The ORANGE Essays : One

For The Field, and all who’ve worked it.

These essays literally emerged out of a dream. Toward what I hope was the beginning (?) of the pandemic (and I say that because we are still in it, it is still going and measuring the beginning of something is dependent upon where we find its end), but toward the beginning of the pandemic, I was writing virtually with people—which I’ve done quite a bit—I think on Instagram, and I had a waking dream of Orange.

As I wrote, a vision of Ancestors; a group of people in an overjoyed state, appeared to me. They sang and they danced, they clapped and they laughed awash in a bright shade of Orange.

As I wrote, it was clear to me that these were people who existed Before, a long time ago and also that these were people who were generations away. They were also people of right now—they were us. They were our possibilities.

When I write, it is one of the few places where doubt rarely enters me. I don’t know why, but I take that as a gift, and run with it.

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A WORD FROM EUNSONG KIM, SCHOLAR, POET, TRANSLATOR, VISUAL CULTURALIST AND MORE:

"[W]e believe that poets have not spoken up enough about the intimate implications of form and power, form as justice. We believe some of the older poets have convinced themselves that poetry is not the realm to discuss power, accountability, and radical justice,

We disagree. We disagree. We disagree.

Form & Content, Form & Power are inseparable.

...What might it be to imagine a future, present and a history—where Black artists and poets are not “sharing” or borrowing “forms” from white institutions but are fundamentally prompting and innovating all forms?

Altering from the root, always from the root."

—Found, Found, Found, Lived, Lived, Lived^1

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THE UNIFYING THREAD OF ALL WRITING IS POWER

ALL WRITING I’M ABOUT TO DO,

IS POWER:

HOW DO WE WIELD IT

USE IT

HOW DO WE SHAPE IT

PROVE IT

HOW DO WE DENY, LOVE, ALTER, IMBUE, TRANSFORM, TRANSCRIBE, CREATE FROM THE VOID

THE TRUTH OF/AS POWER?

Well, first let me acknowledge, I’m an American. I wrote a land acknowledgement that digs deeper into this American that took me three years to a craft inside my cartilage and spinal fluid. It came through in about 20 minutes, but that was after three years of listening and thinking about it. I mention it here, because it’s important to know that I love this land and I’m speaking from a IlUS-centric point of view not because I think it’s better than anyone else’s but because this is, indeed, how I breathe the world, for better or worse. And I hope that what I say here, will contribute to our land and our landscape beyond the US. That there’s something useful here for a more global view of theater. I hope I get to talk about these things with theatermakers in Berlin and poets in Pretoria and craftspeople in Puebla, but I haven’t done that yet. So when I’m speaking about the field, I’m speaking mostly about my US centric, New York centric view of the field. I’m speaking from my one body and the bodies of my literary and literal ancestors who ask me to pipe up and provoke some questions. I hope, generally, that our theater field (which focuses too much on the Northeast, and most specifically New York on the whole) opens to greater, broader, conversation from Here on out.

—

I feel like it goes without saying that I am a Black American and a femme one, a self-identifying woman-one because this level of thoughtfulness, this level of critique and prayer and observation is essentially a requirement for being Black and American and a woman. We do this to figure out how to keep living and moving toward love, overall, in a landscape that is often at best, hostile to our existence, at worst, actively seeking our annihilation while extracting our ideas and our labor without acknowledging this is exactly what its designed to do.

But you should know, if you somehow didn’t, that I am a Black American Woman which is important because it’s (almost) always, for better or worse, important to mention that in America, and also, I am asking you to make a promise:

Do not support the sneaky ways I explain myself too much. Highlight them and point them out to me so that I may learn to save time in the next book, ok? Promise me. Right now—do it. Put your thumb right ___here___ on the page or just stop right here on the screen and promise. If you didn’t do it, stop reading right now.

Make the following words Instagram quotes only if (you promise to theorize with me). Do not consume me/through these words without digesting—that’s your enzymes and your labor interacting with mine. Always credit me. All-ways.

If I forget _and begin to over-explain my person, my reason for being, gently remind me in some kind of loving digital stickie note what Toni Morrison said in Portland in 1975: that it’s ok to talk straight to her: it’s ok. It really is ok. The work is being done without you spoon-feeding every poor soul who’s been mistaught. There are already enough books to fill the gap. Talk straight to Toni and it will be al-right.^2

This is an invocation. I ask you to breathe because it is; because without the breath there is no response-ability. The breath is the real thing that Indicates that we are here—That this is theater. I learned that the first time I saw a dead body. This happened recently.

So, breathe.

Right now.

You are responsible.

We,

Are.

: O N E :

I didn’t get into theater in the “typical” way, if one such a way exists. It wasn’t O’Neill or a chorus line or even Arthur Miller, though the crucible remains a delectable masterpiece, this came after, for me. After what I already knew and loved.after the possibilities of theater had already been defined in my head

I read my first play, beginning to end, when I was 20. Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro. I did not know words, and words in any form, could do what those words did to me.^3

Terror and liberation. Recognition and remembrance.

I did not know I could remember something I never knew until I read that play.

Until then, I thought that the terror that I carried was only mine. That no one else knew or understood it. With Kennedy’s permission, I could say hello to this terror for the first time. I could begin to imagine that perhaps it could be exorcised from my being without killing me. Perhaps it was not Me, but some other identifiable aspect that came in by virtue of being Black, being female, being middle class, being midwestern and though not a textbook “mulatto” certainly a body who physically understood that condition.

I saw a condition. And remembered that there could, perhaps, be a Way to remove it.

That is what good theater does to me still. It re-members something, calls something back that was lost without ever knowing it was missing.

Eunsong Kim's, Found, Found, Found, Lived, Lived Lived.
Toni Morrison in Portland, 1975.
Deep bow to Charles OyamO Gordon; playwright, professor and OG theater griot for teaching Intro to Black Theatre at The University of Michigan and introducing me to an anthology of incredible Black writing including Kia Corthron, Pomo Afro Homos and, of course, Adrienne Kennedy’s work. Bless you, OyamO. (Thank you, also to all of the folks who took Intro to Acting that semester. Because it was full, I ended up in that class :0p).