Theater of the French Caribbean; Traditions and Contemporary Stages

Abstract

review of Theater of the French Caribbean; Traditions and Contemporary Stages edited by Stephanie Berard (Coconut Creek, Florida: Caribbean Studies Press, 2013. 332 pp., ISBN: 978- 1626321762) by Yunina Barbour-Payne (barb4006@neo.tamu.edu), Graduate Student, Department of Performance Studies, Texas AM between the stage and the page; between resistance and empowerment; and between Guadeloupe and Martinique. You will find yourself between all of these nations and topics as you turn the pages of Stephanie Berard's edited volume titled Theater of the French Caribbean. Aime Cesaire, Ina Cesaire, and Vincent Placoly are just a few notable Caribbean scholars whose works appear in this book on Creole performance traditions. In this work, Berard offers an analysis of four different aspects of Caribbean theatrical performance, text, language, oral tradition and popular culture. Approaching Guadeloupian and Martinican performance traditions in contemporary spaces specifically, Berard unearths the resistance, power and struggle of the Caribbean aesthetic.This book is arranged into four chapters with a lengthy index of Caribbean playwrights, directors, companies and their works. In four chapters, Berard moves from theater texts to the performance of bodies on stage to argue that Caribbean theater redefines performance through the appropriation of European texts, the inclusion of oral tradition and the fusion of folk and popular culture.For those unfamiliar with Caribbean performance art or more generally Caribbean history, Berard first chapter, A Short History of French Caribbean Theater, sets up a friendly introduction of the book by committing a brief history of place and its various performance spaces. In this chapter, with a daunting task of offering enough context from which the reader may understand the remaining chapters, the author begins with the history in a colonial Caribbean era and then traces to more contemporary one. Within this history, she cites a number of significant cultural institutions and performance venues in Martinique and Gauldeope that have had a significant influence on Creolophone theatrical performance culture. In addition to the institutions, Berard also offers context through a list of major themes historically associated with Creolophone dramatic works, including comic theater, the dramatization of collective history and the struggle for freedom. This performance context centered in Creole culture, history and language immediately introduces the identity and politics that underscore the remaining three chapters in the book.In the second chapter, Dramas of the In-Between, Berard's analyzes the reappropriation of European canonical texts by Caribbean playwrights. The author uses Pierre Laurette's literary reterritorialization, as a guiding theory for understanding cultural and political consequences of Caribbean theater adaptations. In this chapter, the works of Brecht, Shakespeare, Koltes and Beckett are explored. These works are approached through the Creole adaptations by Maryse Conde, Aime Cesiare and Georges Mauvois. Berard's close reading of the adaptations demonstrates a recontextualization of Cesiarian adaptations of Shakespeare, evidences Caribbean Don Juanism and archetypes of the Creole repertoire. Berard focuses on the strengths and difficulties of translation - arguing that Creole itself is an equivalent match to the French language in realms of creative representation and power. While Berard's analysis is concentrated within the language transposition of play scripts, she fails to completely support the failures of some Creole translations on the stage at the chapters end. Linguists will greatly appreciate the length at which Berard offers examples and analysis of French to Creole play script translations. …

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