Daniel Jelani Ellis and Makambe K. Simamba in The First Stone.Cylla von Tiedemann/Buddies in Bad Times
- Title: The First Stone
- Written by: Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
- Director: Yvette Nolan
- Actors: Daniel Jelani Ellis, Makambe K. Simamba, Dorothy A. Atabong
- Company: New Harlem Productions and Great Canadian Theatre Company
- Venue: Buddies in Bad Times; then Great Canadian Theatre Company
- Year: To Oct. 16, 2022 in Toronto; then April 11 to 23, 2023 in Ottawa
Forgiveness is not necessarily a trending virtue at the moment, at least in certain parts of the online world where rush to judgment is common and apology frequently rejected.
So it was quite moving to go to the theatre and find an argument for forgiving even the most unforgivable in an ambitious new production that opened in Toronto on Thursday night.
The First Stone, a long-in-development family epic by the playwright Donna-Michelle St. Bernard now on at Buddies in Bad Times, is a story that centres on a very difficult subject: child soldiers.
In an Acholi village in Uganda, Girl (Makambe K. Simamba) and Boy (Daniel Jelani Ellis) – exact ages unspecified – are living in relative happiness with their mom (Dorothy A. Atabong) and her new baby at the start of the play.
Father is away fighting some sort of war – but his children don’t seem particularly troubled by this, recalling details of his uniform and gun with pride.
Boy is mostly caught up by a budding crush – which Girl, who is starting to imagine a future as a mother for herself, clues into and starts teasing him about. “Why are you always watching me?” says Boy. “Are you trying to put God out of a job?”
It doesn’t take long, however, for the innocent atmosphere of The First Stone to disappear and the gentle, playful mise-en-scène of director Yvette Nolan’s production (much of Jackie Chau’s set is drawn on the stage by actors with chalk like hopscotch squares) to turn nightmarish.
Younger and younger villagers are disappearing – and a character known as Grandpa (Michael-Lamont Lytle), seen lurking near Girl and Boy’s house, seems to be responsible.
A militia is abducting children and, by submitting them to atrocities, is aiming to turn to them into the committers of atrocities.
Grandpa’s explanations that he is following the command of God and somehow protecting locals by brutalizing the most vulnerable among them are paradoxical and perverse. He is a detestable figure much like the infamous Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Indeed, St Bernard, who began work on this play in 2005, visited the village of Gulu, Uganda, as part of her research, where much of Kony’s devastation was wrought and where, as she puts it in a playwright’s note, she was “gifted” stories from the local Acholi people.
The First Stone shows the influence of African and diaspora theatre and storytelling in aspects such as narration by an Ancestor (Tsholo Khalema), who is racked by guilt for having thrown “the rock that started it all” ages ago, and a six-person chorus choreographed by Indrit Kasapi, which always keeps the wide and deep stage at Buddies filled.
St. Bernard also employs techniques associated with Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre – such as projected descriptions of scenes before they happen, and nameless characters. These, as they are supposed to, put a distance between the audience and the story that allows for a more intellectual engagement with what is happening – the welcome side effect being the prevention of the evil depicted and discussed from becoming too emotionally overwhelming.
(Brecht has been found useful in writing about atrocities connected to civil conflict in an African country before: Ruined, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about women and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was initially inspired by Mother Courage and Her Children.)
Uche Ama gives the play’s most powerful performance as Auntie.Cylla von Tiedemann/Buddies in Bad Times
What distinguishes The First Stone – which is part of St. Bernard’s project called 54ology, aiming a look at each country in Africa through a piece of performance – is where its story starts and where it ends. It carries on through and past the worst, essentially asking: Can rape, murder and torture be just a chapter in a life for victims and perpetrators alike?
“What you have done is not all that you are,” Boy ultimately says – and the play invites us to consider, if we are willing to believe this when it comes child soldiers, we can also believe it when it comes to someone like Grandpa. Should we really not cast stones, as per the Bible verse referenced in the title, even at a monster?
Uche Ama gives the play’s most powerful performance as Auntie – a slippery, nuanced character who acts as a kind of go-between with villagers and Grandpa, and is the one who puts forward the idea of forgiveness as survival technique.
There is an overall unevenness to the acting, however, with some performers sinking deeply into their characters (Atabong and Simamba are two other standouts) and others only floating on the surface.
I, ultimately, wondered how much the distance I felt between myself and what was happening in The First Stone was purposeful, how much was unintentional, and how much of it was my own need to remain aloof to protect myself as a parent unwilling to go there on a day where I’d already had to stay off social media because of a senseless massacre of innocents elsewhere.