One of the defining characteristics of playwright and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney’s (Moonlight) work is the intricate ways in which Yoruba myth, legend and ritual are woven into contemporary settings. Yoruba Orishas, or deities that exist between the spiritual world and our human one, are transformed into relatable human characters within The Brother/Sister Plays, allowing a sense of ritual and history to infuse a story that, in many ways, is reflective of our contemporary society and represent familiar voices and characteristics. Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney and Dr. Abimbola A. Adelakun (professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin) explore the ways in which the Orishas have influenced McCraney’s writing and the fundamentals of Yoruba myth.
“The Archetypes of these deities were worn on my friends like sleeves,” shares playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney (McCarter Theatre Center). “I began to investigate how to use ancient myth, stories, to tell urban ones. I found that the stories are all still there. So I began taking old stories from the canon of the Yoruba and splicing them, placing them down in a mythological Housing Project in the South. This made the stories feel both old and new, as if they stood on an ancient history but were exploring the here and now…The Yoruba believe that when evoking the spirit of the Gods in the space, the goal is not to fully become the deity and lose self, but rather to become oneself more fully and therefore evoke the god in you.”
Examples of Yoruba deities that make appearances as characters in Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet include: Olodumare (supreme creator), Oya (goddess of storms), Esu (orisha of crossroads, duality; trickster), Elegua (master of force; closely associated with Esu), Ogun (presides over fire, war and hunting), Osun (fertility) and Ori, which is not a specific Orisha but rather the concept which defines and determines our personality.
“In their pragmatism, Yorubas have long recognized that Gods exist only because humanity does,” shares Dr. Abimbola A. Adelakun, professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. “Gods live when they are reborn through stories, re-enactments and evolving media forms. According to the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, Gods such as Ogun, Obatala and Sango themselves have challenged forces that threaten their harmony with physical and psychic forces. Gods, Soyinka says, need humankind to be complete. They do not want to be separated by material barriers or otherwise. In his book, Myth, Literature and the African World, Soyinka describes how Ogun, the God of metals and metallurgy, used the scientific techniques at his disposal to create a passage through ancient disorder to be reunited with humanity.
Even in our secular disenchanted world, the Gods still come to man regularly for this reunion. They emerge in stories as they are retold for another generation, staged enactments of ritual dramas, pop culture and other means modern technology makes possible. In Marcus: Or the Secret of the Sweet, the gods come as humans. By re-incarnating as human characters into the performative contexts of family dramas, they contend among themselves as humans to elevate mundane concerns into timeless truths. The supernatural power of Orishas, they show us, transcends their magical abilities. It is about how they possess us so we can unleash the God in us.”
Cover photo by Lawrence Peart (In the Red and Brown Water, Texas Theatre and Dance, 2016)
