Smoking Out The Beehive.. serendipities of Reconstruction!

..past plumbs present – in reading about Claude MacKay’s novel, Romance In Marseille, reviewed in today’s New York Times..

The resonance is deeply personal, turning back to remember a commission from the National Portrait Gallery, and the journey of knitting a tapestry of black poets into a frieze, etching their voices and journey..

That work is called Smoking Out The Beehive, and was performed at the National Portrait Gallery in 2013.

Going back to the ‘journal post’ I wrote, about that creating to a quick timeline, I’d forgotten that it, too, came in proximity to a reading of Reconstruction..

Today, as Claude MacKay strides in ‘lost’ words finally affixed to print, Reconstruction comes again into view; on the 24th February, at West End Library at 6:30pm, in Mosaic Theater’s reading series, Mosaic On The Move.. – and I am once again caught off guard by confluence of this synchronicity, out of another February, 7 years ago.

This is the entry of February 6, 2013:

“..in this past October, my play Reconstruction received a reading here in DC, at Fort Fringe. The cast was of spectacular ability, and the audience participated in the ‘after’ dialogue with friction and engagement.

But one of my favorite words was in action throughout: serendipity..

The character of MISS MARIAH, in my play, was performed by Ms Jewell Robinson –who had never read my work before, but was so moved and engaged by my reach, that she, under her other hat, commissioned me to write a piece for presentation.

You see, Ms Robinson is Director Of Public Programming for the National Portrait Gallery; its current exhibit features profiles of poets, and is entitled Poetic Likeness.

The commission, presented to me in November of 2012, was to write something to highlight the work of the black poets in the exhibition, for a presentation in the museum’s offering for Black History Month.

I took the commission, excited and honored to be offered such prestige from this prominent institution..-

In Claude McKay (1889 – 1948) I touched upon the inner conflict inherent in a cage of colonialism; born in Jamaica, subject of Queen Victoria, aspiring, intelligent, aware and precocious, McKay startled British society with his penetrating poems, ‘ballads’ full of melody and the lilt of the island patois; he also presented a slim view of the variant shades of colour -coloureds- who made their life off of ‘bumming’ what they could from their fellow man..

This early identification of the skeins of colour and society, wedge his work, and, after coming to America, fix in his stature, giving him the view between African American slavery, and, in the afterbirth of Emancipation, predations of a deepening “intellectual” ideology, and Negro discontent.

His journey was a wide-ranging struggle to keep to his moral compass; he strode through the Soviet fields of communism (in the early 1900’s), and bridged a connecting tissue of political struggle between Comrades, and American Marxist/Socialists.

McKay’s politics gave virulent voice to the rage of racist abuse of blacks in America; his initial trip into the south was a decimating and defining moment of clarity for him, in the nature of a particular American savagery, where lynching, rape, and burning were handy tools of oppression against people of color..

..I came to appreciate the particular tragedy of Jean Toomer (1894 – 1967), whose mix of color presented him as “white”, but whose conflict of soul constantly brought him against the grain of easy living, and, ultimately, caused him to fracture in himself, unable to fully fit the pieces of his birthright, and paradox, in America.

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) I have always admired, but had never been so intimate with; his endeavors in opera (taking his play Troubled Island, and working with the black composer William Grant Still) as well as Broadway (his work with the composer Kurt Weill in creating the libretto for Street Scene) are amazing journeys of artistry in their own right, but in the dexterity of this man’s reach, I found myself awestruck at the diversity of his forum!

Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992) I knew of her activism, but I was not aware of the deep soul of her poetry, or the challenge of her health..

Amiri Baraka (1934 – ) is a name that inflicts, incites, and antagonizes; his work is a ‘slicing’ arc, through styles, polemics, pose, theatre, and modern reaches of rap and hip-hop.

Yusef Komunyakaa (1947 – ) is a deep resonant thinking man whose journey from southern blues, into Vietnam, and further personal tragedy.. is of such breathtaking dimension and succinct dialect that I was subsumed in his storytelling voice, style, knowledge and humanity.

…so; these are the six; these were the companions, in my last two months of silence, during which I found the craft to fit their stories into a length of tapestry that allowed them to speak their own character; entitled: smoking out the beehive.

..it came through immersion; distinct music; distinction of styles; influences and counter-struggle; polyphonic, ultimately; rich. Through whom we are all enriched.”

..reflections in rehearsal / Not All Canoes Sail Back Home

This morning was the first gathering of an ensemble of women in the Terrace Theatre Rehearsal rooms, who put strong voice to the strong women Femi Osofisan evokes in his work-in-process, Not All Canoes Sail Back Home.

After an initial read through, Chuck Mike, who is directing this presentation in the BOUNDLESS: AFRICA literary series at The Kennedy Center Tuesday evening, allowed a moment’s breath and then asked, “How did it feel in your sprit?”

Mr. Mike’s question is quietly considered,  as the richness of the work speaks through an imagined gathering of Maya Angelou, Maryse Condé, and Efua Sutherland.

In a outline on the concept, Mr. Osofisan states, “As astonishing as it may sound, and by some historical coincidence which I find remarkable, these three women who are considered today to be among the giants of the literary world, lived in Accra at the same time for some years during that turbulent period of the Nkrumah revolution. They were of course only in the early years of their womanhood then, and their careers were in such a budding stage that not even the most gifted soothsayer could have dared predict their future eminence”

Yesenia Iglesias, Temidayo Akibu, and Erica Chamblee speak in the spirt of these great people.

In answering the question of how the experience felt, Ms Chamblee stated, out of the consequence of a historic moment of the play, “Women, out of tragedy, and pain, deciding to alchemize that into triumph, and momentum to do that – must transform the pain, or be dirging forever! It’s about, the future for brown people, after the bottom’s fallen out.”

Tomorrow’s rehearsal brings another layer to the presentation: Gelede dancers. Mr Osofisan outlines that “Gelede dancers appear at various moments in the play, and are a crucial factor in the play’s interpretation.”

..there is palpable power in the shape of this work already, and as each new element is brought into the performance, a narrative of Nigerian history threads into an account that inspires and, yes, invokes a strength of presence for guidance through the dark..

Not All Canoes Sail Back Home!

As part of the 2019–2020 WORLD STAGES season, the Kennedy Center presents the literary mini-series BOUNDLESS: AFRICA on February 4 and 5, 2020.

 

Featuring playwrights, poets, and writers of African heritage living in Africa and the Diaspora including the United States, the series brings to the forefront relevant issues that inform the boundaries separating genres, art forms, geography, and time.

 

NOT ALL CANOES SAIL BACK HOME will be given a reading on February 4th. I am excited to have been asked to moderate the panel discussion afterwards, with the playwright, Femi Osofisan, director, Chuck Mike, and playwright Carlyle Brown!

 

It should be an amazing evening!

..”expose the question the answer hides.”

..more than ever these days, the answer is: James Baldwin.

Nikita Stewart’s expansive insight in the New York Times is presented as: The 1619 Project, whose endeavor is to examine slavery in the root of our culture. It is offered in detailed process, causing readers to reflect on the still insoluble sutures in the making of a nation.

Yesterday’s Project reading, Why Can’t We Teach Slavery Right In American Schools, woke right into education, leaving errant threads for thinking pulled.

Some public response to this project series suggests that Truth can only be determined by anyone not African American; blinking at that, is to miss the basis for continuing acts of racism.

Such response is the intentionality in dissolving the very frame that Nikita Stewart means us to use as portal, in hopes of excavating deeper and meaningful conversations that do not happen in any uniformity.

 

“Unlike math and reading, states are not required to meet academic content standards for teaching social studies and United States history. That means that there is no consensus on the curriculum around slavery, no uniform recommendation to explain an institution that was debated in the crafting of the Constitution and that has influenced nearly every aspect of American society since.”

 

For me though, along this journey, there is another knot: how do we speak to racism, if we cannot speak race in its format?

How do we articulate the different landscapes of critical thinking, between James Baldwin and Alain Locke.. – without speaking the nuances in their purposed language of shade, in color, caste and class?

 

Sides in this will continue to come about out of their own like purposes; but it is especially in the classroom, through context for Youth and students, where frame for critical thinking must offer scaffolding to grapple questions of incongruent influences, in the conflict of realties and perceptions.

..there was a journey, to creating The Me I Want To Sing

In 2015, DC Public Library commissioned me to create a work on Marian Anderson that could tour community libraries.. The piece became Inspiring The Me I Want To Be: Marian Anderson.

 

Crafting it, I felt a further conversation developing that I could not get to at that time..

Then Washington National Opera (WNO) commissioned me for a performance work, ahead of the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors, and wished the subject to be Marian Anderson, a past Honoree. I celebrated by widening the aperture of the subject to be able to thread how her life sent a ripple into the lives of others, who followed her..

Originally I wanted the new work to consider the interrelatedness of Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price (also a past Kennedy Center Honoree), and Reri Grist – so that I could speak to art song, opera, and music theatre (as Ms Grist started her career, plucked from ‘the chorus’, to be the voice from ‘the pit’, in the Broadway premiere of Bernstein’s West Side Story, who sings Somewhere).

..however, the commission turned out needing to be of a slimmer scope, and so The Me I Want To Sing considers only two of such significant icons of song… but certainly two whose twined rippling presented paths of opportunity for so many more..!

The Me I Want To Sing is being produced the 13th April 2019, in the Family Theatre at the Kennedy Center. It is a cause of celebration for anyone who loves music, believes we each have a story to sing, and once heard, that our voice can inspire  others..

AMERICA REX/Program Notes, TAPAC Showcase Performance, 29th – 31st August, 2018

Change does not happen in a vacuum; context is everything.

 

I think I have a good memory.

I do not.

 

When first asked to write these Notes I started diving into all sorts of reminiscences that seemed to associate with this play.

Off the top of my head, I had to admit that I was only threading with fiction..

 

Luckily, I keep a journal –and have been doing so since I was 13 years old.

 

I went to one particular well stacked pile of books, took up the top Journal and opened it –only to be struck at the fact that the book’s first page was titled “America Rex”..

 

It turns out that the work you are about to see did not start as a play, but as a state of mind – a place of America in 2002.

I at least got that right: America Rex began in 2002.

 

I labeled the journal as such, already being witness to a year of how the leadership of the Bush II Presidency was using a paucity of words in articulating a new dimension of national grief, anguish, fear, and eradication of compass..

 

The opening entry in the Journal is dated “October 7^th, 2002”.

 

I read of myself, musing upon a gift a friend has given me, having just returned from London with a copy of a Saturday insert from The Guardian, titled: “Rome, AD … Rome, DC?” written by Jonathan Freedland.

 

I note in my Journal that “The tag carries two photos opposite one another: one, Rome and the colonnade steps of the Senate – the other, Washington, DC and the colonnaded rotunda of Congress. Inside there is a photo of Bush – in gold breast plate armor and purple skirt of an Emperor of Rome – his thumb ‘down’ – standing in front of a balustrade that is draped in Imperial Purple…”

 

And out of that, comes my own digression towards what will become paradigm for a play:

..”America is being run by a nest of bullies”, stitching themselves “into a suffocating chrysalis – ending any view of light, or promise, until we have metamorphosed – into our destruction, or into the future, is uncertain. What are we meant to become”..?

 

I pull down another Journal. It is from 2003, and details a first trip to Australia.

 

Beyond initially touching this, I do not need to be reminded of the significance of the trip, or the impact on my consciousness and creativity during a particular visit to a Melbourne gallery of Indigenous Art.

I remember distinctly: standing in front of a work of art which detailed a presence of Dreamtime .. that drew me into thinking along concepts of arts disciplines, meshed, and representing dynamic relationships between earth -dream -knowledge -journey.

I came away from that glimpse of possibilities, gestating something that could frame ‘an inclusive sandbox’, in which to offer scaffolding for a theatrical work – a work which I then consciously hoped would not only speak to global culture, but inform a wider conversation of what might be done with theatre and a black box.

 

America Rex, the play, is the result of that ambition. Begun in 2002, it was completed in 2003.

Now a full 16 years on from the first thoughts of this work, its premise is more relevant than ever, while its relationships of power articulate contemporary institutional and global fears of “otherness”.

 

But it is the component of journey that makes this work the right frame for Dione Joseph’s vision of wisdom and warning which results in its being “a call for a return to indigenous ways of knowing and belonging”.. “..located in a te ao Māori context that boasts a diverse eleven strong New Zealand cast and an indigenous team of Creatives descending from Zimbabwe, Caribbean, India, Sri Lanka, USA, UK, Ireland, Samoa and of course, tangata whenua.”

 

Context is everything, as change cannot happen in a vacuum.

 

Opening Scene of the Tour Float Tourists – David Capstick, Ruth Capstick, James Maeve, Carl Drake, Chris Auva’a, Mustaq Missouri, Joseph Wycoff, Kacie Stetson, Mel Odedra, Graham Vincent/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand; JK Productions & Ahi Karunaharan; photo by Michael Loh

 

General Fisk – Graham Vincent/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand; JK Productions & Ahi Karunaharan; photo by Michael Loh

 

Speaker swears fidelity – David Capstick/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand; JK Productions & Ahi Karunaharan; photo by Michael Loh

 

Yves, and Louise – James Maeva, Sandra Zvenyika/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand; JK Productions & Ahi Karunaharan; photo by Michael Loh

 

the anguish of General 3 – Mustaq Missouri/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand; JK Productions & Ahi Karunaharan; photo by Michael Loh

 

Speaker and seeping chaos – David Capstick/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand; JK Productions & Ahi Karunaharan; photo by Michael Loh

 

AMERICA REX, closing night Cast & Jimmy Kouratoras, Original Artwork and AV Design – Otis Donovan Herring, Choreographer and Movement – Tom Minter, playwright – Dione Joseph, Director/AMERICA REX, Showcase Performances at TAPAC, 29th – 31st August 2018, New Zealand

 

 

I am grateful for all who gather to see this work, Dione’s vision, and the incredible and empowering coalition of Production Family, Creatives and Artists who share in the premiere telling of this story.

JK Productions have put-up a 90 second video clip of the performance – have a view!

 

Thank you.

tkm/dc August 2018

 

 

…”why theatre is essential to democracy”

Just sharing something I was pointed to this morning, though posted in April 2018.. –

This is a TED Talk engagement of thought/thinking.. part of a threading of ideals, for dialogue.. -And in this, we must not forget Joe Papp.. – who I was able to interview, for a high school project, such a long journey ago..

Oskar Eustis speaks as Artistic Director of New York’s Public Theatre.. the ‘House that Joe Papp built’..!

“Why theatre is essential to a democracy…”