When I first read Darren Canady’s bio, I whispered to myself “Our playwright is pretty awesome.” I sat down with Canady and asked him a few questions about himself and his play Reparations.
A: In a couple sentences, what is Reparations about?
D: The play is about a young black woman who wants to take advantage of a new technology and a government program to receive reparations for the lynching of her great-great-grandparents. The technology allows her to unlock the blood memories of her family that are a part of her genetic make-up, and that unleashes a torrent of unpredictable consequences for her and her family.
A: What inspired you to write Reparations?
D: Like a lot of black families, my family has had to confront the inequities, oppressions, and complications built in to the American incarceration system. At one point in time, I had a conversation with a few members of my family in which someone posed the question of whether a person could be predisposed to violence, if it could be something that was a birthright. And that made me think about the antiblack violence that is at the core of American history, and what if the traumas we experience become more than just events but somehow become a part of our makeup. AND THEN, I challenged myself to try to see if our joys and loves could also be thought about the same way.
The cast of Reparations finds joy in their work at every rehearsal
A: What in Reparations resonates the most of you?
D: I am a naturally suspicious person; the old axiom of “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it” has held an immense amount of power over my behavior. So, since the very first draft of the play the idea that pursuing a flesh-and-blood accounting of and confrontation with history – traumatic, violent history at that – may be a dangerous journey has always resonated with me. But I will say that recent revisions for this premiere production have more resonated with my need to remember that love and everyday joys have always sustained me through the darkest times.
“AND THEN, I challenged myself to try to see if our joys and loves could also be thought about the same way.”
A: Why did you decide to premiere Reparations in Seattle?
D: It’s probably more accurate to say that Seattle decided on me rather than the other way around (HUZZAH! CONGRATS ON Y’ALL’S GOOD TASTE!). The shortest and truest answer is I said yes to a premiere in Seattle because Jay O’Leary is in Seattle. “Point blank periodt,” as the kids are saying.
A: How’s it been working with Jay?
D: This interview doesn’t have enough column space for me to do this question full justice. So perhaps a brief-yet-direct answer can get to the core of my feelings: being in Jay O’Leary’s rehearsal hall has fed, revived, and resuscitated parts of my artistic self that I didn’t realize were so desperately parched. This woman does miracles.
A: How did you and Jay meet?
D: We met through Pork Filled Productions’ UNLEASHED festival 🙂 An earlier draft of Reparations was presented in UNLEASHED 2017 and May Nguyen and Roger Tang felt that Jay would be the perfect person to direct the staging. Thank GOD they were so on point in their artistic matchmaking. As proof, there is a photo of Jay and me from an UNLEASHED talkback that perfectly captures how simpatico we are – and also how much neither one of us got time for baldheaded games in talkbacks.
O’Leary and Canady share a moment at Pork Filled Production’s UNLEASHED 2017.
A: What do you want people to walk out of the theatre thinking about?
D: I want what I always want: for people to start talking and then start DOING. I want people to talk about our legacy of lynching and racialized violence and really name it as part of American culture and governance. I want people to really ask themselves what are we doing to enact justice around that. What I want people to DO is to start unpacking their family legacies – haul out the uncomfortable truths AND the joyful things, bring them out carefully and with compassion, but bring them out.
A: Any words of advice for young people/artists/anybody in particular?
D: At the beginning of EVERY class I teach, I start the day with a check-in. I ask students how they’re feeling and what they want the community of our class to know about what’s going in their/our world. What I want them all to know as young artists is that I am invested in their WHOLE selves, I’m not expecting or even wanting them to leave all the things that they are carrying emotionally and intellectually at the door to my classroom. I think that’s my advice: bring your whole self to all the work you do; yes, come in with a spirit of collaboration and a desire to make every space joyful for everyone, but acknowledge that you can’t be part of that if you’re false about any part of who you are.
Darren Canady is the author of Reparations. In his own words: “All my writing grows out of my black Midwestern roots. I’m descended from slaves who moved west and north, bought farms, worked the land, and then gave birth to children who kept migrating to cities small and large. All along the way my family told stories about each other: full-bodied, act-it-out, relive-it-again stories that always paired well with good food, spades, dominoes, brown liquor and a belief that family – both blood and chosen – is something worth celebrating and memorializing. If you know that about my origins, then I feel like you know the core of who I am.” Reparations opens January 8. Tickets are available by clicking here.