Roselle Thompson
This unique Caribbean play presents an all-embracing Caribbean experience. Be prepared to be in awe by the famed folkloric icon Anancy, (who is presented as a female), together with other cultural cohorts; Papa Bois, the silk cotton tree, African gods, Kumina rituals, Kalinda dances, transplanting of African culture in the Caribbean, magical powers, plantation life, rebellion, and conquest. The Play’s ambitious timeline embodies raided African children, their Transatlantic crossing, plantation life and survival of traditions, are presented in epic proportions. It stars Gang-Gang Sarah, an African combatant warrior slave, whose prowess and skills in African traditional art and medicine, and dynamism as a leader, is both attractive and threatening to those around her. Hailing from Africa, legend says Gang-Gang Sarah had magical powers that enabled her to fly from Africa to the Caribbean, to look after slaves on Caribbean plantations there. However, in this play Gang-Gang Sarah, is presented as a Caribbean slave woman warrior, with skills that link her prowess as a skilled combatant, Doula, folk herbalist, and cultural leader, to her uniqueness as an individual, who challenges her slave master, with sometimes devastating consequences. Provocative in content and style, this play acquaints readers with a history of the making of the Caribbean, and the story of Anancy in the Caribbean. Anancy’s story is encapsulated in the main narrative, forming the mise-en-abime, with signifiers within the text that lead to other narratives. Additionally, it presents African complicity in the slave trade, which enabled slave capture and trading, the development and expansion of the Sugar Plantation in the Caribbean and the influence, growth and development of African religious and spiritual beliefs in the Caribbean. A major theme highlighted is the politics of male dis-empowerment and the matrifocal family, as well as the role of transplantation, acculturation and synthesism of African cultures in the Caribbean. Ultimately, given present reflection in 2020, on the currency of re-assessing the values of past and present cultural assets in the 21st century, especially with the global outpouring of mass unity, (ignited by George Floyd’s death in the USA), against actions that are directly linked to past atrocities, e.g. slavery, that continue to have repercussions in our world today. The writer calls for an reassessment of Gang-Gang’s story, in the hope that it would ignite debates on the importance of this legendary figure. The writer suggests that Gang-Gang Sarah has been relegated to a myth, which debunked her legendary status and cultural importance and instead branded her a witch. Therefore, the suggestion is that there should be a re-evaluation of the trope from 'witch' to 'warrior,' since perspectives on Gang-Gang’s African religious and cultural significance in the Caribbean environment at that time, was based on misconceptions by the dominant Christian ideology at that time. 3
