We’re happy to announce Diaspora Dialogues’ 2017 Long Form Mentorship participants. Starting in January 2017, established authors will mentor emerging writers in the development of a full novel, short story, or poetry manuscript. Our mentors are: Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, Moez Surani and Alissa York. The writers receiving mentorship are: Mariama Abdullahi (memoir), Denise DaCosta (novel), Jin Haritaworn (novel) and Phillip Morgan (poetry). We are very excited for this year’s program. Stay tuned for news about our Playwright Mentorship and other updates about our events!
Writers Spotlight
Growing Rootless
What impact do you expect the dramaturgy program to have on you as a playwright and on Rootless?
As a playwright I am interested in the learning and growth that I will experience in solo work. Much of my writing and creation up to this point has been with one or more people. The piece I’m working on is already benefitting from having someone ask it to imagine beyond its confines and borders.
What kind of process are you and your dramaturge Jivesh following?
Jiv and I have talked about my process which often includes visual exploration as well as physical exploration being a part of the process. We are choosing to view the current script and further writing done at the early stages as explorations which I will then take when crafting the piece.
What, if any, has been your past experience of working with a dramaturge?
I have had the gift of working with two dramaturges in the past. One of those experiences was an ongoing process while writing a script. My writing partner and I would spend with our dramaturge looking for the clarity of the story. Later we worked with someone in the rehearsal process who was able to help with the clarity of the characters.
Between the time that you began work on Rootless and now, what has/have been the most significant turning point(s) in the writing?
With this particular process I have found it particularly helpful to be connected to images. This has enabled me to be immersed in an imagistic world as I write.
Can you expand on the use of myth and oral stories in Rootless and how this choice is conducive to an exploration of liminality?
The myths that I am currently exploring are a combination of myths that I heard as child growing up in Sindh Pakistan, and those that I am creating out of images that are central to the experience of the piece. In myths it is in the unknown, the liminal places where characters that are engaged in search, the path are able to find magic, courage, strength or transformation.
You speak of rootlessness and displacement as an ongoing yet unexamined state of being in contemporary Canada. Can you speak more on this?
I’m not sure that I was explaining myself clearly with that statement. I might say from this vantage that it is what is common amongst us. I think what is unexamined is recreation of connection to land/earth we are on.
What is your earliest/best/worst memory of theatre as an audience member?
One piece that has stood out for me, was at Les Trois Jours de Casteliers puppetry festival in Montreal. The piece was called L’après-midi d’un foehn by Compagnie Non Nova. It was a one-person show in which a collection of plastic bags that had been fashioned into humanistic shapes were manipulated by a circle of fans facing inward. When the fans were on, the bags danced, fought, played, loved and lived. It was incredibly simple and magical with no formal language. I was already drawn to puppetry and this confirmed for me how powerful inanimate objects can be in expressing emotions.
A Beat, a Moment, a Point of View
What impact do you expect the dramaturgy program to have on you as a playwright and on The Orchard?
It’s so hard to say. Each pairing of people so unique, and results in so many outcomes . . . ! I’m not going into the program with any expectations. Only a desire to grow as a playwright, and I hope in turn my play will grow too. My dramaturge is Guillermo Verdecchia, whose work I’ve respected for a long time. He recently adapted Lorca’s Blood Wedding. So working with him on my adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is a perfect match. And we have our time spread out over a year, which is an amazing luxury. I can’t wait to get started.
What, if any, has been your past experience of working with a dramaturge?
My past experiences, which are limited, have really varied. With one of my first dramaturges, I realized halfway through the process that we were trying to write two very different plays. It caused a lot of tension and eventually the play stopped moving forward. That was a huge learning experience for me as an emerging playwright, in terms of communication. On the other side of the coin, I most recently worked with Marjorie Chan who was a wonderful dramaturge! She was sounding board, advocate and we found a process that worked for both of us.
Between the time that you began work on The Orchard and now, what has/have been the most significant turning point(s) in the writing?
I think the most significant changes to the play will happen in this coming year, and that is something I am really excited about. I feel like a have a solid, straight forward adaptation right now. Through various drafts, I’ve really gotten to know Chekhov’s characters in their new context of the 1970s Okanagan. Now it’s time to let the play burst open and get away from the Chekhov. Actually, I’m very scared about it . . . but that’s what makes it exhilarating.
You said that you’ve drawn from personal experiences for this piece, including interviewing family members, can you talk about the process of integrating and fictionalizing these experiences for your play?
Yes, I did a lot of interviews with my family who grew up on our orchard, and were also the ones to cut it down in 2009. And I continue to find historical accounts of farming in the Okanagan through the Kelowna Archives. After completing research, I let it percolate and work on me, and then I never really look at it. Organically, whatever captured my imagination, finds its way into the play. A beat, a moment, or a point of view. No character is based on a specific family member. Each character is a composite of Chekhov, my research, and my dreamed reality.
What is your earliest/best/worst memory of theatre as an audience member?
I grew up in Kelowna, which is a relatively small town with no professional theatre. So my first memory of theatre was a play that I was in. In Grade 6, my teacher wrote and directed our christmas play. It was called Christmas on the Enterprise. Yes, as in the Star Trek Enterprise. I was too nervous to audition for any of the parts, so I was The Computer. I sat behind a box and made a robot voice. I wanted to throw up, I was so nervous. But, man oh man, I sounded like a computer!
Planting the Seeds
This mentorship program is a stepping stone in my writing career. As someone who has been teaching herself the craft of short stories by reading other authors, I have been searching for one-on-one professional guidance tailored specifically to my stories for a very long time. Being mentored by one of Canada’s most decorated authors, Lawrence Hill, is a dream come true.
My collection gestated for many years before coming to life. Soon after I came to Canada, I was fascinated by the resilient and courageous Bengali immigrant families I came to know through my parents, and often found a seed for a story in the many dinner parties, picnics and weddings we attended. I carried the seeds with me for a long time, but could only begin to nurture them once I completed my formal education and had a sense of direction with respect to my profession. Until then, I never found the time to write.
I have decided to set two stories in Bangladesh so that readers can see and understand the other side of the immigrant story. I did not want Bangladesh to remain an abstract idea, or a distant reality to be experienced only through the nostalgia of the characters who have left the physical space. I wanted to portray it as a tangible geographical and social entity with its own set of complexities, so that readers can get a better sense of the identities that Bangladeshis navigate prior to immigration, as well as the ones they confront once they travel back from Canada.
When an idea for a story comes to me, I sit down to write a first draft, which is usually just a skeleton and simply a way to put down the core ideas in paper before they escape me. Then I work extensively on re-writing and creating subsequent drafts to further develop the plot, characters and language. I usually leave a time gap between my drafts, so that I can distance myself from the physical act of writing and think about my stories away from the computer.
Jhumpa Lahiri is who I’d choose to write about my life. She writes with a sensitivity and understanding of human emotions that is unparalleled. Another big reason I gravitate towards her is because of our shared experiences as children of Bengali immigrant parents in North America.
In an ideal world, a writer would have the financial stability to be able to write full-time and have a lot of flexibility in schedule. I also imagine a writer’s life to be very tranquil with a beautiful physical environment for writing. Ten years from now, I see myself as an established author, with at least two published books. I imagine myself as a writer who is celebrated not necessarily through prizes and accolades, but simply because of her ability to create a lasting relationship with her readers through the universality of her stories. The low points in this journey would be rejections by publishers, and the highlight would be the process of writing itself, and meeting fabulous writers and mentors along the way.
Journey into Unknown Territory
This is first time I am writing a play (outside of my youth work) so to get feedback, mentorship and to learn from those that write in the classical tradition is extremely valuable as they come in with a different set of eyes than my physical theatre/collective creation background. Having access to the wisdom of Jennifer Brewin, who has written in a collective creation format, is invaluable. Being a part of this program will stretch me in so many ways. #Growth2016
I had many pieces I wanted to work on and I chose to start with this one not because I was the most passionate about it but because if I wanted to write about this story—my family, my history I’d better get started before they all started to disappear. My grandpa already passed away and I didn’t truly get to know him until I decided to write this play. But once I started uncovering stories and truths—history, I couldn’t stop writing, the passion was ignited.
I went to Barbados to research and learned so much but so little. Working on my play Unknown Territory has increased my drive to have it become a toured production in the school board and social agencies.
Donald William Moore—How did I not know about him! (And the fact that I have a family connection to him but that’s a whole other thing) Somehow in Canada or at least in my Mississauga experience of hearing about “Black History” seems like very distant connection, there was no generational relationship. To me Canadian Black History feels like a “States slavery thing” and it didn’t happen here in good old Canada. So even hearing about the 2-3 token American Civil Rights leaders aka Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman in my teen life I didn’t feel a connection to these people or even know how deeply this history and these leaders affected me. I didn’t know there was Canadian Civil Rights Activist; Black Canadians had to fight for their freedom too?! But if I was taught about what happened in Canada and all the great Black Leaders that made change and progress for their people and this country I would have seen positive representations of Black people, Black Canadians; to know and learn about the strong Black leaders, the life changers, and the inventors! If I learned about this as teenager you better believe I would of have had more confidence, motivation, and drive. Not to say that I didn’t have that before but it would have stemmed from a different place, a positive place, not an “I am going to prove that I’m not that stereotypical Black person” place, But I’m going to strive to be like, to exceed Donald William Moore and carry on his Legacy. Imagine if I knew about Donald William Moore at 12 or 14 years old instead of learning about him at 28 or in that Caribbean Studies course in University—I might have had a different type of love for myself and my people at 14.
A Particularly Fertile Plain for the Imagination
I’m obviously very happy to have a chance to work with Nino Ricci, whose work I’ve admired for a long time. I hope to get a good solid critique about my work-in-progress, and advice on all the elements that go into making a novel: plot, structure, overall dramatic quality, characters, etc., etc.
The Laundryman’s Boy is the coming-of-age story of a thirteen-year-old Chinese immigrant named Hoi Wing, who comes to St. Catharines, Ontario in the fall of 1913 to work in a Chinese hand laundry. At his arrival, he, like every Chinese immigrant of his time, is met with the virulent racism and animosity of the general Canadian population. He also faces the immense challenges of a new culture, language, and a harsh and unforgiving climate. Yet with time, he begins to adapt to his new world, and befriends a young Irish scullery maid who aids him against the neighbourhood bullies. Later, when Hoi Wing’s relationship with the girl intensifies, the townsfolk are offended and appalled. Their relationship leads to the violent climax at the end of the novel.
Both my grandfathers were Head Tax payers who came to Canada in the early 20th century. My paternal grandfather came to the St. Catharines region. Their lives, and the lives of the many Chinese men who arrived during this brutal and hideous period in Canada’s history have never been properly dramatized, and their stories, brimming with love, tragedy, heartbreak, hope, and sacrifice, are largely forgotten. I want to tell these stories.
I chose 1913 as a point of entry for my novel not only because of its temporal proximity to the commencement of World War I, but also because the Republic of China was founded by Doctor Sun Yat-Sen shortly before. Many of the Chinese who were in Canada at that time were great advocates of the new republic; Sun even visited Toronto in 1912 to fundraise. The time period of my novel (1913–1916) represents a particularly fertile plain for the imagination. Revolutions are taking place. The world is changing. Many new social forces are at play: the rise of the working class, the beginning of women’s rights, and the horror of modern warfare brings about a loss of innocence.
My writing process is extremely slow. With this novel I visualized my protagonist toiling in the laundry and wrote that first scene. I tried to make it as horrid for him as possible. I then wrote as many scenes as I could, always with the goal that things should grow progressively worse for him, and that he face enemies and adversity in each scene. At some later point I tried to impose a temporal and dramatic structure on all the pieces I had written. I then wrote the very difficult “in-between” pieces.
Franklin W. Dixon and/or Carolyn Keene would be who I’d want to write my story.