now at lumiere.net.nz
Lemn Sissay on Something Dark
Lemn Sissay is a man of many talents. Poet, author, musician and media star in his native Britain, his most recent incarnation is as actor in the critically acclaimed monologue Something Dark. Drawing on his early experiences as a child in care, Something Dark explores themes of loneliness, race, family and identity, through a story which is both uncomfortable and compelling. Kiwi audiences will have a chance to experience Something Dark this April as Lemn brings the play to Auckland's ignite05 new voices_new pathways festival. JOANNA MATHERS caught up with him via email for Lumière, before attending Sissay's performance.
JOANNA MATHERS: You have an established reputation in the UK as a poet, author and musician. What made you decide to write a piece for theatre?
LEMN SISSAY: Sometimes the work seeks a form so that the work can express itself at its best, at its most intense, at its most beautiful, at its most honest and truthful. Whether in poetry or in novels or on stage. There was no other way of telling this story other than in the form of a play on stage. In terms of contradiction the BBC asked me to abridge the play for radio, which I did.
JM: Had you had much experience as an actor prior to your performance in Something Dark?
LS: I had some experience as an actor, but little. As a poet I have been performing on stage for twenty years but I had to unlearn my stage experience. As an actor the relationship with the director is key. John McGrath did an amazing job of teaching me how to teach myself how to act. I have so much more respect for actors now. It is the least egotistical of jobs. The ego has to be left outside the theatre for the actor to truly find
the character – it's a beautiful thing. Much more than people realise.
JM: Something Dark is an intensely personal piece, dealing with difficult
truths. Has the process of revealing your past in such a public way been difficult for you?
LS: The term 'intensely personal' is relative. Since the first months of my life I have been public property. I was owned by the government – literally. The government was my legal parent. My youth was punctuated by case conferences meetings and files and agendas. So the idea of personal is anathema to my experience. I didn't have a family to house what would have been 'family issues'. Sharing this story is more a celebration of truth than a divulgence of pain. Again, it's all 'relative'. And hey it's an amazing story! It's a story I could not have put on stage had I not personally dealt with the issues to the best of my ability... Had I been messed up by the nature of the story then I could not have performed it. It is not therapy. Life is good.
JM: How have the public reacted to the work?
LS: Sold out tour, immediately commissioned for abridgement by BBC radio and then Broadcast. The show was immediately nominated for a Sony Award – BBC radios version of the Oscars. The reaction has been good heart warming and genuine. The reviews have been inspired!
JM: You wear many creative hats – poet, musician, author and now actor. Is
it hard to find the time for all your ventures?
LS: Not at all. Not in any way. Time management – not time itself – is what gets in the way of any 'venture'. I never take on a project if I do not feel compelled to do it. For the latter I will make time. I have a little time-workshop at home where I make time. I am a poet first and foremost and I think you will find that most writers spread into other fields while retaining their first love.
JM: What message would like the audience to take with them from Something Dark?
LS: Secrets are the stones that sink the boat Take them out, look at them, throw them out and float.
JM: Finally, what brings you to New Zealand?
LS: Strangely I have just returned to England from Australia were I made a documentary for radio four. I am just now getting over jet lag and the euphoria of such an inspiring and fulfilling journey. Something Dark brings me to New Zealand. It's worth knowing that there is a lot of Light in Something Dark. So I am bringing my own piece of light to what I hear is a beautiful country. A piece of Lumière.
Something Dark
By Lemn Sissay | Reviewed by Joanna Mathers
THERE'S something disquieting about being privy to someone's deepest, darkest secrets. Intimate disclosure creates a vulnerability which forces the listener to reflect on their own shadowy corners, the hidden parts of their past which inform and influence current experience. Lemn Sissay utilises the power inherent in this type of disclosure in his recent monologue, Something Dark, to create a poignant piece of theatre which casts light on such dark places.
Something Dark is based on Sissay's experiences as a child and teenager in the UK. He spent the first 17 years of his life in foster care and subsequently as a ward of the state. The search for family and identity which consumed his early life culminated in him tracking down his mother in the Gambia in his early twenties. His joy at this discovery was short-lived however, and the reunion of mother and child uncovered a dark secret, that he was the result of a rape.
Trawling the depths of human misery is often an excuse for cheap theatrical thrills, but Sissay circumvents this through the sheer honesty of his material. Although in some senses he is mythologising his experience, there's no doubting the pain of the young boy in care, rejected by the only family he's ever known and handed over to a monolithic welfare state, or the horror of discovering that he was a child of rape. This sense of entry into private pain underpins the power of his performance.
Sissay established his reputation as a poet and this is evident in the theatric lyricism of his delivery. Here is a man in love with the nuances of language – the subtlety and shades of unspoken words and the battlefields of secrets exposed. The narrative develops through the seamless fusion of poetry and prose – his journey from the concrete squalor of England's north to the colourful exoticism of the Gambia is sprinkled quotes from his early poetic works.
He is no shrinking romantic, however. His acting, much like his poetry, is imbued with a robust, rhythmic physicality. He has a huge presence and a great sense of the importance of space in performance – drawing in on himself like a kindergarten child in a "a tree starts as a seed" charade or standing, arms outstretched – expansive and open to joy.
Director John McGrath has given Sissay free rein to traverse the whole gamut of emotions, unhindered by props or technical wizardry, other than the clever use of lighting. This acts to reinforce the thematic juxtaposition of light and dark which runs through the piece – Sissay disappears into the shadows but inevitably emerges triumphantly back into the light.
It is this ultimate optimism which makes Something Dark such an effecting work. Hope, without corny-ness or Hollywood banality, shines through despair. The fact that Sissay has been to hell and back and can still raise a wry smile at the memory of it is a touching testament to the resilience of youth.
JOANNA MATHERS: You have an established reputation in the UK as a poet, author and musician. What made you decide to write a piece for theatre?
LEMN SISSAY: Sometimes the work seeks a form so that the work can express itself at its best, at its most intense, at its most beautiful, at its most honest and truthful. Whether in poetry or in novels or on stage. There was no other way of telling this story other than in the form of a play on stage. In terms of contradiction the BBC asked me to abridge the play for radio, which I did.
JM: Had you had much experience as an actor prior to your performance in Something Dark?
LS: I had some experience as an actor, but little. As a poet I have been performing on stage for twenty years but I had to unlearn my stage experience. As an actor the relationship with the director is key. John McGrath did an amazing job of teaching me how to teach myself how to act. I have so much more respect for actors now. It is the least egotistical of jobs. The ego has to be left outside the theatre for the actor to truly find
the character – it's a beautiful thing. Much more than people realise.
JM: Something Dark is an intensely personal piece, dealing with difficult
truths. Has the process of revealing your past in such a public way been difficult for you?
LS: The term 'intensely personal' is relative. Since the first months of my life I have been public property. I was owned by the government – literally. The government was my legal parent. My youth was punctuated by case conferences meetings and files and agendas. So the idea of personal is anathema to my experience. I didn't have a family to house what would have been 'family issues'. Sharing this story is more a celebration of truth than a divulgence of pain. Again, it's all 'relative'. And hey it's an amazing story! It's a story I could not have put on stage had I not personally dealt with the issues to the best of my ability... Had I been messed up by the nature of the story then I could not have performed it. It is not therapy. Life is good.
JM: How have the public reacted to the work?
LS: Sold out tour, immediately commissioned for abridgement by BBC radio and then Broadcast. The show was immediately nominated for a Sony Award – BBC radios version of the Oscars. The reaction has been good heart warming and genuine. The reviews have been inspired!
JM: You wear many creative hats – poet, musician, author and now actor. Is
it hard to find the time for all your ventures?
LS: Not at all. Not in any way. Time management – not time itself – is what gets in the way of any 'venture'. I never take on a project if I do not feel compelled to do it. For the latter I will make time. I have a little time-workshop at home where I make time. I am a poet first and foremost and I think you will find that most writers spread into other fields while retaining their first love.
JM: What message would like the audience to take with them from Something Dark?
LS: Secrets are the stones that sink the boat Take them out, look at them, throw them out and float.
JM: Finally, what brings you to New Zealand?
LS: Strangely I have just returned to England from Australia were I made a documentary for radio four. I am just now getting over jet lag and the euphoria of such an inspiring and fulfilling journey. Something Dark brings me to New Zealand. It's worth knowing that there is a lot of Light in Something Dark. So I am bringing my own piece of light to what I hear is a beautiful country. A piece of Lumière.
Something Dark
By Lemn Sissay | Reviewed by Joanna Mathers
THERE'S something disquieting about being privy to someone's deepest, darkest secrets. Intimate disclosure creates a vulnerability which forces the listener to reflect on their own shadowy corners, the hidden parts of their past which inform and influence current experience. Lemn Sissay utilises the power inherent in this type of disclosure in his recent monologue, Something Dark, to create a poignant piece of theatre which casts light on such dark places.
Something Dark is based on Sissay's experiences as a child and teenager in the UK. He spent the first 17 years of his life in foster care and subsequently as a ward of the state. The search for family and identity which consumed his early life culminated in him tracking down his mother in the Gambia in his early twenties. His joy at this discovery was short-lived however, and the reunion of mother and child uncovered a dark secret, that he was the result of a rape.
Trawling the depths of human misery is often an excuse for cheap theatrical thrills, but Sissay circumvents this through the sheer honesty of his material. Although in some senses he is mythologising his experience, there's no doubting the pain of the young boy in care, rejected by the only family he's ever known and handed over to a monolithic welfare state, or the horror of discovering that he was a child of rape. This sense of entry into private pain underpins the power of his performance.
Sissay established his reputation as a poet and this is evident in the theatric lyricism of his delivery. Here is a man in love with the nuances of language – the subtlety and shades of unspoken words and the battlefields of secrets exposed. The narrative develops through the seamless fusion of poetry and prose – his journey from the concrete squalor of England's north to the colourful exoticism of the Gambia is sprinkled quotes from his early poetic works.
He is no shrinking romantic, however. His acting, much like his poetry, is imbued with a robust, rhythmic physicality. He has a huge presence and a great sense of the importance of space in performance – drawing in on himself like a kindergarten child in a "a tree starts as a seed" charade or standing, arms outstretched – expansive and open to joy.
Director John McGrath has given Sissay free rein to traverse the whole gamut of emotions, unhindered by props or technical wizardry, other than the clever use of lighting. This acts to reinforce the thematic juxtaposition of light and dark which runs through the piece – Sissay disappears into the shadows but inevitably emerges triumphantly back into the light.
It is this ultimate optimism which makes Something Dark such an effecting work. Hope, without corny-ness or Hollywood banality, shines through despair. The fact that Sissay has been to hell and back and can still raise a wry smile at the memory of it is a touching testament to the resilience of youth.
Something Dark featured in the ignite05: new voices_new pathways festival.
Ethel M. Guillory wrote: