Zazu Oke & Vince Deiulis Theatre Nidana’s Gods like Us
To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice of the First World War, this worldwide premiere takes a look at the conflict through a lesser-known perspective. In November 1917, on a yam field in Nigeria, a farmer is approached by a Canadian war recruiter to join the Allied troops to push back the German advance in East Africa. The Nigerian farmer’s morality is challenged in ways he never expected.
An allegory interwoven with traditional Nigerian music and stories, this new play by Zazu Oke and Vince Deiulis challenges audiences to question what they truly know about the World’s First War.
DATES & TIMES:
Thursday November 8th, 2018 @ 8pm (Pay-What-You-Can Preview Night)
Friday November 9th, 2018 @ 8pm (Opening Night)
Saturday November 10th, 2018 @ 2pm & 8pm
Sunday November 11th, 2018 @ 2pm
Tuesday November 13th, 2018 @ 8pm
Wednesday November 14th, 2018 @ 8pm
Thursday November 15th, 2018 @ 8pm
Friday November 16th, 2018 @ 8pm
Saturday November 17th, 2018 @ 2pm & 8pm
VENUE:
Factory Theatre Studio Theatre
125 Bathurst Street
Toronto, ON M5V 2R2
TICKETS:
General Admission: $35 plus applicable fees
www.theatrenidana.com
Twitter: @TNidana
Instagram: theatrenidana
Tickets: https://www.factorytheatre.ca/what-s-on/godslikeus/
Transcript
Welcome to episode 154 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre, featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, and more.
It seems like once one fringe season ends, another begins at least the process of applying to festivals, and you’ve probably noticed if you’re in the theatre world at all that we’ve been inundated with notifications about festival lotteries starting up, and I’ve gotten mine in to, well, the one that I’m going to be applying for. I’m going to go for the Toronto Fringe again. Hopefully this year I’ll be able to bring the commandment to Toronto in a way that works out for me, and if you have a show that you’re wanting to do, hopefully the lottery works out in your favour.
I was going to apply for more festivals, but unfortunately real life gets in the way and I am faced with moving, and so to have the lottery fees and actually fringe fees come in at the same time as I’m needing to pack up, pay rent, and move, those are expenses that I could not put together. So unfortunately I’m only going to be trying for the one festival, and hopefully next year I can try to do some more. What are you looking for? What shows do you have in the go? Are you applying to some fringe festivals? If you are, I want to hear about it.
Remember that you can drop me a line by finding Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stagereallypod. You can find the website at stagereallypodcast.com, and if you want to drop me a line directly, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickaby, and my website is philrickaby.com. If you like the podcast, I really do hope that you’ll leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, Google Music, or Google Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts, because your ratings and comments do help new people find the show, or even better, as I’ve said before, if you know somebody that you think will like the show, please tell them about it, because some of my favourite podcasts became my favourites because somebody I knew told me about them. Oh, I just got new buttons, by the way, and if you’re interested in having a button, drop me a line, let me know.
It’s a Stageworthy button, little Stageworthy logo. It’s a one-inch round button, and if you’re interested, let me know, and I’ll do my best to get it to you. My guests this week are Zazu Oke and Vince Deiulis from Theatre Nodana’s Gods Like Us, which runs from November 8th until November 17th at the Factories Theatre Studio in Toronto.
Maybe just each of you give me your name and tell me what you’re doing on the show Gods Like Us. Great. My name is Vince Deiulis, and I’m a co-writer, co-creator, producer, and performer in Gods Like Us.
Nice. Yeah, and same. My name is Zazu.
I am whatever he just said. Vince and I go way back in a dual performance out in the open. I’ll say it was by David Duvall, so it was the theatre that put it up was To Be Determined Theatre.
I guess they’re still trying to figure out the name. But yeah, and ever since, you know, Vince is a smart guy. He’s studious.
He’s very innate with his, you know, the world, and he wants to dive in. He likes to learn a lot about different cultures, and he finds me very intriguing. He’s supposed to be talking about you.
Yeah, Vince finds me very intriguing. What is it that Vince, I mean, let’s just ignore Vince for a second. What does Vince think is so intriguing about you? That’s a good thing, yo.
Vince, he loves my background. He loves the person I am, I guess, and I love him for that. And he loves that I was born in Africa, and I actually live there.
And he loves the fact that I’m able to grasp the concept of being Canadian, you know. And so, looking to my past and telling him my story, he finds that very intriguing, you know. And he’s very sensitive to everyone, you want to say.
And so, he created this idea. He’s like, you know, we should write a play together. We should do something.
I’m like, yeah, sure, no problem. And this guy here just balls it, just goes, takes it by the horn, just goes with it, and just creates this whole, you know. He used this opportunity, this 100 years of emesis to create a play.
And then, because I’m African, I’m Nigerian, he’s like, how about World War, what happened to World War in Africa? I’m like, buddy, I have no clue what happened. Not a cent, not an ounce, no one told me nothing. All I know is that I’m African, I’m here.
Yeah. It’s funny, it’s interesting, because, you know, I was looking at your description of the play. And, you know, when we’re taught about World War I, we’re taught about, we’re taught Belgium, we’re taught France, Germany, you know.
Canada. Canada. You know, but we’re not taught about the African theatre in terms of the war.
In fact, the only time I’ve ever really seen that mentioned is I watched the BBC, Canada, Canadian, like the big miniseries, The Great War. Okay. And they go into that.
They do, okay. I’ll have to watch it, yeah. It’s a slog, by the way.
It’s like 12 episodes. It’s 12 episodes, wow. Like, all the footage and stuff.
But it’s so rare that we talk about the fact that World War I happened in Africa, as well as these other places. Is that what drew you to it? The fact that we don’t know that story? Yeah, essentially. So, I was in a show last November called Echoes of the War by J.M. Barrie, and it’s basically families, British families, before the First World War, after the outbreak of the First World War, and then kind of during near the end of the First World War.
These three short plays kind of stuck together. And when I was in that show, and it was a great experience, but when I was in that show, I was like, I wonder, like, I kind of know about this stuff. Like, I’m not saying anything that I don’t know.
Yeah, there’s a bit of history that I’m learning and new things that I’m discovering. But overall, like, I know, like, a lot of young men from Britain and from Canada and from all these European countries were kind of conscripted or enlisted and went to this war. But what else was happening? And my uncle gave me a book called The World’s War by David Olusoga, which is also a BBC short series.
And that talks about, David Olusoga is from Nigeria, and he lives in London now. And so that talks about the other perspectives, like the Indian soldiers, and the African soldiers and kind of every other country, because, and like, the title of the book is The World’s War. And it makes you think about that this was a global conflict.
There were Australians that were going to the war, there were, you know, Africans, there were a bunch of different countries that we that that went to this war, died for this war, died for the cause. And yet they’re just forgotten by history. Not mentioned.
Yeah, we know about the Western Front and the British. And nothing, there’s nothing to take away from that. But to say that there are all these other stories that are that we can discover.
And so that was really interesting for me to start. But to be to be frank, also, with, with all that, all those teachings, like I live in Africa till I was nine. And, and I even, I called my dad, when this one to inquire what happened in Africa and when the war was happening.
I called my dad, I’m like, Dad, um, what happened? He’s like, Well, I don’t know. He says, I don’t know. He’s like, I know that your uncle, or one of your uncles, your great great, one of your great uncle, actually, no, one of your great uncles.
Yes. No, his uncle. So that would be my great uncle.
Three, six of them enlisted. Yeah. And he says they were all written books.
But But these books are kept somewhere that we don’t know where he is. I’m like, that can you access is like, I don’t know. I can’t access it.
I’m like, why not? Have you just told me someone has it? Right? It’s like, well, I don’t know those people. So, so I am left with the impression that that, uh, even Africa itself doesn’t talk about it, um, about the war. So it’s, it’s, it happened as a book, but it’s, it’s, it’s there, but it’s, it’s not taught, you know? And so I feel like there’s, there’s information that needs to be, you know, I don’t think the whole world needs to know about Africa or Nigeria in the world war, but I feel like it’s even in Africa that they aren’t teaching that history, you know? And I think that’s something that like, you know, we should know that history.
Sure. I mean, I know the reason why we teach it here because it’s of course it’s the, it’s, it’s with a hero. It will also, it is like the world in our mythology in Canada, world war one is when we became a nation.
That’s when that happened for us was that’s when we stood on the world stage that we’re a nation. That’s right. That’s right.
You know, in the forefront, I mean, Africa and Nigeria, it doesn’t occupy that, that same, that same place. Because we’re colonized the whole time. Yes.
Yeah. So, so what was it to brag about? Well, it’s the same for the, for the Indian, like the, the, the, the Indian soldiers, like they, it’s not a big thing for them. They were colonized too.
They were like, it’s not like how much, how much option did they have to, to, to go and fight in this war? Right. And I think that’s what we’re talking about here is what were, what were the options? Well, yeah. And then, and then, and then not only that, what were the options for those who were Africans, you know, the blacks, you know, because at that time there’s still racism going on.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So how do you get a, how do you, how do you tell a slave to go fight for you in a war without backlash? Well, it’s not like the slave can necessarily, they can say no.
Can they not? Can they? I don’t know. And I think that, and that’s why people need to come, that’s why people need to come see the show. Can they say no, is the question.
What would happen if you have a bunch of slaves going to war with them? Would they rebel? Would they shoot you? You’re giving them guns? You’re giving them guns? Gun is power. Yeah. Right.
So there’s all these questions that arise and Vince is doing this research and, you know, and, and I’ve learned a lot, a lot. And so again, the play does dive in and help answer some of those questions. Hopefully people can understand from that.
Interesting. One of the things that you said earlier that I kind of want to jump on, I really wanted to, to, to ask about it is about your experience with Vince. And you mentioned that Vince is interested in the fact that you can grasp being Canadian.
Yes. I’m curious what you mean being Canadian. Yeah.
Um, because you could be typical, you know, we all have our stereotypes, stereotypes. You can be a stereotypical white man. You can be a typical Mexican.
You can be typical, but I don’t see myself as being typical as an individual. And I think that’s what, what I mean about that because a Canadian isn’t typical. Does that make sense? I’m curious what you mean by, by that, just like to keep going, just get your ramble on.
Because, um, you know, uh, we Canadians, uh, we, we accept, we, we, we like to accept. And that’s me. I feel like I accept all the people for who they are as, as a race, as a person, as someone who has their own value and ideology.
And Vince is an example of a person of that. Right. Right.
And so, um, that’s what a true Canadian really is, is we’re willing to accept all the cultures. And then that’s why we’re so multicultural. Cause I know a lot of black people who aren’t accepting of the white race.
I know a lot of black people won’t accept enough Indian race or other races. In fact, I know Indians that aren’t accepting of their own people, you know? And so to be a true Canadian is, is to understand all the people, their perspective, um, and, and, and accept it for what it is in face value and without prejudgment. Yeah.
Right. And so, and I think that’s what, what, what is, um, awesome. I’m trying to hammer it.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s good.
That’s good. Um, so Vince, we talked a little bit, you were here, uh, just a few months ago. Yeah.
Yeah. We were talking about another show. So we talked a little bit about, about your theatre background, things like that.
So Zaza, you’re new to this. So, uh, one of the things that I like to do is I like to find out what your theatre origin story is. Like if we are, if, if people make theatre, we’re the superheroes of our story.
Like, what is your origin story? What made you want to do this? Theatre? Yeah. I’ve been doing theatre since high school, actually since middle, high school because middle school, I came here and I was great. No, actually middle school.
Yeah. Cause I was Sebastian. I was Sebastian in middle school and, and that was my first, um, play on the stage.
I was, uh, you know, in Shakespeare and, you know, I, I, again, I, when I came, came from, came from Nigeria to Canada, I was fresh off the boat. Like English was bad. Like I’ll give you an example.
Um, my first day in school, cause my English was broken. I had, I understood English was broken. So I speak like this, like, how, how, how are you today? And so things were just broken, like, you know what I’m saying? So, um, I went to ask the teacher cause she wanted us to write in sentence.
And I asked her, how do you spell day? They can use, I say, ma’am, how do I split? I went, ma’am, miss, can I ask, can you please spell day? She’s like, it depends on which day I’m like, okay. Um, so, so my sentence is, um, she says day as in D a Y. Okay. So that was the, so, um, so when I wrote down my sentence, it was supposed to say T H E Y. But I, I wrote this sentence and went, and I, and I said, and they, so, and they came over to my house.
So my spelling was and D A Y came over. And so it, it, it was, it was a learning curve. And so theatre, I didn’t allow that to prevent me from expressing myself and who I am as an individual, because I lacked understanding of language.
So theatre was a great way in middle school to actually help me to express myself even more and create. And so I always loved creating cause in Africa, I drew in sand. I was drawing people.
It’s like, it’s gonna be an artist. Everyone’s like, Oh, look, he’s such a good drawer. You know, it’s gonna be an artist.
So I always thought it was gonna be a painter or a drawer or sketch, some of those sketches. So I was sketched. And then I came to Canada and learned theatre.
Wow. What is this? You know, cause as a young child in Africa, you don’t get, you don’t get to see theatre, you see TV, right. But you never know how to get on TV.
Right. Yeah. No one teaches those things.
Right. And so when I came to Canada, I learned about theatre and my teacher says, Hey, you try this. And I try like, Oh, you’re natural.
Give it, you smash it. You know? And so ever since then I love theatre and I’ve always been a part of theatre. And I never took it seriously until I actually went to high school.
Even then I thought I was gonna become an animator cause I always felt, I kept drawing and sketching and stuff like that. Then I served a mission on my church and it just hit me. I need to create life.
I just need to just perform. I’m a performer. And so I’ve ever since I went to theatre school, I went to Brock University, studied theatre.
And then after I graduated, my first play was with Vince. We toured out and opened together. Nice.
And it’s just been great. And now I’m kind of transitioning to film and kind of, you know, backstabbing theatre. Theatre has a special part of my heart, you know? And so creating this, it’s just been great.
Right now I’m working with a world renowned comedian known by the name of, I’m blanking, I don’t know why I’m blanking. His name is, did the drum roll? Jay Martin. He’s a world renowned comedian and this is the second time I’m doing this show with him.
It’s a theatre dinner show and it’s called Commission Kofi Wedding. And so it’s when Africa meets Jamaica. So when coming to America means Zaka Zulu, whatever it is.
And pretty much it’s like an African man and a Jamaican. The cultural clash, right? The differences. And so if you come and watch this, it’s like it’s like you’re watching a big Madea film and it’s just blown up, you know? And so it’s pretty epic.
And so I just, I love theatre and every opportunity I have to play on the stage, I’m there. Yeah. I think Canada is one of those, one of the few places where you can, well, I don’t know about, I think you do it in England too.
I’m sort of borrowed that from England where you can do theatre and film and television. And the stage is like, well, people are starting to do like now film people are doing television and occasionally people do theatre, but there seem to have previously been these walls between what you do. And in Canada, it’s just like, we’re just doing everything.
We’re accepting. So you guys co-wrote this together. And what does that process look like in terms of writing with somebody? Sure.
So I guess what a lot of what I, because I haven’t been to Nigeria, I haven’t, I wasn’t around during the first world war. So I did a lot of the like historical research on the piece to kind of find out more about what was going on historically there. And, but we didn’t want, we decided from the beginning, we didn’t want to do a historical drama.
We didn’t want to come up and be like, this is exactly what happened in Nigeria during the first world war. Cause nobody wants to see that. What, what interests people and what makes theatre interesting is, is emotion, right? It’s about the story and the conflict, the personal conflicts that happened between people.
And so that’s when we started to influence. And when, when I leaned on Zazu more for the, like the cultural references, the traditional references, the things that make Nigerian, Nigeria, Nigerians, and like the traditional, all the traditional elements that I would have no idea about. And so that’s when, so like, for example, there’s, there’s a song that’s sang during the show and that’s not something that you can look up.
I mean, you can, I guess, but that’s, it’s, that’s why, that’s why you talk to someone like Zazu who grew up there and was saying these songs and yeah, sure. Maybe the song won’t be historically accurate to that time or whatever, but the song is still a Nigerian song. It’s still an African song that was sung to children.
That’s what’s important. And I think audience members who are African or Nigerian or not will, will maybe recognize this song. And, and that’s the kind of thing that’ll be interesting and important.
But the thing is, with even that, anything that Africans do is so traditional that it stems from eons. Like, so even the song that’s sang, a hundred years from now, it will probably sang because it’s just passed on from generation to generation. It’s something that’s never lost.
That’s why Africans are very rude in their culture, in tradition. So Amazing Grace has always been Amazing Grace. It’s never changed.
You know, way in the water. It’s always, you know, it’s just all certain songs that just never change. And most of the melodies will never change.
Lullabies will never change. They’ll always be the same because it’s just passed on. Yeah.
Yeah. And like, um, and for example, like Zazu was talking about how he called his dad when, when he had a question about something or he calls his mom or he calls his sisters, like having, having that connection to Nigeria and being able to talk to people from that community is something that is going to elevate the piece that much more, right? Like, yeah, I can, I can write a piece about, you know, this very, this very, uh, textbook story of Nigeria in the first world war. But, but to add that level, that’s, that’s what, what Zazu really brings to the, to the production and what makes it, what makes it alive, I think.
Yeah. Oh, it’s one of the, you mentioned the, like it’s history, but it’s not historical. It’s not, it’s not like this happened and this happened, which is always the, the, the difficulty with, with, with writing something historical.
There’s the, the, the two desires to tell the good story and also to be historically accurate. You cannot necessarily do both because history, accurate history, kind of boring. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. You gotta, you gotta jump some things. People be like, no, actually that took years.
Yes. That did take years, but that’s boring. Welcome to the theatre.
Welcome to the theatre. We have to make history. Yes.
You can’t be here for five hours. No, no, no. No.
And even then, like, come on. Um, did, did you struggle with, with the, uh, the, like, what is, what do we, what needs to be accurate and what doesn’t, or were you just like, fuck it, let’s just do what we need to? I think that was one of the struggles. Um, but, but Vince was clear, had a clear understanding of like what, how, you know, he, he knew that there was a topic and a challenge at hand.
Um, and, and we want to, to, to send a clear message. So having two characters in a setting with that clear message, putting them in that, that clear message being sent from that world, from that historical, um, background, I guess, telling that story of with two characters really solves that. All that, all that, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s two individuals interacting in that, in that world per se, something that might happen, might not happen, but, but by also sending clear message of what did happen.
Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah.
No, it does. It does. One of the things I love about, about theatre is that you can do something, just two people and all you have to figure out is if there’s a conflict, why doesn’t one of them leave? If you can figure out why one of them doesn’t leave, you’ve got some awesome theatre and, and, and that kind of like having two people who are stuck together is a, is a great opportunity to, to, to, to have some real drama.
Yeah. Um, what would you say, both of you, what would you say your, your biggest challenge in creating the show was aside from the, the, the question of history over story, what was the most difficult thing? Um, I think, I think, yeah, I mean, it comes making it general, but specific, I think would be, would be the hardest part because that, because yeah, like the, again, I mean, I know you said not to talk about it, but the, the history and trying to, trying to talk about the whole country, the whole conflict, but at the same time not being able to. And so what do you focus on? What, what do you think will resonate with people the most was, was, and continues to be the big challenge of this show is like, how do you make something as big as a world war fit into two people in 80 minutes on stage and, and make it important and make it resonate.
And I think, yeah, finding like the specific in the general and, but still keeping it general enough that, um, that you learn about a lot of things. Yeah. Um, you know, like for, to be honest, I think, um, the, the most challenging part was, was like having to like, cause I’m so busy.
I have three kids. I’m 28, three kids of the three. Oh geez, man.
Right. And Vince is a, is a single man always, always working because he has just had that time to work and work and work and, you know, and I lived in Brampton, he lived in Toronto. So I think that was the, the challenge part was, was just when do we meet up? How, how, when are you free? Yeah.
You know? And so that, I think that was, was the most challenging aspect in creating this. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that you were talking about, about, uh, you know, just generally dealing with might make it encompassing a whole world war and, and all of that is, is the other side of it is that a war that doesn’t really exist in popular culture.
Yeah. Because first off, there are no surviving soldiers from that war. And, um, there’s also a lot less, uh, historical record because the, any film that we have is, is choppy, like hand cranked, uh, uh, black and white stuff.
Whereas world war two has a lot of, of film, a lot of sound. It’s got so much stuff going on. It’s, it’s more documented.
And so we’ve largely forgotten about the war in popular culture, except of course, when all of a sudden wonder woman takes place in world war one, the movie. Um, but, uh, largely we don’t, we don’t, we don’t deal with it. And yet the impact is everywhere that you go in Canada, every small, and I know anytime I go through a small town, like in the centre of the town, there’s a cenotaph, you know, and you, you start to realize as you go around the country, this hit every little town, you know, and, and yet we’re not, we’re not thinking about it.
We don’t, in fact, we would think the numbers are staggering casualties and things like that. And that’s another thing that we don’t, we don’t realize because we’re so far removed from it so far. Yeah.
A hundred years, which is a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, was when you were looking at things to include, were you like, were you thinking about what does the audience need to know in order to understand what’s happening here? Or, or are you just like assuming a certain amount of knowledge? Um, I think, I think normally you could lean on that. You could lean on, oh, they know this, they know that. But I think considering, um, this is a story that, you know, even finding research texts on was, was a challenge in itself.
So I imagine if it’s that hard to get the information for people to know the information is even that, that further step. So it’s, yeah, it’s finding what, what are those obscure things that no one knows and maybe no one needs to know or cares about. What are those things need to be told to influence this story and to make them understand the circumstance of Nigeria, of this section of time, because it takes place once we’re into the war.
It’s not the beginning of the war. It’s not the end of the war. It’s kind of that middle period.
The war. So, so even the people in the story know about the war, um, so they can talk about it from that point of view, but it’s, yeah, I guess in terms of, um, what the audience needs to know, we kind of have, we kind of opened the show with a bit of, um, like a prologue to, to kind of get people up to speed because Zazu, I mean, I didn’t, I didn’t think it was important, but Zazu felt that like, and it’s, and he made a good point of, you need to kind of give that information first. And then when we touch on it again, later on in the story, then it’s like, oh yeah, it doesn’t take the audience that minute to be like, what are they talking about? And it takes you out of the story because you already know it.
And now it’s just reinforcing it through the action that’s happening. Um, so that was a really good point. And that’s something that we’ve, that we’ve constantly, um, struggled with is like finding out which bits of information are important and which bits of information are important and interesting to the show.
Yeah. I think, um, on that topic, that like, whenever we’re, me and Vince are together and, and we’re having to explain the show to someone, Vince will go into this, like, this, like, I like, like, don’t you know, don’t you know? And I’m like, I don’t think they know. Like they have no clue.
Like I didn’t even know. Right. And so I know in theatre, we’re supposed to show respect to the audience and, and respect their understanding, their knowledge.
You have to, right. And so you don’t, you’re supposed to dumb it down. Yeah.
A piece like this, that lacks, that even us lack knowledge in, even us explaining with a prologue or anything like that, it’s not treating them with disrespect or anything like that. It’s, it’s to give them the knowledge that requires them to fully grasp and question and, and also like leave them with question marks also without really being lost. We don’t want to lose them.
We want to keep them intrigued, but not lost. Yeah. Right.
We want to make them question, but not like, you know, no, we want, sorry, I should, I should call myself, repeat myself properly. We want them to wonder, not question. We want them to wonder more and, and okay, how about this? You know? And so, um, he would, he would educate people and I’m like, Vince, let’s not educate them anymore and create this prologue that will help them understand what you want to explain.
Right. Because if you have to explain it to everyone every time, then they’re going to be lost. We don’t want to lose anyone.
It’s, it’s so true because you, you know, like we were saying, this is like World War I, not particularly thought of in the popular culture. If it was not the 100th anniversary coming up of the end of the war and we haven’t had like four years of like World War I, people talking about it, like all this stuff, it would still be completely out of mind for most people. And I think it still is for most people.
I think so too. You know, the common man. Like I’m, I’m a history nerd, so I eat this stuff up, but most people, like what’s on TV? Like, have I seen this? Like, what’s my frame of reference? Yeah.
Um, but you also have, from what I, from what I see in your description is there’s an inherent culture shock or in terms of, of like misunderstanding, because you have, you’re a Canadian recruiter who’s approaching a Nigerian farmer. Yeah. Two very different experiences.
Yeah. And also one person who, who ultimately knows what, what, what is ahead and one that doesn’t. Um, and so are you, are you, obviously there’s like, just by the premise, there’s two people who aren’t going to understand each other off the bat.
Um, is that, was that important to explore? Yeah. I think, uh, when we were exploring how to tell this story, there was a lot of options. Um, and we were trying to think of like, what, what’s the, what’s the best one? What’s the easiest one? Um, do, do we have, is it just two soldiers like at the front talking about this? Is it two people who have no reference to the war? And they’re just kind of like talking about what they think it is like.
Um, and that’s when we kind of, I, I, I’ve been reading this, um, this great book called Nigeria in the first world war. And it’s, it talks about all like the history and all the boring stuff that Zazu says, I always talk about some of the most important stuff is that it talks about, um, like Nigeria had only been, uh, a country. It was before that was a Northern and Southern protectorate.
It had only been a country for eight months before the outbreak of the first world war in January, they became, they started like amalgamating the Northern and Southern and trying to figure out how that worked and then war breaks out. And so you have this country and, and like all the, obviously all the British and, uh, officers are going up to the front to fight and fight for their country. And so, so it’s a very stripped down, uh, leadership in, in Nigeria to kind of control the masses.
And so what, um, what the leadership there was constantly telling Britain is we can’t, uh, we can’t conscript people here. We can’t force anyone to fight because we’ll get a rebellion and we’ll lose Nigeria. And so, so the story here is they needed to recruit people.
They needed to ask them for their help or convince them that they needed their help. And, and then there’s this, obviously there’s this balance of up until now, we’ve been convincing you that we’re, that we’re gods, essentially, we’re higher than you are more important than you don’t like white people can’t die, you know, like we’re, we’re invincible. And now we’re set, we’re coming down and saying, okay, now we need your help too.
And this is a big thing. Like we need you to kill, potentially kill other white people. You know, we need you to, we need you to kill these people that we’ve been telling you are invincible.
So even then there was rules set in place in order to kill a white man, of course. Right. So that those prove to be challenging, especially when you meet a wise man that understands that.
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. A lot of the pushback that, um, that the leadership in Nigeria was getting was from the educated Nigerians, like the Nigerians who had gone to London, gone to school, the, the educated elite who were, who were being disrespected by, um, by the colonialists and, and because, you know, like, oh, you want to be like us, but you’re not ever going to be like us. But then the educated Nigerians were like, well, we thought by doing this, you would respect us.
And no, so that, so there’s that whole element as well, that kind of like feeds into this story. Um, but so you, so you have to talk about like that recruitment process. And that’s why we figured that that was a good place to kind of, cause you could talk about the history.
You could talk about, um, the, the, the culture, um, and you can talk about, uh, the country coming into itself. Well, it, it, this takes place in 1917. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Cause that’s important to note because that’s, you know, when, when, when, you know, in, in, in British, in the British world, when the war started, everybody was just going, by the time you were at this point in the war, you’re like, okay, we’re not, people aren’t volunteering anymore.
Cause most of them dead and the other ones missing limbs. And like you’re the British, the, like the allies there, they are desperate for people. Um, but also this, this recruiter knows all of that.
And how do you then convince somebody do like, do you lie? You say, no, it’s easy. Nothing, nothing bad can happen. And that’s, and that’s the thing, right? Like you have to, um, in the show, it’s, it’s the tactics that are used to kind of convince this person.
It’s like, yeah, there’s a bit of lying. There’s a bit of truth telling. There’s a bit of honesty.
And then, and essentially that’s why, um, the farmer, the Nigerian character has, has this conflict, essentially is this huge conflict to consider. Um, and at the same time, like, so does the, so does the Canadian, like, like the recruitment, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot at stake. Yeah.
So, so there, so. Especially when he’s affected by, by, uh, by something that, a trauma that happened when he was in the battlefield. Yeah.
Yeah. In terms of, in terms of Zazu, from, from your perspective, um, what is like, what is the struggle of, of the farmer? It’s a good question. The farmer’s struggle, um, he’s, he’s grounded.
The farmer is very grounded. Um, and he, he seems to have a clear understanding of what’s happening in the surrounding. And he has a great, great, um, great value to tradition and culture.
And, and when he’s approached by the, by the recruiter, he, he’s a bit calm because he understands that when he’s being attacked, when a shark, you know, when a shark attacks a fish, you know, the fish, if this fish moves a bit, he’s gone. Right. And so he, he himself, he’s paying, he actually, he, he’s put a resort, a reserve and, um, and his conflict is, is, is do I, um, pretty much use my intelligence, my, my wisdom to, to help this cause or do I not, or do I use it to just better my own people? I think that’s where his conflict really is because he cares for mankind, but, and he has no hatred in him, but he also doesn’t want to be caught in a trap where he knows that they’re out to get him.
Yeah. He’ll help you, but you’re going to backstab him in the process. Right.
And so I think that where, where he’s left at, especially when his whole family has a history with the war. Yeah. Interesting.
And so you guys are, you guys open on November 17th. We open on the 9th until the 17th. Right.
Um, and you’re at the factory theatre, which is a great little intimate stage to be like, to, to, to put two people on. Um, we’re at work. We’re actually converting it’s the studio and we’re converting it to the alley to configuration.
Yeah. Yeah. Cause we think that’ll be exciting.
So you like, you can have an audience on both sides. That’s Yeah. I saw a show.
I saw Rob Kempson’s trigonometry in the studio in an alley and, and alley shows in general, just add that because you can see people watching the show while you’re watching the show. So you get like, you get what you get and then you also see people reacting to what you’re seeing. So there’s that whole extra element that I love.
And so when we were talking about this piece, that was a big thing for me was to have that configuration. I’ve seen a few shows, a few shows use that. Um, and it’s usually really dynamic.
I’ve only seen one show where I don’t think they want it to do that. Their show was not particularly great. And so looking across, you would see people like looking at the lights.
When you see people, that’s not what they wanted us to do. But there’s a certain, there is definitely when, when you have an audience on both sides, um, you’re also compressing the audience space, which is sort of like pushing in the, the performance space, which means that it’s more intimate, which is, I always think it’s, that’s a great way to do theatre is like, like really with people. Let me hang out with you.
Cause you want to like, I love, I don’t like, I don’t want to be too far away when somebody is like, when the actor is like practically on top of you and you like, do you see everything? It’s so you can’t disengage, which is one of the great things about theatre. Um, is there anything in particular aside from, you know, having people see the show that you guys are looking forward to with presenting this show? I think so this show, I mean, it came from that being in that other show and the war being an important element, but what I found and coming up to the armistice, what I found was the anniversary of the armistice was important was, was telling the story and talking about different perspectives. And so I’m hoping that one of the biggest things that we’re hoping to achieve with this show is, is to make people think about the war.
Think about the world war as you know, as, and think, think about more perspectives, think about things outside of yourself. Like we’re living in a time right now where it’s all about engaging with other perspectives and it’s all about like learning new things and not turning the blinders. Like, like we’ve done for so many years, uh, and opening, like taking off the blinders.
And so this, we’re hoping that this show takes off the blinders in that time, you know, and talks about something that maybe we, we thought we knew all about or didn’t care all about. And now suddenly, uh, we know something new and, and, and we’re going to look in, maybe we’ll look into it. Maybe we’ll look into other things.
Yeah. And yeah, I totally agree with that. That’s the accent thing.
I think that’s what our mission is. Our goal is, is to tell the other story. You know, you tell your story, which is always the hero story.
You’re always the hero of your own story. Right. And, and to tell the other story from the person that didn’t really win, you know, um, how did they feel? Were they heroes of their own stories? You know? So, um, how did they view, uh, what happened? And I think it’s, it’s a good way to, cause I feel like theatre helps, helps you to accept things in life.
Theatre helps you to better understand different cultures, different values and ideologies. And I think culture does it. I think we want to stick with that same status quo with what culture, what, what theatre brings to individuals and to, to just give better understanding and enrich people’s life and their perspectives.
And I think that’s what we want, um, is people to leave and be like, okay, wow. Yeah. Um, that was interesting.
You know, that’s what we want. That’s what we, we, we, we want people to feel that inertia. It’s interesting.
Cause you know, you’re talking about like this, you stressed world war, which is, and as soon as you said that, I was like, well, that’s cause we usually think about it as like a British war. Yeah. And that’s how we’re thinking about it.
But it is, it is so much more than that and affected so many more countries, people, places. So I think I’m looking forward to seeing this. Thank you so much for coming and doing this.
This has been a homebody productions production.
