Koffi Kwahulé’s Coltranean Theatre of Cruelty

• Published in: Modernist cultures Vol. 8; no. 1; p. 138
• Main Author: Prieto, Eric
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 01.05.2013
• Subjects: Bourgeoisie; Cannibalism; Cruelty; Incest; Infanticide; Kwahule, Koffi (1956- ); Music; Provocation; Rape; Scripts; Surrealism; Theater; Violence
• ISSN: 2041-1022; 1753-8629
• DOI: 10.3366/mod.2013.0055

Any study of Kofli Kwahulé's theatre must grapple with the problem of bad taste. Kwahulé's plays typically dwell on outrageous themes, ranging from rape and incest to infanticide and cannibalism, which might seem to be chosen only for their shock value. This thematic provocation is matched on the formal level by scripts and stagings that disregard the established norms of proportion, economy, discretion, and narrative structure, and that to dwell obsessively on a small number of verbal motifs that do not forward a Story line so much as they build to crescendos of violence. What are we to make of this excessive dimension of Kwahulé's work, its apparently willful lack of proportion and propriety? Should we see it in the context of the modernist tradition of scandalising the bourgeoisie ('épater le bourgeois'), which goes back through the surrealists to Rimbaud and Baudelaire? Or perhaps as part of a calculated appeal to the kind of lowbrow audience that is drawn to lurid violence? Or perhaps even as a sign of ineptitude, an inability to generate dramatic energy without recourse to such excessive strategies? None of these dismissive hypotheses, I would argue, holds water. In older to get a better sense of what Kwahulé is up to, it is helpful to turn, as Kwahulé himself does, to the music of John Coltrane. Kwahulé repeatedly cites Coltrane as the primary inspiration for many of the dramatic forms and techniques he developed in some of his most challenging plays, beginning with Cette vieille magie noire in 1993, and culminating in the series of three plays that will be studied here: Jaz (1998), Blue-S-Cal (2005), and Misteriaso-119 (2005).