Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2024
How, this chapter asks, does twentieth- and twenty-first-century Haitian theater shed new light on Haitian history and ask burning questions of the nation’s present? Turning to drama has enabled many Haitian dramatists to reach out to wider audiences including illiterate or semi-literate people, as they straddle the divide between oral and written, as well as French and Creole. Many of the dramas explored here retell Haitian origin tales of dismemberment and reassembly. I identify a tradition and dynamics of adapting, remaking, reworking, and remixing that span much Haitian theater. Haitian drama often not only remakes the original material itself but also changes ways of seeing the world from a Haitian point of view. Haitian dramatists’ approaches to translation, adaptation, remaking, and remixing sometimes change the original language, or shift the political and cultural contexts to a Haitian worldview. These acts of rasanblaj often reflect on Haitian history, culture, and current events through a process of constant remaking and call-and-response collaborative interaction. Haitian drama portrays the Haitian people as the main actors and agents in their own stories.
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