Theatre Review: Colleen Wagner’s Play The Monument Is White Supremacist Filth!!!
Last night, my friend Edward and I watched Colleen Wagner’s Governor General award-winning play The monument at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. The Monument is Wagner’s pathetic attempt to illustrate the genocide of Rwanda’s civil war was a crime against humanity. There was no discussion in The Monument about the internal conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi people.
The Monument focused only on the issue of gender which is just a disservice because Wagner ignores the complexity of Rwanda’s civil war. A synopsis of this racist play is, all African men are rapists and all African women are victims of male rape.
The first thing Edward and I noticed was the paucity of black people in the audience. We counted less than ten black people in the entire audience. The audience was mostly older, middle to upper class, uppity white folks. Wagner is white, and The Monument was clearly made for a rich white audience and not black people. I wish I could get the ninety minutes of my life back after watching this racist and sexist play!
Although The Monument has a predominately black cast, the play is still engendered through a white supremacist lens. Black people are depicted as “the other” even though all the actors in The Monument are black. It is obvious Colleen Wagner is a racist, this white woman clearly knows nothing about African people.
In the city of Toronto, there is a real lack of diversity in the theatre scene and hardly any plays made with black actors. However, I notice that most of the plays in Toronto produced about black people exist in stereotypical racist categories. For instance, The Monument engenders black people as wild savages, sexual beasts, and sub-human beings that have no humanity or humility.
I am offended by the depictions of the black male and female sexuality in The Monument. The protagonists the soldier Stetko and the female prison guard Mejra are just cardboard stereotypes of African people. I watched two black actors scream and shout at each other for ninety minutes! There was no levity to the play. The Monument was too intense and an assault to my ears! The constant yelling just annoyed me I wanted to walk out of the theatre.
Colleen Wagner was trying to illustrate to the audience that the civil war in Rwanda destroyed lives. Wagner did a terrible job of illustrating to the audience the trauma of the Rwanda civil war. I do not like the construction of black man and black womanhood in the play. The Monument had no nuance, no class, and no feeling except anger.
The second thing I hated about The Monument is, the misandry. Yes, I know during times of war rape is used as a weapon against women. However, African men were also victims of the Rwanda’s civil war. In Colleen Wagner’s racist mind black men cannot be victims but oppressors.
Colleen Wagner is trying to promotes racist and sexist stereotypes about black people. Black women are constructed as just passive victims that have no agency. The black male character Stetko was just a young black solider with an insatiable sex drive.
I guess I did not get the memo that young African men only think about sex all the time! The scatological language was offensive and deleterious! Colleen Wagner is a racist and clearly has an anti black male agenda. In Colleen Wagner’s white racist mind, young African males are just sexual beasts that just rape, beat, and murder black women.
It is ludicrous for Wagner to suggest that Rwanda’s civil war just emerged because of male violence against women. Wagner ignores the history of the European colonizers and just wants to blame black men for Rwanda’s genocide.
Of course, Wagner ignores the history of colonialism and the role of the Belgian government. Rwanda’s genocide was ignored by the United Nations and the international community until it was too late.
Wagner promotes the racist and sexist image that all black men in Rwanda just raped and murdered black women during the civil war. Wagner does not discuss the brutality that young African men experienced during the civil war in Rwanda. The Monument clearly has a gender imbalance and is anti black male! Young African men died during Rwanda’s civil war but the murdering and killing of black males is not Wagner’s concern. Wagner’s hatred for African men demonstrates she is a bigot.
Next, the play was performed in an African language and four screens with subtitles were in the background. I felt the screens were too confusing to follow and robbed the play of its power. Finally, Edward and I kept on looking at our watches because we just wanted the play to end. The actors Jean Paul Uwayezu and Jacqueline Umubyeyi over acted. The screaming and the shouting was just stupid because it did not convey feeling and emotion. Wagner’s play has a lot of dialogue but no substance. In a play, it is very important for a playwright to not just “tell” the audience something, but also “show”.
Finally, the African country Rwanda was depicted as existing in an anterior time. Rwanda is constructed as pre modern and sub-human. I kept on wondering to myself, is this play based on the 1990s or during slavery?
The African feminist Anne McClintock’s book Imperial Leather discusses white supremacy. McClintock states that, black bodies are constantly under surveillance by white people. According to McClintock, she says panoptical time is utilized to regulate black people. Panoptical time means the white person is hovering above the black people and watching us through a white gaze.
Meanwhile, Canadian feminist Julia Emberley’s book Defamiliarizing The Aboriginal states that, spectral violence is reiterated by white people to construct blacks as inferior. The term spectral violence means the spectator, actually seeing the images are conditioned to believing it is the truth. During colonialism, the Europeans utilized images to transmit the white supremacist messages that people of colour are subordinate to white folks. The Monument is a form of spectral violence because the violence is in the racist images that black people have not reached modernity.
The costumes in The Monument suggested to me the play was just a slave drama and not a contemporary play. Why are Stetko and Merja dressed in rags? Collen Wagner’s play won a Governor General award because this is a white Canadian theatre award. The Monument is not a play I can endorse because of the racism and sexism against black people. I would not recommend The Monument to anyone unless you want to see two black actors screaming at each other for ninety minutes.
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