Performing History

Ellen Gerdes and Corrine Karon, “Where Heaven’s Dew Divides.” (Photo: Nathea Lee)

[History] does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe  our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.”
– James Baldwin, Unnamemable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes

“What happens when we cannot tell our stories, when our memories have temporarily abandoned us?  What is left is longing for something we are not even sure we ever had but are certain we will never experience again.”
— Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work

On widening the historical record, and making history

Germaine Ingram:

Ananya, last night you mentioned that performance was an act of historicizing. Can you talk more about that? When you said it, it struck me has having many, many layers.

Ananya Chatterjea:

I would say this is particularly relevant to communities in which oral histories are very important, because they are a very real compliment, or a very real foil, if you will, to written histories. I just think written histories are about men and the wars they fight. I didn’t mean to put it in that crass way, so I apologize. But it just feels a lot of times that’s what we study in texts. That’s not the type of history I’m talking about. I’m talking about the history of what daily lives did to survive. I mean, I really think a lot about the courage of women in Iraq right now. They get up every morning, you know, make breakfast for their kids, and send their kids to school. They may not come back, right, with what’s going on. But the courage of those women is historic and they’re not written down in history books. So for me, that’s why performance is an act of historicizing.

Chitra Vairavan:

And I also feel that in performance we’re stretching that history further – in that moment.  We’re still a part of it. We’re still a part of that same narrative and continuing it on, reimagining it.

Shavon Norris:

I’m not so interested in my body on other people’s. I’m interested in their words and their movement living in my head and my space for a little bit, and my history, and giving it back to them. Because I’m interested in us reclaiming our stories, and not having shame about them and not having guilt about them. And putting them out in the public. And I think folks feeling like it’s coming from me, and not necessarily from them, but through my filter, gives them a little bit of a distance from it. And then it once in a while creeps up and they have a conversation with themselves about it.

Germaine Ingram:

One thought takes me back to Peter DiMuro’s distinction between illustration and illumination. I feel like our job as artists, if we’re going to deal with history, is to do something that conventional history doesn’t do – or that conventional history can’t do. So that’s where illumination comes into play: How do we use our tools as an artist to light up that history, shade that history, shadow that history, silhouette that history in a way that conventional presentations of history have not done or cannot do? Different artists approach it differently, but I feel, personally, a great responsibility to know as much as I can about that history. Anytime I’m dealing with a historical project, I do extensive research. Very often, I feel it becomes an excuse for not creating, that, you know, I’m continuing to read and research. But I feel a responsibility to know as much as I can about that history – not to replicate that history. And I don’t feel that that history, or knowing that history, denies me license to create as an artist. But I want to be able to respond to people when they ask me about that history. Or how that history might support or diverge from what I’ve presented as an artist. I wanna be able to respond in an intelligent way about that. I also wanna be aware of those situations where my presentation might bump up against the assumptions, the presumed knowledge, that people might have about that history, about those historical situations.

Distinguishing Between Truth and Fact

Ananya Chatterjea:

Fact is: “It’s  1:30 on the 6^th of October and we are all sitting here.” The truth could be, from one perspective: “Oh, they’re just having a conversation.” Or, “They’re building powerful alliances.” It depends on how you look at it. The truth is what we have to imagine, and we have to interpret and research and remember. You have lots of facts written down, and the opposite of fact is not fiction; the opposite of fact is truth. So when I think about truth, I think the truth, for us, is the stories we research, and we imagine, and embody. In embodying them, we have to reimagine them, and re-put them in our bodies. That becomes a part of our history and a part of the history of women’s movements across the world. And the moment you have put it on the stage, you have created a moment of history. You know, you know it, and I know it, and other people know it. And then we pass it on in different ways. The stage is definitely a place for action and historicizing.

Germaine Ingram:

I particularly deal with that challenge of the relationship between history and artistic imagination, as a work that we’ve been doing has to do with historical events and historical places. And it raises the question, “What are my responsibilities as an artist to inform myself of those facts, of that history?” I don’t wanna be ahistorical. I don’t wanna be stupid about the so-called facts. Now, I don’t think of fact as the opposite of truth. You know, I spent thirty years as a lawyer. So for me, the challenge as a lawyer was taking these myriad facts and determining which ones you bring together to create a truth. I didn’t know the truth. But my job as a lawyer was to create a truth about the story of my client that would resonate with a judge or a jury. And so that’s how I tried to deal with facts. “Okay, what can I take from here, and what can I take from there?” And create something that is valid, not so much as history, but as a truth that has a resonance for me and for others, that speaks with some meaning about something of substance.

Hui Wilcox:

I think that’s true. It’s not about fact-gathering or fact-checking, but at least for [Ananya Dance Theatre], it’s about gathering stories, and listening to people that we don’t hear in the news today. We hear what the government has to say, or we hear what the corporations have to say. And we’ve gotta dig deeper to hear the stories from the women in the Amazon rainforest. right? You don’t hear those stories in the news, so something’s about, I guess, sources of history. Oral history, neumonic history. It’s not just written history.

On Interpretive Responsibility

Shavon Norris asks members of the Ananya Dance Group:

I feel like my biggest questions, my challenge in social justice and being in different communities and having stories shared: I often struggle with exploitation and exploration. How do I support other people sharing their stories, and being really humane about that, and then having that go to the stage? And having them feel safe. Or having them feel empowered in my voice participating in their story? I’m curious about how you navigate that in a really respectful but still challenging way? Not to tiptoe around stuff, but really get into places where things can be fiery and shift, and still be really respectful, and not exploit these stories that are being offered?

 Ananya Chatterjea shares the following thoughts:

I think it’s very important for us to remember this work is not easy. It’s complex. But, you know, one of the things that we know very clearly is what happens when someone speaks for you, and to know that nobody says, “Speak for me!” That’s not what we’re trying to do here. So that’s why the power of imagination has got to be so strong. Because each of us has in our own histories something we can research and connect to in our cultural memory. And to reimagine ourselves in that situation, so we don’t have to tell that story directly. When we are trying to create shifts in the social justice movement, we offer a lot of information – facts, figures. So what you do is you transform those facts and figures. And I’ve always thought of that as our job: that we just reveal the human condition inside of those facts and figures.

Shavon Norris:

It was about trying to explore history in the present, acknowledging the power of the break. You have to participate with the thing, you have to participate with the history. It has to filter through your knowing and your lens. And a lot of our conversations were about that. We shared similar things, but very different interpretations or perceptions of that. And as I get older, I realize that’s very important.

Adrienne Abdus-Salaam:

You have a huge responsibility to know the story – thoroughly. It’s not enough to just skim the surface. You need to research. And if you’re not, then it’s a disservice. And it becomes disrespectful and, to me, at that point you are exploiting other people if you don’t take on the responsibility to really research and know as much as possible. So that you can be as knowledgeable in your approach as possible.  The other huge undertaking that you have to do is that you have to find some kind of connectivity. So, to me, it takes you as artists going back and looking at old journals or sitting with yourself and thinking about some stuff that you’d rather not visit. You know? You have to do it, because if it’s not honest, and if it’s not your story, the audience will feel that. And again, you’re still doing a disservice, because they’re gonna feel like you’re “acting,” you’re “portraying.” You understand what I’m saying? They’ll see this is not genuine, and it is not truthful, so they’re not going to focus on what’s important in your story.

You have to take the time to study other people and study yourself as well. And then be willing to put it out there. So it can become less about you telling their story, and, maybe, more about telling a story of us. You know? Heaven’s Dew wasn’t necessarily my story: I’m not Methodist, I wasn’t born in those times, but I had to find a way to put me and this woman together, you know, so it could become us. So it wasn’t like I’m telling her story. And I became unseparated from it. So I think you have a huge responsibility.

And I think it’s hard. I do remember having a conversation with the cast members about, “Okay, so we’re definitely talking about African people and the majority of our cast is not black.” You know, “What is this gonna look like?”… And I remember having a conversation where I felt just being honest with your intention and being true to the story and it’ll be what it’ll be… So for me, I didn’t feel a problem with having a very different cast. I loved it, actually. And I felt that the fact that we look the way we look and were addressing the subject matter, was making a statement. That in itself made a statement: that we’re all connected and that it’s all our story. It’s important to everyone, as it should be.

Ellen Gerdes shares her own realization that all the cast members of Where Heaven’s Dew Divides have unique connections to the historical events that inspired the piece, and that these individual connections create a richer interpretation.

I know that our history served as an inspiration for this, and that we weren’t telling a linear story. But sure, it’s something I think about and thought about. I think at first I thought, “Well, maybe this isn’t my history to tell.” And then the way the group was working, I realized that we all connect where we did. And then in a way that makes it a richer history to tell; that nobody is feeling sort of personally guilty or personally left out. But we were all aware of the questions.

Germaine Ingram emphasizes that the the production was more about conveying a sense of urgency towards the historical material, rather than attempting to educate a public:

I think it also helped that we weren’t trying to tell any liberal narrative. Our objective in the piece was to share with audiences our curiosity and our passion about this important event in time. And so people in the audiences who saw the work over three nights, you know, they were bringing different measures, different amounts of intelligence and knowledge to the work. There were people from the historic churches who had lots of knowledge about that time period. And we weren’t trying to teach them that history; we were trying to share with them our passion about that history. So I think audiences responded positively to the humility that we brought to the subject matter, and our sense of trust that audiences, regardless of their knowledge or background, could tap into the stories that we were trying to tell and the passion that we were trying to show.