What I liked
Beautiful direction, seamless transitions, I loved the music, I truly felt like we were in Lagos.
The production theme of white — the idea that in Western culture white means purity and in Nigeria it means sacrifice and death, that red is the wedding color there— such an unapologetic color that takes up space with fearlessness, like the people of Nigeria do.
What I didn't like
I wasn’t ready for the story to end. And yet I loved that. Because grief and pain and finding ourselves happens in fragments without closure or neatly tied bows at the end. The show is very true to life in that way.
I love that we don’t get to witness the ceremony. That we only see a glimpse. Ceremony is sacred and I felt a deep respect in the omission of it.
Thank you again for a beautiful performance.
Congratulations to the whole team.
My overall impression
Writing this the moment I got in my car to capture the feeling still rippling through my body.
Italome is a powerhouse writer and storyteller. She draws you in like an old friend and the intimacy and ease of her storytelling keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
Her ability to transform into her compelling family members and other characters was so deeply subtle and nuanced. I loved each character so much, I could honestly watch separate shows about their lives— they were all so specific and had stories of their own.
Her main character of Sirah is funny, engaging, deeply rooted, and very much like the water itself….a frozen wave on the verge of breaking.
Her experience of leaving her homeland to live in America and not quite feeling at home or ‘whole’ in either place, was reminiscent of a mermaid caught between land and sea.
Sirah’s Auntie Grace’s deep cosmology of her people contrasted with her Mother’s chosen Christianity made me think about how the dominant colonial ‘cultures’ get to pick and choose which stories we believe, and how each people, each nation, each Indigenous community has their own beliefs and cosmology that is just as valid.
What a heartbreaking concept to feel haunted by a lineage and story you have not been taught to understand.
What a graceful and transcendent way of translating that heartache.
Thank you Italome, for gifting us with a glimpse into the worlds you inhabit, in all of your wholeness and bravery.
