In the Red and Brown Water



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9. SYNOPSIS
Act One
It is morning and Oya is on her way to a very important track meet. She is confronted by her mother, Mama Moja, who questions her about why she always wants to run. Oya tells her it’s an important race, and Mama Moja encourages her to do her best. As Oya is about to leave, Mama Moja doubles up in pain, but insists that it is nothing and Oya leaves for her race.
Oya’s god-brother, Elegba, arrives telling Moja about a strange dream he had about Oya. She is lying in water, with blood coming out between her legs, staring up at the sky. Elegba tries to get her attention but she does not see or hear him. He asks Moja what it all means – she tells him that it means both he and Oya are growing up.
Oya wins her race at the track meet and attracts the attention of the university scout – The Man from State. He offers her a place on his team. Oya is so pleased, but after thinking about it, says she has to ask her mama first.
Oya’s sitting on her porch after the race. Ogun enters, the hard working mechanic who is in-love with her. Ogun has a stutter and is unable to get his feelings across to her before the slick-talking Shango arrives. Shango asks Ogun to leave him and Oya alone. He tells Oya how great she looked out on the track that day, but Mama Moja interrupts them, seeing through all his sweet words, and tells him to leave Oya alone.
Oya sees The Man from State again, and explains that she has to turn down his offer of a place on his team to look after her sick mother.
Getting weaker and weaker, Mama Moja dies one night. Oya is left in the care of her Aunt Elegua who does not look out for her as much. Shango sees his chance now with Oya, and makes his move. He wins Oya round who cannot resist him or his words, and they enter the house together.
Aunt Elegua reminds Oya about The Man from State, now that she no longer has her mother to look after. Oya contacts The Man from State, but he tells her that unfortunately he has found someone else to take the place on the team. Her disappointment is deepened when Shango comes to tell that he is on his way to war and leaving her behind. Oya is devastated.
Ogun sees his opportunity to tell Oya how he feels. He tells her that he can love her and look after her and that they can have a family together. Now that her hopes of running are over, all she wants is to have a baby of her own. She accepts Ogun’s offer and they enter the house together.
Act Two
Three years have passed.
Two other girls from the area – Nia and Shun – enter on their way to a baby shower. They pass Ogun on his way to work as he kisses Oya goodbye, telling her that they will have a baby shower too one day.
Alone on the porch, Oya is met by Elegba who tells her that at the age of sixteen, he has got an older woman pregnant. Oya tells him to go inside and get some rest.
Shango enters – he has returned home on leave from war. Shango expresses surprise that Oya does not have a baby yet, and asks her who she’s with now. She tries to convince Shango that she is not ready for a baby yet and is fine. Shango exits, but does not believe her and leaves her flustered.
Shango comes again to Oya, and tells her about Ogun’s little brother Oshoosi, getting into trouble at church. They laugh about it, enjoying each other’s company again. Ogun enters, angry. Oya tells Shango to leave; he does, but tells Ogun that he was there first, and will be there last.
Nia and Shun are gossiping about Oya – she’s having an affair with Shango. Shun is angry – she thinks Shango is her man and that Oya is stealing him from her. Shun tells Nia she has a plan to get him for herself.
Shango leaves again for the war, telling Ogun that Oya is all his again.
Oya realising that she is unable to get pregnant, even by Shango the man she really loves, visits a Voodoo woman who also tells her that she cannot help her.
A few days later, she tells Ogun to leave her. She tells him that she loved him but he is too good for her. He should find someone who would make him happier. Ogun leaves, devastated. To add to Oya’s despair, Nia and Shun tell her that when Shango was last here, he got Shun pregnant.
Shango returns from the war. He goes to visit Oya. Unable to give Shango the baby she wanted, she cuts off her ear and hands it to him – this is all she has of herself to give him. She then collapses.

10. CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
CAST

Mama Moja / The Woman Who Reminds You Adjoa Andoh

Shun Camilla Beeput

Nia Sheri-An Davis

Elegba John MacMillan

Aunt Elegua Cecilia Noble

Ogun Javone Prince

The Man From State Paul Thornley

Oya Ony Uhiara

Shango Ashley Walters

The Egungun Abram Wilson
CREATIVE TEAM

Direction Walter Meierjohann

Design Miriam Buether

Lighting Jean Kalman

Sound Fergus O’Hare

Music Abram Wilson

Movement Ben Wright

Dialect Neil Swain

Assistant Director Patrice Etienne

11. INTERVIEW WITH WALTER MEIERJOHANN, THE DIRECTOR
What were your first impressions of the play?

I read it in February for the first time. I’m German. I knew this was a beautiful play but I didn’t quite understand – there are so many things going on, and there are so many weird things, such as the stage directions which are written in the text but are spoken out. I had never read anything like that. Also, all the Yoruba names – I had never heard about it before. But I knew there was big talent there. It is also based on Lorca’s play Yerma, which I had directed before, and I love Lorca. I knew Tarell was young – he was 27 – but I knew something exceptional was happening here, I knew he was so talented in mixing so many things –Yoruba mythology, Yerma and street languane. It is a very interesting play.


How much have you considered the Yoruba religion and culture?

I was a bit frightened by it, to be honest, because it’s not my thing. I read some books and did my background research. But I noticed in the play that it is good to know it, but you don’t see it right away. There is something very epic in this play as well, which is not just Yoruba – there is Brecht and Shakespeare, all these guys are in the text as well.


What research and preparation did you do?

The biggest things were the two trips to America. One was to New York where I met Tarell and saw a workshop in Princeton. To see American actors do it was quite remarkable. Meeting Tarell and taking about it was amazing. And then together with Patrice [Etienne, the assistant director], we went and did a research trip to New Orleans which was exceptional.


What did you learn?

I learnt that I could trust my own instincts, in the sense that I went to New Orleans to find out if there was something in the text that I would have to change once I’d gone there. But coming back, I thought I can create a world that can be set anywhere and doesn’t have to be New Orleans.


But the great thing is that we have a New Orleans trumpeter [Abram Wilson] with us in the play, and that was a great encounter too, in the sense that we have a real piece of America in our production and he is just a remarkable guy. I always knew I wanted a live musician, which is not written in the text, but that is how I work and is also my background in German theatre. I always love live music. And here, to find someone like Abram, I couldn’t believe my luck!
How did you tackle the spoken stage directions, and the shifts from prose to verse and back again?

I think we are still in the middle of finding that out – there is not one solution to do it. Tarell did tell us how to do it, but I always think that in a way, that is not a rule, it is something you have to discover and I think we are still discovering it. Yesterday when I watched it, I thought it is such an avant garde text. It is a beautiful story, it’s quite a simple story actually, but there is something quite edgy with the stage directions – it’s not a smooth text because the actors have to shift suddenly from being in the emotion and being very truthful, and then suddenly flipping out of it. It is very exciting and I have never seen it before. There are constantly shifting gears.


Is it slightly Brechtian?

Yes it is, but not as rigid. I like Brecht, but I prefer this – it’s more emotional in a way.


How do you think the play is relevant to a British audience?

It’s very interesting. I said to the actors, if I don’t get it and you have to convince me as I’m not English… We’re in the process of finding the pace – Tarell said it has to be fast and loose, and we are now in the process of making it not so fast because this is not an American audience. It is still fast, but I have to slow it down so that the audience can understand it.


Have there been any challenges in directing this play?

It’s been a completely huge challenge – the whole enterprise. I normally work in a very different system from here. I normally work with an ensemble theatre so I don’t cast. So the process of casting took two to three months and I couldn’t believe how long it took. But then again we really have an ensemble on the stage now and they are a remarkable group, and it really pays off to take your time to find the best people. Doing the technical rehearsals in two days as you do here – that was very different. Where I come from it takes much longer. And you do the lighting first without the actors. I’m just amazed how actors do it. They are very patient. I’m learning a lot.


I’m also telling an American story – I never thought I would do something like that. A German director, telling an American story in London! I’ve met great people. The designer is German, the lighting designer is French so this is really like a meeting point. Very exciting and international.

12. INTERVIEW WITH MIRIAM BUETHER, THE DESIGNER
How did you arrive at the idea of water in the set?

It’s in the play already. Tarell uses the metaphor – Elegba describes his nightmare of Oya floating on top of the water. For me, it feels like a metaphor of life, of femininity, of fertility. The original plan was to start it in water and drain the water away as the play progresses – in that Oya is actually drying out – but we changed that now. People forget that there is water – it becomes another ground – it’s bottomless, you can’t see where it ends. And then of course, in Yoruba, she is goddess of the river. We felt from the beginning that we thought it should be in the water.


How did you go about achieving it practically?

It was very expensive – it swallowed almost all of the set budget! The Young Vic got in specialist water company – the water had to be heated as we were worried that actors would get ill, and we had to test out their shoes so that it’s not slippy for them. I was very concerned that the water came across as just a metaphor – it’s not actually there. I was also very concerned that it didn’t come across as a flood. One of the worries we had was that people would think of Hurricane Katrina.


What was your starting point and your research?

I did research about the Projects – people sitting out on their porches because of the heat. That is why the rest of the set – the raised levels for the actors when they are not acting – are meant to represent the porches. That it what people do there. And the same for the audience sitting downstairs – that’s why there are plastic chairs and not normal theatre seats, to carry that idea all the way round.


Did you consider Yoruba culture and African theatre?

I did. The characters in the play have elements of Yoruba religion – Shango is the warrior, Oya is the goddess of the river. In terms of the costume designs, it was interested, to see their colours that they are represented by in Yoruban religion, some of which we used and some of which we didn’t.


How did you and Walter go about working together?

We started with conversations like you always do, and then I started to put things into a 3D model. We looked at it that way, and discussed it, and changed it, and meet again. It is the first time I have worked with Walter – and the first time you work with a director you have to find out what is going on in their minds, so the first time is always intense. The second time, you know how they tick and there are many things you don’t need to talk about anymore.


You’ve designed several times at the Young Vic, haven’t you?

Yes, The Good Soul of Szechuan and generations.


What do think of it as a space and as an institution?

I love it actually. It has the most interesting and diverse audience in London, actually. David [Lan, the Artistic Director] and the technical team are very supportive too and up for crazy, creative ideas. You can also turn the spaces upside down too. The main house is so flexible – you can do it in the traverse, the round etc. But even though you can change it around, it is still hard, because three quarters of it is the audience.


How did you go about designing the costumes?

The research into the Projects and what people wear there helped. I also talked to all the actors about what they thought their character should be wearing. I then worked with the costume supervisor to find lots of choices which we presented to the actors. I always want them to be happy because they have to act in them, so we sort of find it together.


It must be hard designing both set and costumes.

Yes, it is. It is very time consuming. You also do props as well. Yes, there is a lot to do!



13. INTERVIEW WITH ABRAM WILSON, MUSIC DIRECTOR
How did you get involved in the play?

It was Tarell, and Walter’s affiliation with Tarell, and Tarell’s affiliation with Peter Brook that really interested me. When I got the play I thought it was very original – I had never read anything like that. It was a challenge to write the music in a very minimalist style and I like challenges.


Have you worked in theatre before?

No!
How have you found it?

It has definitely been an adjustment. I’m a jazz musician and I’m used to writing for my band and jazz organisations. Within the acting world, it’s a very different way of grasping the art. They are very physical and emotional. Jazz musicians are very cool. So I had to get used to how they deal with, and how they access their art. It’s a new awakening for me.
Would you work with theatre again?

Oh, yeah! It’s a whole new thing that I want to try and do.


How did it work practically between you and Walter?

I read the play several times, and then me and Walter met and talked about where we could have music. We had many collaborative conversations about where we thought the music should appear. For example, he would ask me how I thought Aunt Elegua should sound like? I would go to the piano and play something – he would say that sounded good, and we would record it on my phone. We went through the whole characters like that. Some situations, I could immediately hear, and I would be walking down the street and I would record it on my phone and then jazz it up and I would play it to Walter when I next saw him. Some of the moments I didn’t write until we got to rehearsals. One time, Walter said we needed something for Oya and Shango for when they first meet that was really beautiful – I said give me ten minutes! Walter came back and he listened to it and said it was great! It’s the cast’s favourite song! It’s the one you hear when Shango caresses Oya’s ear.


Tarell often compares his writing with jazz in that it mixes the old with the new. Do you agree?

I definitely think that this is something that he does. He mixes the traditional writing aspects, which I’m not that familiar with, with the characters’ names coming from Yoruban spirituality. And he also mixes the New Orleans tradition with the old style, which is actually an African tradition, of music within the community - the humming that happens throughout the play. This community aspect is very much like jazz – a community of musicians working together to perform the music. Everything is bouncing off each other – and this is how the play works too – everyone is bouncing off and feeding off everyone else. I think that is one of the things that attracted me to it as well – it is so similar to how a jazz band plays.


You play live - how did you find it? Is it the same as when you normally play?

It’s very different. It requires a lot of concentration - who is saying what and what time, the entrance of the music at a specific time and not playing at a specific time. Sometimes music can crowd what it is being said – sometimes silence is the best music, and it is good to know that. It was a great experience. I have to be really aware and focus but still emotionally be into it too. That’s the biggest difference.



14. INTERVIEW WITH ONY UHIARA, ACTRESS PLAYING OYA
What did you think when you read the play?

I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this! It’s really beautiful.


How did Walter rehearse you all?

One of the strange things we did was a run through on our first day – not just a read through, but an actual run through. He would throw those sorts of things in which was weird, but nice and different. But it worked and it helped, because it gave people ideas about their characters from a very early stage. After that we would read scenes a bit before we got on our feet to do them. The rehearsal period felt that it went very quick.


Have there been any challenges?

The accent is hard – it’s fun though. Portraying the things that she goes through too – any human fear of what might happen to a person. I can relate so much to her in a way. I used to do athletics when I was young, and then dreams of having millions of babies!


I was going to ask you about that – it’s not such a prevalent thing in our culture, is it? Say in Yerma, she has to have a baby in that society to be accepted, it’s the norm – here, nowadays it’s not like that anymore.

For some people it might be. For Oya, if she came from a different place and had loads of money, she would probably have had IVF, but in the community she comes from it is not an option. But she doesn’t want to face it. And because she had her running and that was taken away from her, she has nothing else, there was nothing left for her to do really.


How about Tarell’s use of the spoken stage directions?

This was also quite challenging for all of us. I think we’ve found it, but we are still exploring it and having fun with it, and seeing how far we could go with it. It’s very fast and quick.




15. INTERVIEW WITH JAVONE PRINCE, ACTOR PLAYING OGUN
What did you think of the play when you first read it?

With the language, I was like ‘oh my God!’ - because it was written with some prose, some verse and then bits in between. Then there are the stage directions – do we say those, or does someone else say them for us? Piecing it together took a while. The scenes are so short you’ve also got to find out the subtext as well. It was crazy. It took me a while to get the picture in my mind – but it was rewarding once I got it, put it that way.


What research did you do?

I read The Brothers Size a year beforehand because I auditioned for it. But I got a part in The Statement of Regret instead and took that. I did watch a few programmes like Fresh and Mississippi Burning, just to get an idea of accents and things like that. We also did a week of finding out about the South, and how they act there and we also did research into the Yoruba gods. So, for example, Ogun is a god, and Shango and Oya are actually part of a love triangle in Yoruba religion. We also looked at Hurricane Katrina, which although this play is nothing to do about, it helped to get a feel for the Deep South. Finally, we also read parts of Lorca’s play Yerma as there are elements of that in this play. So for the first week, we were researched out! We did all this was with Tarell and Walter which was great.


Were there any challenges doing this play?

Yes – my character has a stutter. I went for the audition and did what I thought I had to do. When I got the job, I thought, this is a real challenge, how can I pull this out. I can’t tell you how difficult it is. I still find it difficult even now with opening night last night. People who have a stutter don’t stutter on vowel sounds, but on consonants. And sometimes it’s an inward or an outward stutter, or voiceless stutter. I have to vary it, and I don’t want to go over the top with it and make it comical, so I often do the voiceless one. It’s hard, especially with the Southern accent, and getting across the fact that he is really in love with Oya. I was like, help! It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done. It’s working on so many different levels and layering the character, so it just has to be just right. Everyday I’m still thinking how I can play this – was it truthful, did I get the story across, did the audience understand even when I’m stuttering. Proper challenge.


When you auditioned for The Brothers Size did you go for the same part?

I read for both parts, actually.


Will you go and see it when it’s back on at the Young Vic? It must be weird, because not many actors can say that they are in a theatre playing a part and in the same theatre someone else is playing the same part.

Yeah, I know! I will go and see it because I want to see what happens next. Although Tarell says the plays are the same but are not the same, that there are contradictions. But yes it will be strange, although I’m playing Ogun as a younger man so I won’t feel threatened! And my friend Tunji [Kasim] is in it too, playing Oshoosi.


Do you relate to the character of Ogun? Are there any similarities?

No. Not at all. He is so honest, he’s so loving – if I see a girl, I’m gonna go and get it. I’m not going to muck about. I’m just going to be direct and see what happens. But he has carried unrequited love for so long, until one day he has plucked up the courage to say - this is it, I love you - and this is what he wants. He seems quite content to settle for something, like working, having a wife, having a family. Me – I’m always chasing the next thing – even if I get the thing I want, I still want more, and I still chase that, and if that’s not good enough, I’ll still chase something else. I’m never satisfied. He seems quite content in himself. And it’s quite nice playing someone like that. Someone who it that secure – who’s like I’m happy with what I’ve got, and I’m cashing it in - and that is not me. He seems like such a nice person. But he does turn dark, when the woman he loves, loves someone else. That would kill you. If it was me, I would let her go, but he holds on because he loves her so much he thinks that one day she might love him. It’s a tragedy man.



16. NEWSPAPER INTERVIEWS WITH TARELL ALVIN MCCRANEY
The Financial Times: Past master

By Sarah Hemming

Published: September 20 2008
Listen closely,” wrote the New York Times critic of The Brothers Size, “and you might hear that thrilling sound that is one of the main reasons we go to the theatre ... a new voice.”
His British counterparts agreed. When the play arrived in Britain last October, its distinctive style won the owner of that voice, Tarell Alvin McCraney, huge praise and an Olivier nomination. The Brothers Size told the story of two brothers in Louisiana. But McCraney lent this intimate story an epic, timeless quality through his fusion of contemporary setting and ancient African myths.
Now the 27-year-old American playwright is back in Britain with not one but three dramas: a revival of The Brothers Size and the British premieres of In the Red and Brown Water and Wig Out! With two of them staged at the Young Vic and the third at the Royal Court, McCraney should emerge from this winter with a sound knowledge of London’s transport system.
We meet when McCraney is visiting Britain to cast the Young Vic shows. A strikingly tall and graceful young man with a lilting Southern accent, he is both charming and matter-of-fact: while outsiders may hail him as original, he describes his impulse to find fresh ways of connecting with his audience as nothing new. “People were using that tool in theatre way before any of us were born,” he says. “But I think keeping it sharp and finding new ways to use it is important.”
This keen awareness of the past is important to McCraney. He is a graduate of Yale School of Drama, but he grew up in Miami, where he became conscious of the way old world and new world, European and African beliefs were intertwined in daily life.
“You often don’t know where these traditions come from,” he says. “But they are there in our music, our speech patterns, the way in which we praise and worship, the call and response in our church services.”

As a child, his favourite book in the Bible was Ecclesiastes. “I found in it that there is nothing new under the sun,” he explains. “And after that realisation, I really stopped trying to be an original, whatever that means, and began working with the shards and pieces. In the African-American community, where we can’t trace lineage directly to anything, we have pieces of things. So I started trying to put them with other pieces – with things I learned about Jacobean and Elizabethan theatre, guerrilla theatre in South America, Peter Brook’s theatre, African Yoruba traditions.”


Ironically, it is this sense of indebtedness to the past that has produced his distinctive voice. The Brothers Size could have been a naturalistic piece about the difficulties faced by young black men, but instead it is set in “the distant present” and its simplicity makes it both immediate and timeless. The two brothers – the hard-working Ogun and the feckless Oshoosi – are contemporary characters, but they also have an archetypal quality. It wasn’t a matter of giving the characters depth, McCraney says, but of “bringing that depth out” so that audiences judge their behaviour from a broader perspective.
“Oshoosi is named after the ancient Yoruba deity who is a wanderer; it is impossible for him to stay still. I have tons of friends who cannot stay still, literally and figuratively; they can’t sit still, but also they can’t do 9-5. And if they try to adhere to the structures and rules of school and society, it makes them sad. So what is it like to have the spirit of Oshoosi in you? ... When you use archetypes that are that old, you’re using tools that are in everyone’s lives.”
Another striking feature of both The Brothers Size and In the Red and Brown Water is that characters speak their own stage directions out loud – “Ogun enters covered in oil”, for example. McCraney explains that this helps to connect with the audience.
“The piece is for them and with them at the same time. That’s why the actors talk to the audience. I don’t want them to feel that they’re not there ... If I put a row of flowers on stage, you come into the theatre; you see them; your mind stops thinking about it. But if I tell you there is a row of flowers there, you have to imagine them – and you are producing all these things with me. It’s the most powerful thing the theatre does and no other art form does it, not in that way.”

Both The Brothers Size and In the Red and Brown Water belong to a trilogy of plays. But the two dramas developed very differently. McCraney wrote In the Red and Brown Water after a month spent in Oxford with bad jet lag.


“I would get up at three every night and write notes, letters, poems and stuff. And when I went back to school in America, I realised that I had written 45-50 pages of this play and I didn’t know it. I began to structure it, and I remember thinking this all feels very dream-like – because I was literally half-asleep when I wrote it. People have pushed to make it more logical, but I think that’s the beauty of it.”
The play focuses on the struggles of a young woman, Oya, again named after a Yoruba deity. But it is also a tribute to the strong female relatives in McCraney’s life, particularly his younger sister.
“My mother passed away the summer before I was in Oxford,” he says. “So all these letters and poems were about things I wish I had said. She died of Aids-related complications fairly young. And when she was dying, my sister stepped in and began running her household. It was amazing to me how strong she was at such a young age.”
As this remark suggests, McCraney had a difficult background. At home, his mother struggled with drug addiction; on the street, as a gay, would-be dancer, he was bullied. He realised the power of theatre when, as a member of a theatre group visiting detention centres, he moved the women in a halfway house to tears with a monologue he had written. And it is striking that all three works visiting Britain seem concerned with family.
Even Wig Out!, his flamboyant drama about drag culture, is, in a sense, about family: the alternative family that the characters create, and the rivalries within it. The play chronicles the preparations for an extravagant ball and the intensely fought competition between two drag houses.
Wig Out! came from talking to my friends who are transgender, transsexual,” says McCraney. “Going to balls with them, seeing how they relate to each other. They have no place in modern mainstream society, so they are on the fringes in their own infrastructure, and they have built a hierarchy of who is the most fabulous and who isn’t. It can be very cut-throat.”

Again, the style is eye-catching. This time the glitz, glamour and pace of a ball colour every aspect of the drama. To keep the atmosphere fresh in his mind while writing it, McCraney covered a table with photographs and memorabilia, creating an exotic world that he could slip into at will. The result, he hopes, both tells a story and recreates the wild, party mood of a ball.


“One thing about doing a play about another world is that people want you to tell all the rules,” he says. “Well honestly, I couldn’t, we’d be there for three or four days. I’m going to give you a few sketches and then you just have to come in with us. Jump into the deep end and we’ll go!”

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