 London directing, so I guess that's all. You know, talking about political plays, you know, you're, well, we have a long conversation, but we'll do aspirations for plays in Africa. And, you know, there were some people in the audience that asked for context. So would you put, like, Ghana and Africa in general in the context of that time, and we're talking 1961, right? Well, I don't have to say that in the black world, we have a lot of problems. And my own conviction is that there's a need for more interaction between Africa and the diaspora for us to be able to solve some of these problems. Unfortunately, our history, the way we are brought up, we are not in Africa, we are not very conscious of the diaspora at all. Well, what we watch on television is what we see. We find many of our people who say, I'm a nigger, you know, very proudly, because they watch television and they see tough people being there. So, and also, it's only when we are outside of Africa that we are really conscious of being Africans. When we are in the continent, we are either Nigerians, or Ghanians, or Ibo, or Afsar, and so on, so much division. And yet, you see the whole world, people are coming together, forming large blocks and so on. Because the world is getting more and more, I don't know what the world is, but more difficult, more cruel, and it is the same to be weak. We are very weak, unless we come together. I don't think we can get far. And you find that this kind of Afghanistan movement began here, in fact, in America. Very strong, at rally with Dr. Du Bois, who was there, and then moving to London in those days, and then coming to Africa itself. In Krumah, was educated here in America, Lincoln University. They went to London. In those days of the colonial situation, we were not free then. It was in the 1960s that this independence movement began to make meaning, and many countries became independent. The first country to be independent was Ghana. It was called the Gold Coast then, but they changed the name to Ghana. And Krumah became president, and one of the things he did was to encourage blacks from the diaspora to come over and participate in development of the country. So there were a lot of African-Americans who came to Ghana in that first decade of independence and who were very active in their life. Unfortunately, Krumah became more and more dictatorial because there was so much opposition for what he wanted to do. He wanted to build a very strong independent country. In those days of the Cold War, he was very identified as somebody who drew a lot of leaning towards Moscow. And so the CIA was against him. So within 10 years he was deposed, and a west-fam-friendly government came there. But in those 10 years, there was a remarkable progress. And a lot of unity between the African-Americans and Ghana. So that's actually what your play, the moment of your play is really just the beginning of the new Ghana. And in that period, all of these African nations were getting their independence, as well as the civil rights movement was kind of growing through its heart. So there was like a great deal, a great deal of hope for the black world. People identified themselves in a larger, collective way. But there was that play deal with that moment and these three young ladies who would become literary giants happened to be the same place at the same time. This was remarkable that these three women were very young. They had not really begun their literary career. And yet when they left, they rose to become very famous figures. How are the case people watching? Did you tell them the movie's women are at your place? The Maya Angelou, the Marish Konde, who won the nobel last year, who won the nobel if there had been cousins. And then if one certain land will be less known here, she was getting in. That's very important in the literary movement in Ghana. In the beginning of African drama, she was very, very important in this. She tried to use local traditions to develop a new kind of theater and so on. I was interested because I'm doing three plays on this issue, on this issue of the African diaspora, the meeting, how we can... So I'm doing three plays on that period. And the first one was on Dr. Du Bois, who died in Ghana. Then this time I thought I should look at the female aspect of this. It was looking at it that I found remarkably that these three women were in fact there at that time, but participated in that experience. Unfortunately, they didn't write much about the political involvement. I don't know whether that was strategic, but they did write about the personal relations when they were there. So this is just my own story on these three women there. I don't know what the degree of involvement is in the story of them, but I just imagine the kind of people they were. And how about you, Francis? How about the context of the Haitian Revolution? I think people... You know, there were a couple of people asking the other night about the context. And I think what they meant is that in the history of the New World, there was the Haitian Revolution. Well, it started in 1791, and we gained our independence in 1804. Most of the world was still... The slave trade was still happening. And I mean, a lot of the way that Haiti has been regarded since then has to do with Europe and America and a lot of countries not wanting slaves to insurrect the way that Haiti did. But it also... The Louisiana Purchase happened as a result of events in the Haitian Revolution. Frederick Douglass was an ambassador to Haiti for many years. There's a little bit in my play about Toussaint-Riverture's relationship with President Adams and then President Jefferson. President Adams was very supportive of the Revolution, and Jefferson was not. So we've been very connected and in conversation with the rest of the world, but there's definitely been a deliberate effort to marginalize our country since then. And it's tragic. But I mean, I just remain so inspired by that event in Haiti because it's really remarkable what was accomplished and the impact that it had on other countries that it eventually led to a lot of... I mean, France during the Haitian Revolution, was not only abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue, but all of their colonies, they abolished slavery in all of their colonies. And so when Bonaparte took power and was threatening to re-establish slavery, Louverture and Dessaline and the people of the Revolution, they weren't just fighting to maintain freedom in Saint-Domingue, but all of the colonies where slavery had been abolished and their plan was to continue helping other countries. So I mean, I don't know if that answers your question as far as context with the rest of the world. I think so. No, it was other people that kind of asked a general question. I mean, I think there was a threat. I mean, it makes the slave trade and just how it developed the Western world I mean, that must have been very dangerous for the rest of the world for there to be a black republic in the Western Hemisphere. I mean, we're a lot more slave, we're votes than history would like to... That was just a bad example. You know, that's the kind of thing that you don't have to be put down. And even the perception of voodoo and indigenous spiritual traditions is a result of preventing any more insurrection of the other slave colonies and you know, like Brazil has its own version kind of like all of these countries, Santarí and Cuba, like they all have their own versions and they're mostly regarded as evil over witchcraft and that's why. Well, but if we don't look at those things like what we would call voodoo in Santa Tarea and what they do in Brazil, it's very much the same thing. It's an African thing. Exactly, but that's what I'm saying is that European and American slave owners they perpetuated this idea that it was something evil and really pushed Christianity because they didn't want blacks to gain that power because they gained a lot of strength and power and it was a way for them to stay connected to their African roots and so that's where all that came from but then it gets passed down because you know when I was growing up, I grew up in Miami. I mean, the way people regarded voodoo is one thing but then I mean I'm black, I think of myself as black but in Miami people didn't, black Americans didn't consider me black they were like, she's not black, she's Haitian, whatever that means and Haitians were really regarded very negatively. This history is not taught at all. It's not taught at all, it's not taught at all. I mean it wasn't taught at all in school when I was growing up in America at all. I don't think it's being taught now. No, it's not. You mean the history of the history that we're talking about. No, it's not taught. Well, you know, there's history about it that explains a lot of things and that's why it's extracted from history. I think I mentioned this somewhere in the other day that just was in the Guardian Deck, the British abolished slavery in 1833. Well, it took a lot of while for that to happen before you actually got off the farm or got off the plantation but they borrowed, the British government borrowed money to buy out the slaveholders. It wasn't reparation, it was like buying the slaves at exorbitant prices for the landowners because slavery made, and I think this example is giving me an idea of how much money slavery made. It took out that loan in 1834 and the loan was paid, guess what, 2015. And so, you know, to give you an idea of the enormous impact of slave labor and human trafficking this had on like really creating the Western world. I just saw something funny on Twitter the other day that said black people should never have to pay for anything made of cotton ever again. So, you know, so the scope of that, so if you look at history from that lens then you see different things, right? You definitely see the bullshit. And our connection to each other, you know, a lot of the maroons came from Jamaica. You know, we were all connected, everybody in the West Indies. A lot of the slaves in Haiti in San Domingo were directly from Africa because the conditions were so harsh that the lifespan was very short. So there weren't that many slaves who were born in San Domingo who were constantly bringing Africans. So it was predominantly Africans. I think that's one of the high points to get back to your very first question about the experience we had in Casiz was that we were able to share that, you know, not just as descendants of these slaves but also as artists. We could share our experiences and it was a revelation for me in many instances. And this for me brought about the question of how complex the idea of diaspora has become. And I often question myself, like how long does a society need to be, or a group of people need to be referred to as a diaspora? Would we not sort of integrate into different cultures? Because the problems with diaspora would be, the idea of a diaspora would be multiple identities. The diaspora versus homeland or nationhood. And I think about the situation of Brazil, for instance, where it's taking over 600 years. But then you refer to Africa as the homeland and the cultural production from the Afro-Brazilian society has been included as part of Brazil's national cultural heritage. So on the one hand you have diasporic consciousness and on the other national cultural identity it's sort of antithetical to each other but then they operate in parallel lines. It's kind of an interesting dynamic. So I wonder, would we then have a perpetual diasporic existence? Would they ever get to a point where we are people other than the diaspora? Say 500 years from now. Can we be both? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It comes up with a lot of multiple identities or dual identities. You have to ever have anyone who's a diasporic individual now would probably be in possession of more than one or two passports or three passports. And then you find yourself shared in several homelands, several continents in a way. And then you think about it. How would this play out in maybe a couple of years from now? Because in the case of Afro-Brazilian religions, I studied connoble. And I found it very interesting that connoble which was initially discriminated against and criminalized. It's a religion. It is a religion. It's like a variation of the voodoo from Haiti and Santorini and Cuba. Initially it was criminalized for the same reasons she mentioned. And over the years it was accepted as part of Brazil's cultural heritage. And now I find that there are even people who are practicing the religion who are not of African ancestry and who refer to Africa as a spiritual homeland. So it's continuously... That's the thing is I've always said that America is a cultural colony of Africa. Most people are diasporas. If you take Africanness out of a lot of world culture, you wouldn't have very much to it. So there's these kinds of intangible things that kind of make us... Like you say, the religions like Santorini and stuff. They seem to emerge out of groups of poor people. It's not like they're communicating with each other about how we will worship and do this thing. These things just kind of happen. It grows like weeds or spread like a virus in this kind of Africa this thing. I was just going to say that issue, interestingly enough, has not been dealt with in Africa itself. Until we did the whole slave experience, it's probably the lightest collective experience we've had. But it has not been dealt with in Africa itself. And some of the things that we were talking about, the religious revival and the rest, if you came to Nigeria, you may even get bonds by fanatical Christians and Muslims. But it's the same in Haiti too, like notations and photos. Because this thing is evil. It's pagan. You're not supposed to recognize any of these deities. And so, it's interesting. What's happening at home, some of this, of course, has very changed. But we haven't until we actually deal with this. Seriously, there were slaves who stole the slaves. What is happening today in contrast to what happened before? We really need to deal with all these Jews in Africa itself. We haven't dealt with this question. Well, you know, it's not universal, but in my time in Africa, people were very welcoming to me. And it seemed that there was kind of like a caveat that I was one of the last ones. And I was like, sorry, you know, in 81 before this. So I think it's a lot about preservation too, like when you're talking about the diaspora, because I mean, I can speak more for Americans, but like I've had people tell me, because I identify as Haitian American and like I had, when somebody asked me, well, when are you going to drop the hyphen? Like you've been here since you're a baby, you know. But I don't, and I'm an American citizen, but I don't want to, because I feel like it would take maybe two, three generations before my descendants don't know anything about our culture. I mean, but by the way, it's been enforced so much that it's going to stay, that's what I mean. I speak for Brazil. You mean the hyphen? Yeah, like the hyphen-nated identities are for Brazilian. I mean, there's so many people who have adopted it who are not African ancestry. And this religion has transcended racial barriers to open up to just about anyone. Once you accept the idea of your cosmological beliefs, then you're... You're good to go. Yeah, you're... I think it's very different here. Don't you think? What? It's very different here. Oh, you mean the way people pack the sanitary? Not sanitary. I'm just talking about the connection to the African... Continental? Yeah. And maybe because so many Americans have been here for so many generations and they don't know where exactly they come from, they feel like their stories started here. I don't know. Well, Brazil has been a back and forth like this because after the slave trade was abolished in Brazil, they were the last... That was the last... Yeah. In 1888. The last slave real. But there were still a couple of Yoruba people who went back and forth just to get knowledge. It wasn't like, oh, they asked them to, on the slave ships, pack your bags and they packed all your stuff. But he was going back and forth and getting knowledge and which they do to this day. And they have that connection because I thought the idea of a homeland was illusory because there are a lot of contingencies that happened after the slave trade. A very big one called colonialism that has wiped the idea of this kind of religions and beliefs from most African minds. So for Brazil, it's really very... It's very strong. It's really vivid. It has infiltrated almost everything from music to food to literature, movies, everything. The national dish for Brazil is the feijoada, which is a soul food here, like we're talking about. And there's this essay that says soul food cannot be feijoada because in a place like the U.S. cultural dish from a minority can never ever be a national dish. And I think that's the thing is that... I was just talking about this with some other playwright friends of mine not too long ago. And because slaves in America were so disconnected from Africa and they were separated, people from the same tribes were separated, they were separated from children. So they eventually... We had to create our own culture. Black American culture is its own specific culture. But in America, black Americans have never really had true equality. We've had to keep fighting. So I think it's different when you're in Haiti. It's a black majority nation. So there's not that sense of having to really create and guard your own identity and your own culture. It was already there. It's been... There was this eradication, this deliberate destruction of having you hold on to that identity. So the consequence is that we, as black Americans, created our own, our new culture. So what my friends were saying, it's difficult to start thinking about their connection to where their ancestors came from. Because they've had to fight to create this culture here and are continuing to fight. I think that's kind of throughout the Atlantic Basin. And I think that what I mean by African American culture is created by black people. Because part of the mechanism for social control is... It was like playing. They just didn't put people in chips together. They made sure they were different languages. So they couldn't connect with each other and revolt. Practices that you had... It was their intention to erase, in a generation, practices that you repeat over cultural practices. So all those people, all those people in the hemisphere, whatever they made, they made themselves. Now they must have covered it together from self-stuff. I mean the people who were like, you're Ruba, right? The French said, well, you can go to the Catholic church, right? You know, they go to Catholic church and they say, oh, sacrifice, shango is the same thing. It's just like back home. They appropriate it out of the way that history interprets what we do. It's imitation, right? But we're human beings. We're cultural animals, right? Spiders make webs, bees make... People make culture. And that's why I think Afro-Atlantic culture is so many. Because it was created in an environment where culture was denied. Millions of us, which is probably... Probably no work anywhere like this. So I think that is... I think there are the distinctions in that phenomenon. That's what happens in Bahia. I mean even in modern day, you know what I mean? If you travel around, you go like, whoa, didn't I just see that? And how does that... I mean in art, for example, that phenomenon, like people like Robert Farris Thompson has been studying pretty good. Like Congo sculptures where they be doing that, whatever that means. Whatever that means, all kinds of stuff like that. But you know, well, you see that in the language. You know, or you know, or sort of kinds of whatever. You couldn't carry the objects, but you could carry the meaning in your body, you know? I mean, and I just think those things... There is the oppression. And then there is what black people manifest out of the oppression to deal with their trauma or heal themselves. That's the thing which I think it's all wrong to... Thank you. Say something about the cameras right now. You said the other evening you used an example of a stick that you saw somewhere, you know, that was an old guy who got caught in a stick. And that's the same image that would have been carved some years ago. I thought about that. And another example, I was in Ghana some years back and I was at a museum. And there was this video of Michael Jackson dancing. But it was interposed with another image of African dance. And the similarity between what you saw in terms of movement was just amazing and they did it deliberately to show you how similar those movements were. So I'm fascinated in how we carried over this dynamic, this unconscious gene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, in my case, you know, my people are Gichis, the Gullah people, you know, they come from the sea islands. And the situation for, you know, my family's people is that they were probably bought from the Green Coast, right? Because they cultivate rice. The Europeans didn't know how to make rice. But the South Carolina sea island with the marshes was a perfect place to grow rice. So, you know, the language is Gullah that people talk about, which is like a combination of English and some Timney and Mindy words from that same coastal place. So growing up, you know, people were speaking that in the house. You know, there was just like an African thing. So it wasn't like an abstract idea. You African, that's it, right? That's the way it goes, you know? And so, yeah, I guess it sort of... But, you know, going back, you know, when I was in Africa, in 81, when I went to Freetown, because I had to go someplace where they spoke English. You know, you're driving me, you know? You go somewhere, you just have to, you're totally cementing yourself to, you know, your host when you're in another world. So I went to Freetown and I could understand what people were saying, you know? And it was, and I realized this must have been the great cause, because it's just like the color that I heard when I was a kid, you know, which I thought is just like evaporated from my mind, you know? And so, you know, those people carried those remnants of language and stitched together and made something which was, you know, comfortable to them, you know? Culture making. Perhaps you guys would like to join in on the conversation? No? I have a question for friends who said, I think your play was very well researched and I wanted to talk a little bit about your process of like researching and writing, and clearly write something like researching and writing at the same time without it being like that. Well, there was definitely a period that I was just researching, especially before I started part one, to try to put things into context. And I remember early on, one of my main sources was the Black Jacobins. It was very dense. I mean, it took me like a couple years to get through that book. But sometimes, you know, I'd read about things and like the character of Valentine came to me out of something that I read in that book about during the French Revolution when a lot of people from France were coming to Saint-Domingue. So there was a little bit of crossover because I would discover things and make a note. Like that could be a character. That could be an event. But I, for the most part, started with research. And once I found my two Cecilia and Valentine, then I felt like I could start to craft the story. And then part two, I went back to research because I knew part two was going to be, there was going to be a lot of focus on Louverture and Dessaline. And so I, it was kind of a lot of back and forth. I created my own timeline of all of the event, the historical events. So I would refer back to the timeline that I created. The events that I thought were important in terms of not necessarily the history of the revolution, but events that I thought were important in the art of those characters. So I kind of had to rearrange things. And some of the events that happened in the play, I kind of rearranged the order because I was thinking more in terms of the character art as opposed to the history. But it's been difficult. It's not easy. There's a lot of back and forth. There's a lot because there's a lot to remember. And there's a lot, like sometimes I have to, I have to go back to feed myself again. And especially when I would get caught up in, when the creative process stopped being fun and started feeling like Le Bourgue, it's, I would stop and go back to the history and to get re-inspired and re, just to connect with the feeling that I had when I first wanted to write this play because I could really get caught up in the process and then it just started feeling like a homework assignment or like, am I gonna do this? So I keep going back and forth to get that soul connection again. I don't know if that answers your question. It's both synthesized. But I don't know if there's one way to do it. I think, you know, every artist will find their method. Yeah, I, um... Can you introduce yourself? I'm Mary Moore-Eastern. I'm a political dancer. And I, um, there have been two mentions of the present and the future and the ways that, I mean, we know many of the ways that reflections on the past will apply, but, um, Ms. Javo particularly has, um, seen Diaspora as, um, has explored Diaspora as something of people who are much older, all right, and who are living into the end of their years, all right, which seems to me to be the present and the future because they're not in their places of origin as part of the story. And the end of Fermi's play proposes, um, a different, a different possibility instead of simply tracing the outcome of, um, past practices. Uh, with the women dancing, I mean, and there's also this, there's a question in here somewhere. I'm gonna get to it. Um, but there is the possibility of choosing a different outcome as the creative artist. Um, and there's a line in yours that says it's not going to end in the same old disappointing way because the playwright doesn't want it to. I was given permission by, by your saying that stuff. I sort of wanted to follow up on that idea of, um, the present and the future in, in the terms of what is, what we are investigating and uncovering in the past. Some of us are uncovering it for other people from whom it hasn't been uncovered. Okay, but, um, does that spur any responses? Yeah, what was the question? Yeah, what was the question? What was the question? There's a future about, I guess the question was really about um, how to represent um, these stories of the past moving into the present and the future. And there are choices to tell what actually happened or what you surmise came out of it. Um, but it seemed to be that your choice was to invent a new thing based on the women and then the women are dancing in a new way and it's going to have different meanings and then we all get up and we demonstrate, the audience actually demonstrates that. So my question is to talk about that. That's a choice that you made. It's like naturalism versus realism. I mean, I mean, I have two thoughts about that. I, I, I do believe that the work that's been created invites the audience to think about the future. Even if it's, you know, my play is all in the past, but it invites the audience to think about what is possible. Right? Um, and then the, you know, the super answer, like, for me I've talked about part three, my intention in part three is to move, jump way ahead 100 years from now because I've had that experience in researching the Haitian Revolution almost every documentary I've ever seen ends with now Haiti is blah, blah, blah, blah and it's very hopeless and I don't, I don't want that to be the end of my, I want the end of this trilogy to be about what is possible for Haiti in the future. Thank you. You know, the, um, you know, a play um, it's a contemporary play that deals with history. It's not a history play. It's a contemporary play. Right? You know, so it's, you know, because, you know, you weren't there. I mean, even history itself is, you know, in some ways a fiction. Right? Because, you know, two people experience an event. You know, me and Chuck experience something. Then we walk away and I tell you. So this construct that we have of history of whether it's true, I think, I think as Americans in particular we're pretty, like, lazy about it is, about what. Like, for example, France loses doing, you know, as a, with a historical construction. Right? It is through her eyes, you know, looking at, like, a past event. So it's something else of history. You know, or a commentary in history. And it's, unlike a history book, it tries to derive, it's happening in the theater, so it tries to derive consensus. So, I don't know, it's a little different. I wish people would maybe be history to receive it as plays in that way. What really is history? History, you know, there are very many versions. And it's the conqueror, the one, the victor who writes history, who tells us what history is. You know, with the big age. But we know there are several histories. And I'm always trying to do those things to interpret history from the side of the losers. You know, from the, I want to describe it as history from the lower side. You know, the victims have their own version. Particularly we come from it, colonized for a long time we were chanting long live the queen who are weaving the flags of great detail. That's what the history was. Now we are in recognition. But in fact I am only interested in that rewriting as much as it empowers the present and helps us into the future. So my interpretations are also very much you know, affected by the current debate that's going on. In Nigeria now, a lot of talk about the role of women. Women in politics you see that in South Africa half of the cabinet now is female. You know, there's still a lot of resistance to that in Nigeria. Some of the females who have participated in power have been great looters. Robbers. Thieves. But just a few and there were agents of certain powers there not acting dependent in certain cases where we have had independent women they've been very exemplary. Very very strong and positive leaders. So you see here I'm trying to also get into that debate that women should you know, also we're giving prominent roles to let them take over power from all our male so that context in which you see that play. Thank you. I have a question. I wanted to ask you about your choice to be in theater. Do you choose theater or do theater choose you with the different works you're doing? You're all doing to my gears social training or social justice work. Why is it that you're in our business? I could say I've always been fascinated by alternative ideas to what's what's obtained and the manner of dialogue and writing stories the way one would want to have them and for me writing comes easier than it's my most favorite way of communication and I always like to put alternative events on paper that way this way could it be that way for instance it's just simply that and I'm just fascinated by dialogue and what dialogue could do in terms of how dialogue can take on different forms in terms of theater and I've always been interested in theatrical productions and have been inspired by then your show actually he's the reason I am a playwright because I was first fascinated by his style of writing weaving mythology with contemporary issues and how he would put in music and the musicality of his language too so I'm really honored to be on this panel with him actually because I've looked up to him thank you I'm also very proud to be to see that something I've been able to influence something that is so good and so which is almost new talent so I'm very proud as you measure this I'm just here for the money I feel like it chose me because it's a peculiar life to be a playwright and I started as an actor but it was really just so random how I ended up in an acting class at 11 years old anything about it I had never seen a play but my friends were doing it until I did it and I fell in love immediately and I loved performing and when I started writing I was a big daydreamer I had a lot of fantasies and when I started writing plays it was like oh those are people and characters so I think it was meant to be and then I talked a little bit about this during the talk back after my play but when I started writing plays in a few years after I started writing plays I started really deep diving into my own identity as a Asian American and that's when I felt really driven to tell our stories because I grew up in America I never saw anything about Haiti on TV unless it was something negative on the news it was nothing, it was never mentioned in school, it was never any movie like we did not exist so I felt like well this is what I have to do we exist I kind of tripped into theater since I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and then I realized that acting was parallel to being a lawyer as well to some extent but I learned on my journey in the theater that theater could be a powerful tool for changing society and when that hit me that notion hit me audience members who would come to watch a play and they talk about what they seen, some even said that they reviewed behavioral patterns that they had and they thought differently about what they could do on one level but then I got more involved in the area of theater for development where we actually went into communities and I was able to see communities transform at the rehearsal of a play that's theater with the people by the people and for the people where they become the agents of change by performing a play themselves and you become more or less like a facilitator but they're performing about issues in their lives whether that's a road that needs to be transformed or whether that's the issue of female circumcision whether that's the issue of poverty, education, health issues that go on etc and I've actually seen communities take their own power back and make change, substantive change in the community so that's what keeps me in there, the fact that I know that it can have that impact my mentor Walishenko once said something to the effect that when we have the opportunity to arrest eyes and ears it pays sometimes to put something in front of them and let them know something about the solidness that exists around us and I firmly believe that I think that we have that almost as a duty to do as artists let me say that when we talk of theater the phenomenon we grow up with is totally different from what we're doing here nowadays the growth of film and video and a house a bit tempered is done but in on stage in Nigeria this is where I come from the audience is an active participant they're answering back singing with you so it's not like here you listen politely and after this show that so that kind of experience is very fascinating you get into it again and again having the audience talk back the audience doesn't wait till after the play to tell you whether it's good or not they can stop the play and I have had very interesting experiences acting one of Moulien's plays for instance what the title again he won the adaptation it was the where the woman is deceiving the man so much cockled in and then but he is so stupid man he has to beg her and all that she goes up to and then he has to beg her to enter the house and she insists that she must go down his knees and I wanted to go down the audience and said no he must much and that was the end of the play he hide him within the audience at the point and the man comes and they don't say but he's here he don't care about your so he really gets theater that way really what makes for what we call the theater for development which we are talking about we go into communities and you can really influence the society because they see you they learn immediately they participate and so on well so this question of this new theater we are trying to evolve which deals with words it's really it's not really a real practice there there's music there's dance everything total theater in our own experience and that's what we've been trying to to see how we can modernize and put in modern stage and so on so that that's the fascination with it we're trying to generate a bit of that at the end of when it's played by inviting the audience to become a part of that journey of the women in dance as well so that participatory nature in fact this is so good because the number of my plays the ending is decided by the audience the actors don't decide themselves we have the audience to decide and they tell us what to do but it's really very entertaining I was kind of wondering that it seems like in a lot of the plays from this weekend and a lot of the new years that we get is people here in America but almost feels like we are a abducted child trying to find our way back home we're looking and searching for our history we're looking and searching for our ancestors for the people who gave us life gave us our culture how that culture was so deeply embedded in our genetic history I don't see a lot of I spent a little bit of time in South Africa after Mandela was elected president where South Africans welcomed black Americans welcomed our money welcomed our interests but categorized us as Americans and not necessarily their brothers or descendants of a sort of long lost family welcomed home so my question is Femi and Carly talking about looking forward looking to the future in terms of that what do you see as necessarily generating from Africa generating from South America generated from the Caribbean in terms of they are looking to bring us home they are looking to show us some sort of light or some sort of way or some sort of pathway to if not repatriating but welcoming us back because I see a lot of us reaching out but I don't see a lot of that coming this way yeah I think it seems to me just the opposite you know I don't I don't I don't know I mean first of all I think when I I guess I was looking for I went to Africa in 81 I went by myself I got a grant and I took a plane to the car and I just started walking just searching through my roots I guess it was pretty kind of crazy but so there I was looking in Africa looking for my African identity and what I discovered was how much of an American I was and it was just like day-to-day cultural behaviors like waiting you know like I was in a car park and the brother got me a ticket I was going to go to Conakry and the guy said we'll be leaving in a little while and we didn't even like when it was dark well it didn't take me long to like you know like hey! what is the matter with this guy he's a little crying around sort of observing me so you know those are things which you know what happens that you you know there's one kind of culture that you grow up with habits of sort of kind of behavior you know and that there's you know so that's who I am I'm like an African American I can't go back that's gone I mean it can become something else and I don't mean that that's negative that idea of I think everybody experienced that I mean I did a solo show about that you run into people and say oh the same thing happened to me I went to Russia and went to Kiev and everybody looked like my grandmother and I hated the food so there is this even this quality that intersects which you know makes the whole thing kind of complicated as personal I had a different experience which enabled me to begin to see that you get out of an experience sometimes what you put into it right? I didn't go looking for roots I went curiously looking to for tools from my the roots of my culture in which I could use to embellish my craft as an artist so I went with curiosity I went to learn and over a period of time I found myself giving and taking from the culture there as well and so much that I was given a wife and two children from that soil so I married the continent as well in that respect but along the journey I taught I started a theater company and you just go it's give and take and I think if more people went with that notion then you'd see more of that reaching out but you had a destination you had a place to go you know the spot I mean you were Nigerian you came from America but you were a Nigerian going back there no no no no no no I went as an African-American whose parents from the south of this of this country and I went afresh I just graduated out of college I had this full bride ITT fellowship and that one year turned into 30 and that was because I went with a I think I went with an open slate with a clean slate I didn't go with any expectations in fact I went to find out more than I had learned here in this country about Africa because all you know is what like Femi said earlier what they get in Nigeria is what you get on TV and what we got here was the same thing Tarzan images of yeah stuff of that nature and I discovered that not only did I have to explore and learn more about that but I also had to debunk images of African-Americans two Africans in that circumstance so I think it's give and take what was the image of African-Americans one the black exploitation films of the 60s painted us as violent right our women were loose right so that how someone would approach an African-American woman there would be different as to how you would approach one of his own women on the continent right so you have to start cleaning that up and clarifying that you do that with your own character with the violence that you have heard here so I think that American feel like chef yeah I think it depends on the individual one then where in Africa you go yeah South Africa is different I'm going to Syria right it always depends on the kind of person you meet whether an educated person or an uneducated person all these people have different perceptions I mean if you read Maya Angelou she even talks about some people go there expecting we're going home and when they land at the airport they expect hello they're embraced and everything but the person you meet they come and he wants to rub you and then when he rubs you you're so surprised my brother rub you so it depends on what kind of person you are what knowledge you have of yourself and what you expect to get from the place I remember when I was teaching Emory for example I got some postcards from whom you know if a campus you know you know and the secretary of the department was asking where is this and I said this is Nigeria I said no it cannot be Nigeria I said but this is my department she didn't believe it of this black woman she never believed that you know you don't have such places in Africa and I couldn't for sure that even till I left said no this is not Africa because it doesn't pass even thought and as well as there is an Africa of poverty and so on which the some international agencies are expecting to get money from people the marketing there is this Africa of poverty needs school and all that and they don't tell the truth and we too in Nigeria we don't we get all kinds of ideas from films from television and so on of black brothers who have power length and go and all that so when they come the attitudes are different some people regard black Americans as lower class people you can't come and talk to us you are slaves anyway there is that kind of attitude also there and this why I said we are having quite debt with this thing in Africa the issue of what happened we made enormous money selling their people their own brothers and they were the leaders of society they were the rich and so on just as today some people are selling us to the international companies to the multinational and so on and making enormous money the kind of people that were referred to that this play were worshipping and they want to get rid of that so it depends on where you go your attitude when you go there and also collective level too when you talk about reaching out like with the practice of the Afro-Brazilian communities in Brazil I don't know if you heard about the king of the Yorubas the Oni of Ife who last year declared Bahia as the headquarters of all Yorubas in in America so so all of their practice has brought this about and then you have visits back and forth there's a delegation that's going back to Brazil from Ife and the Benin Togo Republic and all of that so more and more these connections have been made possible through the kind of reaching out or enforcing or not enforcing but just making these practices frequent and also trying to keep sorry trying to maintain the practices of their ancestors and this is not because they were expecting to get embraced or anything but this has come about just from the practice over the years and this has brought about newer relations between Brazil Nigeria, Brazil Togo, Brazil and West Africa as a whole so it's really interesting I want to speak to the I guess from an American perspective because I think it's a really great question and I know for example in Haiti I'm blanking out on the word but they created a word for people like me who are Haitian but didn't grow up in Haiti when they call you I forgot what the word is so you are othered in a kind of way but it's not that we're not accepted or regarded in like a negative way but we're different and you know I am different even as much as I as proud as I am of my culture and as much as I it's part of my life when I go to Haiti like I stick out and I grew up there my accent is not the same but I also wonder if excuse me so if the ten minutes are up just cut us off no it's okay oh yeah okay I also wonder like when I think about hip hop culture and how it's been embraced all over the diaspora and that was something that was created here by blacks in America but it's really been embraced all over the world and you know there is the it is true sometimes people like a thing about a culture but don't like the people but I think with because it's true but I do think with hip hop there is something about it there's a reason why it's been so embraced in the Caribbean like everywhere because there is something about it that speaks to us collectively so for me that is one way where there's been a reaching out I think there was a longing to connect with black Americans here and somehow hip hop tapped into that I don't know if that you're you're just making me think about the essential question that I heard coming up or a statement coming out of each of them and that is about what we do about the people who are in need of reclaiming their power this language of hip hop this language of the audience who helped to decide ending this language of of connection with all of these disparate parts of African community how is it that I guess what I'm hopeful is that these people who have invented so much are the ones to invent the language of reclaiming our I don't know how else to say not for abuse but to let live well I suppose I suppose that's what we're attempting to do in the theater I mean narratives are important and you know when people sort of create a new narrative that has more possibilities that things happen not everybody goes to theater but music is universal and I think about young brothers and sisters in Dakar we have this great daily news show it's maybe the most popular news show in Senegal and they're all about hip hop that's where they come from so the news is delivered with hip hop flavor and there's a whole new generation of young activists on the street who are pushing for an end to corruption who are pushing for a reinvention of democracy and democratic tools in Senegal and that's partly fueled by the power of this kind of underground media this is bubbled up it started up internet on TV like for real preaching the entire nation but they're also watched in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea because the government can't completely suppress everybody's internet connection like if they try to people still get it on their phone and people who can't get it on their phone are sharing with each other right just on the street so there's that going on and we've had a feedback for a long time involvement in music from the continent and the caravan in the US and I didn't get into it because I could go all day but I did the DNA thing and part of what has resulted from that is relationships with cousins long separated and I'm in touch with them every day so in Nigeria and Senegal in fact over the last 14 hours 16 hours since I was last in this building most of my contacts have actually been with them via e-mail other than my wife and our total of these housemates that's where my conversations have been these last few hours so I feel very plugged in and they have regaled about how much James Brown and Parliament something like that growing up and amazed that James Brown wasn't drawing huge crowds here like he was back in Nigeria when he would visit the continent it was wrong with y'all anyway you know from Haiti and from Cuba had a huge impact on African artists and they fed it back and so in my senate law who was a hip-hop record producer you know it was him in the end of the day how much Nigerian hip-hop artists are having an effect on hip-hop artists in Brooklyn and Queens and LA now and there's a feedback feedback it's been going on for a long time it just hasn't been a broad international focus but we know in our community so to me that's one of the hopeful things about the future we don't have to invent this connection to the continent whole plot it's not like it ain't been there it has been there for a long time and it's a hopeful about the future thanks for that David that's exactly what it is that's exactly what the diaspora is and that's exactly how it operates and it is it is a feedback group well we're going to unconvene now what's next we don't know we're making this up as we go along so it was to explore our relationship we could share with each other we found it was really positive and we were really happy to share the outcomes with you guys and what happens next Camargo is not a producing organization so we hope to promote these places as much as we're able and they'll go out into the world they got some tough players and they got some tough riders they can take care of themselves out there that cruel world but you know that's what we hope for so we'll keep you posted so thank you should we just yeah why don't you sit close to him why don't you get out and scan let me see if I can get this nice