the sankofa trilogy: Transcript from a post-show conversation with d’bi young

d’bi young, creator of the sankofa trilogy
Erin Brubacher, Director of Education and Outreach for Tarragon
Kristen Kitcher, trilogy production manager
Tarragon Audience Members

Share

d’bi: So, welcome to our Talk Back. Don’t be shy. There are no questions off-limits. This is a crucial part of the process because it’s a part of the process where we get to dialogue around how the play is actually functioning, how it’s working, and things of that nature. It’s a magical process this storytelling thing you know? It’s like what you feel is what I feel, is what you feel, is what I feel, so there’s a constant flow of energy that is being reciprocated throughout the process. And I think for me that happens particularly when there’s no division, when there’s no fourth wall so when we decide that that’s not there then that energy can flow more easily so that it doesn’t become unidirectional draining of energy but rather a regenerative process.

Audience 1: You call it storytelling, are you telling your own story?

d’bi: The process that I use is called bio myth that borrows from many other processes and I‘m sort of trying to hone and understand what it is that I do. But it’s biographical meaning it’s based on some of my lived experience, the lived experience of my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and then people who I’ve encountered, and my ancestors, and then it’s also mythologized in that a lot of that information is poetically licensed with lots of changes, and then I borrowed from all that I experience in Toronto. The story is rooted in Jamaica but I’m a hybrid. I was born in Jamaica, raised in Jamaica for fifteen years. And then I’ve been here now for eighteen years so what I create comes from this mixed experience you know? So it’s bio but I can’t quite say it’s biographical, it’s like bio-mythographical.

Audience 2: What kind of experience do you need to have internally, in order to make your decisions about what you want to utilize of the material?

d’bi: Usually it’s the things that I’m most challenged by; I write about things that most make me afraid. So that’s a lot of what I’ve learned from my mentors here in Toronto, my mentors in Jamaica, and I’ve had the privilege to continually being mentored by a really eclectic and wide community. Two of my mentors are sitting here right now Djanet Sears and Rick Knowles. I have the privilege having many, many, many elders and colleagues participate in helping me to shape the arts. So mostly I speak about what I’m challenged by and intern, challenge the community, and that’s really the deciding factor. I work, most recently with eight principles; self-knowledge, orality, rhythm, political content and context, language, urgency, sacredness, and integrity. I’m coming out of a community and when I say community, I’m really talking about that mixture of communities that I that I just mentioned. They place art at the center of social change, I’m a product of conditioning; that’s what I’ve always done, and that’s what I’ll always do. Art is there to help us to be able to speak better with and to each other. So all the art that I make is situated in that nucleus, in that caldron, in that circle, and it’s a constant process of experimenting with how can I do that better and how can I do that more effectively and efficiently so that we both walk out of here feeling like we’ve had a magical experience and also an experience that changes us internally.

Audience 3: Last year I was at the reading week performance, I should say I participated because you were right in our faces, and you made the point that you keyed off the audience and you were adlibbing, you were making it up forty percent or something as you went. So, I’d like to know, tonight, now that you’re in a theatre doing this, are you keying off the audience and making it up? And the second part [of my question] is, when did you drop in the Libya part of the story, was that after you’d already been performing?

d’bi: So, one of the fantastic things about being at the Tarragon is, Richard [Rose], who is the artistic director here, he was supposed to be doing lines for me, he was supposed to be on book. So after ten minutes Richard put down the script. [Laughs] A beautiful thing grew out of that, this play comes out of a number of theatres, most recently Tarragon but it also comes out of b current, Nightwood and Soulpepper. All three companies have had a hand, at some point in the last few years, with shaping this play; the last one being Tarragon. So at the end of that Richard said to me “That’s an interesting process, I noticed that what you just did was based on who was in the room”. It was one of the first times that anyone had acknowledged that that was a part of my process. So this is what I do, I write and then, once I get on stage, I work with who’s in the space and I work with what the space is saying that it needs because I’m a live performer. So what Richard did was he said, okay, this is what I’m going to do, once you’ve decided you’ve wanted the play, this is what I’m going to do to honor that process. I’m going to give you a preview period so that you can have the room to figure out what you want to do with the script that you have, so you can see what you want to do differently. And that after that preview period, you can actually have your piece—so, what you see now is a play that’s gone through that process; which is where Libya came in. So during the previews, one of my friends said to me: Well you know the play is beautiful, but this whole idea of being ‘current’ … why is it set in 1980? And I’m like clearly because it’s based on 1980 and she’s like but that’s retrospective, I mean you’re bringing in the ‘now’ but you’re not being specific … and she was like what about Gadhafi? and I was like what about Gadhafi? and she was like well ABC...blah, blah, blah and I was like whoa. So then two things happened, the Gadhafi stuff made it in and also, it moved to 2012 but the press got 1980. Like I said you know, it’s an experiment and for me, I’m less concerned about the perfection of the moment and more concerned about the experience of the shaping. So there are changes that you see clearly and you know that those have been made more recently because you affect the process. What Richard allowed me to do was to be like that’s ok, clearly you do that, it is crucial, the urgency in those set of principles that I mentioned, so let’s honor that. It allowed me to just be open about that, which is so refreshing and keeps it fresh.

Erin: I’m just going to hop in and tell this story, which I’ve heard Richard tell twice now in one week and I think it speaks to both your concern and dedication to something being important in the present and also the process that you work in. And he’s told the story twice about him giving you notes, quite extensive notes in reference to last year …

d’bi: No, this is in reference to this year [laughs] this is in reference to last week! [laughs]

Erin: I’m sure it was! And he was saying you know, I gave her notes and an hour later they were in the show, not the notes exactly but, I saw our conversation taking shape and how she modified what she did in the next performance, and that’s about being present.

d’bi: Yeah, storytelling is community and storytelling has always been community, and I think maybe sometimes we sort of get into spaces where we think I own this, this is my role in it, and that’s un-malleable and it’s a clearly defined box and you can’t affect … you know? And I think that if the storytelling is supposed to serve you, and serve me and serve us, there’s no need to be that controlling about it. The protectiveness I think can be extended to the sacredness as opposed to the actual thing. We can be protective around, needing to honor this space, you know that I’m going to honor you in this space, and I expect you to honor me. The honoring doesn’t mean that you don’t question, investigate etc. That’s not disrespectful, to ask about something, to ask about the nature of it, to want to figure out something that maybe is not clear enough. Those things are not disrespectful and I think that when you’ve been raised by a village, as well, you don’t need to be so protective of yourself. When I come into the space I don’t feel like I need to defend myself against anything. In fact I’m already here before you come in, so when you come in here, I’m already in the space. Look at Cami’s [Cameillia Koo, designer] Tree, the whole thing, you’ll notice there’s no director credited in the program because the piece has been collectively directed. So you hear about Richard giving notes; what about this, what about that, Andrea [Romaldi] dropping in, our beautiful crew of musicians and composers, and Christian, our production manager/ co-director, and all the people who you don’t see. I’ve always been dreaming about making theatre like that, I’ve always been dreaming about what would happen if we actually approached it that way? Richard gave us the opportunity to do that by saying: no director … all right, no director … okay … and trusted that the ship would be okay, big risk, but we’re fine.

Audience 4: What about the impact on your technicians? –The constant changing?

d’bi: Oh well I try to change within the framework of the script, so cues and stuff like that, I try not to play around with, I try [laughter]. There is a set script, however, an audience that is less familiar with the Jamaican language I make all kinds of changes linguistically in the poem itself. I translate, I transliterate in the course of the play. Sometimes there are parts of the story that feel more necessary some nights and other nights, not, so they don’t make it in; it makes it too long or people are tired and it needs to go a bit faster. Some nights it’s very rowdy, so it moves a bit slower. Those kinds of adjustments happen with each performance.

Audience 5: So what happened tonight?

d’bi: Well how long were we tonight?

Kristen: You were an hour and twenty-seven minutes long.

d’bi: Okay, so tonight was a long show [laughs] so tonight I took my time. I know that Stama tonight, the character who goes around telling the Gadhafi story, he really took his time tonight [laughter]. He wanted to talk with you, he wanted to talk with each person, that’s what he felt like doing tonight; I just honor them. [laughter] He felt like he needed to go and explain. Okay so the whole geography thing is not in the script. [laughter, quotes play] “How many, how many do you count, five to ten?” But, that’s what you wanted! [laughter]

Audience 6: First of all, thank you for one of, I think, the best theatrical experience I’ve ever had. And I’ve been coming to this theatre for over thirty years, and really, you give up your soul, you give up your heart, everyone feels it from the moment you speak, so thank you so much for that. There’s a wonderful element of children’s theatre in the work you do and I think that’s part of what you feed on. When you’re performing to children, you can play on their imaginations, they are so with you, and I think that’s part of what you’re tapping into here. But you’re tapping into it with an older audience, and I have a little theory on that, because I’ve done both, I’ve performed for seniors and I’ve performed for children; both want their imaginations tapped. We want to express, as we get older, our feelings. What you are doing here, you are allowing people to express their feelings just by sitting here, and it’s amazing.

d’bi: I think that ‘play’ is important, we cannot forget to play. We know all the boundaries we are taught about, particularly in our lovely Toronto here, and particularly in theatre, and it goes on and on. I know I keep saying this, these guys know, they’re at every talk back, but I say it because it humbles me. I’m thirty-three years old , because of the people in Toronto who took the time to mentor me , I’ve had a career of being able to do exactly what I’ve wanted to do with my life. I’ve never done anything that I’ve not wanted to do, ever. I don’t take that very lightly, and when I think of why I’ve been able to do that, it’s because I’ve had elders and mentors who took the time to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes; How about that? Yes. How about that, how about that? Along the way that builds up into an entire life and you can then look back and say, but wait a minute, I come from a community of story makers; I come from Toronto, I’m a product of Toronto …

Audience 7: My question was what is the expectation of your response from an audience?

d’bi: I think it’s everybody’s show … and throughout those seventy- five/eighty minutes, we’re navigating how to be in the space together. So my expectations are only that we stay together during the show, that’s the expectation, the rest is like, icing.