Pioneering the Authentic Interactivity of the Self
Lisa Paul Streitfeld
Sekou Sundiata has pioneered a new universal art form in his blessing the boats, a multi-media autobiographical performance piece which concluded a two-year national tour last spring at the Apollo Theater Sound Stage where the poet/playwright celebrated his homecoming. In February of this year, he presented this extraordinary feat of storytelling at the New Territories/Live Arts Festival in Scotland.
The journey from Harlem to an international audience is made all the more authentic because the passage is through the body. In 1995, the poet was diagnosed with life-threatening kidney disease. His only hope for survival rested on a transplant but the waiting list was excruciatingly long. When his friend and manager gave him her kidney in 1999, he learned that selfless love is not a sacrifice but a meaningful exchange of energy.
Sundiata opens blessing the boats by offering his guiding symbol over a loudspeaker in a mesmerizing baritone voice: "I used to be a Leo, now I am whatever sign is the best in the daily horoscope." The personal connection to the sun offers a glimpse into the holistic Self even as the risky subject matter threatens to turn this charismatic performer into a poster boy for kidney disease survival. Yet, what makes this work transcend the catharsis of the typical addiction/redemption millennial tale and soar into artistry is the performer’s refusal to make emotional demands on his audience.
This performance marks the first time that Sundiata combines personal narrative with his unique talent to pour poetry into mythical storytelling. Self-revelation leaves him naked on a simple stage set consisting of a table and a screen for projected images and chapter titles establishing the narrative structure. He doesn’t seem to be performing as much as mining personal history for revelatory insights passing into universal myth. You get the feeling that he would savor this transformation even without an audience, for the most thrilling moments of the show are the convergence between inner and outer reality into the magical moments in time which Carl Jung called synchronicities. This passage into the unconscious depths delivers the performer beyond the pitfalls of narcissism; it isn’t his subjective image that the storyteller holds up to the audience but the act of moving beyond the personal and into the realm of the universal. We have here Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth arising from gritty urbanity for a new millennium.
This intense multi-media collaboration–with inspired directing by Rhodessa Jones, dramaturgy by Roberta Uno, sound by Bill Toles, Michael Massola’s lighting and Sage Marie Carter’s production design–expands the wordsmith beyond the limitations of his native expression. Aided by music and images, Sundiata mines the language of the body and medical treatment to take his audience on an inner voyage both literal and metaphorical. Just as the primordial is located in the body, surface emotions arise from the visceral. In this manner, the poet enters the realm of the shaman, interpreter between internal and external realities. The revisiting of the voice telling him to count on the operating table accompanies a nonlinear passage through the internal organs. "We can see into the cavernous," he exclaims. "I expect to see buffalo on the wall."
By fashioning poetry from the mundane, Sundiata has uncovered a manner of directly communicating the transformation of the DNA to absorb a leap in human consciousness. Entering the multi-layered realm of the fourth dimension, he invites the audience to accompany him in seeing anew. "The world is both hard and soft," he says, illuminating the contrast by shifting his physical energy between masculine and feminine.
Even the medical language the poet familiarizes himself with, such as alpha and beta blockers, contains polarities. Yet, as he takes us backwards into his personal history of addictive behavior, a wizardly grasp of symbols open the door to new levels of awareness that transcend the opposites. For example, his illness causes him to fall unconscious in an elevator stopped on the seventh floor; seven relates to the crown chakra, where the opposites are integrated.
In order to arrive at this destination, Sundiata is humbled by the limitations of his body: "We wanted to shake up the world, now I just want to stop shaking," he exclaims. This vulnerability leaves him open for the entrance of the alter ego, which forces him to embrace the paradox that will free him: Sundiata tried to kill himself through his addictions, yet when a deadly disease claimed his body, he clamored for life.
Here we arrive at a powerful convergence–a shift pregnant with a new version of an ancient mythology in which the wounded healer Chiron takes the place of the suffering Prometheus on the rock. By relating his culpability in his medical condition, Sundiata risks losing our sympathy and ends up gaining our compassion. "My sin was a sin of omission," he confesses. "What I didn’t say about my kidney failure…I have a chronic narrative with a behavior problem." With this revelation, the self-contained narrative collapses momentarily. The performer has stepped out of his role to communicate directly with his audience, now freed from expectations. Here he is actively releasing the grandstanding ego persona in order to embrace the Self, the archetype of wholeness that seeks interconnection rather than applause.
As Sundiata describes the elevated realm he has entered, where things around him turn into their opposites, he laments that he can no longer find his cool. "How do you wake up and not remember where you are?" By transcending his habitual form along with his public persona, Sundiata effectively carries his audience to a destination where he has found grace. The audience knows this because they are the beneficiaries. In this manner, the art of an authentically interactive performance arrives at a new millennium where the body reveals a truth that is, in our culture, so often obfuscated by words. This wisdom will undoubtedly be shared in his new work, The 51st Dream State, which has its New York City premiere at BAM in November.
