3 hours ago
6
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. Last week I went to watch the play Deep Azure, written by the late actor Chadwick Boseman, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, part of the Globe theatre in London. It’s a show full of verve, poetry powered by hip-hop, Jacobean verse and beautifully choreographed movement. I spoke to Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, the play’s director, about the importance of reviving Black work and the responsibility of not only honouring Boseman’s memory but also showcasing the full spectrum of the Black experience globally.
‘It tells Black writers their work deserves to be in these spaces, too’
The eulogies for Chadwick Boseman, who died in August 2020 at the age of 43, understandably led with his roles in blockbuster films: global fame as T’Challa in Black Panther, as James Brown in Get on Up, and in his portrayals of other historic American figures. Little known, however, was that Boseman was also an avid writer and director whose prose and verse depict the Black American experience. His staunch support of Black Lives Matter was clear when, in June that same year, he and more than 300 other Black artists signed a letter demanding the US film industry sever ties with the police, including stopping the use of police officers on sets and at events, and invest more in Black communities.
For Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, who also grew up in south London and went to the same inner-city state comprehensive school as I did, Boseman’s lyrical talent, “direction and high-level theatre-making” made him determined to bring one of his plays back to life. “As Black artists, I really believe in revivals of Black work where they’re necessary and needed,” Fynn-Aiduenu tells me.
Deep Azure was inspired by the death of Prince Jones, Boseman’s friend and fellow student at Howard University in Washington DC , who was killed in 2000 by police in Virginia. Written in 2005, the play premiered at the Chernin Center for the Arts in Chicago, and follows Azure, a young Black woman mourning the death of her fiance, Deep, at the hands of a police officer. Fynn-Aiduenu was immediately drawn to it, applying his distinctive directorial style, one that weaves music alongside text and movement to great effect. His 2018 play Sweet Like Chocolate Boy, which he wrote and directed, explored the changing face of Black British identity and protest from the 1990s to the present day, set over a soundtrack of garage and booming jungle. Deep Azure, described by a director who worked with Boseman as a precursor to the musical Hamilton, operates in a similar spirit, although Fynn-Aiduenu is keen to point out that he largely sees it as “a play with music rather than a musical”.
Fynn-Aiduenu felt deep sadness after Boseman’s death. He wanted the actor to see his soul-baring work given its flowers, and said the spirit of the project became about honouring the memory of Jones and Boseman. “Writing is a whole entry point into somebody’s head,” he says. “I love that we get to explore his artistry and hear how it collides with all these other intersections with his life.”
Boseman was famously sponsored by Denzel Washington to attend a midsummer acting class at Oxford in the early 90s, and it’s thought that much of the flavour base for Deep Azure was developed during this period, something that inspired Fynn-Aiduenu. “I thought, wouldn’t it be amazing to see this play in a space that reveres Shakespeare and has to revere Chadwick?” he says. “It also says to all these other Black writers out there who embrace this Jacobean epic form: your work deserves to be in these spaces, too.”
Winning trust
The Boseman family – Chadwick’s widow, Simone Ledward Boseman, and his brothers Kevin and Derrick Boseman – were in contact with Fynn-Aiduenu throughout the process, though they had reservations about his ability to maintain the authenticity of a play in which the dialogue is mostly African American Vernacular English. Many of the characters express themselves via a culture closely linked to historically Black colleges and universities in the US, and there were concerns about how this would translate for a London audience, and whether it would feel true to Boseman’s roots.
Fynn-Aiduenu faced a grilling, but assured Boseman’s family that he would bring the play to life in all its complexities. “I will do my best to scour the country for as many Black American actors as I can find, and make sure I give them a chance to be seen,” he told them. That commitment carried through into production: one-third of the cast is American, associate director Marley-Rose Liburd is a Black American from Brooklyn, and Jayden Elijah, who plays Deep, travelled to Washington DC to study speech and mannerisms. A group of Howard University students also followed in Boseman’s footsteps, visiting London for a week as part of the British American Drama Academy, taking part in world-building sessions alongside the cast, as well as taking hip-hop music and movement workshops.
“That validity, that truth, was maintained in the room because we thought about it well. This play was a really beautiful opportunity to have a connection between the Black British and Black American diaspora,” Fynn-Aiduenu tells me.
Globalising grief
Grief and the after-effects of loss permeate throughout Deep Azure. Across the global Black tradition, many customs surrounding death include sharing food, community gatherings, and boisterous celebrations of life, and some of that external volume and vibrancy comes through in the play’s 00s hip-hop soundtrack. But the script doesn’t shy away from the pain underneath. Selina Jones’s performance as Azure, in her more sobering moments, is a reminder of the internal battles that losing a loved one can create: disordered eating, surrendering to vices, an ever-enduring sorrow and dread. “My job is to highlight how transformative Black grief is and show how hidden it is,” Fynn-Aiduenu says, adding that the death of his own father gave him new layers of understanding within the work.
He is comfortable with the play meaning different things to different people. In a wider political context coloured by state violence, audiences will draw their own comparisons. “ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has been mentioned,” he says, “but this is a play about what happens after those things, and so many things happen in the mind, in the soul, in the body, as well as politically.”
One source of particular pride for Fynn-Aiduenu was that his production of Deep Azure brought together the Boseman family and the family of Prince Jones for the first time.
Congo Square, the Chicago-based theatre company behind the original show and countless other works of Black theatre-making – named after the New Orleans spot where enslaved and free Africans could gather on Sundays to dance, sing, play music and trade – has long battled funding issues. But despite the financial constraints in Black arts, Fynn-Aiduenu sees it as a mission to keep on creating. He is setting his sights on taking the play back across the pond, to Chicago or even Anderson, South Carolina, where Boseman was born and raised.
“I think often the industry tries to dispel the fact that a Black culture, whether you are here or in America, has been made that is of worth. So, in terms of theatre, I’m thinking what I can do is invest in communal stories, imaginative playing together. It is incredibly important that we as a diaspora tell each other’s stories.”
