By CHRIS LOVELL
Web Editor
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Siena College will be presenting the premiere of Child Soldier, a politically-charged drama by Albany Playwright J Thalia Cunningham, this coming weekend.
Cunningham’s newest work is a collaboration with Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Professor of Creative Arts at Siena College.
J Thalia Cunningham is an Albany-based playwright, as well as an Emergency Physician, who has written a multitude of politically-based pieces that have been performed all over the world.
Mahmood Karimi-Hakak is a playwright, filmmaker and director, originating from Iran, who categorizes himself as a political artist. Behind all of his work has a political message, because he feels that when creating a new work, you should do something that you are interested in, something that excites you.
“The job of director is to give life to the written word, and make sure that the flesh and wings are added to the bone structure that the playwright presents to the director” said Karimi-Hakak.
He uses his actors, who are originally cast as an ensemble rather than in specific roles, to bring life to the written word by shaping the part of the character that resides within each of his actors. Only once he and the actors have begun to work together does he cast each actor as a specific character. He feels the measure of his success as a director, in regards to working with his actors, is whether or not he can help grow the “seed” of the character into a big “tree” that essentially takes over the entire actor.
Child Soldier follows the life of Destiny, a 20-year-old former child soldier from Liberia, as she is plunged into an inner-city high school, with its bullying, gangs, and drug culture. She struggles to navigate this strange new world, striving for an education, while vestiges of her former life continue to haunt her.
Karimi-Hakak said that he thoroughly enjoys working with Cunningham, as he always looks for the opportunity to collaborate with playwrights. “Normally, I work with dead playwrights, because it’s usually much easier to collaborate with them than with live playwrights. They can’t come out and say, ‘you cut my line.’ But this time I had the fortune of working with a friend. We could converse, we could feed one another.”
Cunningham feels that this collaboration with Karimi-Hakak is a unique experience, not only because she has been part of the production essentially from the very beginning, but also because Karimi-Hakak is unique in his vision and creativity.
“The beauty of theatre is its ability to teach something about ourselves and the world around us, which is probably why I’ve never yet written a romantic comedy. I like these thorny social issues, because they do teach us,” said Cunningham.
In most of Cunningham’s work, she incorporates many theatrical devices, including puppets, drums and videos. In regards to her previous productions, Cunningham feels that other directors sometimes shy away from or even prefer not to use some of the theatrical devices that she has written into the production. On the other hand, while working with Karimi-Hakak, he seems to embrace the theatrical devices that Cunningham included in the script.
According to Cunningham, she believes that the writing and acting process are very similar, as they are both very interactive. “I write best when I’m in a situation where it is like the characters are there talking and I am just taking down dictation.”
Cunningham finds that the beauty of theatre comes from the ability to take something that an audience may know about, and asking them to look at differently. She decided to write about a female child soldier because she felt that there was quite a bit that had already been written about the Lost Boys of Sudan, and she wanted to bring focus to a slightly different topic. When considering how she might take something people may have already known about and shift their focus slightly, she found the idea of a female child soldier intriguing.
To Karimi-Hakak, theatre is not what happens on the stage; rather, it is what occurs in the minds of the audience as they leave the theatre.
“I’m hoping that a little thing, a little snap will happen in their heads. I don’t care if they think it was a good show. If that happens, they’ll say ‘that was a good show, now let’s go rest.’ I want them to think and I want the play to make them say ‘damn, it doesn’t let me rest.’ Because then it will make them think about gun control, about Newtown, about the rate of murder. Because this is just a capsulate of what goes on in society.”
Previous works by Cunningham have been set in West Africa, or have dealt with military violence. “I love the way the West African mindset seems to make sense out of all the chaos,” said Cunningham.
When creating Destiny, Cunningham was looking to create a character who could use some of the toughness that she had gained from being a child soldier in a positive way to help her with some of the unspeakable horrors that she encounters in an inner city high school.
“She is still a soldier and she is still fighting, and this is a battlefield. And these wars are not just fought in countries that we read about or see on the news, they are fought on our soil in much more frightening ways that would never occur in other countries,” said Cunningham.
Because Child Soldier is a Siena College production, Karimi-Hakak always looks for opportunities to collaborate with the Siena community, including alumni. Siena graduate Sean Baldwin had heard that Karimi-Hakak was looking to work on a piece about child soldiers.
“It had happened that I had recently taken a course on child soldiers, child laborers, and child sex workers, and so I went to speak to him to suggest a book that he could take a look at,” Baldwin said. After meeting with Karimi-Hakak, Baldwin joined the production team as the Dramaturge and Assistant Director.
Baldwin has enjoyed having the ability to work with Karimi-Hakak. “In my experience, [Karimi-Hakak] has gotten cast members to dig deeper and reach further down into themselves than any other director I have worked with in the past. Additionally, his designs for set, sound and lighting are highly stylized and unique.”
Karimi-Hakak’s intensive directing stands out not only to his production staff, but to his actors as well. Siena senior Andrew Vroman said one of the reasons he was interested in being part of Child Soldier was because he enjoyed being around Karimi-Hakak’s thought process. Vroman also mentioned that Karimi-Hakak’s methods are sometimes unconventional, which makes Karimi-Hakak incredibly invested in his work.
There is a feeling of abstract thought behind Child Soldier, and most of that comes from the varied definitions of what a child soldier is. The face of the play is a literal child soldier from Liberia, but Cunningham and Karimi-Hakak are looking to broaden the definition for the audience.
Karimi-Hakak believes that many people fit into the definition of a ‘child soldier.’ “A child soldier is a whole bunch of 18-year-olds who go to Iraq and get killed. They are children, they are 18 years old, and their lives are destroyed after. To me, a child soldier is a tool used by politicians to strengthen their own power, a tool used by rich people to fill their own pockets. A tool used by a variety of governments to oppress their own people. A child soldier is not only a phenomenon limited to West Africa, or Liberia, or the rebels, it happens in America.”
“I hope that this play makes the people think,” said Karimi-Hakak.
Performance times are 8 p.m. on November 13, 14, 15, 20, 21 and 22, and 2 p.m. on November 16 and 23. The performance is being held in the Beaudoin Theater at Siena College, Loudonville, New York.
