PLAY IS ALWAYS TIMELY — THAT’S THE PROBLEM
Decency at core of show tackling ever-present issue of discrimination
Black Boys want you to know what it’s like to be a queer black man. And you guessed it. It’s not easy. Saga Collectif and Buddies in Bad Times’ timely and evocative show was first mounted in Toronto during the fall of 2016 and is now about to relaunch with a national theatre tour beginning in Vancouver, at The Cultch, on Jan. 17.
Written and performed by Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, Tawiah Ben M’Carthy and Thomas Olajide, Black Boys is a documentary-type, multi-disciplinary theatre show that, according to Olajide, interrogates “the intersectionality between race, gender and sexuality.”
It’s putting it out there for audiences to pick up.
“There are still a lot of people of colour and a lot of queer people of colour that don’t feel like their stories are being reflected on stage or on screen,” said Vancouver native Olajide, adding: “It is an opportunity to bring this story around the country and hopefully have not just people of colour, but, particularly, queer people of colour around the country, to be able to see a story that perhaps speaks to their experience.”
The play’s roots go back to around 2012 when the idea began to be developed. It was a timely concept then and it’s still a timely concept now.
“We were really creating this play around the time when things like Trayvon Martin and the brutalizing of young black men by police were becoming more and more mainstream in the press,” said Olajide, adding that Black Lives Matters’ growth and activism also propelled the project.
“It was timely in that sense that it was very much in the forefront of our minds. Also what’s problematic is it is always timely and that’s unfortunate. There has never been a time I can think of in North American history where things like racism and homophobia are not timely subjects. They are always timely, particularly when it comes to the brutalizing of young black men. Or black men in general.”
Add to that blatant racism and homophobia, and men like Olajide have had, and unfortunately continue to have, a tricky trip through life.
“It is an ongoing challenge,” said Olajide, who calls Toronto home these days. “It’s true it can be a very isolating experience because you’re not going to find a kind of refuge in the white community, because you don’t fit into that community. But at times you are also excluded from the black community because of the homophobia that can still exist there. So you can kind of find yourself friendless in a lot of experiences. So the play does investigate those challenges. Then too within the queer black community there are complexities.”
The three-handed play has been described as raw and intimate as it dives deep into the identities and the personal stories of the men on stage as they try to find their integrated selves and how they fit into the bigger and often very complicated picture.
It’s that complicated picture that Olajide sees as the most important backdrop for Black Boys.
“I am most proud that it illuminates the complexity in the human experience,” said Olajide.
“Universally, fundamentally, we are all the same, but also there are extreme complexities and there are differences we need to look at and acknowledge. On the way to sameness there is a lot of acknowledging of differences and I think acknowledging those differences and being able to understand them encourages empathy. Going, ‘Ah, right, they are different as well and I too feel different in a lot of ways.’ ”
In a world that seems to ever increasingly be wary of differences, Olajide says at its heart this play is about decency.
“I think generally in terms of its storytelling, I think the show’s greatest power is to generate empathy within our community. At the end of the day, whatever the response is, I hope that the show contributes to more empathy in the world.”