Hopes and Memories Project

 

" The Last Anniversary " is tells the story of the adventures of an African traveler stuck in an airport upon arrival in Europe. Caught in the administrative and judicial system, arrested and questioned, he remembers his ancestors and the price they had to pay for liberty. Inspired by the opera “The Barrier” by Langston Hughes and Jan Meyerowitz, this creation combines jazz and African influences with the original opera and explores the issue of fundamental human rights, the history of migration and of discrimination and racial profiling. It is also an invitation into the inner journey that shows the complexity of the individual and collective historical trajectory, which in many cases is the opposite of what the popular media and mainstream policy would have us believe.

The operatic sections sometimes combined with dance-drama take place at night as part of the prisoner's emotional and dreamstate memory while during the daytime we see the play unfold during which time we are exposed to the trials and tribulations of the 'suspended traveller' as he encounters his interrogators, the NGO do-gooders trying to assist, the lawyer, the journo working on an expose, and his intrepid friend trying to save him. 

 

The work of Meyerowitz and Hughes relates the tragic story of a rather singular « family » in the cotton-growing South of the United States where black people are confined to inferior jobs (as agricultural labourers for example) and where the everyday life of individuals is governed by the colour of their skin, according to a racist and unjust social organization. Against this dark background, Colonel Norwood, a white man of about sixty, shares his life, outside matrimony, with his black housekeeper Cora, with whom he has had 3 half-caste children he has wished to bring up in a way worthy of the richest white people in the area. Of these children, the most turbulent and rebellious, resembling the Colonel himself, is Robert, so-called Bert, traumatised since his father hit him as a child. He multiplies acts of provocation by showing himself in town, in places reserved for whites, as the son of Colonel Norwood, refusing to go round to the back entrance reserved for « Niggers » and entering by the main central door like all white visitors. Norwood cannot accept his behaviour, summons him, threatens him with a firearm, but Bert will have none of it, reacts violently, and after a last quarrel kills his father. From then on a manhunt begins and village hatred is unleashed. The villagers, under the leadership of the sheriff and local dignitaries, pursue Bert into the marshes, where he will doubtless be caught, while his mother Cora, halfway between despair and madness, revisits, in fantastic visions, her past thirty years of life with Colonel Norwood, whose body now lies lifeless. Bert finally comes back to his mother, having escaped the pack of pursuers for a while. With just time for a goodbye, Cora, who has long since understood the destiny awaiting her son, invites him to go and lie down in his room with the Colonel’s gun as a final means of escape : there remains a single bullet to « send him to sleep », to escape from the torture and humiliation of a shameful death, without the slightest hope of justifying his parricide.