Scene 3
A magician and his slave
Slavery and hatred
“You didn't teach me a thingl Except to jabber in your own language so that I could understand your orders: chop the wood, wash the dishes, fish for food, plant vegetables, all because you're Loo lazy to do it yourself. And as for your learning, did you ever impart any of that to me? No, you took care not to. All your science you keep for yourself alone, shut up in those big books.” (Césaire,1969, translated by Millar, 1991)
The line above inspired me and helped me to devise this scene. A poet, author and politician from Martinique Aimé Césaire wrote a post-colonialism adaptation of The Temþest for a Black Theater. Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. These characters are the focus of the play as Césaire foregrounds issues of race, power, and decolonization. My version of Prospero is slightly generous than Prospero in A Tempest. As the same as Bill Gates’ slogan “computer for everyone”, Prospero released magic tools and taught language of spirits so that everyone can use spirits and have more convenient and creative lives like magicians. But the reality is that his brother and King Alonso stolen his most advanced magic technology from him due to making fortune by this and people like Caliban use magic in the undesireble way. Prospero tries to control them by spirits’ surveillance, however those people are often beyond his control. And what is worse, his strict surveillance and criticism against Caliban grows Caliban’s hostility to Prospero.
Actually we can see this situation between colonizer and colonized figure. Such as Britain, Spain, France and Japan, countries notoriously known as colonizers might be not hopelessly vicious and selfish. For example, The empire of Japan (Japan’s old name) had vision and mission to develop the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, changing East Asia richer and stronger. However what they actually did was exploitation, enslavement and building up cultural hegemony, which lead current Korean movement of Anti-Japanese.
Keywords
Challenge
As Césaire did, I tried to retell the story of Caliban by my own language.
Because of my limited English ability, I cannot devise script for characters like Prospero, Miranda, and Ferdinand. However Caliban is not a native speaker of their language. It must be natural that I create Caliban's line.
Honestly, I felt sense of embarrassment when I projected my English lines as Caliban in front of English spearkers, but I believe that feeling is one of colonised figure's feelings, who is forced to speak dominant language instead of own language.
Caliban brings firewood to Prospero in the storm. Caliban is fed up with spirits passing Prospero’s request to Caliban 24 7 and complains about that to Prospero. But Prospero believes that Caliban is the one to appreciate him because he gave Caliban magical devices and taught how to communicate with spirits in magical devices, such as MagBook. Prospero criticizes Caliban of his wrong method for using magical devices, for instance, watching Miranda’s mirage on MagBook, neglecting Prospero’s orders, dropping mobile magic mirrors often and breaking its screen etc,. Prospero calls Caliban as “savage” “Hag-born monster”. Spirits following Prospero repeat his words around Caliban and monitor him to prevent his mischievous behavior.