THEATRE

PuSh FEST Our Fathers takes a spiritual approach to BLM

by Charlie Smith

Toronto theatre artist Makambe K Simamba recognizes why the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer had such a profound impact on her back in 2012 and 2013. “The most central reason that it spoke to me was my younger brother, his name is Liayo,” Simamba tells the Straight by phone from Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre rehearsal hall.

By the time the gunning down of Martin had become a monumental international story, spurring the Black Lives Matter movement, Simamba’s brother was about the same age as the Florida teen. “I really thought deeply about what it would be like if Trayvon was my actual brother,” she says. “The thought terrified me and it broke my heart and it made me so angry and it made me confused.”

The 17-year-old Martin was shot dead after buying a pack of Skittles and a fruit juice at the local 7-Eleven. His killer, neighbourhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, was not arrested at the time even though a police dispatcher had told him not to follow Martin in the upscale gated community in Sanford, Florida.

Simamba recalls being about 75 percent sure that Zimmerman would be convicted after he was finally charged, given the evidence, including his 9-1-1 call. But the jury acquitted him. She says she understands that racialized violence continues to exist, but she was devastated that there was no justice in this situation because it was so obvious what had occurred.

“If this was my brother, how do you deal not only with the fact that he’s gone but the fact that the whole justice system in the society that you’re living in is telling you that it’s okay that that happened?” she asks. “And that the person who did that gets to walk away without consequences?”

The horror remained with her in her body for two years, she says, before she felt ready to write about it. It came when she was doing a three-week intensive program with One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre in Calgary. Around that time, Simamba went through a difficult breakup. Then she heard the horrible news that a cousin, who was in her late 20s, had died suddenly in a motor-vehicle accident.

“It made me really think about ancestry because she’s a part of my family as well,” Simamba recalls.

That prompted her to think a great deal about her cousin’s spirit entering the afterlife. “I kind of was in such a devastated place that, creatively, I did not have the energy to stifle my own impulses,” she says.

Those impulses resulted is her oneperson play, Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, which she will perform at the Firehall Arts Centre on the first three evenings of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Directed by DonnaMichelle St. Bernard, it tells the story of a murdered Black youth named Slimm who struggles in the afterlife to come to terms with a death that he did not choose.

Simamba initially wrote a 10-minute solo, but she has since expanded it into a full-length play after doing extensive research. She visited Sanford so she could feel the world that Martin experienced. She also travelled to Ferguson, Missouri, and stood where an 18-year-old Black man, Michael Brown Jr., was shot by a white police officer in 2014.

“I feel a strong connection to those stories and I feel those stories live in our bodies,” she says. “We experience racism in many different ways.”

It’s part of her effort to accurately convey the experiences of Black teenage boys who, she says, have had a profound impact on popular culture even as they remain the “most hunted”.

“The entire piece is quite spiritual,” Simamba says. “I always have this image that I’m walking through ghosts because I think I am.”

Plus, she travelled to Montgomery, Alabama, where so much history of the civilrights movement is remembered, including the famous bus ride taken by Black icon Rosa Parks in 1955. It took Simamba back to her childhood—that was the first show that she ever played on-stage, as a third-grade student.

“So I got to go to the Rosa Parks Museum and sit behind her statue,” she says. “All of the sudden, I was seven years old again. It brought me so much joy. And it felt like a full-circle moment.”

The director of programming at the PuSh festival, Gabrielle Martin, tells the Straight by phone that she feels that Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers is so interesting because it takes a metaphysical perspective on how our society values Black lives.

“It is a necessary work, and Makambe is an incredible, incredible performer,” Martin says. “I think we’re really lucky to see her at work. I think it’s a challenging subject matter that is really handled very masterfully.”

Martin describes the upcoming show at the PuSh festival as a “remount of sorts” because it’s being taken to another level with a video backdrop and dynamic lighting. “They’ve gone a little bit deeper with the work,” she adds. “I am really excited to see that and have that version premiere here.”

As Simamba was writing Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, the primary audience, in her mind, was Black youths. While she welcomes people of all backgrounds to the show, she says it was extremely important to her that Slimm tell his story to people his age.

Simamba also emphasizes that at the end of the day, what’s behind the headlines are real people and that these young Black lives truly do matter. After all, Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old kid who had just bought a powder-blue suit for his prom when he was executed because of his race.

“I feel like headlines freeze people in their death,” Simamba says. “I wanted to just remember and humanize this child who did not choose to lead a movement. He was just walking home with candy and a drink.

“That’s what makes the story so heartbreaking,” she continues. “He never chose to be a martyr.” g

Makambe K Simamba plays Slimm in Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, which is rooted in the tragic shooting of Black Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

I always have this image that I’m walking through ghosts because I think I am.

– Makambe K Simamba

The Firehall Arts Centre, Touchstone Theatre, and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival are partnering in presenting Black Theatre Workshop and Tarragon Theatre’s coproduction of Makambe K Simamba’s Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers. It will be performed at the Firehall Arts Centre from January 20 to 22, and Simamba will be in conversation with Gabrielle Martin after the show on January 21.

PuSh FEST Vox.Infold reflects the city’s interdependent arts scene

by Charlie Smith

East Vancouver musician, poet, and artist Ruby Singh thinks it’s passé to celebrate the power of individual genius.

“I think that’s such a tragedy of a way of thinking,” Singh tells the Straight by phone. “It’s an interdependent community that lifts voices, that raises voices, that gathers around and lifts people.”

It’s reflected in his soon-to-be released album, Vox.Infold, which is a collaborative effort between himself and cocreators Dawn Pemberton, Inuksuk Mackay and Tiffany Ayalik of PIQSIQ, Russell Wallace, Tiffany Moses, and Shamik Bilgi. In advance of its release on Bandcamp on January 31, Vox.Infold can be heard in its entirety at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in an installation at Lobe Studio (713 East Hastings Street) using 4DSOUND technology.

Singh points out that Lobe Studio has speakers in the ceiling and the floor, enabling him, as composer and arranger, to do things he could never do in a regular recording space.

“I took the stereo mix and turned it into a choreographed dance of voices,” he says. “This is like a 28-speaker decision. So you’re moving sounds and having them meet at different points in a song and then you can shift everything.”

With great enthusiasm, Singh points out that Lobe Studio is one of only three studios in the world with this capability— and the only one in North America. He says that this studio enables him to send sound flying away or flying back at whatever speed he likes.

“It’s like you’re putting dimension to sound,” Singh adds. “It’s very much ambisonic, so it’s moving and dancing around you. You can really feel the movement of the music and the different voices.”

The first single from the album, “Nakshatra”, was released in December. Its name was derived from “the lunar mansion in Indian astronomy, carrying with it the light that shines through the darkness”, and listeners can hear the Inuit throat singing of Mackay and Ayalik among the other voices.

It was recorded in November and December of 2020, before the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, which meant the singers were masked and shielded and had to remain three to six metres apart during sessions. According to Singh, the goal was to make an album outside the ambit of capitalism, white supremacy, and other overarching and suppressive forces in our society.

“There was a lot of heaviness in the room,” Singh says. “The album didn’t try and shy away from that. If anything, we leaned into the ideas of pain and grief because those are things that expand us as human beings and expand our humanity.”

He brought along some poetry that he had written, which was incorporated through polyphonic sound. He adds that as part of an effort to decolonize the production, the primary focus was on the process rather than the outcome.

“Everybody was really into that,” Singh says with satisfaction.

It premiered at last year’s Indian Summer Festival, which is partnering with the PuSh festival in presenting it this month.

Singh notes that the title, Vox.Infold, refers to both a shortened term for voice and to folding vocal cords. “I saw it as knitting voices together,” he says. g

Ruby Singh says the singers on Vox.Infold were given lots of leeway. Photo by Kristine Cofsky.

It’s like you’re putting dimension to sound.

– Ruby Singh

The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Indian Summer Festival are presenting Ruby Singh’s Vox.Infold from January 20 to January 30 at Lobe Studio (no show January 24).

JAN

21–23

Beethoven’s

Eroica*

Fri, Sat, 8pm | Orpheum Sun, 2pm | Orpheum

Beethoven’s heroic and revolutionary symphony is paired with Sri Lankan- Canadian composer Dinuk Wijerante’s Polyphonic Lively. Plus VSO Principal Flute Christie Reside is featured in Swiss composer Frank Martin’s haunting Ballade.

Christie Reside

Hear it. Feel it.

Christopher Gaze

Charles Richard-Hamelin

Andrew Crust

JAN

13

Celebrating Copland

Thu, 2pm | Orpheum

TODAY!

Three Copland Masterpieces meet a witty counterpart in Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.

JAN

28/29

Chopin, Fauré

& Bologne*

Fri, Sat, 8pm | Orpheum

This (almost) all French concert features award-winning Canadian Chopin specialist Charles Richard-Hamelin in a ravishing program led by Maestro Tausk.

FEB

Debussy, Satie & Tan Dun

4/6

Fri, 7pm | Orpheum Sun, 2pm | Orpheum

Discover the colour of music with master French composer/orchestrator Debussy, the playful Erik Satie, and renowned Chinese composer Tan Dun.

* Note: Large symphonic pieces require more musicians on stage. To keep the musicians safe and provide increased physical distancing on stage, the VSO has changed the programming of its Jan 21–23 and Jan 28–29 concerts.

VancouverSymphony.ca 604.876.3434

JAN 13 TEA & TRUMPETS SERIES SPONSOR JAN 21, 22 MASTERWORKS GOLD SERIES SPONSOR JAN 23 & FEB 6 SYMPHONY SUNDAYS SERIES SPONSOR JAN 28, 29, MASTERWORKS DIAMOND SERIES SPONSOR

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Concerts presented at 50% capacity, in adherence with Provincial Health Orders