Malcolm Mays on Sacrifice, Dramaturgy, & The Importance of Environment in ‘The Brothers Size’
in conversation with Korinn Annette Jefferies of The Black Drama School (theblackdramaschool.org)
I started reading The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney for the third time two days before this interview.
Korinn Annette Jefferies: each time I read this piece, Elegba seems more and more insidious— how do you go about playing the villain?
Malcolm Mays: Well, to be completely honest, I never thought of him as a villain. I think of him as a catalyst and maybe an antagonist. I think an antagonist is someone who just antagonizes the situation. Which, ironically, is the reason that our lead character gets to go on his journey towards freedom.
So, in my opinion, I’ve never looked at Elegba like a bad person, I think Elegba is just who he is. You can't blame a lion for being a lion. You can't blame, you know, a dog for being a dog. Elegba is instinctually a shyster, a finesser, a criminal, a hood nigga like, he all them things, but more than anything, he's in love with this man.
Even in the folklore of Yoruban mythology, Elegba is the crossroads. You can't get mad at the crossroads for being the crossroads. It's just a fork the road, man. He's just a fork in a road. He ain't never pretending to be nothing more than that.
KAJ: I looked at [the end of the play] as the separation of family, so I looked at it as more of a negative— or not negative— but just a sadder ending than what I’m hearing you say.
MM: Well it is sad. Childbirth is violent— it’s also beautiful. Things can exist on a multi-layered plane. Nothing is mutually exclusive. It’s especially not in a [Tarell Alvin McCraney] play, right?
That freedom/that exodus is heartbreaking cause the moment that Ogun finally is able to see, accept, and fully show, and express his love for Oshoosi, he has to let him go. It is heartbreaking. You're absolutely right. It's also beautiful because that's the only way Oshoosi was going to go. And he needed to go.
He needed to go find him in another place.
KAJ: this reminds me of the story that's told about Oya cutting off her ear and that sacrifice/showing that you love someone. I see that from Ogun’s perspective. [I see him sacrificing in that way.] do you feel like there's something that Elegba sacrifices to show his love for Oshoosi?
MM: I wouldn't say that Elegba loves Oshoosi in the best, highest form that love can exist—but I can recognize that somebody's inability to express or show love in a proper way doesn’t mean that they don't love the person.
The parable of Oya… [is] indicative of how Ogun views love and Ogun literally has to cause that same separation with his brother in the end. He didn't just do it as a symbol, he did it because it relinquished his brother from what he felt he was tied to.
Elegba did not make that sacrifice but he did, in fact, go out there and risk his freedom— which I don't know how much he values it— but he risked his freedom to make sure that Oshoosi got that call. I don't know if it's a major sacrifice, but I do think he loved him. So I don't know if he he had the Oya level love/I don't know if he had the highest purest form of love/maternal love, but I do think he had a love, and he tried his best to express it.
MM: He just can't get right.
KAJ: I'm curious how you went about the Yoruba cosmology aspect of this piece. I’m sure you learned a lot working with [Tarell Alvin McCraney and Bijan Sheibani] — were you personally motivated to [study that] or was it a task that was given to you?
MM: Not only did I want to, I had everything of access to me. We had everything we could have wanted and needed. We had a dramaturg there, we had an intimacy coordinator there, we had the writer there— it was literally more like an intensive than it felt like a play that was being put on for money.
KAJ: do you think this piece could be done without a dramaturg?
MM: Yeah, but it would take a really, really high level company to still extract the necessary nuance, because this is top tier/god tier/S level/S tier level difficulty. There's body/there’s movement/there’s song/there’s dance/there’s love/there’s life/there's dense dialogue. It is iambic pentameter, but it is for Black people— not even for Black people—it’s just its own rhythm of speech. Just like August Wilson has its own rhythm of speech. It is its own piece. Unique in itself— wholly unique in itself.
Between time and breadth of knowledge, I wouldn't want to do it without a dramaturg. But if you did do it without a dramaturg, you’d need more time with the material, or you'd have to just have that kind of brain, which you know, godspeed to you, you know what I mean? But, yeah, I do think it can be done. I just think, why would you? Why would you? Why walk when you could drive, you know?
KAJ: in your work with the dramaturg, how much did you all consider the impact of environment being that this is taking place in the Bayou in Louisiana?
MM: I think it just kind of ended up being that we want to honor the material as best we can. And if we get there, we get there. But Tarell was more like, “Whatever's gonna bring the truth. I don't want something that you’re trying to do to get in the way of the truth of the piece.”
But it affected the clothing, the design, the music, the colors. We really wanted to access that early 2000s/New Orleans Bayou/urban culture.
KAJ: do you think that a director could direct this piece and set it somewhere else?
MM: Yes, I do. I don't know if it would have the same punch, but they would have to make it culturally specific and draw those parallels for that specific place, because there's something mythological and spiritual and otherworldly about the Bayou in New Orleans. There's so much association with voodoo and Yoruban culture and Pan Africanism, and Black Americanism, all wrapped up in this weird place that has a spiritual identity beyond itself. It's wild.
Cause superficially, this is a story about a brother and another brother, and he's wrestling with whatever, right? You can do that anywhere. But the reason this is a piece of literary genius is because it's about a struggle of the gods—our gods, right? I don't know if you do that anywhere else, unless it's got that same level of depth registering spiritual richness.
KAJ: if you were to take the script yourself— and you didn't have a dramaturg and you were just like, reading it through—what would be your approach to the exclusion of descriptors in the script? how would you go about that?
MM: I think that different variations of it have been done in different forms in so many places, because it's such a pervasive play. It's propagated through the culture. But if you really love the original piece, I would suggest getting real deep into what the author's intent was— if you're gonna do something true to the original intent. And you're gonna need a dramaturg, fa sho.
KAJ: Yeah. Love a dramaturg.
MM: Fa sho. Love a dramaturg.
KAJ: in my copy of the script, it lists Robert O'Hara as the director for the world premiere of The Brothers Size in Princeton, NJ. I know that the playwright worked with director Bijan Sheibani in early productions as well. I'm curious about a director's relationship to the characters by way of representation, I.e. Robert O'Hara being a Black gay man and [Bijan not having that life experience.] thinking about how that may impact directing a work— do you think that there's any value to that?
MM: Of course, of course there's value, because the perspective is unilateral. For me, I usually say this: if you're going to tell the story that is specific of somebody else's culture—that you are not native to—well, then … you better have an anthropological level interest in reflecting something that you know you are not necessarily a part of and be humanist enough, and beautiful in spirit enough, and open enough, to bring in the voices that you are not natively, while also still retaining your own perspective.
But it's funny, because Bijan has the level of openness and vessel like behavior, because he's not only a seeker of truth, he's a craftsman of the highest caliber and he knows when to resonate common human feelings in a very specific environment. And I wouldn't take it on if I wasn't his level of talented, and I wouldn't suggest it for a lot of people personally. Not because I think that we should limit people, but just because often, when it is done, it is not done to the caliber or level of which I've seen it done by Bijan. He’s unique in that. He's one of one in that.
And that's why Tarell keeps using him.
That's why they keep using each other.
MM: That's why they're co-directing this new one at The Shed in New York— which you guys should come out to.
KAJ: I think it’s clear that all the characters have had experience with incarceration to some degree. I feel like there's a weight with that—just how the play ends and how it starts and the things that are touched on throughout/the whole thing.
MM: Yeah, so I'm a big anti-recidivist activist. Like, that's my journey because of my own personal relationship with the system itself. I loved that I was doing this play because it was the first time in a long time that my politics got to converge with my storytelling. So it became very personal for me.
Also, the effects of incarceration and recidivism… they don’t [usually] get explored with that much nuance. I even have a film project that I wrote called ‘Program’ that is literally about recidivism and the effects of recidivism on a person, being incarcerated, being isolated, being put in solitary confinement—which is inhumane—and then having to come home and interact with the world, right? I made the psychological effects quite literal in a horror presentation. And I was rewriting it at the same time that I was doing the play. So for me, it was like right on par.
Being able to explore how [incarceration and recidivism] affects different people differently, how for [Elegba] that isolation protected him from the outside world and put him in close proximity with someone that he rang true in alignment with, whether it was romantically, sexually, whatever it was, they got to be who they were in that safe space.
And then, for [Oshoosi], it was hell because he had to shut off parts of him, to exist in that space, or exist differently in that space just to survive.
And then the effect it had all the people outside who had someone incarcerated themselves, and how that affected their relationship, and [Ogun] having to learn what it was really like from his brother cause he never could understand.
… Those are the kind of things that I think make for a three dimensional/four dimensional piece. I really love that it was addressed [in the story], yet we never went to prison. It's all about the effects of prison. We didn't make a prison story, cause it's not about the isolation itself, it's about the effects it has on the human being. And I think that that's why the piece is so elevated, and so unique.
The Brothers Size runs at The Shed from August 30 - September 28.
extended interview available w/a subscription to The Black Drama School.