“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world… The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
–James Baldwin
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I turn to these words by Baldwin to remind myself that most change happens in increments and that creative undertakings–be they literature, theater, music, visual arts–do make a difference. This is a valuable reminder that what we perceive at this particular moment is but a tiny microslice in the immense arc of human life. No one, absolutely no one, can see the full panoply. It’s an hyperobject, way beyond our ken.
Baldwin’s quote sits alongside two other maxims I return to repeatedly. One is the account Laurie Anderson shared of interviewing John Cage many years ago for the Buddhist publication Tricycle. It was with trepidation that she asked this wise elder her Big Question: Is life getting worse or is it getting better?
His answer has withstood the test of time for me.
“Of course it is getting better. It is just that it is happening soooooo slowly.”
And one other touchstone for me is a book, published 20 years ago, whose title captures its perennial message: The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear.
In a speech delivered last week to the Upaya Zen Center community, historian/author/climate advocate Rebecca Solnit considered the extraordinary power that stories have on all of us. Stories are our compass, our method of navigating a world that is bewildering and uncertain. The stories we hold inform who we love, who we trust, what we see and how we construct meaning. As hard as we try to seek to stay open, logical and fair, we all have our own very particular internal operating system, one that is doing its own deciphering of what is real and true. We are, each of us, locked in our own story of The Story. It can be maddening, and it often brings to mind Churchill’s famous response to the mystery that was (and still seems to be) Russia: “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
Meanwhile the media is flogging the Left and “Wokeness” for losing the US election, flattening the narrative to a superficial account of clear winners and losers. I admire the astute observations of Nesrine Malik, author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent:
“It’s a useful diversion to pretend, and even believe, that dropping the use of Latinx, ditching pronouns or casting fewer Black people in Jaguar ads is the way forward. Yet these are no more than crises of confidence broadly confined to the same class of people who imagine they are relevant to millions outside it. The far more uncomfortable reality, one that demands we raise our game, is that elites created ‘wokeness’ in their own image and have now created a fictional reality in which this patrician class fought valiantly for it and it failed because it’s clearly just not what the people want.
But out in the real world, what the people want was never respected or advocated for with any leadership, consistency and conviction. The fight never started.”
There is a deeply déjà vu, loop tape quality of much of the conversation we are having now with the one we had back in 2016. So I was heartened when Solnit spoke of the importance of “breaking” stories that don’t serve us. We are the storytellers after all, and putting these operating narratives on pause is something we can actually choose to do.
I’m not a political scientist or theorist, just another citizen. But I have decided, along with many others like me, to consciously step back from the 24/7 political reporting this time round. The vigilance with which I tracked the news during the 2016-2020 era just made me deeply unhappy and bitter, so I am now choosing to stay calm and imbibe with caution. No one knows what is going to happen in the years ahead. So instead of being angry from a front row seat, I have taken a seat in the back with a remote view of the stage.
But breaking stories that are not true and useful is important no matter where you are seated. I applaud any efforts to shift, modify or alter culturally held stories that are hurtful, demeaning, exclusionary, inaccurate.
Because theater is public facing, it can be particularly responsive. An excellent example of this kind of story breaking can be seen in a bold move by the Huntington Theater’s new high octane artistic director Loretta Greco. Only on the job for two seasons, Greco has already done something unprecedented: she has marshalled support from the Boston’s theater community, universities, social organizations, nonprofits, and community activists to participate in producing a 9-play series over the next two years. The Ufot Family Cycle, written by Mfoniso Udofia, is a big and bold family saga about Nigerians in America that spans several generations.
This project brings to mind August Wilson’s extraordinary American Century Cycle in which he tells African American stories from each decade of the 20th century. Udofia has acknowledged Wilson’s influence on her project, but her set of plays focus very specifically on the stories of a diasporic Nigerian family who come to the States for education and intend to return back to their homeland. The cycle explores the complex struggles in straddling two strong cultures and how family members navigate that abyss. At a time when immigrants and foreign nationals have been demonized and politically weaponized, this sprawling and very human narrative offers a much needed corrective.
Sojourners, the first play of the Ufot Family Cycle, introduces us to the foundational family members: Abasiama is a pregnant Nigerian graduate student who works nights as a gas station cashier; Moxie, young and streetwise, becomes an unlikely friend to Abasiama; Ukpong is Abasiama’s charming but easily distracted husband; and Disciple is a serious Nigerian student who becomes enamored with Abasiama.
The play, now being performed at the Huntington Theater, sets the stage for this extended storytelling. All four performers are strong– Abigail C. Onwunali plays Abasiama, Asha Basha Duniani is Moxie, Nomè SiDone is Ukpong and Joshua Olumide plays Disciple. My one complaint is that the play is spoken in Nigerian English, and the accent is difficult to understand. (I hope the issue of comprehensibility is addressed in the subsequent plays.) But as for caring about what will happen to each of these characters, that connection gets solidly established. I want to see all 9.
Sojourners runs through December 1.
Across the river in Cambridge, The Actors’ Shakespeare Project is taking on a different form of revisionist storytelling. While there are people (some I know well) who approach Jane Austen’s works with a reverential “do not alter a word!” purity usually only reserved for Shakespeare and the Bible, Kate Hamill isn’t one of them. She has written theatrical adaptations of a variety of Austen’s beloved novels with a great deal of success, including Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and now, Emma.
The ASP production of Emma has been staged in an open, intimately sized room at the Multicultural Center of Cambridge. Not officially a black box theater, the space does have a balcony but no proscenium or back of house. The audience, intermingled with the set and given noise makers (to be used at moments of love expressed or a wedding) occasionally becomes engaged in the play’s action, making the production feel freshly provisional and accessible.
Meanwhile Hamill’s adaptation of the Austen novel has been given au courant feminist and female-centric themes. Because Emma has been featured so many times in films and television–from close adaptions to more contemporary variations like Clueless–most people are already primed for some artistic license in this account of a privileged young woman who needs something meaningful to do with her intelligence and time. Her 19th century world offers her almost no options, and her behavior reflects her thwarted life choices. In Hamill’s retelling, it is female friendship rather than family or class that is at the center of the narrative. This version of Emma goes beyond the marriage plot and considers the value of female relationships.
Director Regine Vital has taken a high theatricity approach, turning at times to screwball comedy and slapstick humor to pull it off, which she does. The cast, high energy and versatile (several play multiple parts) creates a non-stop, fast moving, entertaining two hours. Hats off to the whole acting team—Alex Bowden, Fady Demian, Josephine Moshiri-Elwood, Liza Giangrande, Jennie Israel, Dev Luthra, Lorraine Victoria Kanyike and Mara Sidmore.
Emma runs through December 15.