Solo show digs into recovery process
Addicted K (out of 4) By Raven Dauda, directed by d’bi.young anitafrika. Until April 21 at Aki Studio, 585 Dundas St. E. nativeearth.ca or 416-531-1402
Raven Dauda is an accomplished stage and screen actor, winner of two Dora Awards and perhaps familiar to fans of Suits and Orphan Black.
She is also a recovering alcoholic and she credits this ambitious one-woman show, which emerged out of her recovery process, with saving her life. In it, she charts the struggle of a self-identified central character, Penelope, to take responsibility for her decisions and her addiction while on a journey of self-discovery about familial and historical legacies.
The piece is still in development and has clear potential to grow further, as there are two distinct aspects of its storytelling that do not seem to be fully in dialogue with each other.
On one level, we have a recognizable, even clichéd, story of the addict’s path through the 12 steps toward reckoning, self-acceptance and sobriety. Penelope checks into a rehab centre where she meets, amongst others, the food- and gin-addicted Southerner Rose; Vance, whose poisons are the “adrenalin trifecta of coke, gamblin’ and sex”; and the young Irishman Jamie, hooked on Oxycodone and gaming.
Dauda displays considerable skill as she jumps back and forth between these characters in quick succession, varying her physicality, voice and pacing.
Quick moves between location and time are indicated clearly under d’bi.young anitafrika’s direction and aided by Sharmylae Taffe-Fletcher’s lighting design.
Around this narrative is wrapped another layer of themes and stories that are less familiar to me as a white North American. Digging into her past, Penelope connects to mythic tales and figures from Sierra Leone and Jamaica.
Through a combination of hypnosis regression and withdrawal, she conjures her Jamaican grandmother, who attributes the family’s cycles of addiction to a duppy: a spirit. Attempting to identify and exorcise this demon, Penelope digs deep into her ancestral history, all the way back to a confrontation between a West African female warrior and a rival tribesman whose menace is both military and sexual.
This nesting structure of narratives is literalized in the scenography (which Dauda designed herself, along with props and costumes).
The audience sits on all four sides of a square playing area, in the middle of which are two concentric circles of folding chairs (visual shorthand for AA and other recovery meetings).
Iconic objects are placed at each corner: a plinth on which Dauda sits as she recites an opening prayer; a suitcase (which stands, rather over-literally, for Penelope’s personal baggage); a mickey of rum; and a gorgeous, colourful tree, which represents, as I read it, ancestry, strength and a close connection to nature that all have the potential to heal Penelope. Dauda is asking some challenging questions about the relationship between personal responsibility and the situations we’re born into but, at the moment, references to historical realities of colonialism and how these feed into the contemporary moment are more hinted at than explored.
This leads to a bewildering final moment in which a character who’s previously been represented as a sympathetic force is revealed to be otherwise. This is a crux point between the relatively naturalistic universe of the rehab centre and the more symbolized world of Penelope’s history and culture that would benefit from more exploration.
The risks that Dauda takes with self-disclosure in this piece are evident and impressive, and it very apparently comes from a generous place: a desire to connect, share and discover solidarities.
The rehab side of this tale could easily be imagined as a full-cast play or TV drama, and Dauda clearly has the writing chops to deliver it; but, for this viewer, it’s the other side of the story where the most original and interesting discoveries lie.