“Antigone” is an anchor. I always come back to that core story dealing with fundamental human themes about right and wrong, self-belief, familial obligation. These are core human experiences.
‘Otto Frank’
Inspiration: “The Diary of Anne Frank”
Roger Guenveur Smith, creator and performer: I was invited to a theater festival in Amsterdam. I went to the Anne Frank House. I was very inspired and very moved. I’m always trying to bring the past into the present moment. The idea that Otto Frank should come to know his daughter through that diary, especially having lost her the way that he lost her, must have been an extraordinarily daunting exercise. I thought that would be something worth pursuing, because of this ongoing crisis that we’re still engaged in.
The fundamental challenge is: How does a man reverse the natural order of things and create a memorial for his daughter? To simultaneously serve the living and the dead is the great challenge for Otto Frank and for many of us, who are in the current moment, dealing with loss.
‘Your Sexts’
Inspiration: The erotic letters of James Joyce, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, etc.
Rachel Mars, creator and performer: I was on a residency. Brexit had just happened. It took the wind out of my sails creatively. Then Scott Sheppard [the writer and performer] was like, “I have something to cheer you up.” He read me this James Joyce 1909 letter. I was bowled over by the explicitness, the poetics, the imagery, how much it was all about butts. It was super life-affirming.
I began this search for who else was writing these letters. I worked with two sexologists. It was obviously more difficult to find the women and the queer women, because history, but it was easier than I thought. There’s an illicitness to it, definitely. It does feel like opening a crack into people’s private lives. But there’s this sanctity to it, a kind of respect.
‘KLII’
Inspiration: Mark Twain’s “King Leopold’s Soliloquy,” Patrice Lumumba’s independence speech
Kaneza Schaal, creator, co-director and performer: My practice is about remembering. Today, we look at a figure like Leopold [the Belgian king who presided over atrocities in his administration of the Congo Free State] with mock horror, his atrocities stun and outrage. But there are new Leopolds every day. For me, this was a way of exorcising this evil. I’m interested in looking inward and looking outward, exorcising these catastrophic figures and catastrophic events.
Christopher Myers, co-director and designer: Mark Twain was interested in the Congo, and he understood the relationship between the oppression of Africans there and the oppression of Africans at home. This text of Mark Twain was in line with the internationalism and cross-cultural, cross-pollination that has inspired so many anticolonial causes. It’s about seeing not only the histories of these specific texts, but also how these texts bump up against each other. One of the things that theater does really well is allow you to rub a text against other texts.
