I recently found myself in something of a reunion. I met up with an old friend from elementary school who happened to have transferred to my (our) college, but despite the shared experience at our public school in Boreum Hill, we didn’t cross paths much on our small Ohio campus. However, and maybe this is how these things go, a few years later we found ourselves in frequent contact, engaged in conversations about everything under the sun and the peculiar experience of our shared educational journey, in particular. On a Monday in late November, we met for lunch, stayed for dinner, and spent hours recounting it all, including the strange institutional ennui of our undergraduate years. She, my friend, presented me with many theories as to why this was, but one of the most telling, befitting, nourishing, and visceral was this: our pedagogy was based on an analytic structure in which a conclusion was presumed. The job of the student, with the help of their professor, was to elucidate the process towards, or by which, the conclusion was reached. We had the ends and sought out the means. It was brilliant, India’s theory. A different approach to expressing the ever-imposing power The Academy has on deciphering what’s important.
It so happened that the morning of that reunion, in preparation for reviewing her new work adaku part 1: the open road as part of BAM’s Next Wave festival, I spoke to Okwui Okpokwasili, the Nigerian-American performance artist and multi-media practitioner.
BAM’s Next Wave festival is dedicated to the presentation of world premieres. Something of a creative laboratory — or what the institution refers to as a “creative odyssey” — BAM utilizes its most experimental of spaces, BAM Fisher Hall, a black box theater, to present works that push and thwart formal boundaries of artistic disciplines.
On the phone that morning, Okpokwasili’s voice had a familiarity to it (equal parts bold as comforting) I’d come to know from the countless interviews I’d watched in addition to the 2017 documentary Bronx Gothic created by her Yale classmate Andrew Rossi. The film is an in-depth look at Okpokwasili’s autobiographically inspired piece, with the same title, that explores Black girlhood, bodies, and sexuality. The film Bronx Gothic starts with Okpokwasili descending a staircase after a performance of the piece in tears and visibly shaking. She walks into her dressing room and is embraced by her real-life partner/artistic collaborator Peter Born. I entered the discussion with Okpokwasili understanding that as an artist, she seeks to uphold emotional and intellectual veracity, even if it involves giving up so much of herself.
Okpokwasili has many practices within her practice. One interest is the study and exploration of protracted physical movement — ‘What happens when you stay inside the labor?’ she asks. In Bronx Gothic, this takes the form of an extended period of twerking. The movement evokes the sexual component of the piece but also challenges the audience’s experience: what happens when the performer does something for an unexpectedly long period of time with no start or end in sight? Okpokwasili performances normally start with the performers already on stage, while the audience filters in, and thereby questions that it is only through viewing and observing can a piece exist — and yet given the importance of the audience for Okpokwasili, the audience represents the final component of a “finished” pieced. The audience members become part of a conversation about the inherent meaning of bodies, particularly Black bodies, moving, and the question of how to lessen and differentiate the chasm between stage/performer vs. seat/audience.
The prolongation of particular movements within pieces, and the piece’s lifespan, as well as the reflection of an audience’s place, are subsets of Okpokwasili’s primary practice: to challenge historically associated shapes and forms of performance, both in the audience’s relationship to art (as per the aforementioned discussion) and the form of the art itself.
After discussing the questions that motivated Bronx Gothic, we moved on to the topic/questions of her piece I was to see the next evening: adaku, part 1: the open road. Okpokwasili started by laying out her creative process to me. Okpokwasili’s work starts by deciding on her next question. She then embarks on an intense research phase, which she records and translates into a written score, usually the speaking component of her work — in the case of adaku this took the shape of an ongoing singing/speaking — which she relies on not only as the basis of the piece’s dramatic element but also to push her physical scores beyond oft-relied upon movements — to ‘pull outside a movement vocabulary.’
adaku part 1, which hopefully is the start of a multi (or at least two) -part project, tells the story of a fictional African village forced to contend with betrayal when a member of a seven-person (what appeared to be all women, though this was unaddressed and perhaps purposefully ambiguous) community sides with a cast of proverbial colonialists. Okpokwasili’s interest in this topic stems from the lack of institutional attention paid to Africa before the arrival of White colonialists, or what she referred to as “the rupture” colonialism causes in the erosion of authentically-created communities and livelihoods. Colonialism, as we study it, fails to account for what has been altered and changed by the presence of White bodies. We merely study that those White bodies have come to appear and the aftermath of their presence. Even the title of the piece — as I type this on Google Docs, the computer program is attempting to capitalize the first letter of each world — questions the accepted form of written English. There exists a world with altered norms that are no lesser, but part of other ecosystems.
In adaku, a member of the community is responsible for the contact made with colonizers. This decision was Okpokwasili further challenging narratives and the idea of helpless victimhood — this rupture was not inevitable but an act and decision of betrayal. While the examination of internal contributions to oppression is not novel (see for instance Arendt’s Eichmann In Jerusalem), it is a bravely controversial topic for examination. How do you account for that kind of rupture? The type where self-protection overrides loyalty, community, family, and comfort. Is it an unspeakable human potential that exists in all of us?
The Fisher “stage” showed an ensemble of seven performers milling around in a circle with two white outlines traced on the ground. Angled at stage right was a reflective orange orb. In the right back corner propped up on its side was another light. The backdrop of the set appeared to be a type of crinkled tin foil, all part of Peter Born’s visual contributions to the piece. The performers moved continuously and forcefully in an amoeba-like configuration. As the dancers advanced, the position of line leader constantly changed, sometimes inhabited by more than one person. The communal humming score, created by both the performers and an instrumental overlay, maintained throughout the entire piece. As the performers continued, they started to stomp their feet and pick up their pace to a steadier rhythmic cadence. As their physical impact changed, so did the score — a song emerged from the internal wells of their humming. Suddenly a series of words began to appear, words like ‘flesh,’ ‘bone,’ ‘tendon,’ and ‘understand.’ It took a while before the entirety of the sentences became intelligible, but that there was unity in these statements, spoken by every amalgamate member was clear. Eventually, they chanted ‘open the road.’
A shift occurred when one person left the group, later identified as “Aunty Uzoma” followed by another person, a younger member of the performance ensemble — revealed to be the titular character of Adaku — met at the center of the stage. They did a series of movements related to a light contraption each performer had attached to them, while the rest of the community members encircled them. The two moved their arms in lateral and somewhat swift movements, circling them upwards, together. At one point they joined their fists together in front of their faces creating a pool of light and staring at each other intently. Together they created a sense of jointness and alliance. It wasn’t clear what was happening, but they appeared to be creating something and in the process differentiating themselves from the rest of the community. After these two performers left, and although Adaku rejoined the fold, the dynamic was altered.
Next, Okpokwasili emerged as the protagonist of the story. Leaving the grouping, she began to recount a story: one of a failed marriage, a forced life as a single parent (Adaku is her daughter), and an ongoing dream she had where young village children come to her unable to speak but bleat like goats, walking on the bones of murdered villagers. They approach Okpokwasili’s character Oga Madam/Ezinwanyi (whose name I learned from retroactively studying the script), unable to move in any direction but towards their demise, despite Oga Madam/Ezinwanyi’s pleas to do anything else. Oga Madam appears simultaneously all-powerful and entirely powerless.
The spoken component of adaku now turns into a dialogue between Oga Madam and the townspeople. Oga Madam starts by asking who they are — they claim to be ‘We’ — and inquires about the openness of their hearts and ears, and then poses questions to the townspeople to decipher her identity. “Who is the woman now privileged to take a wife?” Oga Madam asks, to which the people say: ‘YOU!’ She has emerged from single motherhood and seeks to find herself a wife. I found this strange. How could escaping from an experience seen as both oppressive and controlling prompt an individual to want to replicate this experience with someone else? It seemed matrimony had failed her. Why was she chasing after it without having someone in mind? Yes, the quest for a wife, as opposed to another husband, could be an act of resistance against patriarchy, but instead, because of Oga Madam’s tone, it seemed like a cry for revenge, to pass on her pain. Was she looking to victimize someone else, in the way she had been? Similarly, this would be a homosexual partnership. Perhaps that didn’t matter and was meant to be accepted, but the possibility of a single-gendered union seemed to be an open and overt challenge to the system Oga Madam had found herself in. Shouldn’t a challenge be addressed? What is it that she needed a wife, specifically, for?
Aunty Uzoma is the creator in the village, both figuratively and materially. On the occasion of her impending marriage — perhaps adaku lacks enough context — when is this marriage meant to take place, and further yet, where will this bride come from? Oga Madam has asked Uzoma to carve a sacred sculpture. Aunty’s creations not only guarantee artistic homage but will symbolize the forging of a new path from the union — a way for Oga Madam to mark time and look both forward and back. But, the piece she has made has proven to be the source of her nightmares. The creation has, somehow, untapped the potential for havoc and disarray, and it must be destroyed, the ensuing conflict of the piece that will be solved. Adaku, in the meantime, appears to be becoming something of an apprentice to her Aunty and takes it upon herself to tell Aunty Uzoma to destroy the idol responsible for the community’s traces of potential decay. This unfolds as a three-person encounter between Aunty, Oga Madam, and Adaku, while the remaining four performers circle them. The encounter then turns into a duet between Oga Madam and her daughter and Aunty flees to the perimeter of the stage. In the duet, the two engage in a repetition of weaving positions assuming the stance of The Pieta, each taking turns as The Madonna and Christ.
Next, there is a confrontation between Aunty Uzoma and Adaku, where Adaku confronts Aunty about her actively hurting her mother, Oga Madam. Aunty Uzoma is resistant, claiming to have no ability to produce such woes for someone she loves and for a community of which she is a part. In this encounter — of all the scenes of the show, this one could have used some serious editing. It goes on for too long and becomes lifeless. The scene concludes with Adaku forging a trust with Aunty, only to have Aunty present Adaku to a group of phantom figures and get whisked away while Aunty cries for them to take care of her. But Aunty Uzoma — though responsible for Adaku being taken — isn’t spared either. After she turns Adaku over, she appears to be murdered, falling to the ground.
The piece ends with Oga Madam looking for her daughter, realizing she’s gone and understanding what has happened, though it’s not entirely clear how. Has she come to link the nightmare with the sculpture with Aunty? Does she know Aunty has had contact outside? How can Oga Madam know it was Aunty? Aunty is gone too — who will confirm?
Upon acknowledging Adaku is gone, the community embraces Oga Madam, physically coming together to create yet another amalgam, more intimate than its previous iterations. They then break out into a song with the lyrics “When the end becomes the beginning.” Forming a line, they approach the crinkled foil at the back of the stage while Adaku’s figure appears hazily behind the backdrop, grabs its corners, running forward with it and setting it free like the sails of a ship. Adaku stands there as the turbulence and fury unfold in front of her. She is in the waves, set on a journey away from what she had known, which marks the end of this story but stands in contrast to the narrative we, products of Western thought, have been told. Adaku’s forced departure forever alters her connection to reality — she is absorbed into the unknown, which marks the start of our inquiry. A Black body on White land. Her trauma, epistemically, is our starting point.
Speaking to Okpokwasili before the piece in some way was a disadvantage. Instead of watching the piece, I was waiting for the narrative, as she described it to me, to unfold. How would she represent the great betrayal within the village? How would she show the colonizers? I imagined it would be more complex, subtler, and nuanced than having a bunch of White men appear on stage in starchy “safari suits” carrying guns and matches showing off these worldly inventions to “villagers.” Instantly it was obvious this couldn’t be how it would appear — none of the performers were White. But, the narrative score that adaku presented was undeniably confusing and a bit opaque. I wonder what I would have gotten out of it had Okpokwasili not defined her ambition to me.
Considering my determinist viewing, most of my questions surround questions of intention. How was it that Aunty betrayed everyone in the creation of figures? How was a figure also a path? How did Adaku get involved, and how was it that despite her work Aunty got killed and Adaku appeared alone on the tin foil journey of the great sea?
There was clear intentionality in the forlornness the townspeople expressed as the work progressed. They went from a lively bunch moving in their skin to a forced group of allies warding off evil spirits that materialized as actual people.
The start of the piece felt almost like a freewheeling dance party — the excitement of the audience was clear — one woman continuously called out “yes!” and “get it” to the performers. There was a moment where I thought Okpokwasili made eye contact with me. I smiled, big, hoping she’d know how happy I was to be there. When we spoke, Okopokwasili admitted and almost bemoaned that it is the case that performances must have an imposed external structure on them. Eventually, performances will end. Dancers will get tired (Okopokwasili referenced this potential earlier in her call and response by asking the townspeople if they were becoming tired– they told her, ‘NO!’), the audience will get restless, life must proceed, if only for a piece to be contemplated in a different space and time than the one in which it is unfolding.
It seems to me that what I witnessed was the start of very many sets of ideas about relationality, history, and structure, contemplated in person, live, and on a stage. The piece asked many questions of the audience. Must everything be clearly defined to be understood and comprehended? Must narratives be linear? Is arbitrariness allowed? How much can we push the tradition that we’ve been fed? Is boundary blurring necessarily boundary destroying? Are all performed pieces necessarily finished?
These questions came to me as I sat there watching. I realized Okopokwasili had succeeded in beginning the work to thwart the institutional approach India elucidated to me the day before. I didn’t know how to answer these questions, but I understood that they must continue to be asked.