What do you do when your native language is belittled? When it’s claimed that your native language isn’t a language at all. That poetry written in that language can’t produce a single decent poem, let alone a story. Not to mention the imagination on display in the theater through the works of William Shakespeare. For Papa Koenders, the challenge is to prove the opposite—that feelings of love, hate, and victory are universal, and that Sranantongo also embodies them.
The role of Papa Koenders is played by Sergio IJssel. He is known to a wide audience for his role in the popular, long-running TV series *Flikken Maastricht*, among other things. For him, the theater remains the place where he feels most at home: direct contact with the audience. The energy of the moment brings his character to life, as it were. And so, Papa Koenders as well.
Who was Papa Koenders?
Julius George Arnold Koenders (Paramaribo, March 1, 1886 – November 17, 1957) was a Sranantongo activist. Born the grandson of enslaved people, he became a schoolteacher. His white and light-skinned colleagues looked down on him. To them, he was a barefoot man, a teacher who wasn’t quite qualified to stand in front of a class. But there he stood. And how! Education in Suriname would and must be conducted in his mother tongue, the lingua franca of Suriname—starting all the way back in elementary school.
That was his ideal, and he began to give it substance by launching the monthly magazine *Foetoe-Boi*. Loosely translated, “errand boy.” It was a deliberate choice. Papa Koenders wanted to be the errand boy for his mother tongue. For him, it was the only way for Creole children to understand where they came from and why they were relegated to an undervalued position in colonial Suriname.
It is a Dutch-language performance in which Sranantongo enhances the play with translations included in the spoken dialogue.
The director and playwright of this production is Stuart Rahan. Originally a journalist, he wrote as a correspondent for the Surinamese daily newspaper *de Ware Tijd*. Later , he wrote the novel *Mama, mama, kijk buurvrouw* about Aunt Es, the well-known (and beloved) character portrayed by Jörgen Raymann. Driven by his passion as an activist for Sranantongo, the lingua franca of Suriname, he pays tribute to Julius George Arnold Koenders with this theater production.
Running time: 75 minutes