Bilingualism in Chadian theatre.

 

The following podcast Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Abdramane: hello good evening, welcome to your podcast dedicated to bilingualism in theatre. Bilingualism in theatre is a way of popularising socio-cultural themes and easily spreading a message of inunciation, cohabitation, education and much more through the staging of artists.

Located in the capital’s 7th arrondissement, the Themacult centre is a theatre house. As soon as you enter the centre, you can see the art objects hanging on the walls, the gallery room where you can find art exhibitions, books, the cinema room and also the performance galleries.

We are on our way to a great Chadian playwright, actor and director, Garsumu Vangdar, head of the Themacult centre, born in 1967 in N’Djamène, in the Chadian capital.

Sitting on a plastic chair, a computer in front of him and a radio receiver, we hear RFI’s Priorité Santé programme as soon as we enter. A man in his fifties, a giant with a moustache and a smile on his face. Talks about the importance of bilingualism in general and in the art world too.

Garsumu Vangdar: Speaking of bilingualism, it should be noted that since it was instituted, it has come a long way. As practitioners of the performing arts, particularly theatre, I think that a theatrical performance appeals to an audience and the audience needs a performance where it also has and must understand the message that is being said, so in our theatrical creations we sometimes perform in Chadian Arabic and in French and we also sometimes perform in Ngambaye where we put on a show in which there are the three languages, to allow access to the audience and so that the audience can be touched by the subject addressed by the performance. So all in all, the advantage we have in Chad is that Arabic is spoken. We could have continued in this direction to interest our young people in being able to speak Arabic like this. Those who speak French speak Arabic and those who speak Arabic speak French. It’s when you speak both languages that you’re said to be bilingual. But when you speak only one language, if you speak Arabic without speaking French, you’re not bilingual. When you speak French and you don’t speak Arabic, you’re not bilingual. But we’re trying to do this show so that we can reach our audience, especially as our cultural space is located in an outlying district where there are cosmopolitan homes, people who don’t speak French, people who speak Chadian Arabic, people who speak Ngambaye. So our aim is to bring art to this population and also to interest them in the arts by putting on shows that speak to them, that attract them, that interest them and that enable them to understand what we are saying. In the five years of its existence, the Centre Temakilt has produced huge numbers of shows in local Arabic and French, in order to reach the public.

Abdramane: After 42 years in the theatre, Van Dijk has sacrificed himself by putting his heart and soul into producing bilingual shows to give a special cachet to his work and reach his target audience.

Garsumu Vangdar: Generally speaking, at our level, when it comes to performing in Arabic, we do more improvisation, in other words we take a subject and develop it together around a table, we build the scene and then we give it the flesh that we call the word. It’s rare for us to be able to take a text written in Arabic and interpret it in French because there are people among us who don’t read literary Arabic. So we haven’t managed to translate an Arabic play into French or a French play into Arabic. And so, when we want to do it, we often try to summarise the lines, the words spoken in the plays in local Arabic, which we try to rehearse as we go along with the actors in order to get them interested in putting on the show. There are certainly young people who speak Arabic and like to do theatre, and there are also some who speak French and like to act in Arabic, but very few of them have gone to study Arabic, so it’s a real challenge. There are even young people in the jihad who do theatre in Arabic but nothing who doesn’t write Arabic at all. We are in the system of improvisation around a subject or a theme and they put on the show and perform it. So it’s a bit complex. The important thing is to get people interested in written Arabic. And that’s fundamental. And it’s up to us to develop it, to encourage it, to get people to understand the need to have one language, two languages, three languages spoken, because we’re not closed in on ourselves because the world is global and unique. You are called upon to go to other people. You also have to be able to understand a few things. Otherwise, speaking two or three languages will help the population a lot and it will also help development.

Abdramane: Indeed, despite the difficulties that some of the actors in these centres face, such as translating Arabic texts into French and mastering CD languages, a few Arab directors at the back of Themacult have managed to produce bilingual shows, like the late Jamal Ahmad Mohamed, who is one of the key people at this centre. During his lifetime, he worked on the bilingual show, which was a huge success.

Garsumu Vangdar: Yes, because very few of the theatre practitioners I know, the majority, don’t speak Arabic, don’t know Arabic and don’t know how to write criticism. One of my trainers was… He’s bilingual. He graduated from Abeche school. He went to study in Egypt. He came back with a degree in drama. He worked for the Foncière-Police. Now he’s retired. His name is Mounour Ali. He’s a great man of the theatre. He’s the one who trained us. He exists. He’s still around. He now lives in Baccarat. So he’s bilingual. He speaks Arabic. French is literary Arabic. He can translate works, and has put on shows in Arabic. At the time, he had an Afro-Arab theatre festival. It was an important initiative, he wanted to use art to get people interested in bilingualism. And that’s a fact. And for those of us who are already old, the question of survival, of running behind, we don’t have the time to sit down and relearn. We don’t have the time to go and sit down and learn it all over again. Arabic, even if we’ve already learnt it in a few groups in the past, was difficult in secondary schools.

Abdramane: Do you have any scenes that stand out for you when it comes to the issue of bilingualism in chat rooms, especially in your field?

Garsumu Vangdar: Well, as far as bilingualism is concerned, as I said, sometimes there are shows where people speak both languages. In the 90s there were a lot of troupes doing this. But otherwise in Chad, for the most part, you’re going to find something performed in Arabic, otherwise it’s performed in French. But it’s rare to find both in one show. But each language has its own audience.

And I think that if there wasn’t an audience, the show wouldn’t go on. Up until now, there have been people doing theatre in Arabic, and there have been people doing theatre in French. Now, there’s artistic work to be done, because we could also, in Chad, have set up the Faculty of Arts on the Seine, If not the academy of arts to allow people to be able to train in the field of arts with the languages that it is in Arabic or in French that will make a plus it is possible that that exists one does not know and with which go out when it goes out in Arabic as long as we are not with the knowledge one does not understand Arabic one will not know that there are actors or directors one knew of directors who are Arabic-speaking for example the late diam’ amal it is a director we lost it with two years and it is not the case that it is not the case that it is not the case. lost him when he was two years old and he’s a great director he’s basically Arab he speaks Arabic and he had to learn French he had someone learn French he speaks French normally he became truly bilingual and he worked with us sometimes I give my text in French he does the directing and the seven plays he also works with those who speak Arabic he works with them so that means it’s the richness as I say it’s talking about the two years of writing them that’s rare.

Abdramane: In spite of the difficulties encountered, Vangdar finds that you don’t have to be absolutely good to understand the scenes. It all depends on the scene.

Garsumu Vangdar: So from a performance point of view in principle the language problem isn’t necessarily a performance for a scene but now it’s understanding the thing seen from the written angle of the performance and speaking Arabic literary is where there are difficulties because very few do it here, especially in the area where I’m developing, it’s true that there are some who go to schools in Arabic but still not bilingual, we write bilingual but we only learn Arabic, we write bilingual, we only learn French, we have to learn both and that’s what’s blocking us.

Abdramane: Vandard’s experience in this world shows that although bilingualism in Chad is often a source of tension, it can also become a powerful vector for social cohesion. By giving a voice to linguistic diversity and culture, balance theatre is a promising way of healing social fractures. Thank you for listening. Until the next podcast.