Last month I saw Akram Kahn’s Xenos, a solo dance piece at Sadler’s Wells Theatre which brilliantly highlighted the forgotten soldiers from the Indian sub-continent who fought in the First World War. That was co-commissioned and co-produced by 14-18 NOW, who this month co-commission and co-produce two pieces about the forgotten role of Africans in that war.
The first, The Head & The Load, was a performance art piece from William Kentridge in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. The stage, screen, and indeed the audience, ran the full length of the flat part of the space. Collages and film footage were projected onto the screen, with extraordinary silhouettes and shadows created by the people moving on stage, so big no-one could see it all without moving their head. On stage there were actors and dancers playing scenes, music from bands and singers, large objects (some containing sets) moving across it. It tells the story of the Africans who were porters and carriers in WWI. I can’t say I understood where every detail fitted the theme – I’m not sure you are meant to, as it’s more an intuitive piece than a literal one – but it was a captivating and moving visual and aural spectacle.
At NST City Southampton, South Africa’s Isango Ensemble, one of my favourite international companies (this is the eighth show I’ve seen), told the story of the ship SS Mendi, which sank in the English Channel at the end of a long voyage from Cape Town, taking African men conscripted to help in the trenches. A simple, sharply raked wooden platform represented the deck of the ship and all other locations. We see the men recruited by a white military officer before they set sail. On board, there are deaths by disease & suicide, intertribal conflict and maltreatment, before the ship is in collision with a much bigger one so close to the end of their voyage. It concludes by examining why the other ship didn’t stop to help, resulting in more than six hundred deaths. As always with Isango, singing and percussion thrillingly animate the storytelling, and the show was deeply moving.
These were two more enthralling memorials to forgotten participants in World War I, in a truly wonderful series of events by this 14-18 NOW initiative, which has highlighted and served this centenary so well.
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