The paralyzing pessimism of the Market Theater

Considering that this is the beginning of a new year, I thought it would be important to critically examine the role of artists in our society.

Now the other day I went to the Market Theater to watch what was in their first offering.
It turned out to be a multi award-winning play that reveals how a “white” director, Lara Bye, grapples together with an African-American playwright to examine the issue of race and racism.

I must confess that the play Yellow Man is definitely a compelling, insightful and authoritative play on issues of race, class, gender and racism. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of why racism is a crime against humanity.

We have to give credit to the actors, especially Zambian-born Mwenya Kabwe and local David Johnson, for putting her heart and soul into their roles.

Also, perhaps it is a good but curious thing that director Bley has selected this particular production to tackle the issue of obsession with skin colour albeit blaming the victim.

You see, Yellow Man is rooted in the very rich tradition of black resilience and suffering but also needs to show victory and triumph. But both the writer and director essentially fail to use theater to reveal and celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. Instead, both characters of Eugene (Johnson) and Alma (Kabwe) are caught up in an unending series of life battles – love, marriage, parenting, drinking, ambition, dreams, etc — where they only end up as … failures.

I guess artists are free to speak about suffering and failure but that is not the only thing that black life in a white racist society is about. What does it mean when a young gifted director like Bley is given awards for portraying the black experience as a violent, ugly syndrome of self-destruction? No, I think it is not a good sign for artists to only give us a picture of hopeless hopelessness in the black condition.

If art is to imitate life, it should redefine what it means to be human and celebrate the resilience that results in victory. Instead, Yellow Man makes self-destruction, drunkenness, sex, violence and failure to be an inherent quality of blackness. This is worsened by the obsession with skin colour or race where self-destruction and failure are intuitively connected to a black skin.

I found the play to be profoundly negative, tragic and … er, too heavy on the soul. It is trapped in paralyzing pessimism and projects the black experience as nothing but going back to violent self-destruction.

Of course, others will argue that Orlander Smith is writing about a condition to which she is intuitively connected and Bye had no business to readapt the story.

It is a matter of choice.

But I would have expected both artists to respond to the black condition in an improvisational, unpredictable, diverse and creative way that gives the world, especially black people around the world, hope.

We in South Africa live in a society that is a toast of the world for the success of our negotiations, non-racism, freedom and democracy. In fact, we have attained this freedom and democracy through nothing but the resilience, optimism and hope of black people, particularly.

Perhaps what we need to discuss is the sort of art that is useful and relevant to a society in transition. How do we use the arts, especially theater, to transform the mindset and to create a paradigm shift in our society?

In Zulu they say, “ithemba alibulali” — “hope is what keeps the world going round”. Without it we are dead. The vocation of artists is to try to give us hope. Of course, theater does not have magical powers but it remains an indispensable weapon in the struggle to create a better world.

What does it help when an African-American playwright and a South African director get together to blow out the only candle that we have -– HOPE?

* Yellow Man is running at the Market Theater until March