Originally premiering at La MaMa Experimental Theatre’s Downstairs Theater last spring, Fri, Apr 21, 2023, I suddenly remember hearing from maura nguyễn donohue, a fellow CULTUREBOT writer, faculty, and mentor/kin person, beautiful things about Kayla Farrish’s Put Away the Fire, dear. On Wednesday, January 10th, Alethea Pace had an extra ticket, and I wanted to catch up with her and finally get to see a work many in my circle had been discussing. This iteration of the work, presented as part of the Underground Uptown Festival’s Works and Process at the Guggenheim, was segmented to create discourse around the creative process. I can only describe my experience as profound.
By design, Kayla Farrish, in a brilliant collection of choices, intended for her audience to interrogate the formality of ceremony by having the ritual inherent to proscenium presentation begin before the audience had fully arrived. In this way, Farrish invited us into the work; we were a part of its landscape, score, and cinematography. I found this collection of choices acted as a solutio, unfastening us from the linearity that often determines our coming [in]to a place.
The first sense awakened was my ears: the otherworldly musicianship of Alex MacKinnon, sliding through classical, funk melodies and jazz percussion. I paused to note his skill and then turned my focus to the stage to be challenged by a beautiful smile from the majestic Imani Gaudin as she danced with a chair downstage center. Almost immediately after I chose to smile back, my attention was drawn to a cinematic installation projected on the adjacent wall downstage left. My focus pulled in au trois — a warm-up necessary for the eyes if I were to participate in the polycentric hermeneutics of Put Away the Fire, dear. Greetings, hugs, and “oh! How are you?”’s acted as a container for this eye choreography.
Intently, a few of us were transfixed by the sinuous, distilled clarity of Christian Warner and the refined ease of Imani Guadin set upon the familiar setting of Dyer Rhoads’s set design: antique fabrics, chairs, and door framing. With the enchantment of a sweet berceuse and a pool of light, Farrish coaxes us out of our conversations and toward the stage.
The presentation was split, almost rhythmically, into sections, a rhythm that one of our Black messenger deities would enjoy.
The rhythm went: performance —>talkback —>performance —>talkback —>performance…
In both aspects of the rhythm, Farrish was an emissary delivering the message of liberation, expansion (mobility), and jurisdiction.
Each stratum of Put Away the Fire, dear (theatre, dance, musicianship, cinematography) featured modernism, flavor, and boundless and tender dancing. One such tender moment in the evening was the back-to-back duets between Farrish, Christian Warner, and then Warner and Christian Paris Blue. Each duet conjured feelings of support and love imbued with deep listening and care. I found myself amid an audience at once buzzing and chatting, wholly silent and transfixed by the beauty and honesty of the partnering — breathtaking. There was a feeling of what I can only describe as swooning in the moments after the duets. Interesting phenomena happen when Black love is presented on stage.
At the beginning of one of her talkbacks, Farrish states, “ I want to be the anti-hero,” and goes on to explain the pressures and halted mobility white supremacy ( and its gaze) inflicts on the bodies, lives, and works of Black artists. Submitting the alternative of “not being crushed by survival,” to which many in the audience vocalized in some affirming way.
Through the talkbacks, Farrish engaged in world-making — reaching into the past and the depths of memories for her many influences:
1930 – 60’s Cinema — Spell Bound
Parallel Timelines ……………………………………………………………… quantum physics? Time Travel?
“The present dictating the past,”
I a s s u m e t h r o u g h l e g a c y a n d r e t e l l i n g: the living archive.
Satire
Oppositional Gaze
Tropes
Inquiry: “Do you have to struggle?” “What is the format of storytelling?”
Rulings: “The depths, but not the sunken place.” **Whew**
Bojangles, Lena Horne, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rodger’s
Black American exploited music
“like a mixtape jumping back and forth.”
Kayla Farrish brandishes a rich consciousness in her process. Put Away the Fire, dear, (capital B) Black, feels like a jazz improvisation drawing out the riches from the depths of our souls. Set within the kaleidoscope of her aesthetics and the vastness of her dancers’ technical acuity, I was dazzled by her process showing. Farrish is a visionary.
Put Away the Fire, dear will premiere on March 8 – 10, 2024, at ODC Theatre in San Francisco, CA.
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