda is still young and the gate to the world of resources narrow (but opening). We are hoping the work of producing this piece points out pathways in Rwanda to self-production and that emerging artists in Rwanda will have tools and confidence to initiate and develop their own projects. I'd love to be invited back to collaborate on someone else's project, or to take a seat in the audience.

Comments

[jen capraru]

inspiration, truth, vision. thank you for this
www.isoko-rwanda.org