Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies

Clare Finburgh

Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies

University of Essex

TH343 Political Theatre

Debbie Tucker-Green, Generations (2005). First performed as a Platform performance at the National Theatre, London, June 2005.

The following notes provide background information to our seminar session. They are intended as a starting point from which you can conduct further and more detailed research. They include questions (in BLUE) that encourage you to explore themes and issues in greater detail. If you refer to the notes in essays or examinations, please ensure that you quote your source clearly.

Debbie Tucker-Green

HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA – SOME FACTS

900 people die every day from HIV/AIDS in South Africa alone.
Several decades after HIV/AIDS was first discovered, there’s no sign that the epidemic is slowing down in Africa.
The impacts of the disease range far beyond the personal stories of friends and relatives lost.
The disease has impacted the very fabric of social and community life, state infrastructures like government, and it threatens to derail development prospects for the future.
It’s one of the most serious problems facing Africa today. It kills men and women in the prime of their working lives (typically, people between 15 and 49 contract the disease). This erodes the labour force.
Africa’s work force is being depleted by people dying, or else having to look after sick and dying relatives.
HIV/AIDS is reshaping the demographic structure of #African communities, diminishing the capacity of states for sustainable development, and reducing their ability to maintain what’s been secured in the past in terms of social and economic growth.
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki controversially suggested in 2000 at the International AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, that HIV/AIDS wasn’t simply a sexually transmitted disease that’s functionally related to Africa’s unusually high rate of sexual partner change. Dr Yuichi Shiokawa at the conference suggested, “The AIDS crisis in Africa could be brought under control only if Africans restrained their sexual cravings.” 9quoted in Nana K. Poku, Aids in Africa: How the Poor are Dying, p. 3).
Mbeki’s point was to maintain that sexual behaviour is obviously an important factor in the spread of HIV, but it alone cannot explain the prevalence of the disease amongst 25% of the adult population of some African countries. This, when in the developed world, the rate is less than 1%.
Therefore, Mbeki’s point is that there are many other reasons, essentially related to poverty, that increase the risk of Africans catching AIDS, and dying from it.
We should remember that in the war-ravaged Europe of the late 1940s, if it weren’t for penicillin, European and American populations would have been devastated by epidemics of syphilis and gonorrhoea. The devastating impact of war, associated with poverty, men separated from their wives, and women without means for supporting themselves and their families except by means of prostitution, precipitated the rampant spread of these diseases.
There’s a very clear interconnectivity between poverty and vulnerability to disease. 95% of all the world’s HIV/AIDS cases are in the developing world.
Bad water, malnutrition, poor access to preventive and curative care, pre-existing health conditions, etc. all make people more susceptible to contracting the virus.
The following factors increase the risk of contracting the disease:
Protein-energy malnutrition: general calorie deficits and deficiencies in vitamin-A weaken the body’s immune system, including skin and mucous membranes, which are particularly important in protecting the body from sexually transmitted diseases.
Parasite infestations: these weaken the body, aggravating malnutrition by robbing het body of essential nutrients. Parasites also trigger the immune system, impairing its ability to fight infections from other pathogens.
Untreated sexually transmitted infections: these can increase the risk of the acquisition and transmission of HIV by up to 10 times.

Low levels of education and literacy: people are less likely to know about the risks. They are also less likely to have marketable skills and to earn a living, thereby making them vulnerable to poverty and consequent ill health.
Gender issues: many women contract the disease because they are less able to protect themselves than men.
Lack of medical care: there’s a drastic lack on the continent of trained medical personnel to diagnose and care for patients, and of drugs to treat them.
Therefore, according to many HIV/AIDS experts, it’s insufficient to tackle the disease simply via behavioural change. It must also be tackled via development of poor countries. “Of course, by treating the epidemic as a health crisis caused by a hypersexualised culture, the World Bank and the IM can continue to pursue their abhorrent structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on the continent, uninterrupted.” (Nana K. Poku, Aids in Africa, p. 9).
Africa’s post-colonial economic decline has a part to play. Political elites, international organisations and global economic forces shape the continent’s socio-economic situation. Therefore, this is not simply an African problem. It is a global problem, that requires global solutions.
T.-G.’s play only very obliquely refers to the ravaging effects of HIV/AIDS on the African continent in her play. Which of the contextual issues surrounding the disease does she explore, and how?
When speaking about another of her plays, Stoning Mary (2005), T.-G. states that it’s not her intention to write a documentary about Africa. Instead, she’s interested in what falls outside the news. In what ways does she addre4ss what falls “outside the news” here?

GENARATIONS

Increasing mortality amongst the most economically active members of the African societies translates into low adult productivity a generation later.
The problem is perpetuated because people die, reducing the possibility of skills-sharing and education from one generation to the next, weakening the ability of succeeding generations to maintain development achievements of the past, and thereby perpetuating poverty.

Generations (Young Vic, 2007), directed by Sacha Wares.

Loss of income due to illness and early death reduce resources available to the family, leading to further poverty.
In addition, families are less likely to afford to send their children to school, thereby perpetuating illiteracy, lack of skills, and consequent poverty.
This adds to worsening social inequality by, for example, adding to the number of sick, unemployed, and orphans, who are all poor, and therefore more likely to contract the disease.
There’s consequently a systematic erosion of the state’s ability to replenish vital human capital needed to sustain socio-economic development and political governance.
How does T.-G. show in her play the ways that HIV/AIDS affects multiple generations in families and societies?
What’s the significance of the oral culture of memories, stories and skills that’s shared between the family members?
What’s the significance of the fact that the youngest die first and the oldest last in the play?
What is the significance of the Choir? Do they represent the persistence and resilience of the community?

GENDER AND RACE

Traditionally in theatre, women’s work has been hidden, or marginalised. There are relatively very few female playwrights, directors and theatre administrators. There are also often many more male than female parts in plays for actors.
Since the 1970s in Britain, there has been a marked increase in the number of women working in theatre. Authors include Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Sarah Daniels, Louise Page, Debbie Horsfield, Sarah Kane and others.
Since Joan Littlewood’s pioneering introduction of Brechtian techniques at the Theatre Royal Stratford East after the 2nd world war, a host of female directors has emerged: Buzz Goodbody at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s, Clare Venables at Stratford East, Jane Howell at the Royal Court. Some of the most innovative directors today are women, including Marianne Elliott, Deborah Warner and Katie Mitchell.
Do you think it’s significant that the author of this play is a woman?
Does the fact that she’s a woman impact on the content or form of the play?

DRAMATIC STYLE: REALIST THEMES AND NON-REALIST TREATMENT

T.-G. treats highly realist themes, but not at all in a realist way.
What is realism?

Realism loosely refers to any artistic attempt to portray the reality of our world.
Realism is based on Enlightenment positivism, in that it rejects religion and philosophical thought in favour of an investigation and observation of our surroundings. The truth is to be found in the observed facts of life. It involves representing the world as an accurate “document” of “how it is” rather than how it should be.
Realism often involves an attempt at sociological observation and description, rather than poetic invention. The artist has to display “sincerity” rather than aesthetic “liberty”. The artist portrays everyday scenes of contemporary life as objectively as possible, in unpoetic, unidealised prose without exaggeration, poetic metaphor or melodrama. Realism champions the scientific observation of individuals, society, objects. It therefore accumulates details and material facts.
Realist artists often take their subject matter from all social levels, and writers often employ local colloquial speech.

In what ways is this play realist?
The play appears to comprise a regular family gathering between several generations. But instead of a party, this becomes a funeral.

Generations (Young Vic, 2007), directed by Sacha Wares.

In what ways is the play not realist?
In some respects the play subverts realism. For example, there’s no mention of South Africa, except for the fact that the South African national anthem is sung at the end. There’s not even a mention of HIV/AIDS, and it’s up to the reader/spectator to decide why the family members are disappearing.
The play also transcends realism in its form, since it’s non-linear, and highly poeticised.
The narrative is fragmented and circular. It’s as if we are overhearing snippets of a story from another table in a restaurant, and don’t know what the main topic of conversation is.
HIV/AIDS has been described as an African “genocide” or “Holocaust”. Does T.-G. therefore avoid literally and frontally representing the subject because it’s impossible to capture its atrocity?
Compare her treatment to Weiss’s treatment of Auschwitz, and think about the Holocaust theories of Adorno, Caruth, Langer, etc.
The language is highly poetic and rhythmical – T.-G. wrote poetry before becoming a playwright.
What impact does the poetry and the rhythmic cadence of the language have?
The play repeats itself several times, rather like Caryl Churchill’s Blue Heart, or even like Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It could even evoke the nursery rhyme “Ten Green Bottles”.
What effect does this circularity have? Does it evoke the unending, spiralling and unstoppable misery of HIV/AIDS, or else does it celebrate the capacity of humanity always to survive and perpetuate?