a different kind of theater

On 10 February 2016, Nicole Brooks visited Ryerson University’s Literatures of Modernity MA program to talk about her most recent creation and very first play: the critically acclaimed Obeah Opera. Brooks has been working on Obeah Opera since 2009. Over the years, she not only wrote the libretto and composed more than sixty songs for this nontraditional opera but also fashioned a very unique and Afro-centric version of the infamous story of the 1692–93 Salem witch trials. Obeah Opera developed through a number of workshop productions over the past seven years; and Brooks continues to grow the work, with the goal of bringing it to full actualization as a mainstage, commercial undertaking for mass audiences in Canada and internationally. Brooks sat down with me and my students that morning to talk about her creative process and the story behind the various iterations of the play.

 

Hyacinth Simpson: You’ve worked for many years in film and also in television. But Obeah Opera is your first foray into theater as a writer, producer, and also librettist. What motivated you to create work for the stage?

Nicole Brooks: I studied at Carleton University, where I did a combined honors in mass communication and film studies. I wrote my fourth-year thesis on “black spectatorship.” I decided for various reasons not to do my master’s at that institution—I wanted to be a creator of content, not someone who analyzes content, although it was a great foundation for me as a storyteller. I was on the wait list to study filmmaking at Columbia University, but I couldn’t afford to go. Then I got a scholarship from Humber College for their film program, where I did a specialization in directing and producing. Humber exempted me from the written component of the program, as I’d already written a thesis. So I just did all the practical courses in directing and producing. I guess you could say that’s where I got the tools for writing and producing.

I was also challenged by a close friend at the time to take my mission of sharing stories from the black diaspora from screen to stage. At first, I felt very apprehensive about taking on this challenge. I’d never written a play before, let alone an opera, and I wasn’t sure how my skills as a filmmaker would translate to the stage. But eventually my conviction about telling this story onstage overrode my fears and, dare I say, my insecurities. At the end of the day, what I embraced is the fact that I’m very committed to telling black, Caribbean, African—and I would even broaden it and say women’s—stories. So overall and ultimately, we (diverse storytellers in any medium) need to tell more of these stories. I feel immense gratitude that I’ve been afforded the privilege of telling these stories successfully in more than one medium.

Djanet Sears also encouraged me. I was in the chorus for the 2003–04 Mirvish production of her Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God. Every time we asked her when she planned to remount the play or write a new one—because being in Adventures was an amazing experience and as black performers we don’t get enough work in the theater—she would always say, “No, don’t look to me to just remount this work or do another work. Write your story.” That got me thinking along the lines of, “Ok. I guess there is an obvious void, not only in film and television but also in theater. How do we create the work?” I knew I couldn’t audition for Anne of Green Gables. So I’ve been very committed, whatever the art form, to telling our stories and getting them out there.

So here I am now, after the Panamania production [in 2015] of Obeah Opera, pursuing the next stage of the work to have it mounted, which is proving to be the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my professional life to date. I am a producer first on this work. In my twenties, I had an amazing mentor (she is still a mentor and close friend). Her name is Claire Prieto and she’s a pioneer of black Canadian filmmaking. Claire told me that I’m very creative, but that I’m also very good at budgets and organizing. She encouraged me early in my career to put more emphasis on my producing skills than my creative skills simply because there are so few producers of color. If we don’t have producers, who will push the work? I thanked her for that guidance recently. I produced Obeah Opera myself. I went and found the money needed for various things; and then I relied on producers for hire for the execution while I concentrated on finishing the other stuff for the play.

HS: In Obeah Opera you’ve taken on the well-known story of the Salem witch trials, but you’ve departed from canon—both the historical documents and famous re-imaginings like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible—in some very important ways. Perhaps most significant, in Obeah Opera we see seventeenth-century North American Puritanism and the trials themselves from Tituba’s perspective. Your Tituba, like Maryse Condé’s protagonist in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem, is no longer a marginal player. The slave woman from the Caribbean becomes the central figure, the heroine, in the story. Why the Salem witch trials? What was your purpose in taking on this more-or-less well-known piece of American history?

NB: I knew I wanted the play to be about the Salem witch trials. Ok, without taking a complete left turn, part of it—the spark of the idea—was that someone called me a witch. I was producing a series for VisionTV and I was also investigating my spirituality at the time. The person came into my room, saw a candle burning along with incense and water, and said, “You’re a witch.” After that, there was a rumor on the set that I was a practicing witch. People began to look at me and scoff. But instead of being all like “Wha!,” my reaction was, “This is fascinating. In this day and age?” So I started to do some research and of course the Salem witch trials came up a lot. I had an experience similar to the one Condé recounts in I, Tituba; I also felt like Tituba found me—although I didn’t read the novel when I was writing the play because I didn’t want it to have any influence. I also didn’t read The Crucible until after I had finished my own play to a certain level. I started my research knowing about Tituba as “the famous One and Only.” Then, through further research, I found out there were more black women living in the town among the Puritans; and so I based each of my black women characters on a real person that existed in Salem.

HS: Mary Black, Candy . . . ?

NB: Yes, they were all there. They were accused of being witches too. But we were not included in the story. Notice I say “we” because I’m looking at ancestry. On the website for the play [obeahopera.com] I have an Ashanti proverb that says, “Until lion[esses] have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” So we flipped it. We’re taking the most famous witch trial in North America, and we’re telling it through the vantage point of a slave. Or slaves. Everybody was fascinated by that. For me, it was a question of, What was their experience in the town like? And, understanding that slaves had to hide their practice, I also asked myself what that looked like.

HS: After watching the Nightwood production [in 2014] and then the expanded Panamania one, I got the distinct impression that while Obeah Opera is Tituba’s—or the slave women’s—story, it is equally if not more so the story of Obeah. It’s a reclaiming, a recuperating, of Obeah; and this is clear because the orishas and the Elder—characters unique to your version of the Salem story—are important players in Obeah Opera. Is this a fair assessment of what you are doing with the play?

NB: Absolutely. You are absolutely correct about me bringing Obeah to the forefront of the work. You know, people keep saying to me that the piece is finished, but I think it’s still not yet fully actualized. I love hearing your understanding of what I’m doing because most people wouldn’t understand it. I’m working with Djanet Sears right now—she’s agreed to be my dramaturge in this next phase—and she said that the goal is for everyone to understand Obeah. When my mom first saw the piece she said, “That’s not the Obeah I know.” And I said, “That’s the point.” We are taking a word that has a negative connotation and we are reclaiming its power. One of the questions that drove my creation of the work was, “Before we were taken as slaves, whom did we call God?” In the way I’ve imagined it, the orishas actually represent angels. Each orisha in the piece also represents a different Caribbean religion. In Haitian Vodun, instead of calling them orishas, they call them loas. I looked at the various African-based religions in the Caribbean and saw the connections, the similarities. I saw it as all these rivers flowing into and from the same ocean. That’s why I decided to make it so each orisha in the play represents a different Caribbean religion.

The other thing that is in my script, but financially we haven’t been able to do, is that “Haven/Heaven,” or the spiritual realm that Tituba accesses, is supposed to look and feel like carnival with the moku jumbi and all those figures from traditional Caribbean carnival appearing on the stage. I’d written it all in; it’s just that I can’t afford to do it. Even the Puritan main characters represent an orisha on a lower vibrational level, as there is no evil in orisha. The entire piece is not only a cultural commentary per se; it is also a spiritual one. Moreover, each character in the play represents a carnival character. This obviously adds to the complexity of the piece, but trust me, it is all there. Obeah Opera represents Caribbean culture on so many levels. But to fully actualize my complete vision for the play, I’ll need a handsome budget. I don’t have that kind of money, at least not yet. I need a Lion King budget.

HS: The expanded version of the play that we saw during Panamania really brought Obeah—as representative of African diaspora spirituality—center stage. Tituba, the other black women, and the Elder call on Legba, Oshun, Shango, Oya, etc., for healing, insight, power, and strength to persevere in the face of oppression. As well, the orishas were physically embodied onstage by some of the actors. The Elder’s role as the ancestor and as Tituba’s conduit to the realm of the gods and spirits was also substantially developed in the Panamania production. The actor who played the Elder was terrific in giving the audience a sense of the majesty and power of that spirit world.

NB: That’s Singing Sandra. She came straight from Trinidad and Tobago, and she is the only woman to get the reigning monarch twice in the history of Calypso. I met her . . . and that’s a whole other story. But when I met her, I said to myself, “The Elder is living.” She has a presence that MaComere Fifi [who played the Elder in the Nightwood and the 2012 b current / Theatre Archipelago productions] did not. And she’s also of the orisha faith and practice. So she actually aided a lot, and she became another person beyond the choreographer and cultural consultant that I consulted about how to incorporate the orisha worldview correctly into the play. I’m learning through research and my own spiritual journey; however, some of the stuff just comes to me intuitively, and she would explain things that I didn’t understand, saying, “Yes, you’re right about this, but do this, and do this.” It was so rich for us to have direct teaching on the orisha practice from someone who is from that faith. It was amazing to have Singing Sandra with us through the entire Panamania production.

HS: The way you re-present Obeah on the stage changes the usual negative messages about African diaspora spirituality, doesn’t it? Or at least challenges those messages?

NB: That’s my thinking too. After the [b current / Theatre Archipelago] production that was staged at 918 Bathurst [Centre for Culture], we had to have a town hall meeting. Oh my god, you want to see a whole bunch of Caribbean folk coming just to talk! But it was good. They were angry. We were hearing about people ripping down the Obeah Opera promotional posters, saying, “Is Devil tings dis,” because the Caribbean community doesn’t want us to use the word Obeah. They see it as demonic.

Even my mom wouldn’t tell her friends to come. She said, “Look, I can’t tell my church community that you wrote about Obeah.” It was in the news, so they were going to know anyway. But she was too embarrassed to invite her church friends to come see the work because it’s called Obeah Opera. Wouldn’t happen. And people were yelling. We had a panel discussion and people were arguing, “You’re saying voodoo is right and it’s not right!” My response to that was, “I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m saying it is.” I said in all spiritualities, in all religions, there’s good and bad, no? But we have been trained because of slavery to not value our own heritage. We were lynched when we practiced our own thing. So then it’s bad.

HS: And we’ve internalized that viewpoint . . .

NB: Yes! That’s what I said. Look how it’s affecting us even now. All I’m saying is that Christianity was not our religion when they stole us. We are going back to our ritualistic time. What were the things that the slaves hid? Because they were able to retain much of their culture. I love the innovation of slaves because they found ways to preserve their practices by keeping them hidden. All I’m doing is flipping it and saying, “Well, if it wasn’t Jesus and God that they were worshipping, who was it?” We were told that our religion was bad. It was not. So I’m showing that . . . [reflecting] Did people use Obeah for bad stuff? Absolutely. But people used Christianity for bad stuff too.

HS: The Puritans, for example.

NB: Precisely. Which is why one of the songs I wrote for the Puritans is “Blessed Salem.” It’s based on the Beatitudes [sings]: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God / Blessed are the meek, who’ve received the gospel from afar / Blessed among men, you’re welcome! / Look! Your Jerusalem! / Salem, Salem, bearers of the Cross / Salem, Salem, Light of the World / Salem, Salem,” etc., because that’s what the Puritans thought.

HS: No one in the audience could miss the irony when the Puritans sang that song onstage—especially after we had just seen them engage in brutal acts like selling other humans and raping the slave women. For me, that’s one example of the way your libretto is very effective in challenging tendencies to see African religious practices as inferior to Western ones. Some of the songs clearly identify Tituba not as a witch but as a healer, and Obeah not as black magic but as an important healing art.

NB: That’s exactly how ahdri zhina mandiela [director of the b current / Theatre Archipelago production] presented it too. In the town hall meeting that we had, I said, “All of us have grandmothers or great-grandmothers who knew what to do with the herbs. That definitely was Obeah.” In my research, I found that the Puritans used the word Obeah in their writings, but I know that’s not their word. I have literature to prove that Obeah was a well-known term at that point in history. The problem with the Puritans was that anything that was not directly of the Christian God was considered evil. So women were persecuted for midwifery, for example, because all of the people who were on the jury were doctors, lawyers. And it was men wanting this power that they didn’t want women to exercise—this women’s wisdom. So I said to the people at the town hall meeting, “Being midwives—that’s Obeah then. Knowing what teas and herbs to give to the sick—that’s Obeah. Anything that’s not affiliated with ‘God,’ that’s Obeah.” That’s the understanding I worked with because all these slave/“Obeah” women had knowledge of herbs, and healing, and birth, etc.

HS: One of my favorite songs from Obeah Opera is the “Sweet Honey” song—the one Tituba sings while she’s healing Betty. She sings it as she cradles the sick Betty in her arms and gently anoints her limbs with a healing potion. It has such a mellow, soothing vibe.

NB: I wrote it as a lullaby because Betty’s sick and Tituba’s healing her.

HS: It’s a beautiful song in itself; and in the scene it works well to dispel any notion that Obeah is something sinister.

NB: That’s the point. You have to understand that Vodun has a very bad reputation because Hollywood has turned it into something completely evil. So when I went into the Haitian community to do research for the songs, there was a lot of resistance at first because it’s a very secret-society type thing. At least, that’s what it felt like because nobody wanted to talk at first; and then those who had knowledge—it’s not recorded, it’s not written down—of these traditional songs were skeptical. They were like, “What’re you going to do with it? We’re sick and tired of people taking it and then using it for evil.” So they were really excited once they heard what I was doing and also when they saw the work onstage. I realized that the religion or the spiritual practice of Vodun that has the worst rep has the most beautiful music. The music is not only revolutionary but the softest of all the African diaspora religions. The music from Jamaican Pocomania, for example, is a lot “harder.” You know what I mean? But the Haitians . . . [their music] is so beautiful; and when I heard the music it certainly didn’t sound like hocus-pocus to me.

HS: Because it’s highly unlikely that something that’s evil and dark and ugly can inspire beautiful music.

NB: You know what I mean? There’s a book that I used as one of my references. It’s called Sacred Drums of Liberation: Religions and Music of Resistance in Africa and the Diaspora by Don C. Ohadike, with a commentary by Toylin Falola. It was the best book that I read in my research for this work, in understanding what I was trying to create. The author says that traditional music is the foundation for all our revolutionary music—to Bob Marley and beyond. It all comes from that, rhythmwise, and I went, “This is revolutionary music.”

HS: In one of the last songs that Tituba sings in Obeah Opera, she defies the Puritans’ demonization of her spiritual practice as black magic. She says something like, “If you think I’m a witch then I am,” meaning that if they call what she’s practicing witchcraft, then they seriously have to reconsider what they think is so bad about being a “witch.” Coming at the end of the play, it transforms what’s presented as Tituba’s confession of wrongdoing in the historical records into a powerful affirmation of black womanhood and black spiritual and cultural traditions.

NB: That’s one of the newer songs that I wrote and it was really telling for me. The title of the song you are talking about is “In My Mother’s Name.” The lyrics are, “So I stand / in my mother’s name / and those before her / who took on the blame / for all the daughters / who inherited the shame / for all the women who will never be the same / . . . I’m a wise woman, witch so divine and I’ll no longer hide!” It’s actually a four-verse song. We just didn’t have time to explore it in its entirety in the production, but that first verse says it all. I stand in my mother’s name for all those who came before me. For all the daughters who inherited the curse, and for all those who won’t be the same, I’m standing and I’m going to claim it. I was like, that’s the play. If I didn’t know before, that’s what it is!

The very first song I wrote was “Di Moon Song” [sings]: “Di Moon ah go call mi back a mi yahd, Obeah / Di Moon give mi healin’ in a mi hand, Obeah (repeat) / Cross di watah / Cross di sea oh / Di light shine on inna mi oh (repeat).” . . . I was listening to a lot of Jamaican traditional folk at the time. That was the first song I wrote, and it’s the staple. I call it the foundation song. Whereas “In My Mother’s Name” became the understanding of the purpose of the work, the groundation or the roots was “Di Moon Song” and understanding that the moon is going to call me back to my home. If that is the only way I can get home, that’s ok.

HS: We’ve been talking about it in a somewhat indirect manner so far, but everyone—critics, audiences—raves about the music for Obeah Opera. And it’s all sung acapella too. Beautiful melody, harmony, and rhythms and strong, expressive lyrics. A lot of the songs are influenced by Afro-diasporic musical traditions, but you also draw on a wide range of musical traditions and genres. I’ve talked to some other people who’ve seen the work, and they agree with me that the music is a large part of why Obeah Opera soars.

NB: What was shared with me years ago was that if the play was straight text it wouldn’t have been appreciated in the same manner, but the music made it palatable. I thought that was interesting to hear. So here’s the thing: I created the piece. I am the librettist, so I wrote all the words; and I wrote all the music, so I am also the composer. How I’ve written the music has evolved over time. I remember having a conversation with Andrew Craig, who now has been the musical director for the past two, three years, because I had encountered a problem: I couldn’t get the music out orally by myself or through the former musical director—I couldn’t get what was in my head out to the actors who had to sing it. In the oral tradition, music never gets written down. Andrew said to me, “Are you sure you are hearing everything?” I don’t want to liken myself to Beethoven, but, yes, I hear all these parts and all the other stuff. He said, “Ok then. Record it. I’ll give you a device that lets you go up to eight parts and you sing every part. Can you do that?” I said absolutely. That’s how we built this version. I created guide tracks for every single song for the piece; and yes, I sang every part for every song. It was a lot of work, but it was such a relief to finally be able to share with the world exactly what was “downloaded” to me.

Audrey Wright [student]: How long did it, specifically the libretto part, take you to write?

NB: It’s still evolving . . .

HS: How many songs are there, Nicole? Around sixty?

NB: Yes, around sixty songs are presented in this version of the play. I wrote more songs than that, but we couldn’t include them all. You need to understand that as the piece evolved, I evolved. Or as I evolved, the piece evolved. When I first had the idea to do this work, back in 2009, it started off with five women because ahdri kept asking, “Have you ever written music?” Then she said, “Ok. Write ten minutes for the [2009] rock.paper.sistahz festival.” I said, “Ok, that’s very doable. Let’s test this out.” Then when we presented it, we got a standing ovation. So then ahdri told me that I should take the work to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre [which has a mandate to promote “queer theatrical expression”]. Although I’m a straight woman, we got in (most likely due to ahdri’s recommendation). They are stricter now. Anyway, we got in. They asked for twenty minutes. This was in 2010. I thought, “Oh, they are just asking me to add ten minutes more—no problem!” So I added ten more minutes and it was nice and comfortable. Then ahdri invited the work back to b current’s 2010 rock.paper.sistahz festival, but she wanted thirty minutes. From year to year it felt nice and comfortable because it was only ten minutes of work that I was writing. We mounted the work over three nights at the festival and it was sold out each night. We had five shows at Buddies in Bad Times and got a standing ovation each night. Backstage at the festival, ahdri said to me, “Write the damn play! You’re being safe. Write it.” And then she announced onstage that b current had commissioned Obeah Opera for a workshop production in 2011. I went, “What?,” and she said, “Write the play.” That’s the full “working” production that was presented at the Bathurst Centre in 2012.

Hyacinth Simpson: Music is such an integral part of the work because everything—dialogue, monologue (interior and otherwise), emotions, etc.—is communicated in song. The work is billed as an opera, but it is not the traditional form of opera that we are used to seeing. Several reviewers have said that you’re expanding the usual idea of what opera is, that you are redefining opera. Does this describe what you are doing with Obeah Opera?

Nicole Brooks: Yes, we’re working with the standard definition of opera, but taking the form in a direction it hasn’t been taken before. The opera world here [in Canada] was a bit shocked too, and I got a lot of interviews from people in this sector of the arts. I also got government funding from the opera section of the Ontario Arts Council—after proving my point that the play is indeed an opera. Some people were asking how the work could be an opera and a piece for the theater at the same time. They felt it had to be either one or the other. I had to point out that Les Miserable is an opera, but it’s billed as a musical. Evita is an opera, but it too is seen as a musical. So I had to ask if they were going to punish me for doing the same. When I said that to the opera director at the Ontario Arts Council, he agreed that I was right; and he was excited by what I was doing. In the definition of opera, it doesn’t say that such a work must be based in European traditional-standard music. It just says all sung. So yes, apparently I’m redefining opera, though I didn’t realize it at the time. But I’m saying I’m claiming that word because the people who promoted Obeah Opera at each incarnation of the work always wanted me to remove “Opera” from the title. Even the Panamania people told me that it would chase people away. They said that if audiences thought it was going to be a standard opera then they wouldn’t come out to the shows.

HS: Audiences came out in droves, though. The Panamania shows, like the Nightwood ones, were sold out.

NB: Yes. When we did the hour-long read, the one that you saw at the b current workshop production in 2011, I remember there was almost a revolt because we were going to cut it down for the sake of time. But people in the audience were like, “No! We need to see the whole thing.” And then in 2012 it was mounted as a full “working” production. If you read the history of the work [available at obeahopera.com] you’ll see that the 2012 production was an earlier version because I knew it wasn’t finished at that point. ahdri kept telling me it was fine as is, but I knew it needed more development. I guess part of it is my quest for bigger audiences and bigger music and to get what’s in my head out there for people to see and hear in the way I’ve imagined it. So I had to convince all of the funding bodies that what we were planning to do with the Panamania production was something new because it was being developed as a two-hour-plus work—the music was going to be fully actualized. That’s how I got the opera funding, because they understood this. They understood that although we wouldn’t be using an orchestra, we needed the same time that an orchestra would use to prepare the voices of twenty women to create the music and the sounds that the music demands. They saw the innovation in that and went, “Wow!”

HS: I’m now thinking that the kind of theater you are creating with Obeah Opera goes beyond the innovations you are bringing to the operatic form of performance through the different musical genres you draw on and your use of voices as instrumentation. That’s because the work is also highly choreographed. Hand clapping, foot stomping, dance, and other forms of movement are integrated with, and integral to, the storytelling and music; and all these parts work together to express a particular—more positive and empowering—vision of African diaspora spirituality.

NB: That’s still being explored. The Panamania production is the first version in which we were able to implement as much dance as we did. That was because Anthony “Prime” Guerra [choreographer and cultural consultant] put his foot down with me, and rightfully so. He insisted that a third of the cast be trained dancers. He said that every year I would bring him singers who didn’t know how to move, so we couldn’t explore the dance elements for the piece. He pointed out to me that dance is a part of our religious rituals and storytelling, that we don’t have just music and singing; and he pointed out that African plays tend to incorporate all these aspects as well. Now, looking at the work again, I think that’s what needs to be explored even more. I want more dance. I’m thinking of when Tituba enters the spirit world . . . something along the lines of swirling Dervishes because we tend to do a lot of twirls in traditional Caribbean folk and African dances and rituals. These are the movements that call in spirit. And there’s movement and dance with the Puritans too, with their do-si-doing and all of that. That’s important too. So for me, when I produce Obeah Opera again, I want to implement all these facets, because that’s what will make it out of this world fantastic. I’m claiming it—that I’ll have the amount of cash that I need to make it happen. I’m going back to the drawing board this year. It may take a little time to get the work back up; and, thinking about it, the only government funding that I didn’t ask for (but now I think it’s time) is support for dance.

HS: So you’re thinking of a stage “spectacle”—Obeah Opera not only as a staging of your retelling of the Salem trials but also as a grand performance that fills the senses?

NB: Absolutely! This is again where this play must be deemed an opera. Operas always have large casts, amazing costumes, and an epic story. This is what Obeah Opera is. At the same time, it is a musical because of its dance numbers along with the kinds of music being explored, among other things. It is a hybrid like no other. I would love this work to be elevated to the level of The Lion King, The Color Purple, or Fela! on Broadway. I refer to those specific works as direct influences on what I want to create here in Canada. I distinctly remember my feeling after experiencing Fela! on Broadway. This is where I had my “Ah-ha” moment. I realized that I too was destined to create a work (or works) on this level for mass audiences to experience.

HS: That spectacular mode is already evident in the way Obeah Opera emphasizes theater as ritual and ritual as theater. When the actors playing the Shapeshifters appeared onstage as orishas, at times it felt like all the singing and chanting and dancing had called up the spirits right into the theater space!

NB: Absolutely! I remember saying in rehearsals, “You’d better not rehearse it too much because They are going to come.” It has happened. In one of the 2011 rehearsals, ahdri kept telling us to do the Shango section over again, and I said, “ahdri, if you keep calling Shango, Shango is going to come.” And lo and behold Shango came. People started feeling fearful: “I don’t want to do dis devil ting!” What happens to the person who is embodying the spirit? But I told them that we were doing ritual. This is what we are doing.

HS: I was talking to Anthony Guerra about the dance that the actors do and the costumes they wear when they appear onstage as the orishas—

NB: His stage name is Prime. He goes by Prime. He’s also an orisha follower.

HS: Oh, that makes a lot of sense. He was explaining to me the meaning of the different colors of the aprons and masks worn by the actors playing the orishas: purple for Air; green for Earth; blue for Water; and red for Fire. He said they bring messages from the four corners of the earth; and he also explained why the actors wear white dresses and head wraps under the aprons and masks. His explanation made me think that the “I AM” song, like “Di Moon Song” and “In My Mother’s Name,” is also really important to the work’s overall message. Am I right? If I’m remembering correctly, bits of “I AM” are sung at other moments in the play, but the audience gets a full recital when the black women of Salem—dressed in the colors of the orishas—come together with the Elder in one of the scenes to sing it as they chant and dance in the spirits.

NB: Here’s a bit of background information on that song: I based it on Nina Simone’s “Four Women.” People don’t believe me when I tell them this, but it is the truth, although of course I didn’t copy the song per se. Every song in Obeah Opera actually has a root or an influence in either a genre or concept. The work is not like a jazz opera or rock opera, which would commit the play to one genre of music. In Obeah Opera there are all these different musical genres showcased throughout. I think this is where the beauty lies in the work. I deliberately listened to different kinds of music to get a better sense of how to embody in music each section of the play and the message I wanted to articulate. So Nina Simone was my foundation for that song. The “I AM” suite is a ballad with four verses sung by each main slave woman, including Tituba, who has a verse in which she declares who she is. Each verse is followed by a traditional chant that calls up particular gods or goddesses to support the women. The dance that they do is a possession ritual, but it’s not the bugga, bugga, bugga you see coming out of Hollywood. In the trance that the dance brings on, you are hearing the spirits speak. In fact, it can be considered a type of lullaby as well. You’re hearing the Holy Spirit or that spirit voice saying, “This is who you are; this is where you come from.”

Image 1: Obeah Opera. Scene from Nightwood Theatre Production, September 2014. Photograph by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Jennifer Fraser [student]: You mentioned that there are other types of musical theater and opera that exist outside of traditional operatic settings, and obviously Obeah Opera is a very different kind of opera. Do you think that maybe in its ultimate incarnation you’d want Obeah Opera to be staged with something like the Canadian Opera Company as a grand production?

NB: COC didn’t take me on simply because . . . How I understood their explanation is that it was more a union thing, hence not making Obeah Opera a good fit for them. I didn’t need an orchestra, so I wasn’t going to be making use of their infrastructure.

HS: Black musical traditions have very strong acapella roots, wouldn’t you say? So I’m thinking that keeping Obeah Opera’s music instrument free ties in with the fact that the story is being told from the perspective of black people and also that black musical forms influence a lot of the music in the work. Not to mention that acapella renditions have a long association with religious worship, and Obeah Opera is not only based on a story about religious conflict but is itself about recuperating African diasporic spiritual meanings.

NB: Well, some traditionalists—black spiritualists and Obeah traditionalists—were upset because there was no use of the drum. Usually the drum is very much a part of the rituals as well. My response to that is, “So when they burned our drums and lynched us for having these drums, what did we then do to keep our traditions alive, to call on spirit?”

Courtney Mahrt [student]: Use the body.

NB: Yes, exactly! All the sounds we can make with our feet, by clapping, through breathing even. That’s when I learned about dubtion. That’s how they created rhythm; and I said, “Well then, that’s what we are doing. We are paying homage, because when the slaves couldn’t drum in the middle of the night when they had to hide, they used their bodies.” Even the heartbeat is a drum. And that’s my base for a lot of the music creation.

HS: One other thing I’d like to talk about is that you expanded the Puritans’ roles from the Nightwood to the Panamania production quite a bit—Abigail’s, for example.

NB: Now here’s the thing. Every time the work gets produced, and every time it gets into the hands of somebody else, it’s interesting to hear what they demand. Take Nightwood. Nightwood Theatre has been around for thirty-five years; it’s a theater company for women by women that has a mandate for diversity. They had just finished the Penelopiad [in 2013], which was a big production for them, and they thought Obeah Opera was perfect for what they wanted to do in 2014. When they read the script that I had at the time (and I thank them for all their input because they pushed me to think in new ways about what I was doing), one of their demands was that the cast be half white, half black. In the previous staging, the story was told mainly by black women. I was really big on this and it was one of the things that ahdri originally really liked about the work too. So in the earlier versions previous to Nightwood and Panamania, we—the black women actors—played both genders and races. We weren’t playing with black and white face or whatever, although I was toying with that too. I think it’s interesting. Anyway, Nightwood wanted white actors playing the Puritans for visual clarity of the story onstage. There was no argument there. For me, it was interesting that white women were sitting down with me, and I realized to some degree they were insisting that they too wanted to see themselves in the story. They told me that it made sense for the story that white women play the white parts; and then they said they knew a whole bunch of white women who could do it. That was their demand, and I said to myself, “Wow.” Djanet also asked me recently where this change in the composition of the actors came from. Hearing the backstory, she said, “Yes, but always remember who the storyteller is.”

Another thing that changed with the play coming out of the Nightwood production was that initially there was no death at the halfway point in the story. When the Nightwood people read my script, they said, “This is epic, but you need something in the story.”

HS: Betty’s death?

NB: No, they didn’t say Betty’s death at the time. They just said someone has to die, and they said to me, “Maybe Tituba casts Obeah on one of the white people, and one of the white people dies and then Obeah wins!” I said no to that. That wasn’t going to work with me at all. They were just falling back into the stereotype—the same thing of recycling stereotypical images of black people. We’re murderers. We’re this. We’re that. Whether it’s for justice or not I was getting pissed off. Well, pissed off in my mind, because I kept smiling on the outside. Then the Nightwood dramaturge, Erica Kopyto, said to me, “Well, you have to think of something.” I told her that I needed time to think about it, and I came to the conclusion that, yes, for the story arc I needed a climax. Now, for me, there’s a double climax in the piece: (1) a climax of Tituba healing Betty, and then (2) the climax of Tituba finding her own spiritual healing. That’s something I’m still trying to work out in the structure of the play.

HS: Adding Betty’s death makes for a dramatically powerful moment in the play.

NB: Yes, it does. Here’s the thing, though. I went back to them and told them I’d figured it out and to read the script, and I remember the dramaturge calling me and going, “Betty dies?!” She didn’t expect me to make that character die. The reason behind my decision to make Betty die is that I asked myself again, “What is Obeah?” It’s a healing thing. So if Betty is the only one in the town who knows Tituba healed her and she falls sick again, and she begs her mother to get Tituba to heal her—that’s the story—and the mother says, “No, let’s pray and let’s ask God to heal you,” and Betty dies? That makes sense. Betty dies because the power of Obeah wasn’t there. It was denied. They didn’t expect that.

One of the interesting things for me with the Panamania version is that I purposely had a couple of the actors play dual roles and races. Sabryn Rock, who is biracial, played Elizabeth Eldridge Parris, Reverend Samuel Parris’s wife. At one point in the play, Elizabeth takes up his song. You’ll remember that Reverend Parris rapes Tituba in one scene, and the song there is called “I’m Your Daddy Now.” It’s a tango [sings]: “Don’t you know I’m your daddy now? / And you should know that what I say goes. / Believe you me, it’s your new reality. / What I do now / Only the God above will know. / Oh yes! Undress!” The stage goes black after the rape and then Elizabeth comes and she sings the same melody and words to Tituba in their scene: “Don’t you know I’m your daddy now / And you should know that what I say goes / Believe you me, it’s your new reality . . . ” Then she stops and takes Tituba by the chin and looks in her eyes. You know, that’s what’s great about being writer and composer of, and actor in, the play at the same time. There was one moment in rehearsal when Sabryn, after taking my face as Tituba and looking into my eyes, stopped and said, “I’m having a problem here. I’m looking at Tituba as Elizabeth, and I’m trying to understand what’s going on in my consciousness.” It was Prime who said to her, “You’re looking at your mother.” She paused and then said, “Oh my God!” It was an amazing moment because her being biracial added layers to her character and to her character’s interaction with Tituba. Prime started talking about creole women and mixed women, and I went, “Ah, that’s interesting. I’m standing here as Tituba, but I’m also thinking I have to go back to the script. Look at this now. We’re dealing with the complexity of blackness.”

I was talking to Djanet Sears about this too because it was a light bulb moment. I thought it was fascinating that Reverend Parris would even have a creole wife. It made sense. I love it because it just keeps going deeper. The work is evolving in ways that I didn’t expect at all—all of these conversations, all this multilayering. But that’s the history and nature of this work.

HS: What you are doing goes far beyond color-blind casting and the tokenism that at times spurs such casting. You’re playing with the actors’ ethnicity and malleable phenotype to hint at different ways for the audience to see the characters and respond to the story.

NB: And I want to go further with it. We also had Melissa Noventa, who played one of the Puritan girls as well as a Shapeshifter. She was very sensitive when she auditioned for us because it was around the time with that thing about the NAACP and the white woman pretending to be black.

HS: Yes, the Rachel Dolezal story.

NB: Melissa wrote an e-mail right before auditioning. She wrote: “I need you to know I’m white: I’m Italian, and I study Afro-Cuban dance, and I don’t want you to think that I’m appropriating black culture.” Do you see how the signs of the times work with the play? I thought, how interesting—she was telling us that she didn’t want us to think that she was appropriating black culture, but that she studied Afro-Cuban dance and is an orisha follower. We looked at her and the fact that she not only danced very well but knew the traditional dances fairly well and we decided she would be a Shapeshifter and play both slave and Puritan roles. That’s the formula I want to now be sure to implement. I want the range of blackness in the cast and in the play.

And on the flip side, in earlier versions, to be clear, there were always at least one or two white actors. Saphire Demitro, a fantastic vocalist who ended up playing the auctioneer in the Panamania production, has been with me for a few years. She’s Italian or Portuguese. Something. Not black, but something. She previously played a main character: the role of Sarah—as a creole woman. I remember that when she wrapped her head for the role, the rest of the cast was like, “She’s one of us!” She’s a thick girl too, so we were like, “Yes!” [Everybody laughs] I found the visuals and the politics very interesting. She was accepted. She passed. She look like one of them creole women from New Orleans or someone from back home. They red just like she. So she could be in the cast.

I think I need more mixed-race, and I think I may need more Latin/Afro-Cuban, actors. I want the spectrum and range of blackness. There’s also Dana Jean Phoenix, who plays Betty. She was one of the original five (in the 2009, 2010 and 2011 versions). Big voice. Saidah Baba Talibah brought her. I remember thinking at the time, “No, man, this is a black woman thing,” because that’s where I was coming from. “Why is she here?” Then Dana opened her mouth, and I said, “Oh, I get it. Sit here.” So the basis for inclusion in the play is, Can you sing/dance/act your ass off? And can you hang with us?

Image 2: Obeah Opera. b current production, February-March 2012. Photograph by Nation Cheong.

HS: One last question, Nicole. Where does Obeah Opera go from here?

NB: What’s next? Well, I am fighting the good fight and doing my best to find a way to get the show up again and have it performed in all of its fullness and glory in Canada. That includes a twenty-plus female cast and every inch of the spectacle I have envisioned from page to the stage—that includes full dance numbers and all. Let Obeah Opera be what The Lion King was in America (and the world). Ideally, I want Canada to claim it before the rest of the world does. It seems as though the signs of the times may make an opening for this to become a reality: #oscarsowhite; #broadwaynotsowhite; our Liberal government forcing everyone to “act” on diversity. There seems to be a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I can get this show mounted on a Stratford Festival or Luminato Festival level, then tour it regionally to include cities like Vancouver, Montreal, and even Halifax. I would love it if, on a commercial level, Mirvish mounts the new version and aids its inevitable crossover to Broadway, especially now that shows like Hamilton (diverse cast) and Eclipsed (all-black female cast) on Broadway are opening the way for this kind of show.

But truly, my heart’s desire is to have Obeah Opera’s American debut in Salem, Massachusetts, then go to Broadway. It would be wonderful to pay tribute to and honor those women on the very ground where they stood, before moving forward anywhere else internationally. And yes, of course I would love the show to be seen internationally. I think there are good markets out there beyond America, including the UK, the Caribbean, and Africa.

What can I say? For all those who have told me and keep telling me it is impossible to mount such a huge production in Canada, the spirit, the orishas, and the ancestors are beckoning me differently. I guess what I can say is, “Just watch me.” By any means necessary the work must be actualized to its fullest potential, be seen by worldwide audiences, and have a life not only on stage but be a film. I’m seeing a CD, a DVD, the play in book form along with merchandizing. I want it all, I guess. Go big or go home. The irony is that when the show does “arrive” where it needs to be, I will finally be home. As the spirit leads. Ase.

Safiyya Hosein [student]: I’m from the Caribbean, from Trinidad, and I was thinking that you could probably stage the work in the Caribbean, since you are having a hard time getting it done the way you want to here in Canada.

NB: You know, you are absolutely right. With the 2012 version, without people seeing the book or the score, there was interest from Trinidad. There was interest from South Africa, and also England. So this is what I’m saying. A lot of people are saying to me, “Stop beating your head in Canada. Go to the States. Go to Europe. Go to the Caribbean. Don’t stay here.” But I’m going to see if we can do it one more time at least here. I hope Canada does claim it first. But if it doesn’t, I am going to take the work where it needs to go and get it to the next level regardless.

HS: Thank you very, very much, Nicole, for taking time to talk to us about the amazing work you are doing with Obeah Opera. All the best as you take it to the next level. [Applause]

All lyrics from the musical score for Obeah Opera quoted in the interview above courtesy of and copyrighted by Nicole Brooks (creator, librettist, and composer).

 

Hyacinth Simpson is a professor in the English Department at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she specializes in Caribbean and postcolonial literatures.