sophia walker & jacob sampson
In her Playwright’s Note for the program of her play The Bridge, which opens tonight, January 25th 2019, at Neptune Theatre’s Fountain Hall, Shauntay Grant (a finalist for a 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award and former Halifax Poet Laureate) writes about a moment about fifteen years ago when she found herself “piecing together a handful of [her] old poems- verses that had no bearing on one another, yet in those early hours something compelled [her] to look for patterns, connection, parallel themes, a bridge among them.” The Bridge, an “exploration of faith, family and forgiveness” had its first staged reading at Eastern Front Theatre in 2012, was shown by Montréal’s Black Theatre Workshop in 2014 and was developed further by Grant in 2016 as 2b Theatre’s Playwright-in-Residence. Tonight the play is produced in a Co-Production between Halifax’s 2b Theatre and Neptune Theatre and in Association with Toronto’s Obsidian Theatre.
Jacob Sampson, who plays John Solomon, sat down with me for a few moments during a break in rehearsals on Tuesday and explained how he became involved in the play’s development about two years ago when he helped facilitate a workshop run by 2b Theatre to “help Shauntay get a feel for what she had written so far.” He adds at the workshop brought “African Nova Scotian actors from all experiences in to work with me and work with [Director] Anthony [Black] to gain a little more experience, and also to give Shauntay some images of music and text that she could take back and work with.”
Sampson characterizes John Solomon as “a family man who is dealing with some trouble in his past.” The play, he says, “is watching John resist dealing with some of those troubles and the forces around him, whether it be community members or other forces (I won’t spoil anything), kind of pushing him to deal with it.”
Director Anthony Black, who also spoke with me on Tuesday, compares the classic structure of the play to the iconic works of Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams. “It has a very artful construction, the way Shauntay has woven time periods, the past and the present, she’s woven music in and her ability as a poet and a composer of words is very much in evidence. Also, she doesn’t just weave words, she’s weaving image and sound image, and layering these things- and it’s all in the script! So, as a director I have to work out the mechanics of it, but so much of [the play] is there.”
The play is set in a rural Black Nova Scotian Community but the exact time and place are left undefined. This allows the play to be both rooted in its particular place, and also to speak to a broader experience. Black says The Bridge “has a lot of the trappings of being set in a rural setting, in that everybody knows everybody’s business, and that may be a universal about small communities. The play could happen in a number of settings, so it’s not specifically about this specific history, but it is steeped in it and rooted in it.” Sampson mentions the recent focal shift at Neptune Theatre toward telling more local stories and stresses that, “you can’t get any more local than Shauntay Grant.”
The play is also firmly rooted in the Church. The King James version of the Song of Solomon is listed as one of Grant’s earliest influences for the play. Black says, “The central character in the play is enraged by what he sees as the hypocrisy of the church [and by] a world in which people can sin and gossip and then pray to Jesus, confess their sins, and they’re suddenly absolved. And then they do it all over again. The extent to which the characters in the world of the play are steeped in the church and the bible and the centrality of the church is kind of incredible and particular and recognizable. I grew up in a Christian family, and so some of the questions that the play raises are ones that I remember being perturbed about. It seems to me that one of the things that is most pertinent to the themes of the play is ‘Are we able to forgive? Are we able to accept the possibility of grace? Or will we choose to be mired in anger?’ And then how destructive that anger can be on the people who hold it. I think that’s an important question. There’s a lot of very justifiable anger in the world, and I don’t know quite what is right or wrong about it, but I have this intuitive feeling, and maybe it’s just conditioned from growing up in a Christian context, that the possibility of grace and forgiveness has to be kept alive or we are doomed.”
Black characterizes the play as a “soaring emotional experience,” saying that he continues to find himself “broken open by it,” although he admits that’s a lot to promise a prospective audience member. Sampson adds that it’s “cathartic,” adding, “We all have trouble in our past and we can be stubborn about not dealing with some of those things and hopefully when audiences come out of this play they will feel refreshed.”
The Bridge stars Jacob Sampson (John Solomon), Sophia Walker (Anna), Jim Codrington (Reverend Eli), Daniel Ellis (Samuel), Murleta Williams (Chorister/Musical Director), Charla Williams (Chorister) and Chiamaka G. Ugwu (Chorister). It’s written by Shauntay Grant and is directed by Anthony Black. It is produced in Co-Production between 2b Theatre and Neptune Theatre in Association with Obsidian Theatre. It opens tonight, January 25th, 2019, at Neptune Theatre’s Fountain Hall (1593 Argyle Street, Halifax), and runs until February 10th. Shows are at 7:30 Tuesday to Sunday and 2:00pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets range in price from $30.00 to $76.00. For tickets please visit this website or call 902.429.7070 (1.800.565.7345) or visit the Box Office at 1593 Argyle Street.
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