Creation, translation, transmission

On September 28th, 2022, I attended a seminar at The American University of Paris on “New Plays from the Caribbean”, an anthology of plays by playwrights from the French-speaking Caribbean. Edited by Stéphanie Bérard in collaboration with Frank Hentschker, the director of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York, this book is a collection of six plays from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe written by Jean-René Lemoine, Guy Régis Jr, Gaël Octavia, Daniely Francisque, Luc Saint-Eloy, Magali Solignat, and Charlotte Boimare. During the seminar, Luc Saint-Eloy (Guadeloupe) and Gaël Octavia (Martinique) addressed several themes that French-speaking Caribbean creators are confronted with: their invisibilization in French art, the importance of translation in order to reach other audiences, the difficulty of transmission due to obstacles in distribution, and the questioning of their legitimacy and authenticity.

It took me a while to write this blog post because I had to sort through what this discussion had inspired me. Beyond the fiction I write, I create online content in an effort to archive cultural elements that I feel are important in understanding and appreciating Guadeloupean/Caribbean identity. I, therefore, make a constant arbitration between what I like and what I think may interest others without necessarily pleasing me. I’ll never have the guarantee that my arbitration is effective, but it’s always motivated by three emotions.

Sadness

Our culture is an inexhaustible wealth. I still have so much to discover. It's exciting and sad at the same time. Exciting because Caribbean cultures are rich but sad because I’m starting to explore it so late. I don't consider myself to have a theater education. Even though I was fortunate enough to grow up in Guadeloupe, and to have teachers who cared about having us study fiction with Black characters, I don't remember ever seeing a Caribbean play... Is it that I missed out on this lesson or is it really that local theater didn't have the status to be in the school curriculum? In any case, as an adult, I want to fill this gap, but where can I find these plays? As Luc Saint-Eloy and Gaël Octavia pointed out, they may be published over a few years, but when the publishing house decides to stop printing, it’s impossible to get a copy unless the authors still have some unsold copies from the time. I'm literally at a dead end where, if I can't see a play performed live and I want to read what was created in the 20th and early 21st centuries, the paperbacks are no longer available. And let's not even talk about digital or audio versions, since the mainstream public and our artists are still attached to the physical format. If it's not published in a book, does the story really exist? That's a debate for another day. But the place we give to the book as an object right now is really to be questioned. In any case, translation allows us to slightly compensate for the lack of accessibility to our literary heritage in the original language. For Gaël Octavia, translations offer the opportunity to create a new text that will have its own subtleties and its own surprises.

Pride

The artists of Guadeloupe and Martinique live the permanent paradox of having a French nationality which makes them invisible in France (difficulty of access to grants, residencies, etc.) but which allows them to stand out outside France. Being translated into another language means having created a work strong enough to trigger the desire to present it to another audience. Obviously, keeping the author's intentions is the most difficult challenge. For example, in “Street Sad” [ Trottoir-chagrin], the English translation keeps the French expression "faire le mako" [t/n: to be nosey]. I pointed out that English-speaking Caribbean people also use the expression "mako" with the same meaning as us so would it have been possible to just translate it as "to mako" or "to be a mako"? Luc Saint-Eloy answered no because this combination of French and Creole makes it possible to immediately identify the French-speaking Caribbean origins of the character, whether in French or in English. I haven't read or seen the play so I don't know what role this French-speaking Caribbean identity plays in the development of the plot. However, it did make me think about the importance of recognizing our origins. Caribbean and Francophone. Francophone and Caribbean. Do we feel completely recognized if we are perceived only as Francophone or if we are perceived only as Caribbean? Is there a hierarchy of these labels? Do we really live our Caribbean identity when we have little or no connection with other Caribbean audiences? Gaël Octavia has expressed the importance of a sense of belonging to a multicultural and multilingual Caribbean artist community in order to maintain the motivation to tell our stories.

Hope

The very existence of these plays shows this desire to create by any means necessary. For Gaël Octavia, the question of legitimacy sometimes arises because she lives in continental France. Her experience will always be different from that of an artist living in Martinique. Is she therefore less authentic or is she the best placed to write about Martinique? Luc Saint-Eloy prefers to approach the question differently. For him, to create in France is to assert himself where he’s invisibilized. He describes this process as "cultural marrooning”. A struggle to create outside the norms. To create, yes, but does the process free you from the norms?

In reality, the only question that I care about is: does this cultural marrooning have limits? The energy invested in the production of these plays has yet to find its match in the transmission part. How can these plays acquire the status of a classic that transcends time? Public libraries as a place of conservation can be an answer, school curriculum can also be one... But how does one decide that a play is essential? Who decides? Marrooning, yes but do we still remain bound to the norms or does it mean establishing our own norms from creation to transmission? And with what means?

And even if our artists have access to the structures to be visible, would their works have the deserved recognition? Would the artists receive the deserved financial benefits? Would they enter the French heritage while the authors of Guadeloupe/Martinique are still, in 2022, classified mainly in foreign literature?

That's a lot of questions I'm not the first to ask, I know. But we still haven't found the answers yet. I hope it will happen soon. For me, the priority remains the accessibility to control the creation of our cultural heritage. And I think that some answers are articulated between the university, technology, translation, and the Caribbean network. There are two things that I remain convinced of after this seminar: our culture connects us to the rest of the world and can travel beyond the French borders; our culture is a heritage that must continue to be enriched... I trust the current generations and those to come to do so.

A/n: check out a live reading of Street Sad available for free on Youtube.

Photo : Casey Horner