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Brown in Beirut: Back2Roots – Day 6 – Take me to the Water

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

Three things in nature have a tendency to reset my brain:

  1. Walking along the coast of an ocean (preferably with my feet being kissed by the ebbing waves).
  2. A thunderstorm with thunder I can feel in my coccyx.
  3. Sitting deep inside a forest against a tree.

So off I went to the Corniche today. I didn’t get to walk the whole thing but I started out at the Saint George Hotel which, according to my mother, was the classiest hotel in Beirut’s heyday. Sadly, it’s struggling to survive against developers who want to tear it down to add another fancy hotel or high rise that no one will visit or live in. It’s a iconic part of Beirut history, but it looks like it’s been out of operation for a while. As my mother tearfully said today: The Paris of the Middle East is no more.

This must be what Cairenes feel like when they remember the golden days of Cairo.

And it IS sad. Gentrification and modernisation sucks ass. There’s no better way to put it. It’s uncultured. It lacks sophistication. It has no beauty or art to it. It’s cold and economic. It has no charm and leaves no impression.

But I walked along and really was taken in by the sound of the waves beating against the rocks. I was so tempted to climb down and walk where the tides where rushing in, but with only flip flops on my feet I wasn’t going to risk death.

But it was incredible watching the men (young and old) fishing, catching whatever they could. For some, this is how they make a living. For others it’s basic survival. They sit/stand in the sun for hours with these long, lithe and agile poles tearing off small pieces of watered down and clumped bread, wrapping it around three different parts of the hook and line before casting it out into the ocean to catch whatever will take a bite.

In other places, young men jump off the rocks fearlessly into the waves that rush in and quickly escape from tiny coves and inlets. I would have taken a photo or a video, but, frankly, I would have looked like a massive pederast filming these teens. But I so wanted to climb down and ask them their stories. To find out who they are and what their lives are like. Because I want to better understand the people as signs and signifiers separate from the architecture and the land. I want to better understand the blood and people I come from in totality and not in pieces.

I grabbed a quick bite – I am trying to ram as much purslane salad in me because God knows when I’ll ever have it again – and then off to 1 Hertz Studios to catch another Zoukak rehearsal. I took the day off yesterday to get some writing done (apparently I missed a lot of cool stuff), but I got to hear them work on some of the text today integrated with the music and sound elements. It’s actually a really interesting way to rehearse that aspect of a show: In a studio with the sound designer. You also hear the text very differently because in that moment it’s like a radio play.

I love that they’re borrowing the lingo and mannerisms from American drag culture because you would NEVER think that, that would be something you’d hear in a piece in the Middle East. And, look, the kind of theatre they create is foreign to me and I often stay away from it as a spectator and a creator, but they’re creating cool shit and it’s intriguing and in your face and subversively political and it’s not naff. They challenge so many norms and expectations in their work and in their bodies as theatre makers and a company. They’ve got this Fringe/off-Broadway grime to them that is honest and truthful. They’re not interesting in formalism or structuralism as a means to an end. Content will dictate the form and not the other way around.

They’re also incredibly lovely and humble and nice. I’m not used to being treated so well in a room and being treated kindly. I know much of it is Middle Eastern hospitality, but they’ve welcomed me into their little enclave and I’m having the best time dissecting what is they do, how they do it, and why they do it.

Tomorrow…I got from the water into the mountains. And I – am – dead- excited.

Brown in Beirut: Back2Roots – Day 5 – In the Ghetto

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

I smell like basterma.

More on that later.

You will notice there was no update for Day 4. And there shan’t be. The city took it’s toll on me and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment. All the bad shit being here was bringing up and the things it was making me think about it terms of my own refugee-exile history was just too much and I needed to do nothing.

So I watched episodes of ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘Project Runway’.

Until I went to Zoukak’s script workthrough rehearsal. So as I mentioned, I am here as part of residency to shadow them and learn how they create theatre. So it was script work in a living room with some brilliant people for about 4 hours. By the 3rd hour my brain was in pain because the script/rehearsal was in Arabic and trying to translate fast enough in my head proved to be too much. Everyone there was incredibly welcoming and accommodating and offered to clarify when there was something I didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to be the spanner in their process.

These folks have been creating theatre however they have needed to for the last 11 years, and I am so thrilled they finally get a space they can call their own. They work, argue, and laugh like a family of artists. It makes me miss my NYC tribe even more. And makes me wish I had been a part of theatre company like this that was so collaborative.

Although Lamia, one of the members, assured me they weren’t usually this nice; they had just been doing so much side work that their senses were dulled.

They remind me so much of my own family with their personalities and hierarchical structures. They are playful but take their work seriously, so when they are trying to aurally work on a passage of shit-fucks so that the repetitions and orders sound right you know it’s for a reason. They haggle about the tenses to be used in the sentences and the best way to truncate for clarity’s sake. I was really impressed with the level of textual detail they put in the work.

Even an on-the-spot lyric writing for a song moment, which took about 35 minutes, was magnificent to watch as everyone throws out ideas and makes stuff up and no one gets upset when their idea is passed on.

I took a break from their rehearsal today, mostly because I needed to get some work done myself, but I can’t wait to see more of the action tomorrow.

Before I sequestered myself to writing (which I am on a break from now) I decided to say the hell with it and go to Bourj Hammoud to walk through the streets where my family was born and raised. Now, I don’t remember much of it from the one time I came as a kid, but nothing looked familiar. Seeing the flags and the signage and the language, which a year ago I started to learn how to read and write (I’ve been illiterate in my mother tongue all my life), was heart-warming. I didn’t hear people speaking as much Armenian as I would have wanted to, but there was a strange comfort to being there. Mixed with a sadness.

My mother and aunt told me Bourj Hammoud was always seen as the Armenian Ghetto. It was where the diasporic Armenians with no money ended up. And it does look like a ghetto still. It has all the trappings of one, and from what I understand from a local Beiruti, poverty and lack of work is rampant here. It was rampant when my mother and aunt were growing up as well. And you can tell the city doesn’t take much care of this part of town.

But I wasn’t ashamed of what I saw. And I didn’t think they were less than or that I was better. It’s not like I came from money or that I do now, so what kind of pedestal could I even jump onto.

It was enough for me to go to the best basterma sandwich shop in town and gorge myself on this deliciousness that only tastes authentic here. I’ve had it in the States but it has never been the same. Basterma is essentially Armenian cured beef. It’s our prosciutto (sort of). It’s garlicky and spicy and tender.

And it seeps through your pores for a day or so after you’ve eaten it. I’d somehow forgotten that (even though it is a long-running joke in many an Armenian household). And I can smell it now. Coming through my pores. Showers don’t help. You just ride the wave of it.

According to my health app, I walked for 9.8 miles today. I essentially walked East of where I am staying continued on, looped around, passed where I live and found the correct stairs my mother mentioned (see last post) which are indeed the longest set of stairs in the entire Middle East. People hold open air concerts on it. It’s superb. The pictures don’t do it justice. I still didn’t find the furniture store where she worked when she was 14, but there were so many abandoned shops that I am sure one of them was the one.

I headed to the national museum which is focused on antiquities. Which is fine my me. I do love a grandiose Renaissance or Reformation painting or two, but give me antiquities to make feel insignificant any day of the week and I’m happy.

Learning about the history of the city was mental. The occupations by the Romans, the Greeks, the Ottomans, the Arabs. I mean, Christ, no wonder this city can have identity issues sometimes. I was REALLY surprised to learn that the Arab ‘invasion’ of the city only took two years and happened because an earthquake and subsequent tsunami wiped out the city. They were ripe for picking and the Greek empire was dying out, so in came the Arabs. As early as 2007 they’ve been finding pre-historic artefacts and literally down the street from where I live.

And without fail, any museum trip I takes fills me with incredible melancholy when I look at how many cultures/tribes/people were wiped out or forced to enculturate to their invaders. To try and fathom how much is lost and how much we will never know, but then to also try and imagine these countries without their previous influences. We don’t realise how much damage we have done to our own histories and civilisations. And we have the ego to think that we are at the top of the anthropological food chain. But when you see gold jewelry finely crafted 600 years before Christ was born and consider that it was done without ANY technology you start to realise that we are absolute lazy bastards and fools. You can neither stop history and progress, in all its positive or negative iterations, nor can you claim to have the answers to ‘fixing’ what is a natural behaviour for our species: The need to dominate and destroy. Don’t attach morality to it; look at us like any other species on a nature documentary. Just because we have rationality (sometimes) doesn’t mean we’re better. We’re still animals.

And somehow that thought gives me some measure of comfort in dealing with the damage that was done to this city during the Civil War that you see everywhere around you.

I’m also growing more and more fascinated by full-on trees growing in random places and at random heights in this city. FASCINATED.

 

Brown in Beirut: Back2Roots – Day 3 – Epigenetic Existensialism

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

This post, and the accompanying video, are coming late because last night my wifi connection dropped completely. Seems my AirBnB host doesn’t have unlimited wifi (note: check on this for future bookings), so I was sans connection until about 1PM today.

I keep forgetting I am not in a Western Superpower nation, so often my First World Privilege will come through leading to frustrations like the one I had today. Although, they knew I was going to be here for 2 weeks so why they provided limited data is beyond me. But, hey ho, it’s fixed now. Until I use up all the data from this refill….

There won’t be a video from today or a post, really, as I did nothing today. I’m starting to feel this city, or, rather my displacement in it, and it’s crippling me in a very weird way. I find myself not wanting to leave the apartment. Not because I can’t deal with what I see when I walk around. I don’t know what it is, but what I do know is the entire city, especially young people, feel it as well. There is this weird cultural epigenetic existentialism that exists in Beirutis. I think it explains why they try to live life as much as possible and get hedonistic whenever they can. I can only imagine this is the same feeling in other post-war countries/cities where corruption and lack of upward and forward mobilisation exist.

I urge you to look through all the photos in this gallery and read the graffiti. It’s heartbreaking, enlightening, frustrating, and provides a kind of clarity I don’t think I could in these posts.

People here are stuck. They feel stuck and they feel fatalistic about their lives. But they have so much to offer. The burden of being an ancient civilisation struggling to just take one modernising step after another must be incredibly difficult. To go from historical prominence to virtual nothingness is almost impossible to deal with.

And what’s worse is that this region is so piss poor at helping their neighbours that it’s no wonder they’re still in the shits. If only they would cooperate there would be some kind of glory reinstated to this area or at the very LEAST a population that can thrive and, God forbid, be happy.

I never did find the furniture shop (see video), but I didn’t really think I would to be honest. I forced myself to leave the apartment yesterday and went to a Lebanese-Armenian restaurant. I get really bothered with Middle Eastern food that is bougied up and served in some faux classy style and then given a ridiculous price tag. Our food is hearty, delicious and CHEAP.

I also found myself looking at ‘quinoa tabouleh’ on the menu and wanted to set myself on fire. The Hipster Force is strong in Beirut and grows. I blame this on America. I mean the rest of the world blames America for everything, so I’ll just go ahead and climb onto that bandwagon as well.

The best parallel is offal restaurants that charge an arm and a leg for a kidney and a thymus gland. Classicism in food is no joke. If you don’t believe me, look up the history of lobsters which at once point were used as payment to poor folks for their daily work.

I’ve been told I need to explain the foods (Michelle!). So from left to right is:

  1. Sambousek – Arab version of a pastie or an empanada. Filled with ground lamb or beef and you squeeze some lemon into the cavity. It’s stupid good.
  2. Mante – Armenian version of ravioli, really, it’s cooked in a tomato broth and then served with garlic yoghurt on top. Often it comes with a chili sauce but this one has sumac sprinkled on it. Sumac is one of the best spices (tarty and tangy) and pretty damned versatile.
  3. Ashtalieh – Arabs do know how to make desserts. This one I haven’t had since I was a kid. It’s essentially a milk pudding, with a sort of paneer/mascarpone/ricotta cheese topping, ground pistachios, rose petal jam and a sugar syrup. It’s heavenly.

I often find myself wondering if I’m going to make it through these next two weeks. Something has me so frozen that I’m not even able to approach any of my writing duties. Maybe it’s an adjustment thing, but I don’t think so.

Maybe the wifi running out yesterday was the universe’s way of telling me to get off my duff and get to writing.

Maybe this is just refugee trauma that is never going to go away and that needs managing like an addiction. Being here magnifies it, I think. It reminds me of all the things I came from and all the things I don’t want to be reminded of.

Brown in Beirut: Back2Roots – Day 2 – Politics and Theatre

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

I’m feeling oddly jet lagged even though there is only a 2-hour time difference between Beirut and London. I couldn’t sleep until about 4AM and woke up about 11:15AM and then whiled the day away not doing much until I had to leave for my first meeting with Zoukak Theatre.

I’m feeling less overwhelmed by the city, but by a very small fraction. Being here is revealing a massive cultural guilt I’ve been carrying about not fully retaining my mother tongues. I grew up speaking English and Armenian simultaneously, then learned Arabic and French. And to know that I could once fluently converse in those languages and now have a hard time completing one minute worth of talking without switching to English is a problem. And it’s even more aggravating because, as I said in the last post I can understand so much of what is being said to me but there is a god damn block that isn’t allowing me to get the words out coherently if at all.

Although, I’ll tell ya what, they sure as hell come out fast and furious when a soldier points a gun at me and asks me where I’m going.

It’s not a military state here but there is this weird political rule that roads and streets are blocked off to pedestrians and cars wherever a government official lives. I don’t know the radius, but I had to take three different detours during my hour walk from Hamra to Achrafiyeh. Child, I tell you I never spoke Arabic fast enough then when I was stopped and asked where I thought I was going. When I said: ‘Home.’ the soldier replied: ‘Not this way you’re not.’

It’s not that politics is corrupt in this city. I had a really good conversation with Maya Zbib, one of the founders and artists in Zoukak, about the city. And it’s socially and politically also a conundrum. You have large amounts of unemployment and a population that is forever in debt and struggling to catch up. The salaries are not commensurate with the expenses, and the latter keeps rising while the former is stagnant. Rent can cost up to $1500 which is ridiculous, especially so when your salary can’t even cover it. So people move to the outlying areas.

 

Sounds like New York.

But this is economic gentrification for the Lebos who have money and want to live in these new, fancy high rises and luxury apartment buildings. But no one actually lives in them. I walked by building after building in downtown Beirut and the apartments are 90% dark and empty. This ‘modernisation and upward mobilisation’ is all a facade. Even with all the Western companies dotted throughout the city there is this mentality of needing to show off, or rather, to hide the poverty and deconstruction underneath. It’s as if the city is saying: What? We good. Look what we got – no don’t look there!

Granted, Beirutis living beyond their means is nothing new. The stereotype of people owning BMWs they can’t afford is all true. And I think this stems from the European/French influence which creates this Eur-Arab snobbery that places status and appearance ahead of everything else. I mean aside from the fact that people here are fucking gorgeous, they must make sure everything complements that.

I haven’t been out to some of the outlying areas including Bourj Hammoud (The Armenian Ghetto) where my family is from. But those areas are apparently where conditions are the worst.

Sitting with Maya really reminded me of all the reasons why I love theatre and why I want a place in it. At the start of my career it really was just about getting up onstage and playing different parts and having a good time. But the longer I stay in it the more politicised I become. I was part of a discussion thread on FB about Henry Naylor and his work, which is just blatant appropriation in service of White Saviour narratives stemming from massive White Privilege, (don’t get me started) and I realised no one is having honest conversations about the work, the gaps, the problematics.

Zoukak is sort of like the red-headed stepchild in Beirut because they are a devised company that don’t follow traditional forms structure or stories. Check out the video below for a mere taste of their work.

A fellow Brownie (HI MAHA!) put me on their path a few years ago and I’ll be honest in saying that the work they do isn’t the kind I do nor the kind I could ever imagine myself making. But it’s interesting, and new, and challenging, and provocative, and they’re talking about things and tackling issues in the way I haven’t seen anyone else do. And they have an audience here. It’s not the largest theatre-going community, but people GO. And what they do engenders discussions and arguments. They’re not afraid of the big issues.

Their latest work, which is about the transfiguration people go to when they are pushed to the fringes, sounds incredible and not what I expected at all. But that’s a result of my own Westernised biases and nothing else. They’re dealing with these fringe modalities of being through this cabaret-meta piece that included drag kings, queens, and more. It sounds mental and I can’t wait to sit in on their rehearsals.

After 11 years they’re finally opening up their own space where they’ll be able to rehearse, perform, entertain and conduct their drama therapy workshops (more on that in another post), but this will be the last ad hoc way of making theatre they’ll have to go through. They’re rehearsing in the Aresco Palace Theatre which was bought by an ex-pat since returned to Beirut. It was an old 1970s cinema she restored and turned into a theatre and it’s GORGEOUS and kitted up and spacious.

I feel really fortunate that Zoukak allowed me into their rehearsal process leading up to their premiere in Bordeaux. Today was about basic logistics and the rest of this week they’re working on the script before rehearsing next week. I’ll get to see a final run before I go back to London. Regardless of my own (limited?) methods of making theatre I feel like this will be good for me. I’m trying to find new ways to engage with work and create it because I want to see what else is out there. I’ve been stuck in formal naturalism for most of my career – with dabbles here and there in other areas – so this kind of work is opening up the synapses.

But one thing is for sure, I’ll be coming back an even more politicised animal than I was before. And I’m ok with that…

 

Brown in Beirut: Back2Roots – Day 1 – A City on a Fence

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

I can sum up what I’m about to talk about in this post through my experience of getting dinner tonight: I opted to walk to a place nearby because I don’t believe delivery folks are going to find an address with no street number or post code and simple a street name and a building name.

So on my 5 minute walk (down the street I ran from last night) I walked by the following:

  1. A Sushi house.
  2. A cocktail bar with men in beards, white button ups with sleeves folded up, and hanging suspenders.
  3. A small Southern-style bike bar – with requisite bikes and leather jacket-clad men
  4. An Italian bistro blasting Adele.
  5. A wide alley filled with rubble and dirt with a tree growing from the middle.
  6. And my final destination: A Poké Café.

That, my friends, encompasses my experience of the city so far. Or as a local I was introduced to a couple of weeks ago said: This is a schizophrenic city. And he’s right.

Today’s sojourn was all about SIM cards and groceries.

I walked about 30 minutes to get to the first SIM card place (a chain called Class) only to find out I needed my passport to get a SIM card. And something happened which helped put a lot already into perspective.

When I left the Middle East during the war, I focused my efforts on erasing my cultural identity to fit in with everyone in Florida. And it worked. I may not have looked like everyone else, but I behaved like them and no one treated me differently. I moved to New York and was smacked with a realisation or, rather, a reminder that I am not. That I am, as they called me, a Brown person in the theatre. And that opened a whole nest of buried wasps and set me on the path or reconnecting with my cultural heritage. The thing that suffered the most were my language skills. Years of only speaking English, outside of the occasional short conversations with family, had dulled down my tongue. In the 24 hours since I have been here I’ve tried to pass, even trying to adopt my old American accent. But this face don’t change. And people here know where this kind of face comes from.

So I’ll talk in English and they’ll respond in Arabic; refusing to go along with me. And the thing is, I can understand a good 85% of what is being said to be but I struggle to find the words to respond fast enough. I used to think in multiple languages and now I have been dumbed down. Clearly I know the words as I understand them when they are spoken to me, but my brain isn’t used to it anymore. And that’s depressing. That I can’t fully use any of my three languages (all of which are spoken here). That I’m going to be the embarrassing Lebo-Son come home to people looking at him askance.

Although, when I went back to Class (this time in the mall – more on that in a minute), I did enjoy the faces of the two guys helping me when they started talking about a female customer and I laughed and they looked at me like: TRAITOR! WE KNEW YOU SPOKE ARABIC!

I know this is something I can fix. And it’s something I should have fixed before I came here. But then I wouldn’t have had this realisation that I haven’t reclaimed as much as I thought I have.

So my second trip to Class was in the ABC mall – a garish 4-story mirror of any American Mall. I mean, it was shocking. It didn’t feel like Beirut. There was even a god damned Claire’s and P.F. Chang’s in the place!

But I was also hungry and thought: When in Rome. And found myself in a lovely restaurant called Leila Min Lebnen.

And I was indeed in Heaven. I’m sure there’s better tasting, cheaper Lebanese food to be had, but this was a real taste of home like I haven’t had in YEARS. To drink Jellab again. To eat a proper purslane salad. And to have kufta bil leben was spirit fulfilling. These are tastes I haven’t had since I was in Kuwait. It’s not that you can’t replicate them in the States (sort of), but the ingredients themselves are not the same. They are not treated to chemicals or genetically modified. They retained their natural flavours.

I went into a Spinneys after to do some grocery shopping and was astounded that the produce was ugly – or rather, that it was natural. It wasn’t all uniform. It had earth still on it. It felt and smelled real. And, again, I saw products I used to eat as a kid that I haven’t treated my tongue to in a very very long time.

In a way, this city feels like coming home in much the same way going to London was (then it was seeing Cocoa Crispies in an Iceland – and I softly wept in the aisles – I did). But there is a dissonance that is difficult to deny.

This is a city that makes it very clear to any non-ignorant person with a working set of eyes that it has been through hell – and it has survived off the back of its own rules which often don’t make sense. Beirut was bombed the hell out of. The generation before me felt those effects and suffered from them. But the city and Beirutis are resilient. It is not a joke when people say that bombs will go off and people here are going to the disco. Life goes on because you don’t know when it’s going to end.

But this is a city my memories have a hard time coming to terms with. There is this entropy, this paradoxical dichotomy, between new and old, between nostalgia and modernisation, between nature and concrete.

You cannot walk far without seeing some kind of greenery. It’s also no joke when we say Middle Easterners are all about the land. And that nature grows everywhere no matter what. From the rubble to a hanging garden of plants. It finds a way and it grows and the people here nurture it. I saw at LEAST 7 people in the span of one mile watering greenery that wasn’t theirs.

But this is also a city that is hellbent on modernisation. It’s trapped between it’s colonial past, it’s European trappings, it’s American influences, it’s Arab heritage and it’s obsession with existentialism (wait for those photos later). The last one doesn’t surprise me. In one corner is a dilapidated building that looks like Old Beirut and next to it is a construction site for luxury apartments that are Green. Unkempt and disorganised wires embroider themselves through through the streets and snake around walls and buildings and despite the obvious safety hazards and the daily rolling blackouts for three hours, the city keeps going. Old shops and markets bearing their 1960s/70s signage (and how thrilled am I to see so many Armenian names) fight in the same spaces as Starbucks and Poké Cafés. Young men cajole one another in Arabic at one table while two women have an argument in French at the next table – all Lebanese people. The sea is on one side, the mountains on the other, and construction cranes vie for attention. Shops accept Lebanese pounds or dollars, and God help you if you look confused and can’t do the math before you get taken advantage of. Broken down cars are parked next to BMWs and, my god, are there many BMWs (that is also not a joke about Beirutis – it’s accuracy). The men are chiseled and well-kempt and the women are stunning and plumped with silicone – I’m sure some men are too. But the men are also in hand me downs and the women are in hijabs and abayas. Women wear daisy dukes and no one bats an eye. Men throw stares but know better than to harass a woman that will likely beat their asses. There is a haggardness and a resilience that should be odd bedfellows but work in harmony with one another.

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And it all makes your head spin. And it makes you have even more respect for this city and its people. And fear. Because they can survive anything it would seem. And this city really shouldn’t make sense, but it does. And as I type those words I am reminded of the same exact thing I said in my show bi about myself. I have, unknowingly and unwittingly, through some epigenetic curse or blessing, become a representation of this city.

Jesus – this is only day 1 and I have 16 more to go…

Brown in Beirut: Back2Roots – The First Night

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

I’m going to do my best to keep up with blogging daily as a partner piece to the videos I’ll be posting, but the wifi here is slow and I might lose patience.

For those who asked, no I did not suddenly come into vast amounts of money and hence all the travelling. I do it as a part of my work or when I get funding from the Arts Council of England as I did for this one through an Artist’s International Development Fund. The focus was to work with Zoukak Theatre in Beirut to see how they create work and how they reach audiences.

It’s also a chance for me to get some work done myself through exploring a city that I have not been to since I was a child. Once and only once – during which we got caught in the final skirmishes of the war and were trapped for about a week before heading back home to Kuwait.

I don’t remember much of the city. But what I do remember is in stark contrast to what I have seen in the last 24 hours.

Getting to Beirut was a Herculean effort in and of itself. I left in plenty of time only to realise when I was 15 mins from the airport (an 86 minute journey) that I didn’t have my wallet.

This was not an easily solvable problem. I called my landlady who lives above me and lo and behold it was sitting on my desk chair. So I got a cab 40 minutes back to my place where she was waiting for me with it in hand to pass off and the cab could turn right back around.

And I made it to the airport with 40 minutes to spare.

And no one was in the terminal.

Or at the desks.

I guess when they decide to stop working even if all passengers are not accounted for then they can do so. A customer service woman told me I was basically shit out of luck because no one was there to take my luggage. Even though I could have made the flight there was nothing they were gonna do for me.

Now – I organise and plan to the nth degree. I do logistics like no one else. I have never been late for or missed a flight in my life. All those moments in films when people panic or lose their shit. I get it now.

I got on the phone and opted to take a British Airways flight that was leaving in 2 hours. I didn’t much enjoy having to spend the money buying a whole damn new ticket. So my side trip to Jerusalem to get a tattoo that is an exact copy of the one my grandmother got when she went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, by the grandson of the man who inked her, in the same shop, was shot to hell.

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In hindsight I suppose that might have been a sign from the universe because I was GRILLED at the airport in Beirut. All my years in the States and my current tenure in the EU, I was never questioned and let right on through. But this border agent was too interested in the fact that I hadn’t been there since I was a kid and that I had no family left and he kept turning through my pages looking for something he clearly was not going to find.

In short, if they find a stamp from Israel you’re never getting into the country or any Arab country. I don’t know if that was what he was looking for but it was on my mind as I thought of the Jerusalem money that went down the drain.

The process of getting to the apartment was another Herculean effort and gave me a very stark realisation. My Arabic and French skills are not what they used to be. Having spent too many years in the West with no one to speak to in those tongues, I have lost the ability to properly communicate. I knew it would be difficult, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this hard. I could understand about 80% of what was being told to me but I couldn’t find the words or autotranslate quick enough. And in a country where the economy isn’t that great, coming off as a foreigner means you get taken advantage of.

My hosts were amazing for waiting for me beyond my original arrival time of 8.30 (I got there at about 11). I was starving and followed them out to the stairs that took us to Mar Mikhael (the apartment sits on the border of that trendy nightclub area with the bougie one of Achrafiyeh). But I was hit with a wall of sound, and people, and cars, and language and I couldn’t continue. I had to go back to the apartment. I waited a bit and tried to look for delivery options but not having a local number screwed that plan. So I did what any Western tourist would…I went to Subway.

I needed to re-orient myself somehow. Because coming back here is and will be harder than I thought and more than I bargained for.

*This was going to be one long post for the first 24 hours, but there’s too much to talk about and I want to try and keep these posts short. 

Gorgonae, Day 8 – Old Vic Workrooms

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

Hump day has arrived. 

We dove into two of our five scenes today playing with sound, the mics, movement, and the text to figure out what works best. 

I have a bit of a sense of relief in how we’re approaching this ‘event’ because we are treating and presenting it very much as a work-in-progress R&D to test new material and form in front of an audience. It’s not a finished project or idea. It’s hard to keep my NYC mind out of this process. I keep forgetting how much more sensical people approach work here. Maybe not so much season programming and commissioning but it can’t all be better. 

I’m good with our approach because that’s not what I wanted from this R&D which would have been difficult with only 10 days. But I also selfishly want someone to pick it up and develop it or commission it. 

So we read, deconstruct the text, and, my favourite part, listen to how the actors interpret the meaning. 

Look, sometimes I write and don’t think. I don’t imply any meaning. Sometimes it serendipitously happens and manages to line up. Sometimes I hear it and think: What the hell am I saying? But I get a kick out of hearing how people interpret it. It reminds me that we can never really know what, if anything, an author intends with their work. It’s all supposition based on context and our own cultural and societal values and mores. 

And in those lightning moments, meaning is brought to my text that knocks me over (in a good way) because I think I work subconsciously as I write. I let the muses, as it were, take me where they will. Then I follow up and reshape the logorrhoeaic mess on the page. And when it marries in a way I didn’t expect I love it. 

And sometimes I have to push back and say: Sorry that’s not what it means and you can’t continue down that path because it will mess something up later on. 

I didn’t do that once in a rehearsal process. It fucked up my play and subsequent production. I’ve learned never to stay quiet on those issues. 

The best part of the day for me was when I got up to play with the actors when one of our ladies had to step out for an apppintment and was running late coming back. 

I was there in the trenches working with Rania and Lara, building a musical language with Kareem, and reshaping the text with Ita’s movement acumen and third eye.  

It reminded me how much I miss acting. How much easier I find it. How much more fulfilling it is – likely because it’s not as lonely as a process. It reminds me that I’m making the right decision to fully come out of my 3-year hiatus and get back on stage. That’s my home. It’s immediate. It’s more ephemeral. 

I don’t think I’ll stop writing. Although I don’t know for sure. And if that’s what comes out of this two-week R&D I don’t think I would be disappointed. I would be thankful for the clarity. 

Why waste anyone’s time, let alone mine?

I’m not going to turn this into a self-aggrandising or self-loathing post. Ain’t nobody got time for that. 

I’m excited to see what is unearthed in Day 9.  Maybe I’ll pull a Showgirls on one of the ladies and step into a role. 

Gorgonae, Day 7 – Old Vic Workrooms

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

I was surprisingly alert and with it given how little sleep I got last night. But, then again, I’m a notorious night owl who has learned to get by on no sleep. It makes me more docile during the day 🙂

Thankfully, I didn’t have to do much thinking and processing beyond reading through the new scenes and chatting about them and making changes. I was pleased to know that the damned things worked. At least on paper. The piece is a new beast for me, not in terms of story per se, but in form with trying to mix Eastern story telling traditions with Western narratives and a Greek tragedy structure. So the proof of the pudding will be in getting it on its feet and seeing if it really works in action.

That’s where part of the stumbling block was yesterday with trying to nail down the form and when our Fury World, as we call it, interrupts with our Natural World, and what that means. Or when the internal starts to wreak havoc on the external.  

Apologies for any redundancy, but I wanted to work in a new way. To see what it would bring out of me or kickstart in me. So far, it’s been really interesting. I can’t say honestly one way or the other whether I like creating work in this way. I probably won’t know for sure until after the sharing.

I’m digressing.

Today I sat back and watched our three actresses get put through their physical paces by our movement director, Ita. She worked those three like nobody’s business as we tried to find the characters physical languages and then worked on how our Fury World is expressed in movement: A Fury Dabke – of sorts. I struggled to find how the exercise could connect to me or my writing, but Carla, my director, who always gives me aha moments, shared with me the value of what it can do for an actor and thereby for the text they engage with. What it helps brings out of the text which in turn can lead a writer to determine what is too much, what is needed, and what is repetitive. And hearing Ita talk about how it can be freeing makes complete sense to me. 

But this way of working is somewhat new to me because we don’t work this way in the States. Never as an actor or as writer did I have to partake in these kids of physical exercises to find character. I mean, once a director had us all walking around the room feeling one another’s energies and at the time I just didn’t get why the hell we were doing it. I just wanted to get on with it and open my mouth, say some things, and mean them. And there are times where I still find it strange, And I don’t know if I could ever find it useful as an actor because I innately explore the physical gesture of the character I am playing along with the vocal choices without having to go through that process. Maybe if I did go through it, I might find more? 

But I can see the light bulbs that turn on for some actors when they go through it. I think it does have value, but I also think it’s a personal choice. I don’ know if I am 100% convinced, but what is great about this process is that it is opening my eyes and ears a little more to the why and how so that I can understand regardless of my perspective on it. The R&D wasn’t just about the writing but about learning new active or passive practices for my work or the way I want to create work. 

I AM a little terrified that we only have two days left before the sharing, but I’m not scared shitless. If it were a different director I would be more on edge. But I know Carla has a plan and she’s less paranoid precious than I am when it comes to many things in the rehearsal room. She’s the kind of director most writers should be lucky to work with because she knows how to challenge and bring out the best in you. 

I have a feeling tomorrow I’ll be dealing with Kareem, our musician/composer, a lot more in this blog as we move into the text and looping technology we’re trying to experiment with. 

Gorgonae, Day 6 – Old Vic Workrooms

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

Three weeks has flown by and now I’m back in the Old Vic Workrooms for the second and final week of working on my new piece Gorgonae. We built in time for me to generate pages from the end of our first week. Which always means procrastination time where I ‘think’ about the play before I start writing. I work best under pressure. Always have. I can’t belabour the writing process. But I am finding that I do need the time to imagine scenes and play them out in my head so I can get a sense of what it is I am writing. 

 And at this point anything would have been better than the pages I delivered on the last day. You could say they were pages and they had words on it…but that’s about it. Although they were a good starting place for – well – anything.

And then off we went on a break and I turned my attention to something else for a few days to clean out my brain a little. And then back to looking at the script. 

Staring at the pages more like it. But at least I had a synopsis to work from.

A few days before our return to the rooms I feverishly generated the scenes that I thought would work for our sharing and help flesh out the story for everyone. And then it was Monday morning. I find I don’t really get nervous on first reads anymore. My reaction always tends to be the same: God that’s shit writing. It’s just the process of hearing it only in my head for so long and then hearing it from the mouths of actors who may or may not say the words as I heard them in my head. It’s an illogical psychological thing. I usually ignore it. 

It’s reactions after that are telling. These were telling. Not in a good or bad way. But I can tell, generally, when a scene works or when it doesn’t. I’m also an actor; I know the tells. And then we let the actors go before lunch to sit and discuss the dramaturgical arc of the scenes but also to look at the shape of the piece and how the different elements are being used. Trying to make sense of the seemingly disparate worlds of sound, music, movement, and text to make sure a clear story is being told. 

So Carla, Kareem (our musician) and myself banged our heads against walls and one another trying to make sense of what it is I was doing, what I wanted to do, and the BS I started spouting to try and make sense of it.

Not gonna lie – it’s frustrating as hell. It’s meant to be. Otherwise everyone would do it. But figure it out we did. Along with what scenes we wanted to work on with the sharing. 

And off I went to write.

But not so quickly as I had to co-chair a panel on storytelling diversity that ended around 9.15. I didn’t get home until 10.30. I scarfed down some food super quickly (and starting a Whole30 programme right now was stoopid) and go to rewriting four out of the five scenes. Thankfully (thanks to the muses) I write quickly. Very quickly. It’s better that way because I don’t have time to think and judge. I just react. And react I did. And finally dropped off at 1.20ish in the morning after treating myself to some ASMR videos which I have discovered are one of the only few things that can quiet my hyperactive brain so I can go to sleep without much fuss. 

And I feel better about the new scenes. Now….what will the tells tell 🙂

For the Sake of Intriguing Opportunities

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

This post is going to piss some people off.

I may lose some friends in the process.

But this has been eating at me for a while, especially today. And I can’t sleep because I’m bothered.

The latest debacle in the ‘colourblind’ casting carnival rears its head with Edward Albee.

And I’m annoyed. Very annoyed.

But here’s the thing – I side with the Albee estate on this.

BEFOREYOUFREAKOUTSTOPBREATHEANDREAD

Look, most people who know me know I am the first to blow the race whistle and call some White folk out on their tomfoolery so they get even a little woke.

But now we’re treading dangerous ground.

As an actor there are many roles I want to play. I was spoiled early in my career before I moved to New York by playing amazing roles that I would never have been cast in, in NYC (and, in truth, in looking back, my presence as an actor of colour altered the stories in ways I didn’t think of then). My one dream role left (George in Sunday in the Park with George) will probably never be realised and it’s for a very simple reason: George was a white Frenchman and he was a real person. I speak French. And that’s about it. Sure, I could pass. Maybe. But it would be inauthentic.

And I think I am ok with that. Unless Sondheim and Lapine gave me their blessing then all bets are off. Maybe.

But if I am not ok with then I betray Sevan the Writer. The writer who creates very specific worlds and characters. Sometimes I don’t care about the race of my characters because it’s not integral to the story; anyone can and should play those roles to reflect our contemporary society. Sometimes I am very specific and I make a note that it should not be cast any other way for any reason because it disrupts the story and world I have created.

I don’t want my work to turn into a gimmick because of a director’s ‘vision’ to bring some new awareness to support the latest political agenda or grand statement. I’ve seen too many director’s glaucomic visions ruin amazing plays.

When we cast ‘colour blind’ we’re not just doing it in the name of equality. It comes loaded with several layers of semiotic meaning.

We blow this whistle hard enough and what is to stop someone from doing an all-white production of The Colour Purple? Would it be fair for us to deny them that ‘colour blind’ casting if it truly doesn’t matter? Careful.

Sevan, you think, don’t be an idiot. That is clearly a Black show about a Black historical moment. It wouldn’t work with White actors.

Well, you’re going to have to allow it if you allow all the other things you want, i.e., an all East Asian Cherry Orchard set in Russia or re-set in China.

Let’s be clear, I don’t advocate any of those because it’s not what the writers created. That is not the world they created. They are not subservient to our political needs to make statements that will prove a point to the industry.

And more importantly, I’m not on this planet to tell YOUR stories as an actor. If you want to showcase talented actors of colour. If you want to have a diverse season. Then I know 10 playwrights at the top of my head whose work you can produce which could go toe-to-toe with these classics. Plays/musicals written FOR actors of colour. Or even those written with so much casting room that you don’t even have to think about your choices. Swing that cat around and let it hit whomever in the room and cast them.

But the sad thing is that casting race contrary to a play and it becoming a political symbol is something you cannot avoid. We have not reached a point of enlightenment in our society where none of it matters.

And even if we WERE in that place, you’re still remaking someone else’s work and world to suit your own.

Sure, you can say that these subversive moves are to show that actors of any colour are capable of doing anything. You can still make that point with new work.

And I get it, there are some classic roles that are just so fucking incredible that as an actor you want to get your teeth into them NOW. But why can’t we produce shows that elicit the same feeling for characters of colour?

Don’t get me started on Shakespeare either…please.

Read that Jezebel article carefully before you go right to the race whistle.

…it is important to note that Mr. Albee wrote Nick as a Caucasian character, whose blonde hair and blue eyes are remarked on frequently in the play, even alluding to Nick’s likeness as that of an Aryan of Nazi racial ideology. Furthermore, Mr. Albee himself said on numerous occasions when approached with requests for non-traditional casting in productions of VIRGINIA WOOLF? that a mixed-race marriage between a Caucasian and an African-American would not have gone unacknowledged in conversations in that time and place and under the circumstances in which the play is expressly set by textual references in the 1960’s.

I know we want to think this is racism. It’s not. Albee was a picky, controlling bastard on the best of days (although he was totally ok with a Blacktress playing Martha in an Orlando production). The context of this play is very specific. It might be a WPPP (Boring  White People Problems Play), but the man makes it very clear what section of society he is writing about. You change that, and you change the play. Maybe not tremendously, but you change it from what he intended. Even his somewhat hilarious height requirements for Three Tall Women makes sense when you think about the play and what he is doing.

I fault the director in this, sorry. His need to create a new vision and to make the play more relevant to today angers me. If you want to talk about an issue today why not produce a new play that can do the same thing. He says: I believe casting Nick as black adds depth to the play. But what he ends up doing is changing what Albee what was scrutinising, analysing, and skewering.

Also, do we REALLY think THAT play needs more depth?

He goes on to say:

The Nick I cast is bald. My request from the Albee Estate was going to be to change the term ‘blond’ to ‘bald’ and ‘blondy’ to ‘baldy’ or ‘curly’. This would be a comparable insult. If they would not allow the change, the actors would have had to say ‘blond’ and ‘blondy’ with a touch of irony. But I think it would still work. A minor drawback to an otherwise intriguing opportunity.

If you don’t seem the problematics in his decision and what he says then please don’t engage me in a conversation about this because it won’t end well. Because if you’re OK with this then you need to be ok with the all-white production of The Colour Purple as a way to talk about the continuing abuse in Appalachian communities; simply change the more black-centric language to make it work. A ‘minor’ drawback indeed. Now if it was an all-Latino production of the same musical would you be ok with it? Why? Because they’re not white? We’re not going to reverse issues or change them by simply displacing them on the perpetrators.

I’m also not going to entertain the conversations where people say things like: Well, if you’re going to do Macbeth then shouldn’t all the actors be Scottish? Doesn’t that interfere with the playwright’s original choices? Why are people doing The Kite Runner without Afghani actors in it? Huh, Sevan? Huh?

Just don’t…

If I write a play about the Middle East with Middle Eastern characters, I don’t want anyone else playing it but Middle Easterners. I don’t want you moving it to New Zealand. I don’t want you messing with my work because you can’t find actors for it (you’re not looking hard enough) or because you can use my text to make a statement about something with just a few tweaks here and there. I am sure my bank account would love the royalties, but please support another fellow playwright who probably has an amazing play that already does what you’re wanting. I appreciate your support but my work is not here to fulfill your soapbox mission that runs counter to my play’s world and to my characters’ lives.

I don’t want to be your gimmick so an audience can say: Oh my God it’s an all Arab Oklahoma let’s go check that out. What am I? A side show freak? Elicit the same reaction by producing an all-Asian play with all-Asian actors that or may not have anything to do with them being Asian. It’s a stronger political statement.

I say NONE of the above to mean we should not be diligent and call theatres out when they need to be called out. Because they still stupidly make the same mistakes. We should NOT stop blowing whistles. But we can’t treat every moment as the same screw up.

You don’t see TV networks reviving old TV shows and simply replacing them with actors of colour. They’re producing new shows for today with actors of colour in lead recurring roles. And, no, I am not saying there aren’t issues in TV land either. That they are doing it better (in some small ways) than the Theatre should be more cause for alarm. This would launch me into a tirade about our obsession with doing classics ad nauseum but that’s for another post.

We’ve got bigger fish to fry than this play, folks. Hold producers and organisations accountable. Make them produce the new work. Make them find the relevant plays and the actors of colour. Make them change the landscape and shift the paradigm. But let’s not resort to using Classics as the panacea. It’s not enough. Let’s create the new classics. The new roles actors are dying to play.

Let’s not resort to minor drawbacks for the sake of intriguing opportunities.