Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela 1918 - 2013

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Reading of Play at 1994-2014: 20 Years of South African Democracy Conference, Oxford University

On the 24th of April, 2014, a reading of the play will open the conference, '1994-2014: 20 Years of South African Democracy Conference' at Oxford University.

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  There will be six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa.

It is a great honour to be associated with such a conference.

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  We envisage six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa. - See more at: http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/1994-2014-20-years-south-african-democracy#sthash.McRtH2MY.dpuf

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  We envisage six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa. - See more at: http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/1994-2014-20-years-south-african-democracy#sthash.McRtH2MY.dpuf

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  We envisage six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa. - See more at: http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/1994-2014-20-years-south-african-democracy#sthash.McRtH2MY.dpuf

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  We envisage six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa. - See more at: http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/1994-2014-20-years-south-african-democracy#sthash.McRtH2MY.dpuf

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  We envisage six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa. - See more at: http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/1994-2014-20-years-south-african-democracy#sthash.McRtH2MY.dpuf

The purpose of the Conference is to analyse the transition in the 1990s, the subsequent consolidation of democracy and the nature of political authority in South Africa.  We envisage six linked streams: the transition; the constitutional settlement and its legacy; new institutions and their recent history; democratic consolidation, the ANC and dominant-party rule; political opposition and popular protest; beneficiaries and those marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa. - See more at: http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/1994-2014-20-years-south-african-democracy#sthash.McRtH2MY.dpuf

The Robben Island Bible on Youtube

If you would like to see extracts of the research, development & performance of the play, The Robben Island Bible, please visit the Youtube page for all four chapters.

The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford agrees to house archives.

The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford has agreed to house archives of the play, The Robben Island Bible.  This includes the research [ audio & video recordings of the interviews in 2008 & 2010 amongst other documents], the playscript, videos of several of the readings that have taken place since 2008 and this blog.  The archive will be continuously updated to include the latest developments in the project.

Article from the Washington Informer: 'Shakespeare Writings Inspired South African Prisoners'

Full Article Here.....

A book titled “Collected Works of William Shakespeare” and nicknamed the “Robben Island Bible” was crucial in lifting the spirits of key anti-apartheid political prisoners in South Africa’s brutal Robben Island Prison during the 1970s. Among them was Nelson Mandela, who spent more than 18 of his 27 years in the prison before becoming South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

“I wanted to exhibit the ‘Robben Island Bible’ at the Folger Shakespeare Library after I saw it,” said David Schalkwyk, 59, director of research at the library on Capitol Hill. Schalkwyk, who is also a professor of English at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, explained, “I got the idea to exhibit the book here when it was in London at the British Museum in 2012 during the Olympics.”

The Folger Library exhibit, titled “A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare,” opened May 25, 2013. The exhibit also includes sketches of Robben Island locations by Mandela, which are being shown for the first time in the U.S. Mandela drew them while visiting the now defunct prison in the early 2000s to reflect on his time there.

The artwork by Mandela is on loan from a private collection belonging to Bonnie Cohen, the wife of a member of the Library’s Board of Governors, Louis R. Cohen. Both made the sketches available for the exhibit. “I hope people will see the exhibit and learn something about how Shakespeare has been influential in unusual circumstances,” Schalkwyk said. “I hope people also learn about the Robben Island Prison, and the struggle for freedom and dignity.”

Schalkwyk said the book is an example of how important the humanities are, particularly under conditions without material comforts “It reminds us that the humanities must be made available to ‘ordinary’ people, not just to scholars.”

Coincidentally, Matthew Hahn, 40, a lecturer at St. Mary’s University College in London, and a theater director and playwright, had written a play about the “Robben Island Bible.” Schalkwyk and Hahn met at the British Museum exhibit of the book. Schalkwyk invited Hahn to stage a one night only dramatic reading of his play on June 3, 2013 at the Folger Shakespeare Theater in support of the library’s exhibit. “More than 300 people attended the play,” said Schalkwyk.
Hahn based his play on interviews he conducted with eight of the 32 former prisoners who selected their favorite passages in the book, wrote their names in the margins next to the passages, and penned the dates when they read them. Only 14 of the 32 are still living. The writings they chose and signed their names next to “provides fascinating insight into the minds, thinking and soul of those political prisoners who fought for the transformation of South Africa,” Hahn wrote.

The book’s nickname stemmed from a deception used to get it past prison authorities. Robben Island wardens only allowed prisoners to have one book, other than a religious text. Political prisoner Sonny Venkatrathnam asked his wife to send him the Shakespeare anthology. She placed a dust jacket on the book featuring graphics of Hindu deities on the front and back, which tricked the wardens into believing the book was a Hindu “bible.” Prison authorities would have otherwise barred the book, as they considered Shakespeare “subversive.” Venkatrathnam kept the book as a “souvenir” of his time in prison with Mandela and other anti-apartheid icons.

The audience for the play and the exhibit found both enlightening and meaningful. “I think they show how an oppressed people can take an extremely negative situation and turn it into a positive,” said George Powell, 70, a retired high school sports coach, teacher and counselor from Northeast.
 
Others agreed.

“The ‘Robben Island Bible’ provided both spiritual and mental sustenance (to the prisoners),” said Mary Fraker, a writer who lives on Capitol Hill. “Some even used it to teach their illiterate brethren to read. I believe it’s not an exaggeration to say that the book saved lives.”

“Seeing President Mandela’s signature next to the passage from ‘Julius Caesar’ was an incredible experience,” said Mary McCue, a freelance writer who also lives on Capitol Hill. “I found Mandela’s sketches poignant, given that he is now hospitalized with a lung infection stemming from the tuberculosis he contracted when he was imprisoned in Robben Island. Everyone should see this exhibit. It’s small, but very powerful.”

“A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare” will be exhibited at the Folger Shakespeare Library through September 29. The exhibit is free and open to the public. For further information, call 202-544-4600.

Antiapartheid Heroes Emerge Through Reading Shakespeare - Review of The Robben Island Bible at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Revew by Eric Minton

June 6, 2013

Folger Theatre, Washington, D.C.

Monday, June 3, 2013, C–1&3 (center left stalls)

A reading written & directed by Matthew Hahn

Mandela served 27 years behind bars for his role in fighting the apartheid policies of South Africa's then-ruling Afrikaner nationalists. He spent 18 of those years in the notorious Robben Island prison off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where he along with 33 other political prisoners signed their names to favorite passages of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Known as the Robben Island Bible, the book is currently the centerpiece of an exhibit at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C.

To celebrate the opening of the exhibit, the Folger Theater staged a reading of Matthew Hahn's play The Robben Island Bible, a piece based on interviews with many of those political prisoners. While the "bible" itself has achieved the status of sacred artifact among Shakespeareans, it is the play that reveals how relevant The Bard can be to even the most singular of circumstances. Meanwhile, Hahn's script opens a window into a specific time and place we all need to understand better.

The real hero in this particular Shakespearean tale is not Mandela but Sonny Venkatratham, who was held at Robben Island from 1972 to 1978. Prisoners were allowed to keep one book, so he asked his wife to send him The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. In Hahn's play—which Hahn calls "verbatim theater," noting that about 90 percent of the script was lifted directly from his interviews—Sonny contends that he chose Shakespeare in part because of its variety: "Pick any page to be entertained and educated," he says. But he also did the math: He was allowed only one book but he ended up with 38 plays and 154 sonnets.

When their books were later confiscated, Sonny convinced a gullible guard that his book was really a Bible. This particular edition of The Complete Works is the 1970 Alexander Text. Sonny covered the outside with Indian diety figures, that, together with two-column pages of numbered verses, looks very like a Bible. "Religion has done some good with these guards," Sonny says in the play. The guard gave Sonny his "Bible", and Sonny in turn passed it around to the prisoners in their single cells, asking them to sign their favorite passages. His motivation was simply to have a souvenir of his time at Robben Island.

In the staged reading of the play, Nehal Joshi plays Sonny, while various other prisoners are played by Nasser Faris, KenYatta Rogers, and André De Shields. All professional actors, each brings distinct voices and manners to their many prisoners who offer up brief biographical sketches, explain the reason for choosing their particular Shakespearean passage, and then recite that passage. As the play is a series of speeches with occasional interjections by other characters, its theatricality lies totally in the words; but those words are themselves packed with action, and in the mouths of such good actors as these, you've seldom heard readings of Shakespeare's lines resonate more deeply. David Schalkwyk, director of research at the Folger, professor of English at the University of Cape Town, and author ofHamlet's Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare (Arden/Bloomsbury, 2013) that was also featured at this event, filled in as a warder, judge, and the gullible guard.

The Folger exhibit cautions viewers against investing too much meaning in Shakespeare's presence among the prisoners: "To claim that Shakespeare constituted a 'common text' that united Robben Island's prisoners assumes a universal role for The Bard that exaggerates and romanticizes his influence." Some of the prisoners later couldn't remember what passages they signed, and one had changed his selection from Puck's closing speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream to a line from Lady Macbeth. The exhibit's argument is that the prisoner, as did others, probably chose Puck out of familiarity with the play from high school studies.

But this downplays the significance of that particular prisoner's later choice from Macbeth: " Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Whereas Puck offers a prisoner hope while waiting out the time in an isolated cell—"Think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear; and this weak and idle theme, no more yield but a dream"—the enfranchised prisoner afterward can look back on the era of apartheid and his own detention as a bloody spot on South Africa's history and his own life that can never be washed off.

Shakespeare's "universality" is a matter of context; from individual lines to whole plays, his works are amazingly malleable to changing times, situations, and people. That's why Coriolanus can be embraced by communists and Nazis alike; why Henry V has been presented as a prowar play and as an antiwar play; why The Merchant of Venice can read as a racist comedy or a great humanist tract; why Measure for Measure is a different play every decade you happen to see or read it. Many directors and audiences want their Shakespeare to take sides, but he frustratingly takes all sides even in the context of his plots. Those contexts thus ride a continuum through space and time, adapting to the context of specific circumstances.

I've always scoffed at people who quote Shakespeare's famous lines out of context, particularly "To thine own self be true," which is spoken by a duplicitous lord. I will scoff no more, hearing one prisoner use Polonius' precepts to Laertes as his own creed for getting through prison life. "Think about everything: I suppose that is what Polonius is saying," the prisoner says. Yet another prisoner takes Henry IV's lament that "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" and turns it outside in, giving it the perspective of a revolutionary. Uneasy should lie the head of any king, prime minister, or president, he asserts. "Whether my interpretation is correct, that is how I perceive it is," he says.

Meanwhile, one prisoner finds himself in the exact same context of a Shakespearean character: "This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou takest from me," says Calaban to Prospero in The Tempest. Another prisoner identifies with Othello as he risked six months in prison for dating a white woman (an admission that garners shouts of appreciation and approval from the other actors on stage); he avoided the woman and joined the antiapartheid movement and for that received a life sentence. One prisoner chose Sonnets 122 and 123, Shakespeare's defiance to Time; another noted, as does Macbeth, how "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time."

Through their biographies, their choices, and their interpretations, each prisoner comes to life. If, as one remarks, Shakespeare "is a voyage of discovery," their own presence is likewise a voyage of discovery for us. Western nations largely took an indifferent stance regarding not only apartheid but the Afrikaner regime's brutal enforcement of its racist policy of disenfranchisement for the majority of the nation's population. The United States was dealing with its own legal and sublegal variants on apartheid to give the Robben Island inmates much heed. Hahn's play allows us to make up for that historical lapse and to get to know the couple dozen men who ended up bringing about a whole new social order for their nation.

Notably, they are not a unified force. Hailing from different political factions, the prisoners recount their distrust of each other as much as they do their frustration with whites. One prisoner announces how much he hates all whites, but turns away from this absolutism when a white priest, offering him communion, is berated by the warden who doesn't allow the prisoners any alcoholic drink, including wine that has been blessed. It wasn't black versus white, the prisoner realized, but people abusing people. Finding understanding if not compassion for your opponents is essential in achieving peaceful social change.

Consider what is happening in Syria right now and the brewing unrest in several other countries, including your own (whether the unrest is utilizing sticks and stones or hurtful rhetoric). Consider the violence of recent regime changes and the civil wars and armed revolutions that have occurred in every nation of every person reading this essay. Then consider how South Africa moved to a true democracy and rid itself of institutional apartheid relatively peacefully through many years of orderly negotiations. Like Shakespeare, the Robben Island inmates learned to take all sides, first among themselves and eventually across the whole of their society.

Among them emerged one man who grasped that philosophy as fully as anybody and, fortunately, ended up leading his nation through that difficult transition. Notably, Nelson Mandela gets sparse mention in The Robben Island Bible. Hahn specifically decided not to interview Mandela because he didn't want the Nobel laureate to become the play's focus and overshadow the other prisoners. The whole was more important than the individual hero in this play.

When Mandela does show up at play's end, he merely recites his chosen passage:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

This is spoken by Julius Caesar, and if it seems ironic that Mandela would identify himself with a passage from a despotic ruler. Remember the context of his circumstances when he signed this passage: a political prisoner in a brutal environment under a continuous threat of death by any number of means. Mandela would go on to quote Shakespeare many more times in many other contexts, but here he turned to The Bard for words of courage and resolve.

[The Folger Library exhibit, "A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare," runs to Sept. 29, 2013. Details here.]

Comment: e-mail editorial@shakespeareances.com

The Robben Island Bible at the Folger Library 3 June 2013

On the 3rd of June, The Robben Island Bible was performed as a reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.  It was a sold out performance with over 200 people in attendance.  The reading was followed by a short Q & A with Fran Buntman, David Schalkwyk & Matthew Hahn.  The evening was supported by the United Negro College Fund.

It was exciting to be a part of this performance as it was the first time the play has been read in the United States.  It accompanies an exhibition at the Library of Sonny's book along with a brief display about Robben Island.

Not for the first time, but certainly the most overt time was my realization of the similarities between the Black South African struggle for liberation and the African- American struggle in the States.  I was surrounded in Washington, DC by the Lincoln Memorial, the Martin Luther King Memorial, the lunch counter from Woolworths in the Smithsonian & the exhibition there about the similarities between the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 & the March on Washington in 1962, the new African American museum that is under construction to the  and a variety of other pertinent memorials, so how could I not make the connection?  Although I have always been focused on a South African response to the play & research, I think that there is a lot of potential to examine Leadership & Social Responsibility in the United States using the play & interviews because there are so many parallels of both stuggles [and their not so complete outcomes].  From MLK & Nelson Mandela, the iconic leaders of the Struggle to the Black Panther & Black Consciousness Movement, to the many notable men & women who gave their lives to the struggles for equality.  So much of what I heard in my interviews, I am sure could have just of easily been heard from an African American.

Robben Island 'Bible' Inspires Play & Exhibition

The Folger Shakespeare Library is presenting a free, staged reading of The Robben Island Bible, a play written and directed by Matthew Hahn, on Monday, June 3, at 7 p.m. The cast includes such well-known actors as Emmy Award–winner Andre deShields, Nasser Faris, KenYatta Rogers, and Nehal Joshi.

The play is presented in association with the upcoming Folger exhibition "A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare" on view from May 25–September 29, 2013, at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

During the 1970s, political prisoners in South Africa's Robben Island prison were briefly allowed to have one book other than a religious text. South African prisoner Sonny Venkatratham asked his wife to send him The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Venkatratham then passed the book to a number of his fellow political prisoners, each marking and dating his favorite passage in the Shakespearean text. Overall, the book contains 32 signatures, including those of Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, and Mac Maharaj, all luminaries in the struggle for a democratic South Africa. Hahn interviewed many of the prisoners in 2008 and drew upon those interviews and Shakespeare's words to create a play that explores how life imitates art.

Hahn works as a theater director, drama lecturer, and workshop leader in the United Kingdom and in Africa. He is currently on the staff at London's St Mary's University College in their applied theatre course where he teaches on the theatre for development modules. He also works for Theatre for a Change in Ghana & Malawi in their education program. He has directed several productions in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He is the artistic director of the Common Air Theatre Company where he directed subVERSE, a new writing program to develop political playwrights.

A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare

An excellent resource in researching the Robben Island Bible:


A Book Behind Bars: The Robben Island Shakespeare, one of the Exhibitions at the Folger, opened on May 25, 2013 and closed on October 2, 2013. The exhibition highlights a 1970 edition of The Alexander Text of the Complete Works of Shakespeare that circulated throughout the Robben Island prison in South Africa from 1975 to 1978.


https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/A_Book_Behind_Bars:_The_Robben_Island_Shakespeare

'Hamlet’s Dream' by David Schalkwyk

Excerpts from the interviews with the former political prisoners that I conducted in 2008 as the basis of the play, The Robben Island Bible have been published and critiqued in Hamlet’s Dream by South African academic David Schalkwyk, the most recent publication in the Arden Shakespeare Now! series. In June, I will travel to Washington DC as a guest of Dr Schalkwyk to direct a gala presentation of the play at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The Robben Island Bible at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC

On the 3rd of June 2013, a reading of the play will be produced at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC as part of a gala presentation which includes a display of Sonny's 'Bible' in the Library.
This reading will be the most complete version of the play to date.