1On the 18th of August 2020, as I write this article, a coup d’état is taking place in Bamako. People are in the streets—again—they have been protesting for weeks already and they “ont ras-le bol” (are fed up) with the government. They are taking the roads, they are physically taking up space, voicing their claims; embodying contestation by putting themselves “in the way” as individuals and as a mass in the public spaces of the city.
- 1 Obadare & Willems, 2014.
- 2 Ibid., p. 19.
- 3 Ibid., p. 2.
- 4 Scott, 1985.
- 5 Obadare & Willems, 2014, p. 9.
- 6 Scott, 1990.
- 7 Scott defines the “hidden transcript” as “discourse that takes place “offstage”, beyond direct obs (...)
2Protests, indeed, can be considered as a kind of large-scale performance. As Obadare and Willems state in their Civic Agency in Africa—Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century,1 protests often figure in studies on state-society relations in Africa. But in the shadow of these large media-covered events we find a wide range of “everyday forms of resistance which do not necessarily provoke immediate or highly-visible change”.2 Obadare and Willems therefore plead for a reimagination of resistance by “tracking its ‘parallel infrastructures’, i.e., the subtle ways in which it is mobilized, plotted and enacted”.3 They also refer to Scott’s Weapons of the Weak4 in which he aptly notes that when it comes to the struggle between a dominant and subordinate group: “Most forms of this struggle stop well short of outright collective defiance”.5 This reminds us that just because resistance is not obvious does not mean it is not there—instead, we might want to pay attention to the more subtle ways in which individuals and collectives enact, perform or express contestation. In Domination and the Arts of Resistance,6 Scott uses the term “hidden transcripts”7 for those “speeches” that may never be expressed publicly. But when many individuals share the same or a similar situation, they are connected by what he calls a “collective hidden transcript”.
- 8 See e.g. Brook, 1968; Solga, 2019; Vlachos, 2016.
- 9 Brook, 1968, p. 99.
3In literature, theatre is often described as a powerful medium, a potent arena with the potential to birth personal, social or political transformation, raising awareness and bringing these “hidden transcripts” to light.8 It can function as “the magnifying glass” that Peter Brook9 describes, which “narrows down” life and transfers it to the small world of the stage, allowing one to zoom-in more precisely on specific aspects and problems. In that sense, once an individual struggle receives a platform and becomes visible to an audience—this struggle might become a shared one.
4But what are the implications for artists when publicly voicing and performing contestation on an open stage? When freedom of speech is restricted, or artists have reason to fear consequences, they often resort to special techniques of camouflage or disguise. In this respect, Scott observes: “the more menacing the power, the thicker the mask”10 needed. The coup d’état on the 18th of August 2020 was not the first in Mali. Since its independence in 1960, the country has faced many political upheavals and a variety of theatre plays have been produced and performed in the wake of these events. During the last coup in 2012, Sirafily Diango wrote the play Il pleut sur le nord (It is Raining on the North) as a response to the shocking events, criticizing the slow and indecisive action of the government, and Adama Traoré produced Kaklara ou jamais à genoux (Kaklara, or Never on Your Knees) denouncing religious extremism. But unlike in today's highly mediated context, documentation of plays and their reception was much harder to find for the period of the Moussa Traoré regime (1968-1991). When I came to Bamako for the first time in 2019, I was eager to find out how theatre makers worked back then, and what role the art played in the contestation of the regime.
- 11 In this article I use “narrative” as defined by Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997, cited in Elliot, 2005, (...)
- 12 NGOs extensively resort to “theatre for development” (Conteh-Morgan, 2004) or “théâtre utile” (De (...)
- 13 See the interview by Randy Gener with Blonba-Co-founder Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux in Critical Sta (...)
- 14 Conteh-Morgan, 2004.
5It turned out that in Mali, artists did not need to search far for the perfect disguise, it has been there for many generations, deeply embedded in the Bamana culture. It is called Kotéba. In my research, I have been studying popular Kotéba satire theatre, considering it as a space of critical narratives11 performed in the Malian public sphere. I am particularly interested in its potential as a space for empowerment and/or resistance. While the origins of Kotéba lie in rural, traditional settings—where it has been offering a space of social criticism for the village community—throughout the years of colonization this popular theatre further developed and spread to the city. Certain elements of Kotéba are now widely present and can be found in a broad variety of media, such as TV sketches or radio shows. They also find their way to the public through various channels, including NGO initiatives12 and performances in and around Mali. The Bamako-based company Blonba (founded in 1998) creates and tours with contemporary, urban Kotéba plays, such as the social satire Bougouniéré invite à diner (2005), Sud-Nord, le kotéba des quartiers (2007), as well as hip-hop musicals such as Bama Saba (2010) and Plus fort que mon père (2013), which fuse Kotéba and rap to produce a style known as “kotérap”.13 In the Ivory Coast, the Kotéba Ensemble founded in 1974 by the late Souleymane Koly combines music, dance and satire in their shows.14 This wide reach raises questions about the possibilities that a Kotéba-space offers to different actors who take part in a performance. What is (and was) Kotéba’s potential in society, culture and politics? And what exactly does “potential” mean in the case of Malian theatre and Kotéba specifically?
- 15 Ibid. p. 96.
- 16 See also Thérèse-Marie Deffontaines in “Théâtre forum au Burkina-Faso et au Mali” in the same issu (...)
- 17 Anröchte, 2006; Bondaz & Jeannet, 2003.
- 18 Lecadet, 2011; Canut & Sow, 2014.
6Kotéba’s various forms and their development have been researched from many different angles, and academics and theatre practitioners alike have emphasized the artform’s importance “to contemporary theatrical life”15 in Mali and beyond. In Le Théâtre Mandingue (1928), Henri Labouret and Moussa Travélé studied kote koma nyaga (satire directed at aspects of marital life) from an ethnological and linguistic perspective. Claude Meillassoux (1964) traced Kotéba from the rural villages to the city of Bamako through an anthropological lens, describing how it adapted to a new urban context. Theatre scholar and playwright Gaoussou Diawara draws a Panorama Critique du Théâtre Malien dans son Évolution (1981) from the sacred Bamana Do performances to the influence of the famous William Ponty School and the founding of the “Semaines Artistiques Culturelles et Sportives du Mali” in 1962, emphasizing the changing critical character of Kotéba—becoming increasingly concerned with political matters as well as social. The issue 102 (1990) of Notre Librairie included the symposium “À propos du théâtre au Mali”, moderated by Claudine Richard and Catherine Mazauric, discussing tendances in Malian theatre with a special focus on Kotéba and the increasing use of “théâtre d’intervention sociale” (theatre of social intervention).16 More recently, Anröchte, as well as Bondaz & Jeannet17 have studied “kotéba thérapeutique” (therapeutical Kotéba) from a psychological perspective, referring to its use at the psychiatric ward in Bamako, while Lecadet and Canut & Sow18 refer to Kotéba techniques in their study of theatre by deported migrants, and their struggle for public visibility and political recognition. While most of these studies refer to Kotéba’s satirical and critical character regarding social and, increasingly, political issues, there is a lack of specific concern with Kotéba’s role in or as political contestation more specifically.
7I wanted to explore this gap in the scholarship, and thus approached and spoke to different agents who were active in the cultural and theatrical sector at the time of the General Moussa Traoré regime (some of whom are still active today) and who were implicated in the creation of plays and/or censorship processes. In this article, I will expound in more detail on the insights that I acquired through two of these encounters. I will focus on how Kotéba, in the context of the more recent (postcolonial) history of theatre in Mali, is being perceived as having enabled a transport of critical narratives into the Malian public sphere, while being mindful to both its limits and potentials.
8Here I approach theatre plays through memories, exploring not only how my interlocutors perceive the role of these plays as a medium for political criticism, but also the ways in which the performances are meaningful on a more personal level.
9I will begin by tracing Kotéba’s history and development in what is today called the Republic of Mali in order to understand its social function. I will then assess Kotéba’s influence in relation to “political speech” and “contestation” during the Traoré regime via the personal accounts given by Agibou Démbélé, playwright, comedian, former teacher at the National Institute of Arts and former Director (1979-1985) of the National Theatre (“Kotéba National”), and Soumaila Diakité, former National Director of Arts and Culture (1987-1991) and Deputy Director of the Censorship Committee. The narratives by Démbélé and Diakité allow to gaze back at Kotéba’s role during the Traoré regime and help to reflect on the interconnectedness of theatre, narrative and contestation, as well as on the meaning created through these “memories of theatre”.
10Theatre is more than its representation, the performance itself, the text, the actual content; it is an experience from which memories and meaning are created. Researching the impact or influence of a play should therefore include the meaning that was made of it: what it meant to those who were in some way involved in its creation and in making it an event. Some of the plays discussed in this article are not written texts and were not recorded but were part of the artists memorized “repertoire”; for others, documentation has been destroyed in previous political upheavals. These plays exist as experiences in the memories of those who performed them or those who watched and remembered them. But how do we access plays that have not been documented? How do we assess the potential impact, influence and meaningfulness of a performance that only exists in memories?
- 19 Burke & Innes, 2007.
- 20 Ibid., p. 16.
- 21 Czarniawska-Joerges, 2004 ; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2015 ; Elliott, 2005.
- 22 Burke & Innes, 2007, p. 16.
11In this article, I use a narrative approach based on interviews with theatre practitioners and thus focus on the stories from “behind the scenes” in order to find out more about the stories played “on the stage”. As Burke and Innes19 have pointed out, this method is still rarely used in theatre research and thus “although the thoughts and intentions of practitioners are an essential part of performance research […], no methodological framework for theatre interviewing has yet been forged”.20 This being said, they suggest the researcher to consider the debates around the use of interviews, and their application in other disciplines. In this study, I draw on the use of narratives and interviews in social science research.21 Furthermore, Burke and Innes refer to a general scarcity of production documentation, a gap which this article contributes to fill. However, pointing to the limits of the interview approach, they also admonish that “as part of a methodology for performance research, it is necessary to place the interview in relation to other sources of information” and to consider it rather as “one more perspective in the building picture of a performance” than “as a definitive statement that encapsulates the truth of a performance”.22
- 23 Peter Brooks is an American writer and Sterling a Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at (...)
12Accessing theatre through the narratives of people offers two things. Firstly, it gives valuable insight into otherwise undocumented plays, and secondly (perhaps more interestingly), narratives show what people remembered, and thus, what is important to them through what they choose to recount, since, as Peter Brooks23 observes:
- 24 As cited in Freeman, 2015, p. 22.
We don’t simply assemble facts into narratives; our sense of the way stories go together, how life is made meaningful as narrative, presides at our choice of facts as well and the ways we present them. Our daily lives, our daydreams, our sense of self are all constructed as stories.24
- 25 Ibid.
- 26 See e.g. Ricoeur, 1980; Brooks, 1984; Czarniawska-Joerges, 2004.
- 27 Freeman, 2015, p. 28.
- 28 Vlachos, 2016, p. 36.
13This gives a clue to the impact a play might have on the person remembering it and narrating it. Memory, as Freeman further explains, is indeed at the center of “narrative as a mode of understanding”25 since narratives are essentially retrospective. Retrospection, in this case, offers the opportunity to make sense, to give meaning to events and experiences by linking them to each other: what Freeman and other scholars26 describe as plot or constellation of meaning.27 If meaning-making is in large part retrospective, it seems difficult to access in the immediacy of the theatre. As Vlachos already observed, not much is known about the “afterlives of a performance”.28
- 29 See Freeman, 2015, referring to identifying “episodes [of a story] which become situated in relati (...)
- 30 Vlachos, 2016, p. 34.
14However, while the performance itself is an immediate and ephemeral moment—for its physical aspects of body movement, voice and emotion of the performers in interaction with the public—it is also the result of processes of retrospection. Indeed, the theatrical play, which is fundamentally performed, embodied narrative, results itself from processes of retrospection, emplotment29 and sense-making by the play makers and artists. Through the performance, they offer to share these processes with the audience. Thus, while we cannot be sure of the actual impact or importance of a play for the individual spectator, it is more obvious on the side of theatre-makers, since “for many artists themselves theatre is an important tool to make sense of their own life: seeing theatre as not simply ‘art for art’s sake’, but instead a powerful tool that calls attention to injustice, inspires activism, creates community and breaks down barriers”.30 Hence, art gives them a feeling of being part of a bigger purpose.
- 31 Elliott, 2005, p. 26.
- 32 Ibid. p. 23.
- 33 Czarniawska-Joerges, 2004, p. 49.
- 34 Slembrouck, 2015, p. 251.
15As already alluded to above, researchers have pointed to the potentials and limits of narrative interviews as a method. One must emphasize that narratives are not “simple records of the past”,31 nor are they “simply reports of experiences, rather they make sense of and therefore inevitably distort those experiences”.32 Consequently, it could be argued that “what people present in the interviews is but the results of their perception, their interpretation of the world, which is of extreme value to the researcher because one may assume that it is the same perception that informs their actions”.33 Furthermore, in the interview situation, the narrative is not only specifically produced “for” the researcher, but it is also produced “in interaction with the researcher”.34
16Therefore, interviews are increasingly considered not just as a “means for collecting data” but seen as “a site for the production of data”.35 Indeed, they present the process of sense-making as it happens, through the act of remembering and constructing a narrative. Hence, while the interviews I conducted are not to be treated as sources for “facts”, it doesn’t mean that the provided information is not valuable or accurate. Consequently, this article is not looking to make any claims about the actual impact of the discussed theatre plays on political events in Mali, but rather explore the perceptions of the narrators and how the meaning they attribute to the remembered plays allowed them to position themselves in a larger context of political and social change.
- 36 These interviews and conversations included: former Minister of Education and former Director of t (...)
17The two interviews with Aguibou Dembélé and Soumaila Diakité are part of a series of conversations I conducted in January and February 2019 in Bamako with different agents in the culture and theatre sector who were active during the Traoré regime.36 For the present study, I chose to focus on the two interviews with Aguibou Dembélé and Soumaila Diakité for the following reasons : firstly, because of the fact of their connection to the National Theatre being roughly at the same time under the regime; secondly, and most interestingly, as former director of the National Theatre and former National Director of Arts and Culture, and as Deputy Director of the Censorship Committee respectively, the pair offer insight from very different positions in the process of realizing a play on an official stage and under the specific conditions of that time period.
18Many stories and myths revolve around the origin of the Bamana Kotéba theatre, some of which are collected in Adama Traoré’s Le mal développement du théâtre (2014). One recounts the tale of a king who lived with his wives and his court, until one day his favorite wife stole his gold and offered it to her lover. The theft was discovered, but the king and his brother-in-law did not want to reveal the wife’s guilt. During these times at night, the men used to imitate and play hunting scenes, and at one of the performances, the king’s brother-in-law reconstructed the scene of the theft. People called the players in that scene “Ko tè maaw minniw bali” (those who can’t be stopped by anybody). Emboldened, they continued to play secret royal events on the public stage, calling themselves: “Kotè anw bali” (nothing is impossible to us, we have all the latitudes). In time, these performances became the Kotéba.37 While this tale is just one of many different origin myths, it demonstrates Kotéba’s strong reputation as a place of free speech. But it is far more than this. Kotéba is a school of life, of values and social behavior, a space where criticism is voiced in a satirical way and vicious behavior is corrected together within the micro-cosmos of the village community. Soumaila Diakité, gives a telling insight from his memory:
- 38 All original quotes are translated by the author. Diakité Soumaila, 29 january 2019, interviewed b (...)
Dans mon village par exemple, tous les mercredis soir il y avait le Kotéba et donc ça critiquait tantôt le chef du village, tantôt l’Imam tantôt tel ou tel jeune qui s’est mal comporté, donc c’est vraiment des leçons de vie. Et ces leçons de vie se donnent de façon très plaisante mais chacun…, l’intéressé immédiatement s’identifie, il sait que c’est de lui qu’on parle, et tout le monde sait que c’est de lui qu’on parle. Alors maintenant, soit l’intéressé change son comportement, mais s’il persiste les gens vont également trouver des moyens pour le contrecarrer.38
- 39 See Diawara, 1981, p. 20.
19Another explanation of Kotéba can be found in the meaning of the term itself, which is translated as “big snail”, Koté- signifying “snail” or “organization” and -ba signifying “big”.39 In fact, just as the snail consists of a solid shell and a flexible soft part, a traditional Kotéba performance consists of two parts, both of which take place in the village square.
- 40 See Traoré, 2014 and Diawara, 1981 for more detailed information concerning Kotéba’s origin, cosmo (...)
20The performance opens with a choreographic part, starting with tam-tam drums to call the dancers who would form several circles around the singers and musicians. These circles rotate in opposite direction creating a spiral like dynamic which, seen from above, resembles the spiral of a snail shell. This solid part of the snail, the circles formed by the dancers, represent the “organization” of society: the children’s circle, the women’s circle, the men’s circle and the surrounding audience representing the cosmos in which society is embedded.40
- 41 Traoré, 2014, p. 23. In Kanouté, 2009 and Conteh-Morgan, 2004, it is translated as “imitation” or (...)
- 42 See Sampayo Vidal, 2019.
21This choreography is followed by the theatrical part called “Nyogolon” which means “knowing each other together”41 and refers to the social function of Kotéba as a space of self-reflection for the community. In the Nyogolon, the community portrays itself without pointing at anyone directly and exposing them, but through the use of stock figures like the lazy shepherd, the jealous wife or the arrogant hunter.42 However, as Soumaila Diakité illustrated above, the concerned person (and everyone else) would know exactly who is being spoken of. Like the soft and flexible part of the snail, the Nyogolon (and Kotéba as a whole) transforms with the community in which it is embedded and addresses the problems this changing society is facing, while the solid part, the shell representing the cosmos and its components, remains stable. In this way, Kotéba contributes to the preservation of the social and moral values of the village community.
- 43 Ibid.
- 44 Imperato, 1970. However, this process of expansion of Islam in West Africa and the territory of to (...)
- 45 See Meillassoux, 1964.
- 46 I had the pleasure to interview Dr. Oumar Kanouté as part of my research on Kotéba. For this artic (...)
- 47 Kanouté Oumar, 5 february 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal.
22These strong roots in the village context were disrupted, however, when Kotéba theatre became mobile,43 a process that, according to Pascal James Imperato, went alongside a profanation of religious performances following the conversion to Islam of the Bamana people,44 and the establishment of colonial labour camps, which brought together workers from many different villages. According to Claude Meillassoux, a Malian camp officer recruited a group of men who knew how to play Kotéba and led them to perform for the workers in the evenings.45 This was a fundamental disruption of the concept of Kotéba: since in the Kotéba the village community portrays itself, the art is deeply embedded in the community who practices it, but it was now forced to operate on another level than this particular micro-cosmos. However, while Kotéba’s exterior context had changed, the play contents remained the same—reproducing the village setting, with added new characters like “the colonial administrator” and “the camp officer”. As Oumar Kanouté,46 author of Le théâtre malien, de 1916 à 1976 explains, this making fun of oneself was a way for the camp officer to reconsolidate with the workers in the evenings.47
- 48 See De Noray, 1997.
- 49 Conteh-Morgan, 2004, p. 118.
- 50 Among them the first Malian President Modibo Keita and the writer and politician Fily Dabo Sissoko
- 51 There is a large variety of local performance arts practiced by different ethnic groups in the vas (...)
23The colonial administration and education system denigrated local theatre forms, and only French theatre based on the Greek tradition was taught in schools and art institutions.48 The famous William Ponty School (founded 1903 in today’s Senegal) was established to train the next generation of leaders acquiescent to the colonial administration. The school was part of an attempt to “create a Franco-African Culture”49 of assimilation. But while the Ponty-plays had typical folkloric features, showcasing culture to a target European audience, the school was also a site of lively theatrical production that brought forth thinkers and works critical of Empire.50 Besides the francophone school-theatre, however, Kotéba was one of the local theatre forms which continued to be practiced throughout the colonial period.51
- 52 On more detailed information about the beginnings of the National Theatre see Decock, 1968 and Kan (...)
24After Mali’s independence in 1960, the new state needed to reconstruct itself—politically but also culturally. A National Theatre,52 National Ballet and Orchestra were established, and a concerted effort was made to revalorize the local culture through the staging of great epics, but these constructions not only proved of the strong occidental influence, but also that colonial structures remained in place. Aguibou Dembélé recounts:
- 53 Dembélé Aguibou, 25th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “[…] from independence u (...)
[…] depuis l’indépendance jusqu’en 1979 le théâtre se faisait en français, uniquement en français. […] Même dans les quartiers, dans le plus petit village, la pièce de théâtre était jouée en français. […] Parce qu’on était financé par l’ambassade de France, le théâtre, l’INA (Institut national des arts) même était financé par la France, le musée… toute la culture malienne était financée par la France. Quand je suis arrivé ici en 1968 [à l’INA] il y avait que des professeurs blancs, que des professeurs français […] et jusqu’en 1979, c’est la France qui finançait, qui envoyait des professeurs à l’INA.53
25As director of the “groupe dramatique national” (National Drama Group) at the time, Dembélé felt the urgent need for a change. He describes the elitism of Malian theatre; how expensive plays were to produce and how few people attended them. Even the most prestigious plays, such as L'aube de Béliers by Gaoussou Diawara (staged 1968), La mort de Chaka by Seydou Badian Kouyaté (staged 1969) or Une si belle leçon de patience by Massa Makan Diabaté (staged 1970), never attracted many more than 30 people for a performance.
- 54 Dembélé Aguibou, 25th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “We needed to create a t (...)
- 55 “Cè tè malo” is a proper name in Bamana and means “he who does not allow himself to be humiliated”
- 56 “At independence, Modibo Keita depended on cooperatives for local governance, and in 1963 under a (...)
26For Aguibou Dembélé, it was clear: “il nous faut faire un théâtre qui parle des problèmes de notre peuple, un théâtre populaire, un théâtre contemporain malien”.54 Remembering the Kotéba performances in his village, he decided to prepare a Kotéba play for the stage of the National Theatre. In 1979 he gathered a handful of volunteers among the performers of the “groupe dramatique national”, in order to prepare Koté I, a performance consisting of three short plays entitled La coopérative (the cooperative), Cè tè malo,55 and Le Marabout (the marabout). Dembélé characterises these plays as “theatre of social intervention”, referring to the critical aspect of the performances which denounced the state directed cooperatives-system established by former president Modibo Keita (1960-1968),56 the social status of artists in Malian society, and the practices of fake marabout.
27The cycle’s success led the Minister of Youth and Sports to encourage and finance Dembélé and his “groupe dramatique national” to conduct some research into the origin of Kotéba in the villages. In the village of Dembélé’s birth, Kirango, the group created three performances together with local Kotéba actors, learning about the traditional Kotéba dance and play:
- 57 Dembélé Aguibou, 25th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “When you take the Kotéb (...)
Quand on prend le Kotéba tel qu’il est joué à Markala, on sent nettement que ce Kotéba est ancré dans la vie socio-politique, culturelle du village. Nettement, tout le programme traité par ce Kotéba évoque des problèmes qui tiennent directement à la critique sociale, à la critique politique ou à la revendication du bien-être du village ou à la dénonciation des dérives de la société.57
- 58 Aguibou Dembélé refers here back to the already mentioned plays from the program of the National T (...)
- 59 Dembélé Aguibou, 25th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “It’s one or two years a (...)
28Upon their return to Bamako the group decided to open the 1980 Biennale with a critical Kotéba play. Previous Biennales had always been opened by the “groupe dramatique national” performing “big plays”58 in French, and so the group needed to deliver a creation that could compete with these previous prestigious plays. Thus, the actors engaged in an investigation to gather information about problems in different social sectors such as health, education and security. Based on what they found, they started improvising scenes at the manner of Kotéba. Indeed, the creation process of Kotéba is based on improvisation and participation, making the audience an active part of the process of creation itself: “c’est un ou deux ans après la création du spectacle quand on a eu les réactions du public, qui enrichit le spectacle à chaque fois, c’est à ce moment-là qu’on peut peut-être écrire”.59
29Hence, the play Angoisse paysanne (Peasant Anxiety) came to be in 1980. Performed entirely in Bamana language, Angoisse paysanne addressed the problems caused by the President’s tours through the regions—where locals had to provide an elaborate and expensive welcome, without compensation. Dembélé explained that the artists were aware that they could under no circumstances explicitly mention the President or the government in the play, and therefore needed a strategy of disguise. They found it in setting the story on a much smaller scale: In Angoisse paysanne it is the “sous-préfet” (sub-prefect) and his tour that the villagers reject.
30The following is an excerpt of Aguibou’s memory of the play Angoisse paysanne:
- 60 “Take money or something from you to contribute… taking it from your own pocket”: explanation by L (...)
- 61 Note by the author: the first time, politics were directly criticized in an official theatre perfo (...)
- 62 Dembélé Aguibou, 25 January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “Immediately, there is the (...)
“Tout de suite il y a le berger qui vient voir le chef du village et lui dit :
“Écoute, chef du village, j’en ai vraiment marre : à chaque fois qu’une délégation arrive, vous me demandez de donner un ou deux bœufs, je donne et ce n’est jamais payé, vraiment cette fois-ci je ne donnerai rien !”
Donc, chacun vient dénoncer quelque chose. Et la présidente des femmes viendra dire :
“Ah ! Cette fois-là, vraiment je n’ai pas de jeune fille à donner comme dame de compagnie. Toutes les jeunes filles sont parties à Bamako.”
Et il y a le paysan qui vient, qui dit :
“Vraiment on en a marre, à chaque fois que le commandant vient, nous donnons, nous donnons, en retour on ne reçoit rien.”
C’est là qu’on a introduit pour la première fois le mot démocratie… personne ne pouvait parler de démocratie au Mali… personne… on te déchire la bouche. Donc le chef de village dit :
“Nous sommes en démocratie !”
Et l’autre répond :
“Non, nous sommes en dôbôcratie”60
Démocratie, c’est en français, dôbôcratie c’est en bambara… ça veut dire sortir, débourser, dôbô… débourse.
“On a donné, donné, donné, on a marre !”
C’est la première fois qu’on fasse une critique directe de la politique de l’époque61”.62
31In this excerpt of the play, the villagers send a clear message of resistance towards the authorities by refusing to welcome the sub-prefect. No matter its disguise, such a display of civil disobedience and criticism of exploitative governmental politics was not without consequences. Two weeks before the Biennale, while the play was still in preparation, the performance was to be reviewed by an envoy of the censorship committee. According to Dembélé, the envoy was scandalized and refused to “touch” on the play, announcing that he was going to report directly to the Minister and leave the matter to him. Luckily for the artists, the Minister of Sports, Art and Culture, Alpha Oumar Konaré (1978-1980), was secretly in disagreement with the government and never came to verify the play before the Biennale.
- 63 Dembélé Aguibou, 25 January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “This night we played, but (...)
32Dembélé remembers the evening of the opening of the Biennale: “La nuit on a joué, mais en réalité on avait tous peur, parce qu’on s’est dit… on joue ça, c’est pour aller directement en prison… ”.63 As it would later turn out, this fear was not unfounded. However, at the time, President Moussa Traoré did not react against Angoisse Paysanne and the artists who had created it, but, according to Dembélé, rather used the play as an occasion to get rid of his political enemies within the government. Dembélé speculates that Moussa Traoré understood the references of “democracy” and “dôbôcratie” very well but, as just stated, he found the reasons for the malfunctioning of “his democracy” as the fault of others.
- 64 Taoudenni prison (1969-1988) was built by the Moussa-Traoré regime, next to the salt-mine where th (...)
- 65 Dembélé Aguibou, 25 January, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “If there is anyone who has rea (...)
33It was only after Angoisse Paysanne (1980) that Aguibou Dembélé experienced serious restrictions and even threats, when preparing a new play called Administration Générale (General Administration), which targeted nepotism in the minister council. The play was censured and never officially played and Dembélé, now considered as a dissident, was followed for six months by state security forces. In 1985 he was removed from his position as director of the “groupe dramatique national” and offered a position in far north Mali in Gao (a friend warned him not to take the offer, saying it was a pretext to arrest him there, and to send him to the feared Taoudenni-prison camp).64 While Dembélé did manage to stay in Bamako, he faced many restrictions and could not officially continue to create and direct plays: “S’il y a quelqu’un qui a vraiment souffert du Kotéba, c’est bien moi!”.65 However, these restrictions did not keep him from going back to theatre. He started to teach at the INA (National Institute of Arts) and created a student Kotéba group. Likewise, the “groupe dramatique national” (which had been renamed to “Kotéba National”) continued to appeal to him as an expert in the direction of plays.
34Dembélé’s narrative, which is essentially also a personal life-narrative, traces Kotéba’s development in Mali’s postcolonial history. He clearly appears as a key figure in the renewed appreciation for Kotéba as part of the desire for a cultural reconstruction in a newly independent nation. By going back to this theatre, and its roots within local performance, he was also re-valorizing a fundamental tool of community-making as it had been practiced for generations before, during and after colonization in the region of Mali. A tool which relies on participation, communication and criticism by the members of a given community, thus by the citizens of a given place. Helen Nicholson discusses “drama and the practice of citizenship” in her book Applied theatre:
- 66 Nicholson, 2005, p. 23.
If citizenship is a social practice, subject to a continual process of re-negotiation, it has relevance to the more ordinary and everyday activities of life as well as the bigger political issues of the day. Participant citizenship involves more than accepting one’s statutory rights as an individual—however important they may be—and invites questions about the contribution we are each making to the process of social change.66
35If we see citizenship as a social practice, Kotéba theatre in its concept of self-reflection and self-correction in a community setting, is essentially performance of citizenship: it is a collective act of participation and engagement by actively including each and every one present in critical reflections and modifications of individual and collective roles in society. Kotéba offers the space and frame where negotiations and questions can be brought to light before a bigger audience. The artists of the “Kotéba National” re-activated this space on a national stage. With his Kotéba performances, Dembélé (before he left this official national stage) made sure the seed of Kotéba’s revitalization was well planted into the soil of modern Malian theatre. By bringing Kotéba to the national stage, he prepared the ground for official performance of contestation.
- 67 Dembélé Aguibou, 25th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo Vidal: “Everybody said that we (...)
36Continuity was ensured by his successor, Ousmane Sow, who became the new director of the “Kotéba National” and staged Wari (Money) in 1988. This play was, in Dembélé’s view, “the most politically critical play ever performed in Mali” and was based on a collection of violent anti-regime poems written by declared opponents. At this time, General Moussa Traoré was already under pressure from various sides and Ousmane Sow seized the opportunity to immediately produce a second play called Férékégnamibougou (The Village of Intrigue). Dembélé remembered: “Tout le monde a dit que nous avons prédit le coup d’État”.67 This is where his narrative meets the one by Soumaila Diakité.
- 68 Soumaila Diakité added in our interview on 29th January 2019: “À l’époque il y avait des régions, (...)
- 69 “Construction by the people, destruction by the rulers.”
37Soumaila Diakité was National Director of Arts and Culture and member of the National Censorship Committee (1987-1991), an office consisting of 21 members responsible, among other things, for examining, approving or rejecting theatre plays for public performance. This office was connected to the Central Executive Office of the l’Union démocratique du Peuple malien (People’s Democratic Union), the single party in power. In our meeting, Diakité started his account with the play Le chantier (The Construction Site) which was in preparation for the “Semaines Régionales” in 1988.68 For this event, one chosen theatre group from each region was to perform a play which had to be approved by the Censorship Commission. The play Le chantier, presented by the group of the Bamako district, told the story of a process of construction and destruction: every day, the construction workers come to the site to build a wall. In the evening they stop and come back the next morning, only to discover that overnight the wall has been destroyed, so they start over and the same game repeats again and again. Diakité described it as “éternel recommencement” (eternal restarting), referring to the people’s aspiration to advance and the impediment they faced from the rulers: “Construction par le peuple, destruction par les gouvernants”.69
38Diakité remembers that the play sparked heated discussions in the Censorship Commission, as the Director immediately recognized the political reference in the play and saw the work of the Central Executive Office being criticized. When the vote was taken, however, the Director was the only one to vote against the play, while the 20 other members of the commission all approved. When the Director wanted to insist on his decision to reject the play, Diakité stood up to him:
- 70 “No, Mr. President, you don’t have that authority, so all that can be done in the report that is b (...)
Non, monsieur le président vous n’avez pas cette autorité, alors tout ce qu’on peut faire dans le rapport qui est en train d’être rédigé, vous allez consigner que les 20 membres qui sont dans la salle ont jugé nécessaire que la pièce peut être jouée et qu’elle n’a aucune incidence sur le cours de la vie politique ici et que vous seul vous avez voté contre. Ça, on peut vous le concéder, on le met dans le PV, vous le signez et chacun ici signe le PV.70
- 71 “to cling to this or that aspect [illustrated in a play] and to transmit it to the individual dail (...)
39This memory illustrates that performance of contestation not only happens on the stage, but sometimes well behind it, enacted by surprising actors. In this example, contestation had to be performed back-stage so it could happen on-stage. Once in the theatre, such criticism can unfold its full potential to those who want to interpret it. Indeed, in Diakité’s view, theatre serves to illustrate social problems in a condensed way by putting them in relation. This allows the public, if it feels so inclined, “de s’agripper à tel ou tel aspect [illustré dans la pièce] qu’il va transmettre dans son combat quotidien”.71 To explain what he meant by this statement, Diakité gave another example, still referring to the play Le Chantier:
- 72 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “When the worker is in the co (...)
Quand l’ouvrier est dans le chantier en train de poser les briques d’un mur, il sifflote, il ronronne une chanson… mais en fait, il critique son patron qui est là… mais puisque c’est une chanson qui a été jouée dans une pièce de théâtre, personne ne peut lui faire de reproche. Lui, ça le console et ça lui donne la force nécessaire de continuer sa vie.72
- 73 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “is really to enable the pers (...)
40Diakité seems to be referring to the act of making meaning through resisting: the feeling of having the agency to criticize and to express disagreement is empowering. Resistance, as Diakité explains, “c’est vraiment pour permettre à l’intéressé, au plan individuel, non seulement de se trouver un repère, mais de donner un sens à sa vie et de donner un sens à ses actions”.73 These observations resonate with Peter Brook’s words:
Here the question comes back to the spectator. Does he want any change in his circumstances? Does he want anything different in himself, his life, his society? If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t need the theatre to be an acid, a magnifying glass, a searchlight or a place of confrontation. On the other hand, he may need one or all of these things. In this case, he not only needs the theatre, he needs everything he can get there.74
41Performance of contestation can indeed be transmitted from the stage to the level of the individual and their daily life. This, however, is true not only for the spectators but also for the theatre actors themselves and those involved off-stage (such as Soumaila Diakité). This is why Vlachos argues for an artist- and back-stage-focused approach in studies concerned with theatre and social change, since transformation begins with the art-producers themselves during the whole process of production and because “a theatrical performance is the culmination of a much broader set of processes that are often ignored […]”.75 As Dembélé’s account has shown, artists often engage for weeks and months with the topics and the messages they want to send out through their plays. Preparing a play to be examined by the Censorship Commission, and the censorship procedure itself, are clearly also part of these hidden processes behind the creation of a play and insights into them are all the more valuable since they allow to gain an idea of the complexity and range of activities and actors related to contestation which finally make performing contestation on stage possible.
- 76 Soumaila Diakité kindly provided me photocopies of these letters between the Minister of Sports an (...)
42After having countered the president of the Censorship Commission, Diakité was informed that the secretary of the Central Executive Office had sent word to the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture in order to ask him to sanction the National Director of Arts (Soumaila Diakité himself) for displaying anti-party attitude. The Minister, however, was supportive towards Diakité and refused to sanction him since the protocol concerning the play Le chantier had been officially signed by the President of the Censorship Commission.76
43As the National Director of Arts, Diakité worked closely with the National Theatre, as one of the entities attached to his direction. In a second example, he described the preparation of the play Férékégnamibougou (The Village of Intrigue) by the “Kotéba National” for the Biennale of 1990. As Diakité explained, the name Férékégnamibougou was a direct allusion to the country of Mali, and the play tells the story of a corrupt deputy of the single-party who wants to be re-elected at all costs and makes all sorts of promises to his potential voters.
44This time, the play was to be examined by the Censorship Commission, including the head of the Organization Committee of the Central Executive Office, who was attending the rehearsal of the play. As expected, the head of the Organization Committee did not approve the performance, which was going to be presented the following day as part of Mali’s Independence Day celebration on the 21th of September, assisted by the President General Moussa Traoré. However, the group, encouraged by Diakité, stuck to the original plan and performed the play at the celebration anyway. While General Moussa Traoré seemed once again unbothered by the performance, the Commission of the Central Executive Office launched a meeting the day after and accused Diakité of disobedience towards the commission’s head (General Dafaga). Diakité remembered the critical moment very well and shared the vivid memory in his narrative:
- 77 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “On the agenda of the day: Wh (...)
À l’ordre du jour : pourquoi cette pièce a été jouée ? Lui, en tant que président, il avait ordonné que cette pièce ne soit pas jouée contre une autre pièce. Donc on a écouté et il a encore dit:
“Non, non, c’est la faute au directeur des arts [Soumaila Diakité]… ce petit gamin, il se prend pour le centre de la terre !”
Je me suis levé et j’ai dit, “mon Général, c’est ton père qui est un gamin, ta mère qui est une gamine !”
Il s’est assis… on pouvait entendre les mouches voler dans la salle… Donc, après il a dit:
“Jeune homme, vous êtes courageux et je vous admire et je n’ai pas raison, je n’aurais pas dû vous insulter.”
Il s’est levé et est venu me serrer la main…”77
45The dramatization of this memory is enhanced through the building of tension represented by Diakité’s remark: “we could hear the flies flying in the room”. It is this remark which makes of his account a veritable storytelling moment about the memorable day when he contested the General. This story shows how strongly Diakité, in describing his act of resistance in a dramatic, almost heroic way, identifies himself as being part of a resistance—or even as embodying resistance. This is underlined by the phrase “I stood up…”, when he rose to counter-attack the insult, and defeated the attacker who “sat down”. Respect was finally restored through the handshake.
46When I asked Diakité further about repressions he explained that while they varied, the most violent form of repression for theatre was censorship, and that artists were afraid of further consequences:
- 78 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “I remember very well that Sa (...)
Je me souviens très bien de ce samedi matin où la pièce de Bamako devait passer devant la commission de censure, certains de mes collaborateurs sont venus: “Monsieur le directeur, vraiment… Bamako est prête à jouer une pièce alternative ?” J’ai dit: “non, Bamako, vous allez présenter cette pièce-là, vous allez jouer cette pièce-là, on va la maintenir au programme”. Alors, donc ça dépend de qui gère la réponse à la violence.78
47The fact that in his narrative he, a member of the Censorship Commission, embodies resistance against censorship shows how strongly Diakité constructs his past experience around “resistance”, standing up for the good cause and making an ideological commitment, as he explained further:
- 79 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “It is very important to have (...)
C’est très important les repères idéologiques et les repères au plan comportemental. Car si tu ne te reproches rien comme malversation, tu ne te reproches absolument rien, tu n’as pas peur d’aller au-devant de celui que les autres pensent être l’oppresseur. Moi je suis allé devant ce général là, mais il ne pouvait absolument rien me reprocher. Il m’a insulté, j’ai insulté son père et sa mère. Alors, c’est que lui il a ses repères idéologiques, moi j’ai mes repères idéologiques également. Et le Kotéba en fait, sert à donner vie aux repères idéologiques de ceux qui n’ont pas le droit à la parole tous les jours.79
48Interestingly, in this statement Diakité positions himself as a spokesperson standing up for what “others” think, yet is not explicit about who he thinks is the oppressor. I read this as a sign of caution from his side, since standing up for a collective cause is very different from accusing someone personally. This is precisely the strength of Kotéba, which in principle is impersonal, but in reality, as Diakité emphasizes, is very direct—as one can see in the example of Férékégnamibougou:
- 80 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “We took fictitious names, Fé (...)
On a pris des noms fictifs, Férékénamibougou ça n’existe nulle part, mais le nom même Férékénamibougou, c’est “le village de la magouille”, tu vois c’est très expressif, ça peut s’appliquer à mon village, ça peut s’appliquer à Bamako, ça peut s’appliquer à l’ensemble de la République. Donc ça dépend des échelles. Donc ça va du niveau local au niveau national, Férékénambougou. Chacun peut faire son décodage.80
- 81 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “all the political demonstrat (...)
- 82 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “A popular revolt”.
49For Soumaila Diakité, Férékégnamibougou was “like a detonator” when it was played in 1990, leading to “toutes les manifestations politiques qu’il y avait à l’époque”81 and which ultimately resulted in the overthrow of the regime in 1991. This description places the play at the beginning of a large event, and Diakité further attributes to it the important functions of “raising awareness” and “mobilizing all the populations”. In his view, the Kotéba, and specifically Férékégnamibougou, prepared a larger stage for a larger performance to take place: “Une révolte populaire”.82
50In this article I was interested in Kotéba’s potential as a space of contestation where critical narratives find expression in performance. I adopted a “behind-the-scenes” perspective, choosing a narrative approach which focused on agents who were implicated themselves in the making of the discussed plays. Aguibou Dembélé’s and Soumaila Diakité’s narratives show that Kotéba, in its technique of disguise which consists of humor and derivation, brings the needed “mask” which allows for the public performance of critique. Nevertheless, it is still surprising how some of the most critical plays were tolerated by General Moussa Traoré himself. I assume that the efficacy of Kotéba’s “mask” does not simply lie in its technique, but much more in its long and deep-rooted tradition in the Bamana culture. Kotéba is not just any satirical theatre. In its very essence, Kotéba has been conceived to preserve social values and to criticize in a way that is socially and culturally acceptable and is therefore a legal and necessary element of society making. This deep and traditional acceptance of the practice is, I assume, the reason that it has been tolerated throughout multiple regimes—both during and after colonization.
51However, Aguibou Dembélé’s and Soumaila Diakité’s narratives also show that the “mask” is not always thick enough and that in order to bring the hidden transcript on an official stage, it needs more than courageous artists: it needs a network of allies on different levels and in different sectors, for, as Scott aptly describes: “the dominant never control the stage absolutely”.83 While Scott is not explicitly discussing theatre, it is interesting that he uses this art as a metaphor in his study of power relations and public vs. hidden speech between dominant and subordinates. Scott talks about “theatrical imperatives in situations of power” which make dominant and subordinate parties “perform” in a certain way on “the stage” of the public sphere. As we know from Peter Brook’s work, this metaphorical choice is not a coincidence but resonates with the idea of theatre as a magnifying glass for society. In Scott’s text, the use of the theatrical metaphor helps to explain the complex mechanisms of power-relations related to behavior and communication in a more clearly, condensed or down-scaled way, and this is what real theatre also does in life, on an actual stage: it is the place where the public and the hidden speech are merged into one performance, exposing those power relations between dominant and subordinate parties on the small stage-world.
52In this article, the narratives by Aguibou Dembélé and Soumaila Diakité have not only helped to explore their perspectives on Kotéba’s functions in society and its role in voicing criticism publicly, but the methodological approach has itself allowed access to an additional level of sense-making and contestation: the act of narrating itself. For Dembélé and Diakité, the plays they discussed had a major impact not only on their creative perspectives and ways of thinking, but on their professional and personal lives as well. Furthermore, if we think retrospectively, the plays and the memories tied to them interweave the narrators into a bigger chain of events. It seems that the idea of “contribution” and “participation” in something larger is particularly important to the narrators, as appears from the following excerpt from our conversation about the impact of theatre in society:
Soumaila Diakité : “en fait, il y a comme une cristallisation de toutes les contradictions : les contradictions politiques, économiques, sociales etc. donc, en fait ces contradictions ont été telles que les gens ont dit : ‘on ne peut plus continuer comme ça, il faut qu’on fasse quelque chose’. Alors faire quelque chose, ça veut dire quoi ? Chacun vient avec sa contribution, les hommes de théâtre ont monté des pièces de théâtre, notamment Férékégnamibougou, et les étudiants également ont occupé la rue, les travailleurs ont occupé la rue, il y avait souvent des extraits tirés de telle ou telle pièce de Kotéba pour magnifier la misère de la population. Ça a contribué à ouvrir les yeux. Et les gens se sont sentis concernés et finalement ce qui devait arriver est arrivé, le régime a été balayé par un effort, pas de révolution, mais d’une révolte populaire”.
- 84 Dr. Bassidiki Traoré (deceased in 2020) welcomed and hosted me in his family, made possible my enc (...)
Bassidiki Traoré :84 “une insurrection”.
- 85 Diakité Soumaila, 29th January 2019, interviewed by Melanie Sampayo: “It is in fact like a crystal (...)
Soumaila Diakité : “Et en fait on était au cœur de cette insurrection”.85
53Theatre plays are remembered as meaningful because they integrate the people who participated in their making into a bigger event, a bigger contestation of power which ultimately might lead to change.
- 86 In an interview, Ousmane Sow recounted that some people said it was the play Wari which lead to th (...)
54While the exact impact Kotéba plays had in the political upheavals leading to General Moussa Traoré’s fall cannot be measured, many (Diakité among them) speak of particular performances as catalysts or “detonators” of large protest movements that preceded the change in government.86 As the narratives by Dembélé and Diakité suggest, such performances could certainly be described as these “parallel infrastructures of resistance” Obadare and Willems implore us to pay attention to in order to reimagine what contestation is. Indeed, the narrators themselves perceive the plays in these terms—terms which are enacted through the act of remembering and telling their story about Kotéba. We witness Dembélé and Diakité creating references to make sense of what they experienced and what they were part of, embedding themselves, through their theatre connected work and experience, in a story of contestation.
55The narrative approach in this article allows us to explore different layers of contestation. The method used in this research shows that contestation does not work only as a point of reference in the very moment it takes place—whether that is on a theatre stage, in people’s daily life, or in the heart of protest and political upheaval—it also works as a point of reference in retrospective meaning making through the narration itself.