Dominique Morisseau Goes to Haiti
MacArthur Playwright Tackles New Territory
By: Susan Hall - Nov 29, 2024
Playwright Dominique Morisseau grew up in Detroit. Her trilogy based on life in the auto town is magnificent. She braves the tough subjects of our times. Her father was born in Haiti and she now explores her Haitian roots. Signature Theater and the Manhattan Theatre Club are producing Bad Kreyol. Tiffany Nicole Greene directs with a sharp attention to detail and good humor.
The title of the play is loaded. Loaded because the heroine Simone (Kelly McCreary) does not speak the language of the Haitian people, a language of their very own, mixing oppressor’s French with the African Ewe. Simone understands a few words.
The question is raised: Can you know a people if you don’t speak their language? The question is asked daily in New York where so many people overstaying their visas don’t bother to learn English and the city capitulates to them, spending millions of dollars translating everything into Spanish. The play suggests that you need to know a language to understand a culture.
Bad, of course, means Good in English. Sometimes. And Morisseau, ever loaded and ever funny, suggests that even an effort to speak is a positive sign. So positive that– well, let’s not give it away. But there’s a suggestion at the play’s end that we will have more plays set in this exuberant, beleaguered nation.
Color is important. A painted photo of the hills and harbor of Port au Prince forms the backstage. Into it is inserted a revolving turn table revealing a clothing shop run by Simone’s cousin Gigi (Pascale Armand). An ex-prostitute and potential supplier works in another room and an exterior is used for transition scenes.
When the US tried to build military bases in Haiti over a century ago, they built a road from Port au Prince to the northern city of Cap Haitian. It was made of bricks. When I drove on it all the bricks had been removed and used to build homes. A better use. The road is now like a river ditch. I got stuck behind a bus from which chickens were falling off. We were the only two vehicles.
Hulligan TonTon Macoutes terrified natives and visitors alike. I knew about blood being sold to the US before AIDS– with the beneficiary being Luckner Cambronne, a politician. Efforts to aid recovery from an earthquake were mistaken. What Haitians needed was poorly understood. In insulting and demeaning Haitian people in our country, we overlooked a central spirit. No one in the world works harder than these people–for nothing.
There is pleasure in the performance of a Morisseau play, even when the subject is dark. Morisseau miraculously finds humane humor. The actiing is superb. Kelly McCreary is both dumbfounded and kindly. Her cousin played by Pascale Armand, is sassy, defiant and warm. Their relationship is negotiated by Pipi, a gay man who helps Gigi with her store and introduces Simone to the true culture of Haiti. Andy Lucien smoothly plays an exploitative businessman who everyone needs. Fedna Jacquwet as an ex-prostitute turned fabric artist shows the complex role she must play as a woman now doing acceptable work who also has to weave her past story into her garments..
Bad Kreyol is a wonderful evening of theater.