Jerri Daboo

So, in thinking about my own discipline, I’m in a department of drama, we look across theatre performance, dance, music, visual culture, popular culture. So for us, I think we have a very particular issue when we talk about decolonization, because this isn't just about sitting down, thinking about it reading texts, having discussions. What we and our students have to do is to make active choices about embodiment, in performance, onstage about representation. We can't just sit and think about these things and then leave it, we have to make active choices about saying we're looking at this play text; how are we going to make decisions about casting, about themes, about how do we approach maybe difficult issues in this? Those are then embodied and enacted physically on the stage. So for us, it's a very positive active engagement with these issues, which brings up a lot more areas that might be problematic or for discussion. So, if our students will be given a play with a Black character in, but there are no Black actors, then how do we approach that? But then if we say, well, we can only have plays that have white characters in them that's also problematic in terms of excluding those other plays. And there's other ways of thinking. So for us, it's always a negotiation of how do we balance out our ideology, our thinking against, then, what do we actually do in practice? And then what can that practice also teach us and reflect back on these issues and on our ways of thinking on what we look at? So we're really as always trying to challenge the canon. And again, interesting for us that if we think in terms of theatre, the canon is seen essentially starting with Shakespeare; of course, Shakespeare is the main person. But you know, Shakespeare, in terms of questions of empire, becomes very interesting, because, of course, Shakespeare is also taught very widely in former colonial countries, as well. So, if we're thinking of UK and India, this becomes quite interesting: How can we look at Shakespeare and if we're producing a play by Shakespeare, how can we think about decolonizing that play decolonizing that production within a postcolonial framework. Sometimes we use the term ‘canonical counter-discourse'. So we're looking at something that is part of the canon, but how can we turn the kind of thematics and the politics in it around to make a different kind of comment that's coming more from that lens of decolonization? So I think that's why in our discipline, we have particular challenges that are also opportunities for thinking about these kinds of issues.