Dialogue with Ama Ata Aidoo
Theatre director Michael Walling made a research trip to Ghana in July 2005, setting up a co-production of Ama Ata Aidoo's play.
The play 'The Dilemma of a Ghost' is to be staged in 2007, commemorating 50 years of Ghana's independence and 200 years since the banning of the slave trade in British colonies. Some of this article was originally published in the form of a weblog. Walling's discussion of the trip is intercut with extracts from his conversation with Ama Ata Aidoo on 19th July 2006.
Ghana At 50
Ama Ata Aidoo is probably the leading female writer in contemporary Africa. Her work encompasses two plays, novels, poetry and politics. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, deals with a young Ghanaian man who returns from studying in the USA with a black American wife; who is, of course, the descendant of slaves. The play deals with the legacy of slavery in contemporary cultures, and the ongoing tensions around that shared history.
Ama Ata Aidoo is smaller than I'd imagined, leaning on her stick and feeling a bit the worse for a recent bout of asthma - but bright with energy and excitement, and very funny. She takes her agent (a young man called Eli) and myself for lunch - my first taste of Fufu. I give her a copy of 'The Handmaid's Tale' as a present. She knows it backwards, of course - having taught it as part of a course in post-colonial literatures: but this fact in itself gets us onto interesting ground. The idea of Canada as post-colonial was apparently considered very radical by students and colleagues. Only the "Third World" was post-colonial.... We are happy to agree on the absurdity - if the post-colonial is to mean anything at all, then it has to be about a history which is global: it has to be about understanding where we are right now as the aftermath of a colonial past which isn't only the affair of the poorer nations (to say that it is simply to marginalise them again). The inheritance of the colonial period, of slavery, of economic exploitation, is still with us, and the post-colonial discourse has to be about how the globalized world which is the direct result of that inheritance can be inhabited. Which, of course, is exactly what The Dilemma of a Ghost is about. Certainly what it will be about in 2007 London.
I talk about some of my ideas for the production, none of which seem to phase her at all. She's actually quite humble about the whole thing, as writers often are when you want to do their work. She talks about when
'Anowa'
was done at the Gate in 1992, and about how brilliant the actors and director were. But she was also very disappointed that the production didn't "go anywhere". Sounds familiar. The other production she remembers very fondly is the first production of Dilemma, which was staged in the open air at the University in Legon, when (astonishingly) she was still a student, in 1964.
This was Nkrumah’s Ghana, and by the time I wrote The Dilemma, Ghana, or Accra at least, had quite a population (and growing) of people of African descent, from the US, from the Caribbean, all over, because there was an exuberance in this country that all sorts of very interesting black people wanted to be part of. So I was aware of this.
Michael Walling: So this is the thing about her [the character Eulalie] saying “I’ve come to the very source”. The Marcus Garvey thing.
Yes.
Matriarchy and Misogyny
This afternoon
Dzifa Glikpoe
(former director: National Theatre of Ghana) came to meet me, bringing two performers she recommends. The three women together are a riot: we talk in depth, but we also laugh a lot, and they perform songs and dances for me. Or maybe it isn't for me - maybe it's for one another and for themselves. Song seems to emerge from the conversation of these women totally naturally. One of them is called
Agnes Dapaah
: she's very intelligent and very aware of the play and its political meaning. The other, who speaks far less English, is an older lady called
Adeline Ama Buabeng
. I'm not too bothered about the language issue - and neither, it seems, is she. What matters is her rootedness in the culture, her demeanour, her grace, and her incredible energy. As we talk, I realise exactly who she is. She came from a village background, and started performing as a teenager, where she was spotted by the late, great playwright and director (and founder of the Ghana Drama Studio)
Efua Sutherland
. Since her parents were not around, Efua contacted the grandparents, and told them that she would like to adopt her as her own daughter, undertaking to educate her at the same time as nurturing her performing talent. Even today, she lives in the same house as Efua's daughter
Esi Sutherland
.
Akans….. I think our system is slightly schizoid. Because we are matrilineal. The chiefs, family heads, are all male; but they are supposed to derive their authority not from who their fathers and grandfathers were, but from their mothers. And yet we have also, I suspect, absorbed a lot of anti-feminism, anti-femaleness, misogyny, from everybody else who is not matrilineal. It comes out especially in the treatment of step-sons or step-daughters. If Ato [in The Dilemma], when his mother entered, or even an older sister, if he had stood up and asked her to sit down, nobody would have said anything. But his wife - we don’t do that! They don’t mind being misogynistic towards other people’s daughters….
Michael Walling: Because she’s not actually from the clan?
Exactly. But ours, you don’t touch. Because every Akan woman is supposed to be a princess.
Border Crossings' production of The Dilemma of a Ghost , in association with the National Theatre of Ghana, will be presented in the autumn of 2007.