THE ARCHIVIST by Shaista Latif (Latif/SummerWorks). August 5 at 5:30 pm, August 6 at 8:15 pm, August 11 8:15 pm, August 12 at 6:15 pm. At the Scotiabank Studio (6 Noble). Admission is pay-what-you-decide ($15, $25 or $35). 647-335-5516, summerworks.ca.
After mounting a hit show at a theatre festival, most young playwrights follow a certain trajectory. If they’re lucky, they’re approached by a theatre company to develop that show and put it in a season so more audiences can see it. If it does well there, they keep moving upward.
Shaista Latif isn’t interested in any of that.
After her solo show Graceful Rebellions, which told the stories of three Afghan women, received raves at SummerWorks three years ago, she got lots of opportunities. But she turned them down, explaining that she felt pressure to perform and create work only in a certain way.
“I prefer doing smaller, shorter presentations,” she tells me, and names outside-the-box artists like Nadia Ross and Deanna Bowen as inspirations. “I think it’s financially more feasible, and better for me psychologically as well.”
The result is The Archivist, a performance piece that blends music, text, video and storytelling in an attempt to show all the different aspects that make up her – and, by extension, anyone.
As a queer woman of colour who’s worked in many mediums – she voiced a principal role in the upcoming TIFF film The Breadwinner, which is executive-produced by Angelina Jolie – she’s aware of the kinds of pieces that are being done onstage.
“A lot of the work people of colour are being asked to do is a performance of culture, suffering and misery,” she says. “Sometimes it feels like watching trauma porn onstage.”
While Latif admits it’s important to discuss oppression and “the inevitable difficulty that comes from occupying a certain body,” she also wants to celebrate joy and happiness and the things we enjoy every day.
She’s always been drawn to the idea of archiving.
“I’m trying to take what the known images and symbols are in relation to being a queer person, being an Afghan person, a poor person. And I’m trying to find a way to manipulate them and create a complex history. I’m not interested in reducing the show to the history of, say, my parents. I’m trying to embrace multiplicity.”
She workshopped the piece last year as part of Theatre Centre’s RISER Project. Each performance, she says, was slightly different. And in an attempt to get a variety of responses, she invited people of colour to come and write their own reviews of the show in exchange for free tickets. She’ll be doing the same at SummerWorks.
“The show looks at the different narratives that artists of colour are forced to follow,” she says, “so I wanted to see how people who weren’t necessarily part of the theatre bubble – critics, or people I make art with – saw the work.”
Not that she isn’t interested in what critics like me have to say.
“I hope you like it, but if you don’t, I honestly want to know why,” she says. “I’m so deeply curious about this whole process. I want to know how people respond to the video, how they feel entering the space, what it feels like when I pass them something in the show. It’s all so fascinating.”
And she doesn’t want The Archivist to end here. She hopes to keep adding to it in the years and even decades to come.
“As much as the show is about my own history, it’s also about the aesthetics that exist in the world of theatre, so the show will grow with the changes in the art,” she says.
“I want to be doing this show until my death, and then maybe someone can archive my death and add it in.”
glenns@nowtoronto.com | @glennsumi
