In the Red and Brown Water

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, The Good Soul of Szechuan and generations.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I read for both parts, actually.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.