We recently sat down with interim department chair and co-director of Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet Robert Ramirez to discuss his collaboration with Charles O. Anderson (head of the dance area at the Department of Theatre and Dance), the inclusion of movement and dance within the play, the significance of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s work and what to expect in this final installment of The Brother/Sister Plays trilogy.
Tell us about Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet. What is the story about?
Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet is the story of a young black boy in the projects of San Pere, Louisiana who is 16 years old. The simple statement would be that “it’s a coming-of-age story,” but it’s much more complex than that. He’s struggling with his sexuality and identity and searching for his ancestors in a world that melds both the real and the spiritual; the physical and the mythic; surrounded by a family and a neighborhood of people that also parallel a pantheon of Yoruba deities. It’s a story of loss, but also [a story about] the finding of the self, told with really incredible humor and also incredible poetry and magic.
You’re co-directing this work with Charles O. Anderson (Head of Dance, UT Austin). Can you tell us a bit more about the significance of movement in this work and why dance is so important in telling the larger story of this play?
As we did with In the Red and Brown Water (Texas Theatre and Dance, 2016), the first work in The Brother/Sister Plays trilogy by Tarell Alvin McCraney, we’ve chosen to utilize a movement chorus, which is representative of a number of things, but [it] primarily [represents] the spiritual realm that’s running in tandem [with] and parallel to this real one.
As in our previous production, the dancers move in and out of serving as both real members of this community, ancestors from long ago and ancestors from recent losses. They provide a really beautiful physical manifestation of the emotional undercurrent of the story that’s going on at both the personal level for Marcus and some of the other characters and in the much, much larger sense of the story and the sequence of events.
There is a ghost in this play that presents himself to Marcus a number of times through his dreams. In this world [of Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet], spirits are interacting with human beings in ways that are both subconscious and felt in the periphery of the senses, but perhaps not seen. They can be very real for some characters and completely invisible to others, and I think that the movement chorus is really helping to tell that story and to bring the audience along on the emotional journey and the spiritual journey of the play.
Can you tell us a bit more about the collaboration with Charles O. Anderson and what it’s like co-directing from both a theatrical and dance/movement perspective?
I am thrilled to be collaborating with Charles O. Anderson again. I am a huge fan of his choreographic work. I am a real believer in his teaching methodology. I think his collaborative practice in the room is one that is so exciting and rewarding to our students and to me personally. There is a real spark of genius in the room when he gets an idea and then sets about figuring out how to realize it. He sees so much that I don’t and hears things that I don’t, and I would hope vice-versa. But there’s a palpable excitement in the room when he is there and I’ve learned so much about what it means to actually collaborate from working with him on In the Red and Brown Water and now Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet. [I’ve learned] that if you trust your partner, if you trust your collaborator, something really, really beautiful can happen. You have to let go a little bit in order see that come to pass and I saw that happen in our last production and I’m seeing it now in the rehearsal rooms. As a long-time fan of dance and as a frustrated dancer myself, I just think it’s so thrilling to be on this journey of learning the language of dance and learning the power that it has to tell stories. To watch it happen in tandem with the growth of the actors and to see that melting of storytelling between the physical and the spoken and to see the intention and action played out in two very different ways that meet in the middle is a thrill to me. That is why I started doing this in the first place.
What makes Tarell Alvin McCraney’s work so unique? What draws you to directing his plays?
I saw these plays at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company several years ago and I was just immediately struck… just struck right in the heart by the poetry of his writing style and how he manages to be so poetic while, and at the same time, so present and real in the communication and the dialogue. He credits the work of Federico García Lorca as one of his main influences, and I am a long-time fan of his work, which again, is highly poetic and utilizes devices that are representative of the spirit realm.
I can see how that influence has played out in his [McCraney’s] plays. He’s writing in a very, very (what I would call) urgent way. Emotions are worn on the sleeves of the characters. The device he employs of speaking the characters actions, or what we in theatre call “the blocking” or the physical movement., is a really powerful statement about the creation of the self via the speaking, which I also find such huge parallels to my work as a Shakespearean… my philosophy which was rooted in my study of Shakespeare is that we’re speaking ourselves into existence at all times. In Shakespeare’s writing, we hear many, many times “here I stand” or “I lie hear” or on my knee, which is a verbalization of a physical action.
That writing Tarell [Alvin McCraney]’s is rooted in Africanist practices… I mean, this is African storytelling, right? It’s really interesting what he’s done with the Yoruba cosmology of deities and how he’s drawn these parallels between the pantheon of deities and the characters in the play and how they are represented. It’s so brilliant to me how we started this process with In the Red and Brown Water, which focused around the character “Oya” and the thing that everyone keeps talking about in this play is “the storm coming,” the storm at the end. This storm on the brink of arrival is “Oya;” she is the storm. It’s sometimes very, very present in the play and other times you notice it hinting, but that is always there. This is always there as an underpinning and an undercurrent for the writing.
Why do you think it’s important to do this piece now? What is it about this work that inspires you to share it with our Austin community?
I think it is important to continue presenting works by people of color on our stages, [specifically] work that addresses the experiences of our incredibly diverse student body here. I think it’s important to be doing this play because I think that Tarell Alvin McCraney is one of the greatest American playwrights that’s surfaced in the last 15 years. I believe these plays now enter what we know as the current “Western Canon.” It’s important work that, even now (several years after its premiere), sounds so current and so present and so now. I think it’s important for us in Texas Theatre and Dance to be doing this play because it really is this process between Charles O. Anderson and myself which is really emblematic of what we can do as a department when theatre and dance hold hands and create something together. This is a great direction for the future for us. I’m grateful for the students who put this play forth for the season and asked that Charles and I direct it because it accomplishes a great hope we had originally, which was to see this whole cycle and trilogy of plays given to the Austin audiences. We started with In the Red and Brown Water and Capital T Theatre produced The Brothers Size and now, here we are rounding out the cycle and giving Austin audiences the opportunity to see the complete series of The Brother/Sisters Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney. I think that that’s super exciting.
What do you hope audiences take away from this work?
I hope that audiences take away a real understanding of, appreciation for and insight into the culture of these specific people. I hope that audiences take away sympathy and empathy for the struggle that anyone who is trying to come to terms with who they are and trying to reveal it to the world. I hope that audiences come away from this with an expanded love of language and the many ways language can be owned and visceral and present and vibrant… and not boring — not necessarily stuck inside of these (what we’ve come to call) classical structures that are poetic and that are validated and real. And I hope that audiences walk away from this with a real, if not already held, appreciation for what it means to be in a room with live bodies speaking and moving and telling a story because that’s what we do. That’s what Theatre and Dance is: storytelling and language that’s being used to provoke and evoke thought, feeling, introspection and retrospection. So, that’s a lot to hope for for someone coming to see a play and leaving… but I think that’s possible.
Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet
By Tarell Alvin McCraney
February 26-March 8, 2020
Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
Photos by Lawrence Peart (In the Red and Brown Water, Texas Theatre and Dance, 2016)
