On Baggage

When I was young, as a long-haired, hippy-looking subversive, I used to be stopped every now and then at airport customs - in my memory/fantasy this is even before there were red and green channels to choose from - and I would be asked, in that quaint idiom of former times, ‘Do you have anything to declare’ - before the ritual humiliation of having to open up my suitcase and reveal the chaos of end-of-holiday clothes and whatever, all stuffed in willy-nilly, to the amusement of happy-go-lucky gawking folk cruising past unchallenged (and no doubt smug about the vast quantities of illegal substances they were successfully importing under the noses of the customs officers I was so usefully distracting). Nowadays, as a white male of certain age, I am never challenged in this way, and just sail through the green channel, sometimes a passing witness to less fortunate people of colour (usually) being subjected to the same demeaning ritual in front of the gaze of others like me. Though I tend to travel pretty light these days, I am more and more conscious of other baggage I carry with me, and things I really should declare.

I am recently back from teaching and working in New Zealand/Aotearoa for the second time – the biosecurity at their border control is a thing to behold, while I am on that subject. I was doing various lovely things there, directing a documentary play with the super-talented Hobson Street theatre company, delivering a keynote at a conference and leading a number of TO-based workshops with different groups over both islands. I love that TO has taken me into teaching situations all over the world, it’s a privilege borrowed from Boal to have the opportunity to acquire all this knowledge. But it's also a challenge to be placed in the powerful teaching role when so much baggage comes with one, like it or not. All one can do is try to be aware of it and try to cultivate proper humility and reciprocity of learning i.e. live the reciprocal dialogue which is at the heart of Boal’s practice (inspired of course by Paulo Freire’s pedagogical methodology).

From this second time in NZ/Aotearoa, I am bringing back various wonderful learnings and notions and practices with me – not least the importance of whanaungatanga (pronounced, for those who can do phonetics, ˈfɑːnɑːuːŋəˌtɑːŋə) which translates roughly as ‘connection’, and the notion of whakapapa [Māori ˈfakapapa] which resists one-word translation and may even totally resist any form of transplantation, but is sometimes reduced to ‘genealogy’, with a particular emphasis on Māori identity and connection to the land.

The importance of establishing whanaungatanga in the workshop process is perhaps self-explanatory and obvious, but it is worth reminding oneself that however little time you have in a workshop, you skip it at your peril (note to self!). I sometimes worry about the 30-40 minutes odd it takes out of a short workshop for a group of 25 people to introduce themselves, however briefly. But it is time well invested, and foolishly skimped – we all need to know who we are talking to, who we are talking with, where we are talking from, in order to gauge our approach and find our connection – before we launch into unloading whatever knowledge we bring.

I used to be of the (unthought-through and arrogant) opinion that an experienced Joker can take on any Forum play, regardless of who they are and what they know. Indeed, I used to think that it might be a positive advantage, for the ‘neutral’ joker, to be comparatively ignorant of the subject matter in hand, so as to be able to pose usefully naïve questions which perhaps the more knowledgeable person might not be inclined to voice or might assume everyone in the room already has a clear informed position on. More than anything, I like to joker audiences who do not start from any position of unanimity, so such a stance can have positive benefits in terms of eliciting the maximum participation.

I still hold to the occasional value of a degree of (sometimes performed) naïveté in the Joker’s stance. In our polarised world, in our world of cancellation and hand-on-the-trigger outrage, an innocent voice asking why should we not say x, why is such and such an action evidently wrong (to you, the audience), why is this particular intervention based on this particular privilege etc - may be of more value than ever, not least to test our assumptions and remind ourselves of the notions on which they are based. It is good to have the help of an audience of engaged spect-actors to rehearse the reasons behind our self-imposed rules, even if one already knows some of the reasons; in the current self-censoring climate, often we are hesitant or even afraid to ask such things, so concerned are we not to offend.

On the whole, as Joker, I want to rely entirely on an audience to raise objections and I use what skill I have to search them out if they don’t naturally emerge; I always strive to make my own views invisible, as the best way of encouraging all and sundry to participate. But the laissez-dire attitude I describe above it is also a risky strategy. Certain words or ideas are so charged, and it is obvious to all why they are so weighted, that it would really of little value to allow combative spect-actors to provoke by using or suggesting them; though when I think about it, actually I cannot remember (in a jokering career which stretches back into the Stone Ages) any audience member deliberately using any language or ideas gratuitously to offend or by way of unpleasant grandstanding, at least as far as I could tell. ) But the possibility is there.

A young Adrian on the beach

A popular Māori saying: we are all in one canoe

An able joker can survive in most situations – but in post-colonial contexts (if indeed that conjunction of words is ever truly, fully, possible), the Joker or teacher from the colonising nation is probably never going to be able fully to free themselves from the stigma that comes with the history; a person of colour looks and listens, and sees what they see - the familiar white person with roots in ‘the old country’ - what the people of the Land of the Long White Cloud call a pakeha, of sorts. And it may be so triggering, especially when combined with any of the other familiar power markers – gender, age - that it will inhibit the participation of some, however approachable or engaging the Joker or teacher may be. And of course the same can apply anywhere, to a male joker-ing a group of women who have survived male violence, a non-disabled person in charge of a forum with people with disabilities, even to a woman joker-ing a group of males who believe they have experienced oppression at the hands of the female sex (in work with certain male prison inmates, for instance). It won’t always – and some audiences are extraordinarily welcoming to outsiders or others - but you may be so identified with the perceived oppressor that the work will not work while you are visibly powerful in the Joker role. Perhaps this is obvious to many readers, and Augusto talked about it in his books, but, typically, left it to the practitioner to work out when such limitations might or might not apply. And I am resolutely not laying down any identity political rule here – horses for courses, obviously. Try it, work it out.

If anything can undo the damaging set of projections that accompany such role-taking, perhaps it is a pre-emptive and frank declaration of your whakapapa (good and bad), in the broadest interpretation of the word. To pre-empt, to be naked, to acknowledge your limitations (and possibilities), and also to invite all observations and comments. Whatever you say or own, it will not undo what your like have done in the past – but it may help you gain acceptance to speak of it.

Which goes back to the importance Boal placed on multiplication, the passing on of teaching, so that all communities can have the Jokers most appropriate and best attuned to their situations – together with the paradox that even in the act of such multiplication, you are going to have to try and overcome all that baggage in order to achieve it. Or perhaps it is enough to declare it?

Whakapapa is connected to this process, as, in my novice understanding, it speaks of where we are coming from and therefore what we bring with us. It seemed standard practice in my experience for people at a conference to preface all their contributions with a description of their whakapapa – so in the conference and in workshops I adopted/adapted the practice. The question then is what to put in and what to leave out. One can list the standard identity tropes – in my case, British, rural, white, middle-class, of a certain age, cisgender-male, heterosexual – but how much does one then go on to say? Should one add ‘child of an alcoholic, son of a refugee, early leaver of home, of addictive tendencies, theatre-maker, father,, partner, translator, son of The colonising nation, bearer of ridiculous initials with imperialist overtones’ – the list goes on. I suppose the answer is - whatever you think might be useful information for others to receive you. But is there also a danger that such a set of self-attributions might prejudice people’s willingness to hear you – based on their previous experiences of said tropes and types? I certainly wouldn’t usually risk such an inflated self-introduction in the role of the Joker of a forum - too much information, implying too much self-importance.Write your text here...