Performing (for) Survival

Theatre, Crisis, Extremity

Patrick Duggan, Lisa Peschel, Patrick Duggan, Lisa Peschel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137454270
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arti performative

This volume gathers contributions from a range of international scholars and geopolitical contexts to explore why people organise themselves into performance communities in sites of crisis and how performance – social and aesthetic, sanctioned and underground – is employed as a mechanism for survival. The chapters treat a wide range of what can be considered 'survival', ranging from sheer physical survival, to the survival of a social group with its own unique culture and values, to the survival of the very possibility of agency and dissent. Performance as a form of political resistance and protest plays a large part in many of the essays, but performance does more than that: it enables societies in crisis to continue to define themselves. By maintaining identities that are based on their own chosen affiliations and not defined solely in opposition to their oppressors, individuals and groups prepare themselves for a post-crisis future by keeping alive their own notions of who they areand who they hope to be.

Part I

Surviving War and Exile: National and Ethnic Identity in Performance

1

Surviving (with) Theatre: A History of the ELF and EPLF Cultural Troupes in the Eritrean War of Independence

Christine Matzke¹

Introduction

Eritrea looks back on a long history of colonialism, occupation and military conflicts which have always found expression in the performing arts. Of particular importance remains the war of independence against Ethiopia (1961–91), which broke out in response to mounting Ethiopian domination in the 1950s and 1960s. After half a century of Italian colonialism (1890–1941) followed by a British Military ‘care-taker’ Administration (BMA, 1941–52), Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia in 1952 as the result of a UN resolution. Her constitutionally guaranteed autonomy, however, was systematically undermined by the Ethiopian crown until the country was annexed to Ethiopia in 1962 as an ordinary province. The already-fraught political situation was complicated still further in 1974 when Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was ousted, and eventually killed, by a Marxist military junta known as the Derg. Eritrean opposition became ever more radical and resulted in a ferocious 30-year liberation struggle, with the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) as the two major liberation movements. Both used performance as a tool for entertainment, propaganda and nation-building, but also to boost morale and develop stamina in the protracted battle for sovereignty and survival.

In this chapter I focus on two crucial moments in the narrative of Eritrean theatre in ‘the field’ – the areas in which the liberation movements operated – during the 1970s and early 1980s.² I begin with the much-neglected history of the ELF cultural troupes to argue that the ELF laid the foundation for a unique fighter culture to emerge – one that drew upon reinvented Eritrean traditions – but that the EPLF troupes developed that culture further and used performance to maximum effect for the project of independence and national survival. In conclusion I question briefly why these modes of performance have persisted into the post-war period and whether they may even contribute to the current state of arrested democratization.

While this essay essentially provides an introductory cultural history of an important phenomenon in the Eritrean war of independence – the emergence and problem-ridden continuity of cultural troupes – I will also enquire into the ‘functions’ of performance in relation to mechanisms for survival. Life was immensely hazardous in the field and did not allow for a sharp distinction between culture, creativity and combat. Often ‘performing for survival’ referred not only to the liberation war, but also to the continued existence of cultural troupes in the field.

Historical background: the ELF and EPLF

In 1960 the first armed liberation movement, the ELF, was founded and started to stake out its power base. While the leadership remained located in Egypt, the Eritrean Liberation Army was established in Eritrea, with a Revolutionary Command based in Sudan. In Eritrea a zonal organization was introduced whose ultimate drawback, most sources agree, was the rise of ethnic and religious parochialism, social exclusion and personal patronage.³

Eritrean historiography is unequivocal that the ELF as a liberation movement eventually failed and that from 1970/71 reformist splinter groups were on the ascent. Critical accounts of the fragmentation of the ELF differ considerably; in the given context it is only necessary to understand that three main factions split off from the ELF, which, after a complicated consolidation process, emerged as the EPLF in 1976. In 1977 the new liberation movement officially constituted itself at the first EPLF Congress. For the sake of simplicity all groupings which eventually merged as the EPLF will be referred to as such.⁴

In 1972 the core ELF declared war against the secessionists, which led to a prolonged civil war, the fiercest periods being between 1972–4 and 1978–81 (Iyob 1995: 122). By the early 1980s the ELF was virtually powerless inside Eritrea, the majority of fighters having fled to Sudan to seek refuge in the Arab and western diaspora. Even today, bitterness stemming from the civil war, which separated families and caused casualties totally unrelated to combating the common enemy, Ethiopia, is rife on both sides of the divide.⁵

Inside Eritrea the role of the ELF in the liberation struggle continues to be relatively neglected, as is its contribution to the cultural field. I encountered few attempts at ELF/EPLF reconciliation until the onset of the so-called Eritrean-Ethiopian ‘border war’ in 1998–2000, one of the largest and deadliest conventional inter-state conflicts at the turn of the millennium (Jacquin-Berdal 2004), when a number of distinguished ELF artists returned to Eritrea to lend their support. In the capital of Asmara I had to wait until 2008 before I was actively encouraged to research into ELF cultural troupes. That was also the first time I heard an ELF song during the official independence celebrations. The internecine strife between the two camps has continued over more than four decades and has often impeded fruitful discussions and the collation of data (cf. Pool 2001: 71).

These factors have long contributed to the underestimation of ELF cultural work, especially in official historical narratives. Creative impulses originating in the ELF, if not earlier in civilian theatre associations, were sometimes implicitly credited to the EPLF. Yet for both fronts the institutionalization of cultural work, and the recognition of its importance, was a genuine challenge.

The first ELF cultural troupe

Research into the ELF’s cultural activities has suffered not only from the tensions between the two liberation fronts, but also from lack of contemporary documentation for triangulation. It can, however, be safely assumed that no cultural group existed before 1968, when the ELF began a major structural overhaul of the organization (Iyob 1995: 113–14). Changes were also called for with regard to the role of culture. A cultural group was needed for political ends and Ramadan Gebre, a Tigre-speaker from Keren,⁶ the third-largest city in Eritrea, was given the task. Ramadan was an old hand at performance, having run his own theatre group, Abna Keren (‘Sons of Keren’), as early as the mid-1950s. Now he travelled with the new ELF troupe, mostly in the western lowlands, where they performed political agit-prop and revolutionary music in languages such as Tigre, Arabic and Tigrinya. At some point between 1969 and 1971 Ramadan Gebre mounted the first known drama in the field. The play, Emperor (Imberator), was classic propaganda material⁷ and prefigured theatrical tendencies for both liberation movements in the coming two decades, including the portrayal of Ethiopian atrocities and the heroic deeds of Eritreans, fighters and civilians alike. It told the story of an Eritrean son incarcerated by the Ethiopian emperor’s army for being a member of an ELF underground cell, and the heroic, if tragic, resistance of his mother. She is killed, but is eventually avenged by ELF fighters (I 20, I 21, I 22).

Emperor portrayed the bravery of the fighters, but also highlighted the sacrifices made by (and expected of) the civilian population for the nation’s survival. It also acknowledged the role of mothers in the struggle for independence. At this point women were not yet frontline fighters,⁸ and mothers in theatrical representations had mainly served as (passive) allegories of the suffering nation.⁹ The heroic mother figure was to become a staple representation in the two liberation movements, the image appealing to both reformist and conservative elements at the fronts and to the civilian population: a woman comfortably settled into her traditional role, yet resolutely fighting the enemy with all her available resources, even if it meant sacrificing her life. The play left no doubt about its message: this war was not about personal survival; it was about the survival of Eritrea as a nation.

The ELF’s cultural heyday

The outbreak of the civil war in 1972 considerably weakened the ELF cultural troupe, but further political developments led to its rejuvenation. In 1974 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, who had ruled since 1930, was ousted by the Derg, a Marxist military junta. The new Ethiopian regime under Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam proved to be more oppressive than that of the emperor, which resulted in an increasing number of new recruits to the liberation fronts, male and female. By 1975 many highlanders, largely Tigrinya-speakers, had joined the ELF. These included a number of established artists.¹⁰

In 1975 Bereket Mengisteab, a well-known singer and former member of the Haile Selassie I Company in Addis Ababa (based at the emperor’s 1,400-seater theatre in the Ethiopian capital), joined the ELF, as did Negusse Haile ‘Mensa’ai’, a songwriter, playwright and key player in the highly influential Mahber Teyatr Asmera (‘Asmara Theatre Association’), known as Ma.Te.A. (cf. Matzke 2008a). Initially Bereket was appointed as the new director of the ‘Eritrean National Theatre and Music Revival Troupe’ (ELF 1977/8: 15), with Negusse as deputy. In 1976–7 they switched roles, and Negusse continued to direct the group until the early 1980s.¹¹ Ramadan Gebre, although he was no longer running the group, stayed with them until 1977 (I 12/08).

The cultural heyday of the ELF lasted from 1975 to 1981, when the cultural troupe disbanded. Particularly from 1975–7 they had a clear artistic advantage over the EPLF because of their many seasoned performers. Some 20–30 artists made up the troupe, with numbers fluctuating. Following a performance formula time-tested by urban theatre associations, their shows were divided into modern (i.e. ‘liberation war’) music, long-established performance arts (especially songs and dances), and the occasional dramatic skit. Music was most prominent, having always been an essential element of creative expression among all nationalities in Eritrea. It proved to be an effective tool for political propaganda. As performer Sediq, today with the national dance troupe Sbrit, recalls:

Particularly the people and the fighters liked it very much. They used to say ‘a show on one night is better than a series of seminars and lectures’. It proves that people realized the importance of our work. The shows were also helpful in recruiting new fighters to the ELF because after every performance, particularly those in Sudan [where many Eritrean refugees lived], young people joined the ELF in large numbers. (I 5/08)

As there was only one official cultural troupe, the artists lived the life of creative nomads in order to reach their potential audiences: fighters at the frontline, civilians in the liberated areas, and the exile community in Sudan. A large Fiat truck served as the means of transport and, more often than not, as a makeshift upper stage, often used for traditional dance performances. A plastic tarpaulin was spread out at the side of the lorry to mark the lower performance space and to protect the artists from dust. The band took a position in front of the vehicle, a banner with slogans serving as backdrop.¹² With the help of a generator, two 700-watt floodlights and some smaller spots, this mobile performance space metamorphosed into a theatre at night. In the highlands, a hidmo – the traditional house of Tigrinya people – was sometimes used as theatrical space, the anterior room serving as the changing room and backstage area, and the company performing in front of the house while the band sat on the roofed veranda.

In Eritrea, then, the military phrase ‘theatre of war’ has always had a rather literal meaning, for war has continued to be the prime motif in the performing arts, often embedded in historical narrative as a means of political education. Plays recounting the history of the nation were a staple in both liberation movements, even if drama was a minor, because historically alien, performance form for most fighter and civilian audiences alike. Often plays were reduced to ten-minute skits in the ELF for want of professional actors (as opposed to musicians) and lack of audience appreciation.

The Corrupt Derg (Dergi Zergi) by Negusse Haile was one of the few full-length plays recalled by former ELF members. Conceived as a national epic, it recounted Eritrea’s troubled colonial history until the coming of the Derg regime. Mounting a play outside an urbanized context was a novel experience for Negusse, and rather a challenge. Audiences in Asmara and other towns had been familiar with theatre conventions initially brought to Eritrea by Italian and British performers, and they did not call for explanatory commentaries during the shows. In the rural countryside, however, a moderator was needed to guide the spectators through the play. In 1978, in an attempt to provide the historical background during a village show, Negusse explained the ascent of Colonel Mengistu in Ethiopia. When a Mengistu lookalike appeared on stage, a panicky outcry rippled through the audience with a group o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Performing (for) Survival: Frameworks and Mapping
• Part I: Surviving War and Exile: National and Ethnic Identity in Performance
• Part II: A Space Where Something Might Survive: Theatre in Concentration Camps
• Part III: Tactics and Strategies: Dissent under Oppressive Regimes
• Part IV: Coming in from the Outside: Theatre, Community, Crisis
• Part V: Crisis and Extremity as Performance
• Coda: Picturing Charlie Hebdo
• Index