Black communities in America and worldwide face many challenges that stem from slavery, segregation, and discrimination, which have left lasting effects like systemic racism, economic inequality, limited access to quality healthcare and education, and over policing. And yet, despite a dark cloud hanging over it, in every Black community resilience and perseverance reveal two silver linings: grandmothers and theaters/community art centers.
It’s in this spirit that Signe Harriday, a world-class multidisciplinary artist, performer and director at the Pillsbury House Theatre (PHT) teamed up with Amọké Kubat, Yoruba Priestess, writer, teacher, artist and founder of YO MAMA– art-making support groups for mothers of all ages, to create a block party like no other.
Titled “Inside Out 2”, the celebration was the second annual Block Party of its kind and it was held on July 29th at PHT, with all the outside markings of a traditional block party: free food, fun family activities and a fun house. However, the inside twist was that, it metaphorically sought to, much like grandmothers and theaters do in Black communities, offer a safe, healing space for those who came to immerse themselves in it.
Inspired by the book “Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?”, which was written by Junauda Petrus who visited PHT as toddler, the event borrowed on the concept of the importance of Black matriarchs in Black communities, which Petrus captures very well in her poem. In her homage to grandmothers that was written in the wake of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, she offers alternatives to incarceration and policing, that only Black grandmothers (and fathers) have the love, wisdom, and courage to muster. Her poem is one that highlights the joys and pains of Black communities, with grandmothers being at the heart of each of these with their communal values and though sometimes fierce yet undeniable love styles.
Speaking to Al McFarlane, the host of The Conversation with Al McFarlane, on KFAI’s 90.3FM and simulcast on social media platforms including YouTube, Harriday said that ironically, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that reminded her of how important it is for communities to be together and how even historically, this had always been the case.
“We call it ‘Inside Out’, because oftentimes in Minnesota, we get stuck on our one-way street and we’re moving from here to there… But during the pandemic, we were reminded of our ancestral technology and what it means as Black folks in particular to just be together.”
And in Minnesota, she says, the summertime is the time to do that and through a block party, that’s exactly what they did. Between drinking lemonade and fanning away the humidity in Minnesota’s warm summer weather, those at the event were offered solace in the cool shades of wisdom pearls shared by grandmothers who sat warmly sharing their ancestral knowledge and life lessons of survival to the younger generations.
“If you sit down long enough to listen to people and give them that space, give them that rapport, breathing together, our hearts beating together and that hug and that touch, the stories come and the richness comes,” which Kubat explains is how she and Harriday were able to facilitate a safe space of healing to the community in that one sitting.
But while it may sound like this was a gendered exercise, Harriday explains that the notion of “transcendental grandmothering” isn’t limited to genders or family roles, but rather speaks to the transfer of ancestral knowledge from one generation to the next.
“There are many revolutionaries who came before me who I feel I have adopted in some ways as grandmothers. I think about Audrey Lorde, I think about Toni Cade Bambara. I think about Alice Walker and so many others who, I don’t have a personal familial relationship with them, but there’s a way in which their work has grandmothered me. And I think about important people in our community, that are also mothering in their own way. And that doesn’t have to be a solely a gendered or familial relationship.”
While today, for many communities, theater is a dying art form, Harriday said that it was important to preserve it as a space in which Black communities spend their time and resources as it is one of the mediums that continue to allow for communities to be enlightened not only about their own humanity and divinity but of the humanities and divinities of others around them too. She also said that theater remains important because it continues to remain a gateway to imagining and creating different possibilities and futures.
“If you have the feeling that everything is not quite right, right now… you have to activate your imagination to dream a different alternative. Dream a world that we don’t currently have right now. And imagination is the tool that gets us there. And theater activates the imagination.”
To find out more about the programs offered by PHT, visit https://pillsburyhouseandtheatre.org/. To also find out more about Signe Harriday, visit https://www.signeharriday.com/
Find out more about Amọké Kubat’s works and her YO-MAMA organization, at https://www.yomamashouse.com/amoke-kubat.
