Hello and welcome to inside UNC Charlotte.
Today we are talking to two theater professors Carlos Cruz and Kaja Dunn.
Thank you for joining us today.
And you two are going to be opening our theater season this year with a faculty production
which is something we haven't done in the Theater Department at least as long as I've
been at UNC Charlotte which is seven years plus now so that's a really exciting thing.
And it's also a work by an alumni of our theater department so a great connection.
Tell us a little bit Kaja why don't you start and just tell us a little bit about this play.
So yeah the play is by Caridad Svich and she is an alumnae of the program.
It's a memory play so one of the things Carlos and I began talking about when I came two
years ago is that we wanted to continue working.
And we both have activist parts to our practice and so we started looking for a play in the
normal theater catalogs but we were looking for something that was culturally specific
and a two hander and through several catalogs we couldn't find anything that really fit
what we were looking for.
And so Carlos reached out to Caridad.
And she sent us this show and it resonated with both of us one because of the content
it deals with issues of war of belonging a little bit of homelessness and mainly of love
and the human condition but then also the challenge of it because it's its Caridad calls
it a play play so it's not the linear structure it deals- It's circular time and circular
memory and it also has open ethnicities so that the characters have to be of different
ethnicities from each other but it doesn't specify what those were.
And with Carlos his background as a physical theater performer and with my training we
were interested in looking at how we combine different ways of working and then we got
Dr. Monica Ndounou from Dartmouth to come on in the project and direct us and she brought
a very specific perspective.
And so merging those three ways of doing theater together was something that was very exciting
for us to think about.
Yeah- So we should say that the play is called Archipelago as the title of it.
It will run September 12th through the 16th in our blackbox theater in Robinson Hall.
Carlos, talk a little bit about the merging of the physical, I mean because it does have
some acrobatic quality to it it has- It really has a choreography to it.
But then also it has this very poetic language so I- Are you- Did you develop the movement
yourself, I mean is this something that you kind of conceived of as you read the play.
That's an interesting question.
I think it is interesting that you phrase it that way because for me honestly it feels
a little bit more of the partial of the kind of work that I do.
It's way more just heavy a play.
The type of work that I do doesn't relighting the takes as much more in the gesture.
Yet you know I always say like I guess I can't seem to escape really from my forte or my
strength as a performer which is an acrobatic side too to me as an actor.
I think in this particular play because it's a play of memory of remembering that gave
us a lot of artistic freedom on to the how do we want to flow between one image and the
other within the dream sequences what do we remember of the person that we love.
How do we remember things that happened and so on and some images can be highly physical
some of them can be just like you know like really focused and their moments.
I think in this play like any production that I do what I tried to emphasize is that it's
really hard to come up with with a choreography though that comes from the outside and then
being worked with the performers but more that he has to come from the performance themselves.
I think the things that we're seeing are are actually similar acrobatic gestures in general
but that suit perfectly I think the world of this play and also who we are as partners
in this one is always different with different partners.
But I think if we start from that groundwork of that the people that we have on hand I
think it becomes more truthful and then actually can communicate because if not it will be
too too abstract and not concrete.
And there are a lot of the play is kind of abstract in terms of the way it's presented
because it has this dreamlike memory quality but it really is about love and about that
inability to connect.
I guess that the forces that tend to pull people apart and bring them back together
I think it's abstract but it also is very specific both in the movement work and in
the choices we made.
So we had two dramaturgs working with us.
One was a visiting assistant professor Dr. Jennifer Pierce and then we had a student
who just graduated Mercer there.
And so for the two of us I think making choices that are very specific to who we are.
Monica helped a lot with that.
We both have homelands that are Archipelagos.
And so that was something my family's from Cape Verde and Carlos is from Puerto Rico
and so being able to like specifically connect to the text and the material and because the
playwright left it open then bringing it to really really specific choices.
So while there are abstract images I think once you see the whole play we're being very
specific about everything and then Carlos sort of leading the movement work but then
coming up.
Improvisation and organically but then being really specific about what we're doing in
each moment and really learning how to communicate because we communicate all the time as performance
faculty.
And so then getting in the space and sort of practicing together and figuring out who
we are as actors to each other and how we built the story and the relationship it was.
I mean it was an honor to sort of get to work together in this way and also for it we had
students in the production the whole time so I think for them it was great to see how
we model like intimacy choreography or or something that might be more of a specialty
of mine or more of a specialty of Carlos’ is how we convey that to the other person
and check in with each other and work together.
Yeah.
And Just talk very briefly about the expertise that the director Monica brings to this and
kind of her own research agenda.
And so Monica has written a book on the economics of black film.
But she studies the specificity of black theater and so she brings a really heightened awareness
to the importance of not erasing oneself as a performer.
I think for both of us because we're so involved in in disenfranchised communities and communities
that can be overlooked in theater.
Her sensitivity to come in for instance Carlos you want to talk about not wanting to imitate
a certain group and the research we did on the Latin
(overlapping speakers) I mean I think the money can here's another
is another line in the kind of work that we want to do.
If you read the play as is you can you can see that this character is for so is more
geared towards a person that is from the Middle Eastern background.
But, I feel like I as an actor in this particular juncture in time two things I will be doing
a disservice trying to imitate a culture that is not mine.
And two I think Latinos in these regions to see somebody like them.
So I think as a director I mean and we are we are faculty so we have and we are directors
as well.
So we have a strong personas in the studio and have somebody who is always the same voice
that that can can manage all that because he's knowledgeable in her research about it.
So I think it became really instrumental role in this in this project.
And so the play will be performed here in September and up through the 16th but then
you also have some hopes that it will travel across the country even and have seen interest
from other theater companies.
Yeah.
So we are I'm not going to mention anybody specifically because we're in the middle of
all of that right now.
But we we had two theaters that we set out to look at.
And when we proposed this project the idea was that we would have something that we could
tour for the next several years if we wanted to at least the upcoming year to sort of pull
out and go and then as we began to develop it and began talking to other people specifically
because the way we approached this was as a Culturally Competent specific work I think
people are really interested in what that looks like.
And so we've started to receive invitations to take it places.
Well I look forward to seeing it and people can find out more about the production on
our website.
ARTS.UNCC.EDU and tickets can be purchased at the Robinson Hall box office.
So thank you so much for joining us and thank you for watching Inside UNC Charlotte.