In the fall of 2020, not long after Nataki Garrett began her tenure as artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), she and Andrea LeBlanc joined Awele Makeba to discuss "The Carolyn Bryant Project" in conjunction with the work's digital release. Directed by Garrett and co-created with LeBlanc—who also performs the role of Carolyn Bryant—the work conjures the specter of Emmett Till's murder to create a nightmarish reverie on white violence and silence in America. As they discuss the project's creation, they share critical and personal reflections on a creative process that took shape in the Obama era, through its most recent presentation following a summer of surgent Black Lives Matter protests.
Originally recorded via Zoom for Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s digital platform O!, this special edition of our podcast brings that conversation to you, imbued with excerpts from the CNP world premiere production of The Carolyn Bryant Project.
For a full list of creative credits, visit https://centerfornewperformance.org/projects/carolyn-bryant/.
Carolyn (00:00):
Wait.
Emmett (00:01):
What happened?
Carolyn (00:03):
I don't know.
Emmett (00:05):
Yes, you do.
Carolyn (00:08):
Yes, but I don't want to start again.
Emmett (00:13):
But you must.
Carolyn (00:16):
But I don't want to.
Emmett (00:19):
You must, Carolyn, or we'll stay stuck.
Carolyn (00:28):
Stuck. Stuck to what? Each other? We make a good pair, right?
Marissa Chibas (00:41):
Welcome to CalArts Center for New Performance, where we follow the artist. Our podcast is a place where visionary artists lead us into creative dialogue and discuss generous acts of world making. I'm your host, Marissa Chibas, speaking to you from our home at California Institute of the Arts, where for almost five decades a community of artists has come together to break ground and break bread while pushing the limits of artistic practice. You just heard Jacob Romero Gibson and Andrea LeBlanc performing as Emmett Till and Carolyn Bryant in the Carolyn Bryant Project created by Nataki Garrett and Andrea LeBlanc.
Marissa Chibas (01:29):
Directed by Garrett, the work conjures the specter of Emmett Till's murder to create a nightmarish reverie on white violence and silence in America. It was produced by CalArts Center for New Performance with support from Blank the Dog Productions, and premiered in 2018. In Fall of 2020, not long after Garrett had been appointed Artistic Director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, only the sixth person to hold that position since the festival's founding in 1935, and the first woman of color to do so, CNP and OSF came together to co-present Garrett's creative work with new audiences online. In conjunction with the digital release, OSF invited the work's co-creators, longtime friends who had met while students at CalArts to speak with Awele Makeba, Associate Director of Audience Development at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Marissa Chibas (02:26):
In this special edition of our podcast, we share that conversation with you as Makeba and the artists chart the work from its first inspiration sparked by a headline in New Orleans Times Picayune Newspaper. They share critical and personal reflections on a creative process that took shape in the era of Obama through to its most recent presentation, following a summer of surge in Black Lives Matter protests. And now we turn it over to Awele Makeba and our guests.
Awele Makeba (03:02):
Today's conversation is about the Carolyn Bryant Project with co-creators, Andrea LeBlanc and Nataki Garrett, who is also the director. I am going to invite them to introduce themselves. I only know of Andrea LeBlanc as CalArts Associate Dean and co-head of the BFA and Nataki Garrett as the Artistic Director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. So will you please talk about yourselves as theater makers, as directors, as playwrights, as actors and former colleagues. And if you can share about the breadth of your work.
Andrea LeBlanc (03:42):
Hello, I'm Andrea LeBlanc. As Awele mentioned, I'm Associate Dean at CalArts. I'm also an alum of CalArts, which is where Nataki and I met. Actor and creator; I've only written a couple pieces, so mostly I'm an actor. My heart is in a lot of experimental devised work, and I think sometimes that's even when I get hired for is newer work. I've been a long collaborator with the wonderful Nataki Garrett, so I'm really happy to be here and to share the Carolyn Bryant Project with you today and to get to sit down with OSF members and Nataki and talk a little bit about this piece.
Nataki Garrett (04:20):
Hi, I'm Nataki Garrett. I'm the Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and I actually used to work at the Center for New Performance at CalArts, which is where I'm an alum from. And I'm a director by training. I received my MFA at CalArts School of Theater. And I think the best way for me to talk about myself artistically, the bulk of my work and the bulk of my career has been focused on new work. I have a long history in working in new work and new mediums for performance. And then I have a history of training actors and writers and directors in different ways of performance. So I wouldn't say that I'm a conventional artist. I'm more of an experimental artist, more of an adventurous artist.
Nataki Garrett (05:11):
And I'm only a writer because Andrea and I focused on scripting this piece. I'd like to say that it's more scripting than writing because of the process that we used in order to get it onto the page. It was not as solitary as writing often is, but that's basically who I am artistically.
Awele Makeba (05:35):
So, can you share what is the genesis of this piece and why this play now?
Andrea LeBlanc (05:43):
Well, I will say that Nataki and I had been talking about pieces we were interested in, and then I was home in 2007 in Louisiana. I grew up in Louisiana, New Orleans, and I was reading an article in The Times-Picayune, which was the New Orleans paper at the time about the FBI indicting Carolyn Bryant. At that point, I think she was in her early eighties. And based on new DNA evidence, they were reopening the case. And I brought the piece to Nataki, and I was truly struck by the way she's always talked about in the media.
Andrea LeBlanc (06:17):
In some ways, there's something, there's an incongruity about her being this delicate Southern flower, this female that's upheld, and then the violence that she was a part of, and I found that really interesting. And that was one of the initial sparks and I brought it to Nataki, and I think we had wine and began to talk about it and what this project means. And then throughout different steps, like even in the middle of our process, some of the transcripts were actually made public. And one thing that we found low and behold was the transcript of the trial, which was like theater unto itself with an all-white jury, and that's how it became this focus center point to of the work. Right, [inaudible 00:06:56]?
Nataki Garrett (06:56):
Yeah. That's right. And so, yeah, so I remember the article that Andrea brought and I remember having this real clear thought in the moment, which is, I wonder what her life is like right now. She's being indicted as an accessory to a murder that was done on her behalf. And I just was really curious about, or having a fantasy about, what is it like for her to be sitting in her living room right now as she's figuring out who she is in the face of never having really spoken about this.
Nataki Garrett (07:29):
And it was because of her silence, I would say in part, but primarily because of the fortitude and the bravery of Mamie Till, Emmett Till's mother, to put his body on display, to make sure that the world could see it, to make sure that it was in prominent Black magazines, and to make sure that there would be no question about the brutality of the South. And then there was this documentary that came out around the same time that we started working on this, which was focused on listening to eyewitness testimony on the part of Till's cousins who were still alive at the time.
Nataki Garrett (08:14):
And it was a comprehensive documentary by Keith Beauchamp about the death of Emmett Till. It's the story of Emmett Till. At the same time as the indictment of Carolyn Bryant, the testimony and the court's transcripts from the original trial of Milam and Roy Bryant became available. And I ordered that online and I ordered the video of the documentary online, and we started to use this as preliminary documents to investigate, through performance, what any of this... as we were trying to... We didn't even know what the piece was going to be at the time. We were just exploring her fantasy; the fantasy in the court testimony, especially the testimony that's focused on her description of what happened to her, which she claims Emmett Till did to her in the store, which was actually we timed out how long that action would take.
Nataki Garrett (09:13):
And with the other testimony saying that he was only in the store for something like three minutes, there would be no way for all of that to happen. We just were trying to explore through performance the truth. We were looking for some of what might be the truth, if we were to take these two fantasies and squeeze them, we might be able to find some truth.
Carlton (09:33):
And what transpired up there at the candy counter?
Carolyn (09:36):
I asked him what he wanted.
Carlton (09:38):
And did he tell you?
Carolyn (09:39):
Yes.
Carlton (09:40):
And did you get the merchandise for him?
Carolyn (09:42):
Yes, I got it, and I put it on top of the candy case.
Carlton (09:46):
What did you do then?
Carolyn (09:48):
I held out my hand for his money.
Carlton (09:51):
Which hand did you hold out?
Carolyn (09:52):
My right hand.
Carlton (09:54):
Will you show the court how you held out your hand?
Carolyn (09:57):
I held out my hand like this.
Carlton (09:59):
And he gave you the money?
Carolyn (10:01):
No.
Carlton (10:02):
What did he do?
Carolyn (10:03):
He caught my hand.
Carlton (10:05):
By what you have shown, he held your hand by grasping all the fingers in the palm of his hand. Is that right?
Carolyn (10:12):
Yes.
Carlton (10:13):
And was that a strong grip or a light grip that he had when he held your hand?
Carolyn (10:19):
A strong grip.
Andrea LeBlanc (10:20):
Yeah. That also makes me think, Nataki, when you just said that I remember, because we first, it was an idea, and as far as both of our backgrounds being a bit an experimentation, I did really think when I look back on our process, that it was very collage-based. We would come up with a tableau of really examining yes, that this theater piece that was the courtroom, but then also all the fantasies, really examining whatever this cataclysmic moment was between Emmett and Carolyn that really fed in the best way the Civil Rights Movement and the examining of our country to look at that the racial injustice. What was that moment that was the trigger point that really was that bouncing board. And I think then from that, we built upon that in a collage in the transcripts through the music, through the scenic design and really created this very specific world.
Nataki Garrett (11:14):
We started looking at the really more difficult questions to engage as a Black woman and a white woman; this idea of the fear of Black male sexual prowess and white women's fragility and vulnerability around that. And, but I remember Hillary Clinton exposing this idea that Barack Obama would not be a viable candidate because he would not be able to get to the white working class vote. And there was something about her exposing that and exposing really operationalizing her white womanhood to unseat this idea that of the possibility of a Black candidate, because he would not be eligible in those spaces that she would be eligible. And this dance between white women and Black men and this idea of how the white male hierarchical space requires these two bodies to be separate at all times.
Nataki Garrett (12:22):
And so the Jim Crow laws and the enslavement and all of the lynchings of Black men in particular in this country can be tracked back to this idea that these two people are forbidden, these two bodies are forbidden from occupying the same space at the same time. And I remember moving into the space of really exploring that. And then also, if you don't mind me exposing here, who we were in our differences, Andrea and I and allowing some of that to come to the forefront in our conversations about who if I embody Mamie Till and Emmett Till, because I'm Black and Andrea embodies in some way, Carolyn Bryant, then who do we embody as Andrea and Nataki, and where is our intersection and where are we so far apart?
Nataki Garrett (13:24):
And we really got into some very tough spaces; some important, but very difficult spaces in being willing to explore the difficult conversations about race and gender and identity in the United States, where all of us were born into these constructs that we inherited, that none of us actually created, and in some ways, the people benefit from those constructs, in some ways people are terrorized and oppressed by those constructs. But the thing that we can say for both of us is that neither one of us created those constructs, and the best way to dismantle those constructs would be to expose them, and the piece seeks to do some of that as well. Would you agree, Andrea?
Andrea LeBlanc (14:11):
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's part of actually, I would even say at the heart of this piece, it's so interwoven with the depth of our friendship and who you are as a Black female from Oakland, me, a white female from the South, being in grad school together, what our late night conversations over wine and talking about really deeply personal stuff that we will not share here, and it's not for general consumption, but how much that added to how it's woven into the piece, and I think is a really as an important example as so many people in our country are facing really difficult, challenging discussions about race, our partnership in that way, I would like to think is a good example. We're making a theater piece, but yeah.
Nataki Garrett (14:56):
Yeah. Well, and making a theater piece that really kind of... Theater is an amplifier of what's happening in the world, right? And so I believe that there were even some moments in the process of putting... And this is like 11 years of our life, right? And there are some points in the process where I feel like physically, mentally and emotionally, we had to walk away in order to come back to it because it's so hard to engage. And as a Black woman, as I witness, in particular, I feel like the white people are going through a kind of awakening around these conversations.
Nataki Garrett (15:40):
And each time there's this moment of awakening what I always feel... That I always feel the burden of having to do the labor of helping to enlighten. And what I do appreciate about our process is that there are moments where we had to share this process of enlightening, that we had to occupy that space at the same time in order to give way to process. So in some ways the artistic practice allows for the evolutionary possibility of what enlightening does, which is it clarifies, whether you like it or not, where you are, and who you are in the moment.
Nataki Garrett (16:29):
And I feel like this did that all the way through. And then also being able to speak to the social responsibility that I was born with, that I have never not had to have, and having to expose that as well, that I could not separate my artistic self from my Black self in my overly politicized body. I have no space for that, and I just don't even, there's no way for me to experience the world in that way, because I don't have the privilege of that. And being able to use this process as a way of exposing that, knowing that I was safe, not in the held way, but I was safe in the raw way, that I was able to expose some of that while we were working on this, because I cannot look at the image of Emmett Till's body and not know, not see myself in it, not wonder what would have happened to my body.
Nataki Garrett (17:31):
I don't have the ability to dislocate Mamie Till's cries over the body without finding myself in those same tears. I don't have a way of witnessing it that allows me to be voyeuristic. And so what this process allowed me to do was be voyeuristic in a way that I could actually step back and watch an engagement that I could not, I cannot in my own body, do that. But as a creator of this, I can, and I was able to do that.
Carolyn (18:11):
A good Southern belle. Must be white female, a classic beauty, fragile, dainty physique, but looks like she can bear children, not scrawny; flirty, but not aggressive. Never aggressive, never seeks men out. Men come hither to you. You give men that "come hither" smile; knows how to be rescued, knows how to show distress. She'd never marry beneath her. She'd never feel trapped in her own life. She'd never use language that one does not use, and she knows how to remain silent.
Andrea LeBlanc (18:53):
I want to also really shout out our Emmett Tills. Currently it's Jacob Gibson, and how incredibly their personal stories at times were a part of this process. Like whenever he would go to the grocery store growing up, how his mother, he had to keep his receipts on him because of how much more scrutiny there was about [inaudible 00:19:10]. And I remember that for me was such a lesson and I [inaudible 00:19:15].
Nataki Garrett (19:14):
That was Larry Bates.
Andrea LeBlanc (19:17):
That was Larry Bates that I had not, and I hadn't thought about that and how incredible, and this is, whatever, 12 years ago that we were having this discussion and the power of theater and that process to really have something really surface and what all of our wonderful Emmett Till actors brought to an addition to our conversation.
Nataki Garrett (19:35):
In our process, we've had four Emmett Tills. The first one was Douglas Kearney, who is a poet and a playwright in his own right. He writes operas and he was on the faculty at CalArts at the time that we were working on this. The second one was Ryan Anderson. And we did a workshop production of Carolyn Bryant at Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles. The first one, Doug Kearney, we did like a 10 minute viewing of it at REDCAT. So the second one is Ryan Anderson at Highways. The third one, we did a two week workshop with Larry Bates, and where we unpacked a little bit more. And, I don't know, at that moment, I think at the time that we were working on that workshop, there were like, over the course of three months, maybe six people, I think it's the same year that Sandra Bland passed away, but there were like six people who passed away in a very short period of time.
Nataki Garrett (20:47):
And so that's when we started to really embed the current events into the project. Heretofore we were really focused on history and ghosts and the imprint that history leaves with you spiritually and emotionally. And then at that point we started to really focus on how those ghosts are still alive and what it means to witness the number of people who passed away in that... I don't remember what year that was, but it was a terrible year in terms of state sanctioned violence against Black men, in particular Black people. And then the final one was Jacob Gibson or the most recent one, the one that you're going to see, or you've already seen is Jacob Gibson, who was a student of ours, both of ours at CalArts.
Nataki Garrett (21:42):
And actually, I think it was because of the workshop process that we went through with Jacob, and then also the rehearsal process that the ideas for how to really figure out who Emmett Till was in this piece, because before that, the focus was really about only Carolyn Bryant, and Jacob helped us allow Emmett Till to emerge. I have to be honest here, that I was nervous to allow that immersion until we had an actor who could embody these moments and tell us a little bit about where Emmett Till resided in his body through a performance. He didn't say it out loud. He did it.
Emmett (22:27):
My momma used to tell me this story as a little boy: Drexia. I need to see my momma's hands, but all I see is these little sea urchins with the heads of little Black babies, smiling, giggling. They sing at me, "swim free. Swim free! Your soul done left the Mississippi. Come play with we."
Andrea LeBlanc (23:02):
An acting challenge too because there's the young part of Emmett Till. There's the part of the fantasy that he's very sexually dominant or sexualized and then the attorney. So I just want to jump in and say, it's actually a really, it's an acting challenge. It's a strong acting challenge [crosstalk 00:23:17].
Nataki Garrett (23:17):
[crosstalk 00:23:17] because we're just figuring it out. We were like, oh, here's an improv. Could you do this? And then they would do it and be like, great, we're going to write that down. Can you do it again? And they'd be like [inaudible 00:23:27]. We don't know what we did.
Awele Makeba (23:29):
I wanted to pick up on two things that you discussed Nataki, and to go even further and bringing Emmett Till into the space. When you were talking about showing up as your artistic Black self and how you began to explore issues of identity and gender and the intersection. I started thinking about quotes that have haunted me from this amazing script.
Emmett (23:52):
My heart is always breaking.
Carolyn (23:55):
Why?
Emmett (23:58):
Because I never get to be who I am inside me.
Carolyn (24:04):
Sure, you do. We are all who we are.
Emmett (24:09):
I'll never get to just be, because I always show up when I arrive. They always see something, but...
Carolyn (24:22):
I'll probably never get to be the me inside me either.
Emmett (24:27):
This reminds me of something else.
Carolyn (24:30):
Doesn't everything?
Nataki Garrett (24:33):
Yeah.
Awele Makeba (24:35):
And I wanted to add, with that, another quote.
Emmett (24:40):
Do you know how many come after me?
Carolyn (24:43):
What do you mean?
Emmett (24:47):
How many come after I'm gone. They just come and come. I come. Even right now, they coming, and we stuck here to each other, making a good pair. Damn.
Awele Makeba (25:17):
I didn't know if you guys are aware, but today is the 65th anniversary of his abduction and murder.
Nataki Garrett (25:26):
Murder. Yes, today is [crosstalk 00:25:28].
Awele Makeba (25:27):
Right. Today is the day, August 24th. And so I lit a candle for Emmett Till, but also for all those that have been coming...
Andrea LeBlanc (25:40):
Coming and coming.
Awele Makeba (25:42):
... and coming.
Nataki Garrett (25:43):
Yeah. It's hard to say where it comes from because, like I said, it was through the work that we did with Jacob that I actually started to find the voice I needed to be able to access Emmett Till; the version of Emmett Till that we're writing here. I don't want to ever begin to imagine that I know Emmett Till's humanity as a human being on this earth because I never got that privilege. But this idea of never getting to be who I am inside of me is actually really personal to me. And it's connected to the fact the mask that I wear often as a Black woman, especially when I'm moving in white spaces in the hope that people can see my humanity.
Nataki Garrett (26:49):
And I gave this line to Emmett, because again, like I said, there is this opportunity to explore these things that are deep in the dark recesses of who I am as a human being, that I rarely access because it's too painful to live in those spaces. And so to give myself a chance to sort of be, to expose that no matter where I go, it's interesting in my current life right now that it's still true, that I have to always be grappling with perception. And it doesn't matter who the viewer is, and perception is usually precipitated by a prejudice and the problem with, because everybody can say that everybody has a prejudice about everybody, right?
Nataki Garrett (27:51):
But the problem that I think, that being both Black and being a woman exposes is that that prejudice is also supported by a hierarchical construct that uses the prejudice to keep me in a certain place. So I'm constantly debunking ideas about myself, even in moments where I'm not actually actively doing it. And, but that means is that when I fully arrive, even in spaces, like I feel policed in spaces where I'm speaking with people who are progressive, and who perceive themselves to have some understanding about my impact in spaces.
Nataki Garrett (28:36):
And I'm constantly being taught about whether or not they understand something about what other people are experiencing, because the perception is the hierarchy requires that the perception be that I would not have an understanding that I do not know, I do not understand, and that I do not have access to understanding or empathy in the same way that when I show up in predominantly white conservative spaces, I find myself organizing my body, organizing my voice, organizing my energy, so that I can be whatever the palatable is, right? The idea of being unapologetically anything still requires you to acknowledge what "apologetically" is. The only reason why you add "unapologetically" to it is that you have to make a decision in the moment not to apologize for your being.
Nataki Garrett (29:42):
But because the hierarchy requires the apology, you have to acknowledge the apology first. And then the other thing is how many will come after me? And they, just this morning, they just keep coming and coming, and I think that line tells itself, right, because there were two killings over the weekend of unarmed Black men. One in front of his children... I'm sorry, there were two shootings. One ended in the death of the victim, and the other one is in ICU, in critical care at the hospital in Wisconsin. And he was shot in front of his children after trying to break up a fight, and so they just keep coming and coming.
Emmett (30:32):
Willie was told it was blood from a deer. A deer caught in the flashlight. One, two, three, Stephon Clark, five six, Alton Sterling, eight, nine, 10, Terence Crutcher, 23, 24, 25, Philando Castile, 31, 32, 33, Sandra Bland, 47, Samuel DuBose, 49, Keith Lamont Scott, Paul O'Neal, Brendon Glenn, 55, 56, 57, Freddie Gray, Natasha McKenna. Ah! Milam had told Mary's daddy it was Roy and Kimball who beat me so bad, it got out of hand. 77, Walter L. Scott, Christian Taylor, 80, 81 82, 83, Michael Brown Jr., Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, 100, Akai Gurley, 250, 251, Laquan McDonald, 333, 334, Tamir Rice, 512, Yvette Smith, 685, Jamar Clark, 731, Rekia Boyd.
Nataki Garrett (31:31):
And there's something, insidious about right now, right? So, Ahmaud Arbery jogging, Breonna Taylor has still not been answered, that she was sleeping in her own bed, in her own house minding her business. And then I can't get the image out of my head of George Floyd. At least with... You escape to these places of justification, right? At least with the other ones, I was going to say, I was going to start a sentence like that, at least with the other murders, at least they try to organize their bodies, so that it looks like it's done in duress. With George Floyd, it's so clear that there's no duress. It's like intentional murder on camera, and that lack of even the shame that's required to reorganize your body, so that you don't do that, to have the lack of that is extremely frightening.
Nataki Garrett (32:40):
Because not that I imagine for a moment that any of these murderers operate with enough shame, because the outcome lets me know that the shame would've stopped it and the shame didn't, so I don't believe that there's shame there. But I didn't know there could be less shame; less than no shame. And that's what the murder of George Floyd taught me is that they going to keep coming and coming and maybe they'll come this way.
Awele Makeba (33:11):
Speaking of shame, there's another quote from the play. Emmett begins to ask Carolyn Bryant if she ever feels, and he doesn't quite say it and he doesn't quite say it, and then he gets it out. Do you remember that moment?
Nataki Garrett (33:29):
Yes.
Awele Makeba (33:29):
Yeah. Can you talk about that? That, and this other quote, to connect with Carolyn Bryant. She says the Walt Whitman quote, right. And it's revisited and they both say it and then challenge, "how do you know this?" But this is inside of it, there are two things that just haunt me and my arms, the hairs on my arms stand up.
Carolyn (34:00):
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself."
Emmett (34:11):
What?
Carolyn (34:14):
Nothing. It wasn't for you.
Emmett (34:17):
(singing) "I put a spell on you because you're mine."
Carolyn (34:27):
"The past and present wilt. I have filled them, emptied them and proceed to fill my next fold of the future. Listener up there! what do you have to confide in me?"
Awele Makeba (34:47):
I found that fascinating that you had her do an aside to the audience asking them, what do they have to confide in her silence? So that and Emmett Till's question of her of shame. Can you talk to that?
Nataki Garrett (35:09):
Andrea?
Andrea LeBlanc (35:10):
Awele, I think it's so fascinating. I just want to, the moment you brought, I want to compliment Nataki as a director because it was very new text and just Nataki was speaking a little bit about process. And for me, one thing I did before this interview was really say a prayer to Emmett and somebody that's very been moved for me through this process is Moses, Uncle Moses, and how he had to stand up in that courtroom. So he's a real guide for me in my life. And I just said a little prayer before we started.
Andrea LeBlanc (35:38):
And for me that moment, as an actor, I always think of my body as the conduit to which a story is, that it's really just a vessel and I'm here to be an ally to support. And so it's interesting, Nataki, with her great direction. She has this way of giving you a little bit of a... a little crumb or something really to chew on. And if I just allow myself to be a conduit and she has that great... as a really great director, knows when to give the actor space; give them something and let them create. And that was the moment that you really spoke to, to indict the audience a little bit, or to bring the audience and ask them the question right there, breaking the fourth wall and invite them in, in a deeper way to this conversation. And Nataki, I see you nodding, maybe you want to jump in too.
Nataki Garrett (36:21):
Well, it's from this Walt Whitman poem. It's the "Song of Myself," structured around the process of Walt Whitman moving across the United States. And was thinking about the intersection between this time of enlightenment in the United States and the onset of the Civil War, and this expansion and manifest destiny and the murdering of Native and Indigenous peoples in the process and how we never talk about that. We separate them out as if they're all different histories. And I was also thinking about, so what would... Because a lot of this is like, what would Carolyn Bryant have learned in school and what would have been considered to be like the most important canonical writers at the time.
Nataki Garrett (37:16):
And Walt Whitman, of course, she would have learned in school and she would have learned the poem and had to recite parts of it. And I was just looking for like, and then I think it was also the march in Charlottesville and this idea of legacy, and those tiki torch dudes were marching around talking about their legacy. And I really, again, I was just thinking about these intersections between these things that we uphold and the consequence of upholding them. And this all seems to be a part of Carolyn Bryant's legacy.
Emmett (37:53):
Later, remember that you, yourself never had the strength to take on my will! Do what you must do! Because in a hundred years, in a hundred years, you will be unnecessary and there will be a reckoning. And you will spend the last of your day scrambling to lock up your treasures for fear that they will no longer need you. Your fear that I will have them. No need to worry, because their likeness, the one forced fed us for generations as the vessel of all life, the classic beauty will be remembered as a lie.
Nataki Garrett (38:49):
And then the last thing is like, so Walt Whitman is the son of a slave owner. He did not believe in slavery, but he was not an abolitionist. And so just taking this idea of these questions about contradiction and this conversation about fulfilling this idea of legacy and destiny, and what is required of the fulfillment of legacy and destiny, what is required is the sacrifice of other people, that somehow I can take my journey and I can walk across this land as if I have ownership over the discovery of something that existed before I got here, and I can, "oh... And, oh, these people die in the process of that. Well, it's my destiny." You know?
Andrea LeBlanc (39:43):
It's officially the US policy... "manifest destiny" all this falls under this umbrella of this phrase, "our manifest destiny," which is.
Nataki Garrett (39:53):
And then also really kind of listening to, my father used to say, in the struggle for civil rights, the people you had to watch out for more were people who perceive themselves to be progressive, especially white people who perceive themselves to be progressive, because they were less likely to be doing work to make sure that their ideas progressed. Their progressivism was based on the fact that they were comparing themselves to something that was not progressing. So as long as they were more progressive than what was considered to be conventional and staid, then they considered themselves to be progressive. And those ideas are like all in this "Song of Myself."
Nataki Garrett (40:40):
And then of course the other thing is like in performance, I always wanted to give Carolyn Bryant. She's constantly fighting this idea of progressing in her own thinking, so she has to have something to go back to, right? She has to go back to something to reset herself back to where her worth and value reside and how her survival relies on whether or not she recognizes that. But as soon as she steps away from that, she becomes disposable. And we touch on these ideas across the script when we talk about the Scottsboro, the two women who claimed that they were raped by a group of young Black men and boys on a train. They were hoboing through the country, and they claimed that they were raped, which caused the death and the demise and the destruction of people's lives.
Nataki Garrett (41:42):
One of them actually moved North and became really progressive in her ideas. And at the moment at which she decided to align herself with those values, she was discarded by white people who had at some point championed her as somebody who had survived victimization. And those same people turned on her on a dime, like didn't even waste any time. And so white female value, in a lot of ways, is tied to whether or not there is an understanding of who values you and who empowers you. And so giving Carolyn Bryant the ability to know that about herself, maybe not consciously requires her to have something that she has to come back to.
Nataki Garrett (42:30):
And then I think the last thing I'll say about that is... The parts where the writer's voice is inserted, "150 years ago, we declared and secured our legacy," that the ellipsis are really important around the delivery, which actually came out of asking Andrea to say this language, and experiencing an improv of how that stutter... I was watching, Andrea, I was watching you grapple with the question of the text when you were like, am I supposed to say these things, right? And the hiccups in the body where you were trying to ingest it and see where it intersected in your own body, in your own experience, in your own impression in the world.
Nataki Garrett (43:19):
And those are the moments where I went back and inserted these ideas, where I was like, that hiccup right there seems like a question, but here is an edit, where I'm going to say something, and then I'm not going to say, I'm going to say something else. And I want to know what the edit is because I'm really just scripting what you're doing. I'm scripting your acting basically, which is the pleasure of our collaboration is that Andrea trusts me enough in process to reveal her process, and that is a rare gift. Actors very rarely reveal process. Usually, process shows up a little bit like your slip is showing, right?
Nataki Garrett (44:02):
You didn't mean for that process to be revealed, but Andrea has always been willing to expose it. And that is such a gift to the writing process here because I trust the exposure. I remember going through a process and there was an emotional moment, and I remember saying to myself, "if we got to go through this door to get to the other doors, let's just get through this door." I'm going to pull my hands back and allow for the process because I always trust that the complexity of the process is almost as impactful as the ability to live in the moment and transform and embody that... And I need both usually to do my work with you, Andrea. I need both.
Awele Makeba (44:50):
I was really happy to hear you lift up just within him these questions of contradiction. I think today, based on Ibram Kendi's work, he would say that if we are not working towards anti-racism, that we are racist, right? That not to be an abolitionist, but not to believe in slavery. It just, it makes me think of what's possible, that there is a spectrum of possibilities inside of this play that offers a menu of some things that I could do. And just thinking about currently, I may re-examine myself when the impulse to be a Barbecue Becky or an Amy Cooper, because someone is questioning me.
Andrea LeBlanc (45:41):
There's a way in which when we think of the systematic denial that's happening in this country, that there is a scapegoating of the South. When we look at those Amy Coopers, when we look at Ferguson, we look at this, it's not just happening in the South, and I want it... I hope this piece also brings about that examination of where we all are. That's another side thing that I-
Nataki Garrett (46:02):
That's not a side thing at all. That's actually integral to this process. I don't know if the Amy Coopers of the world are going to be able to go, "that's me acting like that, and I shouldn't do that. I see myself in Carolyn Bryant." What has happened historically and I think what this play does too is people go, and we've worked very hard, Andrea, to make sure that people couldn't just be like, "oh, well, she's some dumb Southern hick woman that nobody cares about, so who cares what she thinks?" We worked very hard to make sure that she was somebody that people could see themselves and some elements of themselves in, in particular, white people to be able to go, "oh, I'm in the 'this' in this play. And that means I am always doing that to these people all the time."
Awele Makeba (46:52):
It could be, I'm going to bear witness to this injustice, and I'm going to speak up until they stop, or I'm going to pull out a camera or draw some other attention to it. There's a spectrum of little bitty acts that people can begin to take, so that this doesn't happen again. Can you just name some of the historical inequities, like legacies of racism, that are inside of your piece? You began to do it at the top of the show, and I just want to bring them back to us.
Nataki Garrett (47:27):
The Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam confessed?
Awele Makeba (47:31):
Yes.
Nataki Garrett (47:33):
And even that didn't bring about justice, so they confessed to what they did. They murdered him on purpose. And some of that language is also, we utilize some of that language to motivate some of the action in the text.
Andrea LeBlanc (47:46):
The other thing that I brought up is that Jacob has a great monologue. Something that was important as far as structure of the play was this cyclical aspect that I think early on Nataki and I, and I think even when the audience responds, I think we all know that we're in a cycle that the question of the soul of our nation right now, we have to ask ourselves about the cycle, and the play is about that.
Nataki Garrett (48:08):
The play utilizes the injustice against Emmett Till to look at how common this act is and how we live in a society that finds it acceptable, right? It's palatable enough that there hasn't been legislation put in place to shift it. And so I think that if I were to, if I could name a giant inequity that is highlighted in this play, it is that there is no recourse for what happened to Emmett Till, for what happened to anybody before Emmett Till, and for what has happened to anybody since Emmett Till.
Andrea LeBlanc (49:04):
And I want to add [inaudible 00:49:06] cyclical thing that we're talking about, but there is, in this country, a very well-oiled systematic denial. And I think part of this, I know for me as a co-creator, Nataki, that I was really interested in diving into what this denial is.
Nataki Garrett (49:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And who benefits from it? That's I think following the money, like where does it go? Who benefits? That monologue that, Andrea, you referenced, that was one of those that woke me up at three o'clock in the morning. It was like, "you got to write me down; you better get out of bed and write me down, because you're going to record to this, this moment right now." And even in the rehearsal process, we had to add another name. So in a, what, a three week rehearsal process, we added the last name. And so I think that the bigger bucket of injustice is that we can highlight this and do the story and try to look at it through the lens of who is this white woman and what does she represent for society?
Nataki Garrett (50:16):
And does she choose that representation? Was she at six years old conscious of the fact that that's who she's going to be? And where were the points where she could have dislocated herself from that? Could she have been as brave as that one Scottsboro woman who decided to come back in the subsequent trials around that, and completely upended her life. Is that bravery or is that just being a human being and having a conscience and a soul? And how do we create a space in which people have access to at least the understanding that you have a choice, you either have a conscience and a soul, or you do not have that. And those are the two places that you can occupy. And if you have a conscience and a soul, you put yourself in the gap. And if you don't have a conscience and a soul, you remove yourself from the gap and you go, "oh my God, it's so bad, I'm sorry that these things are happening in the world." Right?
Carolyn (51:16):
What is this place?
Emmett (51:19):
It's hard to say. You're just swinging.
Carolyn (51:26):
I'm just rocking.
Emmett (51:30):
I'm just rotting.
Carolyn (51:38):
Rotting. Rotting like the store? Are we rotting together? Heaven?
Emmett (51:49):
Nah.
Awele Makeba (51:51):
Yeah. Thank you for lifting up this systemic racism around these white supremacist structures that have become a part of governments and institutions and silence. It speaks so much to a need for racial healing in our country and for truth and reconciliation in order to be able to transform some of the social structures and relationships, that we can't move forward without it, we can't deny it. Even the statues, as people have begun to topple them down as well, we need to correct this racist legacy and to name it. This country needs justice and healing, right? And just by naming them and lifting them up and being honest, as Nataki just said, right, that's the beginning part, because if you can't name it, if you can't call it, you can't label it. One of my favorite scholars, Enid Lee, Caribbean born West Indian, says that even if you cannot change the injustice, call it by its name, right, to lift it up.
Andrea LeBlanc (52:57):
It was moving to hear what you just said, but also I hope that it actively emotionally impacts people that, and it assists in an anti-racist agenda moving forward. And I think my phrase, when I really think about the cycle, the thing that I was so tied to was really whatever this, like I said, well-oiled systematic denial. For me, there's so much denial there. And I have to say, and I'm a little hesitant to say this. When I thought of the last election and after all that we heard about Trump and what he said from racist comments to sexist, that I would challenge those women to think about whatever that kind of self-hatred might be internally. When you look at this, examine that and move towards the joy and the light and uplifting those people that have been marginalized and hurt and their voices haven't been heard and upholding them and partnering and... being stronger and fighting for the soul of this country, for sure, which is really a great question.
Nataki Garrett (53:57):
Yeah.
Awele Makeba (53:58):
Yes. I want to thank you for being a guest on Art Talk. It has been a deep... My soul is full, and on many, many different levels, through the power of art, but who you are as women and as artists in this world, and so thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope that we get to speak with you again, and I hope that this sparks many conversations with our audiences. So, thank you.
Andrea LeBlanc (54:30):
Thank you for having us. And thank you for leading us and asking the right questions and being so open and listening. It was a gift to have you interview us. [inaudible 00:54:39] I didn't know I had this little gift coming today.
Awele Makeba (54:44):
So I'm going to sign off by saying, this is our Awele; Awele Makeba, host of Art Talk, where we put our artists front and center.
Marissa Chibas (54:52):
That was Nataki Garrett and Andrea LeBlanc in dialogue with Awele Makeba, originally recorded for Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Art Talk series in the fall of 2020. For more information on the Carolyn Bryant Project and a full list of creative credits, visit centerfornewperformance.org. This podcast was produced by CalArts Center for New Performance in collaboration with Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Center for New Performance is the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts. Travis Preston, Artistic Director and Dean of CalArts School of Theater, produced by George Lugg and Brooke Harbaugh. Editing and sound engineering by Duncan Woodbury. Podcast theme music by Cristian Amigo. Special thanks to Ravi Rajan, president of CalArts. For all things CNP, visit centerfornewperformance.org. You can find more episodes and subscribe for upcoming ones at centerfornewperformance.org/podcast, or find us on your favorite source for podcasts, including iTunes and Spotify. Until next time.