The air smelled of dust and dreams as I stepped into the gritty streets of Osu, in Accra. The Customs officers at the Aflao border wore bright smiles under the scorching heat, as if to contour the eccentric charisma that the city possesses.
The arts market brimmed with tourists across West Africa, United States and Europe, most of whom were in town for one festival, conference or holiday. The heart of accra, with its teeming youth and spicy accents, beats for adventure. And just beneath that pulse, it also mourns.
Whether the sorrow stemmed from the country’s staggering governance, or it tributes the demise of such cosmopolitanism across the entire continent, there is something sorrowful that lurks beneath the average Ghanaian smile.
A mien that’s commonly understood by many Africans. This shared misery is the spirit behind the closing play at the just-concluded Alliance Francais D’Accra Performing Arts Festival titled, ‘There Is Rice At Home’.
Written by Inyang Edoho and Joewackle Kusi, the experimental stage play featured four main casts Kaptoro, his best friend Obasi, his ex-girlfriend Aunty Philo, and Death, personified as a young black woman. For the writing duo, the play satirises anti-progressive laws, economic strife, and it beams its lens into the multifaceted nature of grief. Even more personally, it’s inspired by personal losses by the authors – Joewackle’s brother and Inyang’s close friend.
The entire stage play follows the unexpected demise of Obasi, a big blow to Kaptoro, who’d previously borne the cost of being a slavishly obedient, disorganized and self-isolating police officer in his relationship with Obasi. It masterfully employs both human and ideological casts, personifying death as a self-righteous efficient worker, and it investigates our role as humans in courting it and the ultimate mystery behind its schedules. It also cleverly explores off-stage characters, especially Aunty Philo, who we only hear over the phone throughout the play.
Set completely in Kaptoro’s apartment, a middle-class self condominium apartment, adorned with portraits of his ancestry, the play glides over a slow-burn plot that’s scarily piloted by talking heads.
More than two-thirds of the plot is driven with dialogue, but the technique finds life in the stellar interpretation by the cast. A lot of flashbacks, explainers, and foreshadowing pushes the levers throughout each scene. It’s a continuous play, with scenes that embellish poetry with haunting satires, evoking catharsis all along the ride.
Still in the opening scenes, before Obasi’s death is revealed, he confronts Kaptoro on his ridiculous sting operation that led to the arrest of peaceful public protesters.
“Obasi: You dressed up and put perfume on to arrest protesters! If there was any day to call in sick, this period would be perfect.
“Do you think the school was right to call the police in during a peaceful school protest in 2013? Do you think those two boys from engineering deserved to die?”
Kaptoro’s reply delivered the nail on the head on why police ineptitude is a reflection of a broader string of governance gaps that also weighs every conscientious cop down.
“It was because I had refused to misfile a report as directed by my superior…They kept me locked in there for 48 hours,” he lamented. It revealed the layers between police subordination and the misuse of power by state agents. In every case, the innocent ones suffer the brunt.
Production-wise, Joewackle’s cocktail of dance performances, exaggerated expressions, sombre spotlights and sound design ignited the play’s theatrical spark. Yet, they floated like supple cake icing on the brilliant dialogue between Kaptoro and Death.
Their dialogue held the play’s most intense conflicts, suspense, and dramatic intensity. In one instance, death asks for tea, then proceeds to pour herself a cup. Kaptoro is also benevolent to her, although his horror hovered around his face upon discovering that he was not dreaming. However, it is the curiosity at which he engages her that piques the drama in the play, seeping deeper into underexplored human emotions and perspectives around grief.
Sometimes, people just want to understand the handworkings of the cosmos. Most times, they cannot. Yet, like Kaptoro, it is the audacity to try that brings in the much needed closure. The effervescent relief of acceptance in one’s mortal limits.
In one of their conversations, Death simplifies a rather obvious-yet-fleeting understanding. A lot of humans fasttrack their deaths. “Death: Poverty makes you forget your mortality…You make decisions like fetching petrol out of a fallen tanker,” she tells Kaptoro. “You accuse me of having cold hands, as if I show up unannounced, uninvited!”
The play also strings the reality of strife tightly in explaining why the luxury of morality might be missing among the poor, even if it is the only thing that saves them. Their conversation also partly indicts the government: “Maybe you are the monsters, you who drive people towards me with your actions and willful ignorance.”
It is also interesting to see how Death’s character expressed her paradoxical drive behind her work. On one hand, collecting souls has become “a logistical nightmare!”, while on the other hand, she is “nothing if not efficient.” She ultimately mocks the human-induced fatalities, knocking their recklessness as an abuse of life. “I’ve never enjoyed taking people who have options, people who can be here longer… yet I do not get to choose.”
Kaptoro eventually finds relief when he realizes that his late friend’s misery on a sick bed paled in comparison to his grief of his permanent absence, that grief visits with varying momentums, and one is better off clinging to the light in the tunnels.
“If he was in so much pain, and you know that he’s going to a better place, why do you mourn this much? Should he be back in the hospital…just so you can be happy that he’s still here to be a friend to you?,” Death tells him.
At the end, Kaptoro finally completes the tribute draft that he had avoided in functional freeze mode for weeks, the same tribute that centered his entire dialogue with Aunty Philo, but at the end he spills hot coffee on his laptop, losing the file.
The cliff-hanging tragicomedy reconstructs the idea of comedy, or relief, as some happily ever afters, especially when grief is concerned. Often, the resolution is found in enlightenment, beyond the cold silent moments that are drought with meaning, beyond the stiff anger that drives one restless, in the quiet observance of our frail mortality.
Overall, “There Is Rice At Home” challenges the idea of existence, the plot of all relationships, reminding us of the need to cherish the present and ditch the anxiety in hoping for its return when those who matter are absent from our lives in the future.
As an aside, while the play’s brilliant plot flatters the audience, some lengthy dialogues sometimes appear as missing something, as if it yearns for an experimental sketch interludes that deepens the imagery. Or anything else in the director’s playbook.
Nonetheless, its powerful climax, overall comforting dialogue, and cathartic stage interpretations propel the play as a laudable literary and theatrical classic.
