Play Featuring Anansi and Ginnal Kicks Off Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 45th Season

 By Neil Armstrong

Photo credit: Diana Luong      Theatre artist daniel jelani ellis's play speaking of sneaking will be featured at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto

Theatre artist daniel jelani ellis is promising more dancehall and much more leaning into the world of the mythical folk hero Anansi in speaking of sneaking, a groundwork redux and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre production in association with Obsidian Theatre, when the 45^th anniversary season of Buddies opens later this month.

 

Directed by fellow Jamaican Canadian artist, activist and academic d’bi.young anitafrika,  ellis — who appeared as “Boy” in DM St. Bernard’s The First Stone in Buddies’ 2022-23 season — brings an exhilarating theatrical experience to the Buddies stage: a compelling tale of self-discovery and the pursuit of belonging. 

 

Both are collaborating on another project at the Theatre Centre where he is in residency, and she is the director and dramaturge of the piece. When the opportunity arose to present speaking of sneaking sooner at this Buddies, they seized it.

 

Drawing from his Jamaican roots and lived experiences as a Black queer man navigating “Foreign” (Canada), ellis delivers a multidisciplinary performance that combines dance, poetry, and pantomime to create a transformative journey like no other. He plays ten different characters who appear on stage, “some of them speak, some of them are just there, and it begins with Anansi, we’re entering into Anansi’s web.”

 

“It was in the artistic space of Buddies’ Emerging Creators Unit that speaking of sneaking was first tenderly brooded over for months,” says the creator and performer. “With that infant iteration, I was exploring my newly-forming identity as a Canadian — a Black queer Jamaican young man brand-new to Toronto — reconciling new freedoms and transgressions. It is a surreal experience to return to this piece over 10 years later in the very space where those first ideas were incubated.”

 

Originating in Buddies’ Emerging Creators Unit (2012) and further developed in Why Not Theatre's RISER project (2018), speaking of sneaking has garnered five Dora award nominations, including for outstanding production and outstanding new play. 

 

Eleven years ago, working with theatre director and educator Evalyn Parry, ellis in the 25-minute piece was exploring the issue of code switching not only showing up in language but in the body. 

 

“I was answering that question, like what is the voice of an uprooted Black queer body. And then at RISER it was expanded working with d’bi and it was from Ginnal’s perspective. In terms of this iteration, another way it has changed and continue to evolve is that we (the audience) will be entering into Anansi’s world. This is from Anansi’s perspective; we’re in the realm of the deities, Anansi is the deity of storytelling in this piece,” says ellis, noting that this version of speaking of sneaking is weaving of a story from Anansi the god.

 

When the work was presented at the Theatre Centre, ellis worked with his brother Jesse, a talented musician, who was the sound designer, and in terms of the movement Brian Solomon brought a contemporary dance interpretation of the dancehall.

 

“But for this iteration we’re really leaning into the dancehall so we’re working with a sound designer Stephon Smith and choreographer Jaz “Fairy J” Simone who both independent of the piece have a relationship with dancehall, with Jamaica, with Caribbean through diaspora culture so they are showing up with their own —obviously realizing d’bi’s vision — but then also offering their own interpretation, their own inspirations based on their relationships with dancehall so the dancehall just really exploded for this iteration.”

 

Ellis says at Buddies they have greater resources and the luxury of more time than the RISER project allowed and so they are taking full advantage of that, and it is on a grander scale. 

Photo contributed     daniel jelani ellis in rehearsal for speaking of sneaking

speaking of sneaking follows the story of Ginnal, who yearns to send a barrel back to his family in Jamaica from his bachelor apartment in Toronto. The play artfully collapses past and present, as Ginnal reminisces about his youth in Yard and his path to Foreign. Guided by the playful and ancient spider Anansi, Ginnal navigates the complexities of Black queer masculinity and wrestles with the fraught potential of leaving one home to find another.

 

Ellis says he grew up with Anansi as a figure of storytelling and a revered folkloric spirit and so it felt very natural to be drawing from that culture to incorporate Anansi in the work. 

 

Following the structure of Anansi stories, he believes that ginnals came to be because of Anansi and so he decided to include the figure.  

 

“I wanted to defend ginnals; we understand ginnals as crooked, shady, and trying to benefit themselves. I wanted to offer a perspective that maybe ginnals are doing what they need to do to get through. If we consider that mainstream society or the hegemonic structures serve a very specific kind of person, to be able to navigate these structures with your humanity you have to be flexible, you have to be a bit of a ginnal so that’s how the ginnal and Anansi archetypes came to be.”

Under the expert direction of d'bi.young anitafrika,  whose Anitafrika method helped to develop the piece since its inception, speaking of sneaking returns to Buddies for its mainstage debut. Set and costume is by Rachel Forbes and lighting by Andre Du Toit.

 

Ellis says working with d’bi.young has been surreal and they share so much in common.

 

“It’s a dream come true. We’ll have moments in the day where we will look at each other and giggle when we reflect on how our lives have intersected. We went to the same high school in Jamaica, not at the same time; my dad taught her theatre when she was a youth; my dad and her mom were in the Jamaica School of Drama at the same time. When I moved here, about six months after that I saw her on stage in “Da Kink in My Hair,” that original production at the Princess of Wales Theatre. And I was like woe, theatre is still a possibility here so I have long been looking toward her as model of what is possible, of what I would like to do with my life.”

 

The play opens on September 21, with previews on September 19 and 20; it closes on October 1.