peter brook
I knew Colin Turnbull well since he was 18. He was a man of great purity allied to a fine intelligence and was one of the first to bring into anthropology qualities that up till then were considered unscientific. He could not believe that a cold detachment gave more truth to an observation than compassion. Until he visited them in the '60s, the IK were completely unknown. He discovered a people who were the victims of a ruthless political decision that took away from them the land that had provided them their food. Colin describes vividly the shock of entering a community that had to adjust to living on the fringe of complete starvation. This led to unthinkable ways of life, alien to their nature which resulted from some remote bureaucrat's stroke of a pen. This in turn led to behaviours and actions unthinkable in other conditions, which came from inhuman pressure, not from any inhumanity in the IK themselves. Colin recorded this objectively and in detail in his book.When with our International Centre in Paris we decided in 1974 to make a play of The Mountain People which we called The IK, the actors discovered the deep humanity of each of the characters Colin Turnbull's described. Otherwise, no theatre piece could have come to life. Together, we lived painfully the range of unexpected actions and at the same time found a depth of religious feeling, all of which Colin's material provided.When Colin saw the play he was deeply moved, because he at once recognised the reality of the people to whom he had been so close. 'The IK' played in our theatre the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, then in London and in many cities in the US; Everywhere, the audiences were similarly touched and concerned, seeing before their eyes an image of what could happen to us all as our world and its decline.So on behalf of the cast of the IK: Malick Bowens, Miriam Goldschmidt, Andreas Katsulas, Bruce Myers, Natasha Parry, Yoshi Oida, and Lou Zeldis, this statement is to correct the fundamental misunderstanding of Turnbull's work contained in the new film 'Ikland'. Turnbull is presented as an inhuman observer, seeing only evil in the IK and in this way slandering an African people. This a tragic mistake, due no doubt to the long time that separated the film makers from the period of Turnbull's writings. This new film is a well-made, beautifully photographed account of a courageous journey to rediscover the IK today. I am sure that had Colin Turnbull been alive, he would have welcomed this initiative. It holds out a hand to a people he loved so dearly.
