What are the themes of your play?
Thank God For Her explores the themes of grief and impermanence; and particularly how grief can generate a sense of urgency in the exploration of themes such as memory, identity, family, motherhood, cultural dissonance, and love.
Why did you write it and why now?
Maya Angelou once said, ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.’ Anyone who’s experienced the loss of a loved one might know what it is for that agony to feel compounded when you take on their stories too. The desire to give voice to those who are no longer physically here and to share their stories is something that informs my work, and the principle that guides this is love.
I came across my grandmother’s memoir during the 2020 lockdown. She had filled an exercise book with the story of her life, but the section that inspired this play only took up a couple of sentences. Around the same time I heard my grandfather’s voice for the first time, recorded on a worn cassette tape from my mother’s early visit to the Caribbean. As a singer, I’m deeply fascinated by the nature of ‘the voice as a reservoir of life’s experiences’ and how fragile and imbued with meaning these archival documents and fragments become when the person has physically passed on and can’t offer context.
Loss and grief are universal and timeless experiences. I’m fascinated by the way that these experiences seem to defy the bounds of space and time, creating an interior time world where rules of linearity are superseded by love, causing the past to collapse into the present in the act of remembering. This is particularly resonant in relation to Caribbean diasporic identity and history. Derek Walcott’s posturing of the sea as a living archive, particularly in his poem ‘The Sea is History,’ deeply influenced my approach to exploring these themes.
Which playwrights are you influenced by and why?
I’m inspired by writers who work across a range of mediums. Derek Walcott, Maya Angelou and James Baldwin are all literary multi-hyphenates whom I greatly admire because it’s so evident that they write with love and compassion as their guiding principles, particularly when tackling themes like shame, isolation, and fear.
Simone Schwarz-Bart’s novel ‘Pluie et vent sur Telumée Miracle’ influenced my approach to form and expression in this play. Particularly her depictions of female relationships and emotional ecology.
I also greatly admire the work of August Wilson, Ella Hickson, Sarah Kane, debbie tucker green and Tennessee Williams among others.
What do you hope to achieve as a playwright?
As a playwright, I want to create work that sings. I want my writing to provide avenues for people to feel seen, understood, and loved, offering moments of release and connection. I want to continue to lean into poetry and theatricality in my work, exploring areas of the psyche that both scare and intrigue me. It’s also important to me to create work that amplifies marginalised voices with care and compassion, creating roles that are a joy to explore and interpret, and prompting audiences to approach their understanding of the world with greater empathy.