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When playwright Bruce Norris decided to take a trip to Africa in February of 2006, Steppenwolf Theatre asked him to send them postings for their blog as he traveled…

Guilt Trip

So, the first and most obvious question is, why go?

I had finished the first draft of a new play called “The Unmentionables” sometime in the Spring of 2005.  This new play is set in a fictitious “third-world” country in western equatorial Africa and concerns a disparate group of white Americans whose simplistic notions of themselves are tested when they become more deeply involved with the local population than they had intended. And sitting in my lovely, comfortable, little apartment in Brooklyn, bent over my tiny computer, reading the newspaper every morning and drinking iced tea, I had concluded that it was my perfect right as someone who makes up stories for a living, to create a fictional story which took part in another part of the world, a real part in which I had never set foot and in which very real, which is to say non-fictitious, people, lived. Of course, this is what writers do all the time. But, at a time in which international sensitivities (justified or not) about how we Americans characterize the rest of the world are easily inflamed… Well, you know, I got to thinking.

So, I bought a plane ticket to Africa. Friends said to me, “I see, so will you re-write the play based on what you learn?” Well, actually no. The play is an act of the imagination, an analogy for something else, besides which, I never intended to write about Africans per se – if I’m going to insult anyone, I’d prefer to insult Americans. Then they said, “So, will you go there to help people and make the world a better place?” God, no. I’m not arrogant enough to think I have anything to offer anyone, or for that matter, that a play ever changed the world. I write my little plays to amuse me, not to improve the world. Finally they said, “So, if you’re not going to rewrite the play, nor are you going to help people, then why the hell are you going?”

Good question.

So then… oh, no. Is the answer… guilt? The guilt that we, as supposedly uber-sensitive, globally-conscious theatre-attending lefties feel? The shame of having unintentionally trodden on some toes in a less-fortunate corner of the world? Is it to expiate me from the sins of American privilege and boorishness? Or simply to indemnify myself against the charge that I have no idea what I’m talking about and therefore might be talking out of a less-than-respectable orifice? Isn’t it possible I’m just taking a trip because I love to travel? Are you insane? I hate to travel. And it’s a sixteen-hour plane trip.

Perhaps at the start of a trip (since you can’t anticipate the point of a journey until it is under way) you can, with modesty, simply hope to find out what it is you don’t know. And besides, it’s not like I’m going to the South Pole with a team of sled dogs. I’m going for a few days to a nice hotel in a part of the world I never expected to visit, and maybe I’ll have a nice time and maybe I won’t. So, we’ll see…

February 14

Packing. Panicking. Took my malaria pills. Sprayed clothes with mosquito repellent. I leave from JFK at eleven p.m., and by eight o’clock tomorrow night I land in Cotonou, Benin. If all goes well – and I think we all suspect, in fact hope that it won’t – I should at that point be in my bed at the Hotel du Lac, east of downtown Cotonou, sound asleep. Benin, I’ve been told, is a perfectly lovely country, with none of the violent political upheaval of Ivory Coast (to the West) or the craziness of Nigeria (to the East). But perhaps I ought to mention at this point that, in Benin, they speak French. And I don’t speak French. Which could be a problem.

February 18

I’m finding it hard to leave my little room at the hotel. Each day is sort of an ordeal in one way or another.

Yesterday, after several hours spent arguing (or rather, being yelled at) by the woman at the bank window who insisted that she would not cash my traveler’s check because I had written the date 02/17/06 instead of 17/02/06 and after making her very angry by saying in my fractured French, “Mais, Madame, n’est existe pas un mois (month) le dix-septieme!” (seventeenth), I finally took a scooter over to the Grande Marche again to get a “bush taxi” to Porto Novo, the capital. A bush taxi, in this case, means a broken-down, rattling Peugeot 404, whose driver, after much shouting and grabbing at me, insisted that I get in and pay him 4000 CFA (approx. 9 dollars) for the 45-minute ride. I discovered on the return that this was roughly ten times the going rate, but whatever.

Porto Novo is a much smaller town than Cotonou, situated on the farther shore of Lac Nokoue, and fringed by small homes that stand on stilts above the surface of the lagoon. The town still bears the traces of its colonial past - the buildings are older, crumbling in a more picturesque way as opposed to the molded-concrete featurelessness of Cotonou. When you arrive by taxi, the drivers again manhandle you and vie for who will take you to your local destination. I took a zemi to the Musee Ethnographique (you can translate) like the good little student I am. The museum, which was no more than a few rooms of dusty cases of artifacts, was explained to me by a very nice man who spoke the first English I’ve heard in many days. The cases had masks, costumes, fetish items. I explained to him that I worked in theatre in the US so the masks were particularly interesting to me. He was more interested in whether I had a wife and children. I said something like, “C’est une histoire plus grand”. Ha ha ha. On the way out I was greeted by about 50 schoolchildren in uniforms and I had the sneaking suspicion that what I had been so interested in was really a museum for children. Hmm.

After another tour of a 19th century tribal palace (and a very economically motivated guide) I returned in another crowded fume-spewing taxi to Cotonou.

One of the strangest and most dislocating things here is television. I sit in my room watching coverage of Dick Cheney’s shotgun story or the rising fortunes of some European company and wonder, is this what the Beninese see on TV? There is, to be fair, a Benin channel. But mostly it is reruns of “the Gilmore Girls” dubbed in French or (seriously) “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” with Arabic subtitles. The sneaky thought “no wonder people hate us” creeps into your head. Oddest of all was a BBC documentary all about the history of Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” and the musical “My Fair Lady” with various people offering their opinions on the genius of a play in which a poor street vendor is turned into a quasi-duchess. I sat there watching this thinking of the hundreds of “guttersnipes” (Shaw’s word) that I had walked past that afternoon with no Professor Higgins (myself included) to offer them “lots of chocolates for me to eat”. Loverly indeed.

February 19

Some parts you can’t make up. So it turns out that, little did I know, I have been in Benin in the middle of the International Beninese Theatre Festival (!!??!!); or FITHEB. I saw a poster one day and no one at the hotel knew anything about it and finally after asking around a woman at a bookstore directed me to the CCF (Centre Cuturel Francais) where I found out that last night’s performance, and this is possibly TOO weird, was RICHARD III, that’s right (Maintenant c’est l’hiver du nos discontent…. etc.), performed in French with an entirely West African cast (and one hambone of a white Swiss guy), outdoors, in modern-dress with a kind of “gangster” theme, accompanied by a live musician playing traditional instruments. I managed, basically through sign language, to get a ticket. Remarkable, in a way - and let’s not get TOO misty here - to see how a play travels through huge distances of space and time. I can’t say it was the absolute best theatre I have ever seen, but absolutely the most interesting theatre story. And now I can write off my trip on next year’s taxes.

This morning I took a bush taxi into Lome, Togo, and experienced a tiny bit of a hassle at the border. Luckily, two of my cabmates were from Ghana (where they speak English!!) and they helped me through the whole thing. I can’t see much to make me stick around in Togo, so tomorrow I’ll press on to Ghana. This whole experience continues to be a lesson for me in how not to be a complete coward. As the border guard was going through my luggage I felt the urge to panic (my default move in many unfamiliar situations) and checked it. Must remember that back home.

February 20

So this was the day my true nature emerged and the guilt kicked in.

After a truly rotten day in Togo… well, what happened is this: I had read about a place near Lome called the Marche du Feticheurs; in theory, a place that still provides the necessary ingredients for calling in protective spirits for animistic magic (in short, voodoo). After several confused looks from cab drivers I found one who picked up his two knowledgeable “friends” and we were shortly on our way to what turned out to be, basically a dusty, smelly dirt lot with wrecked cars and about ten tables of, yes, dried severed animal heads, specifically, monkey heads, cat heads, hyena heads, horse, buffalo, vulture… you name it, as well as other desiccated animal parts. The smell was not pleasant. The purpose of these things, I was told, is to be turned into powder that one ingests (!) in order to achieve certain effects.

This was all fine, and then I was led into a small shed to the side and introduced to a muscular man who was called the “son of the king”. I was already somewhat dubious and after some chanting and murmuring and questioning me as to what I wanted (answer being that I want my “new play to go well”) I was presented, with great ceremony, with a STICK, a ROCK, something hanging off of a piece of string, and another STICK and then I was informed that I now owed these gentlemen THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. Further, they said, the “magic” would be more powerful if I gave them more, and vice versa.

You know, there’s just something so dispiriting about people trying to rip you off. They could just come out and say, “can I have three hundred dollars”? You’d say no, but at least dignity would be preserved. As it was, much shouting and anger followed and I left having finally bought my way out for about thirty bucks. And to top it off, the cabbie and his friends had their own little scheme worked out for the trip back. I suppose you can’t blame people who live in poverty from assuming that I have a fortune to give away and comparatively, I suppose I do. But I returned to my pitiful little hotel truly soured on the nation of Togo and looked forward to Ghana.

So, after an extremely hot and sweaty four-hour bush taxi ride to Accra (imagine driving through bayou country in August with no AC) I arrived at another splendid hotel in Accra (which is a very nice city) to find no AC, no running water in the shower, a sink falling off the wall and dirt everywhere. I had finally had my fill and decamped straightaway… and here comes my horrible bourgeois guilt kicking in full force… to the Novotel Accra for the night. I’m almost too ashamed to report this, but as I sit here typing, there is a man playing a piano in the hotel lobby. I may have, with this, lost all credibility. But god, to have a working shower. I suppose this means I’ve given up, in a sense. Africa has defeated me, or at least my optimism that I didn’t have to throw my Western cash around to feel at home. I suppose I’m an addict to my comfortable sense of luxury. I… Oh, what the hell am I talking about? It’s only for the night and they kick me out tomorrow. I’ll suck it up and go to the cocktail bar.

February 21

So, things go from bad to... a different kind of bad.

Accra is huge and steaming hot and pretty overwhelming, the most overwhelming part being that, by virtue of it being a big city and by virtue of my sticking out like the sorest of thumbs, I have been subjected to a sort of relentless hustle today. (I should mention that I did leave the grotesque Novotel after one fabulous night; it felt a little like eating an entire cheescake in front of a starving child or something - the contrast between inside and outside was just a little too surreal.) Every street I walk down I meet a new “friend” such as the good friend I just met outside this filthy internet cafe who approached me with all sorts of laudatory comments for my country, how much he loved it, and so forth. I asked, “what country do you think I’m from?” “England?”, he asked. I corrected him and he assured me that his compliments applied equally to the US. In short order it became clear that there was a certain package that I, as his new friend, could carry to America for him…

And that’s about the tenth such encounter I’ve had today. The saddest of all… well, sad for what it says about me, actually, was the young man (and it’s always a young man) named Johnson whom I met yesterday. He trailed me for blocks and blocks, telling me about his gospel singing (Ghana is CRAZY with Christianity) and how he wants to continue his course of study in… two guesses. Well, of course, in each of these encounters I could just be a hardened, jaded New Yorker by way of Chicago, dulled to the potential beauty of a rare human encounter. Could be. But if so, why did I know so well where it was going? As I turned to the bio-dome, aka the Novotel, he took my hand and requested my email address to help him obtain his US Visa. What would you do? How many different internet scams arise from this part of the world. So, and believe me, I feel like shit about this, completely, but… well, I made up a fake email address. Maybe I just avoided a scam. Maybe. Or the other possibility is that I just deliberately fucked over a poor young man in Africa who was simply looking for a way out. And of course, I’m certain that’s exactly what I did. And as a PS, I ran into him again today and told me how much he looked forward to corresponding.

Tomorrow I’m paying an African man about $150 USD to take me on a private tour of some of the forts and castles from which my ancestors undoubtedly bought and sold some of his ancestors. Feel free to take note of the irony.

February 24

It’s my final day here. I made it back to Benin in one piece which, given the high-speed, foul smelling bush taxi ride that got me here, coupled with the customs officer at the Togolaise border bribing me for admittance to Benin… (”What do you have for me?” is how they put it, and I got through for about two dollars) plus having to pay the driver extra to stop the fistfight he was in with another driver; etc… well, it was a rough return.

Of course, who am I to complain, really, after spending the previous day touring the forts where slaves departed, in chains, for the West? It’s a little bit, uhh… unpersuasive for me to go on about the difficulty of MY travels, I guess. Visiting the forts of Cape Coast and Elmina is surreal. Not unlike my experience at a concentration camp outside Prague last May (do I know how to have fun on vacation, or what?) I find myself having a complicated response. First to the fact that, at least during my visit, the white visitors seem to outnumber the black. What have we all come to see? And also to the strange behaviour of pulling out my camera to take pictures of the fantastically decrepit colonial architecture - in the face of overwhelming historical significance my response is still that of the prancing aesthete. While there you are led through the structures in a guided tour that culminates, dramatically, with your passage through the “door of no return” through which slaves boarded European ships. But on the other side, when you do pass through, impoverished locals are waiting to sell you hand-made trinkets, and below the walls, kids and fishermen use the area as a free public toilet. (I watched as one young man dropped his pants and unloaded onto the rocks.) The whiplash of sensations is too fast; trying at once to be at one with the tragedy of history and not to recoil at the smell.

Look, I know what a shitty person I sound like by even raising these questions. But that, to me, IS the nagging question: I can’t figure out how NOT to be myself at these moments. Like the moment while traveling back to Accra when a man offered to sell us what they call a “grasscutter” (a two-foot long BUSH RAT, fresh or, if you prefer, smoked) for my dinner. Now of course, I have friends who would, with great sophistication, place their fingertips together and say to me “Well, have you ever TRIED bush rat?” And it must be lovely to have that degree of openness to experience; to not cling to the same dreary particulars of your life when the opportunity for change arises. There are all sorts of platitudes that would apply and you know, god help me, maybe bush rat is absolutely delicious. I feel fairly certain, though, that I will not be finding out. (Although I did try the local speciality known as kenkey - congealed fermented corn meal and very nearly threw up.) So what the hell is my problem? Is it fear? Sure. I’d accept that. Is it insufficient acceptance for the other? Yes, guilty of that as well, and I wish I wasn’t like this sometimes, but I’m now forty-five years old and the signs don’t seem to point in the direction of my changing.

So. Tonight, back on a plane. In-flight movies. Headphones. Back to the life I know. No bush rat on the menu. And by tomorrow back in my own little bed. Does the pleasure I will take in my comfortable routine make me smug? Am I limited? Yes, I think I am, and closed-off to experience. I wasn’t redeemed by my experience. I haven’t been transformed. And as a STORY, that is deeply unsatisfying. We like stories to conclude with the rebirth of the protagonist (It’s a Wonderful Life!). But what do you do when you are the protagonist of your own story and you can’t seem to bring yourself to a satisfying conclusion? What if, at the end of Dickens‘ “A Christmas Carol” Scrooge said, “Ahhh screw it, I don’t WANT to change”? Would you take your kids to see it? I don’t know. All I know is I’m ready to go home.

February 26

Back home. Nasty intestinal distress from some African pathogen, but more or less safe and sound.

In May we begin rehearsal for “The Unmentionables”, the play which motivated my undertaking this trip. And as I anticipate the start of that process I’d of course like to believe that I didn’t go all the way there and back for nothing. It’s all still a bit of a blurry fever dream and yet as I’ve spoken to friends in the last twenty-four hours I feel myself rapidly trying to anecdotalize the experience, to fashion amusing little vignettes that I can share with people - the verbal equivalent of snapshots - but the fact is that the experience truly unnerved and disoriented me, and that feels difficult to share. I don’t want that to be the story of my trip.

A few days ago, standing on the ramparts at Cape Coast castle, as I held my digital camera in place of my ancestors’ whip, and looked down on the locals below, and the lives that they lead, so seemingly alien to my own, I had a horrible feeling come over me. The feeling was contempt. And momentarily, I felt better, as I stood there - afraid thousands of miles from the life I know - feeling this contempt for people because they happen to use the beach as a toilet. How disgusting, I thought, and I felt better, safer, because the contempt allowed me to cling more tightly to my own narrow life as I condemned theirs. Part of what “The Unmentionables” is about is how we behave in a crisis, and why. There are some people, and we all know them, who you’d love to have around in a crisis; self-assured people, the people who always seem to know exactly what to do. But I’m not one of those people. I’m an actor, so I like to give the impression that I am, but internally I churn with self-doubt. I secretly curse and vilify the people who have caused me distress, who have robbed me of control. And luckily the worst I encountered on my trip was temporary confusion and the occasional sneers of the locals. Thank god nothing truly dreadful happened. Because if it had, I don’t like to imagine the kind of person I’d become or what I’d be capable of. Actually, I have imagined it, and the result was the writing of “The Unmentionables”. I’m interested in what kind of people we become when panic (especially the panic of a political and cultural crisis) arises. In recent years I feel like I’ve seen some displays of the worst that humans can do to each other. Okay, I know, I know… we go to the theater for a good time, not to flagellate ourselves. But I happen to be a pessimist. It’s my nature. I focus on what is UN-heroic and IG-noble in myself and am naturally suspicious of optimists and those who talk about the great things that we Americans are capable of. I don’t feel like I’ve earned the right to be an optimist - it’s a luxury I can’t afford. Pessimism doesn’t mean defeatism. It just means looking realistically at what we DO, instead of what we like to SAY we do. And the nice part is, we pessimists are rarely disappointed. Sometimes we’re even pleasantly surprised.

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