In her Broadway hit Bridge and Tunnel, playwright and poet Sarah Jones plays 14 characters who have come together for a poetry slam at a venue with the same name. Although from diverse backgrounds, the characters all have one thing in common: they are all immigrants.
The Tony Award-winning play, which ran on Broadway from February to August this year, was publicly backed by Meryl Streep and commissioned by the Ford Foundation to limit fear about how immigrants are affecting the United States’s civil systems and to ‘remind Americans that unless they are Native Americans, then they are also immigrantsâ€.
The one-woman play due to show at a mini-festival under the Urban Voices banner, joins a long line of works by Jones to be sponsored by either NGOs or corporate funders. Women Can’t Wait, which followed Surface Transit, her breakthrough collection of eight character vignettes, which she performed in South Africa in 2001 and 2002, was commissioned by Equality Now.
Waking the American Dream, which she describes as ‘the core†of Bridge and Tunnel, was commissioned by the National Immigration Forum, while A Right to Care, about inequalities in health, was authorised by the WK Kellogg Foundation. ‘They do find me and I have been fortunate in that I haven’t had some of the problems that people [in my field] have experienced — taking on several jobs to sustain artistic aspirations,†she says. ‘I’m supported by foundations who find that my work relates directly to the philanthropic work that they’re doing.
‘I don’t consider myself an arbitor of truth but sometimes it’s a simple matter of looking at facts,†she continues. ‘The US is a wealthy country, but in the Nineties there were 3 000 animal shelters and 1 500 for abused women. It’s not necessarily a leftist’s perspective or whatever, it’s just numbers and we have to express them. I mean, I’ve had phone calls about writing about the plastic industry but I don’t necessarily find that interesting as a source for material.â€
The subject of immigration was a no-brainer for Jones, who hails from the cosmopolitan Queens County in New York. ‘It is the most diverse county in the entire world, if I have my stats correctly,†she says animatedly. ‘More than 112 countries are represented. It’s insane. I grew up with a sense of a global community as my surroundings — My upbringing informed my interest about people who speak differently, who might not share the same ideology but share genealogy.â€
While Bridge and Tunnel is the fruition of three years spent collecting and adapting stories from the US border patrol, illegal immigrants and subway commuters, it is also the product of her own upbringing. ‘My mother’s mother was an Irish-American/ German-American mix and my [paternal] grandparents are from the various Caribbeans,†says Jones. ‘The African-American story is multiÂcultural for different reasons, especially the slave trade. Everybody has a different story and mine just happened to be what it was.â€
A slam poet groomed in the venerable Nuyorican Poets Café, Jones prefers to work alone, which she says preserves the authenticity of her characters. ‘If I’m going to portray them the way I see them, then it is a lot easier to do it myself and use my body and my voice as a metaphor to show that humanity is fundamentally connected,†she explains. ‘I can be a tall black woman from America and it’s not such a stretch to talk to a 13-year-old woman in Nigeria. Part of the intention of the show is to use this instrument that is myself to tell the story of people whose lives I would otherwise not have anything to do with.â€
Jones, who will perform in Cape Town and Johannesburg, will be accompanied by fellow poet, husband and Bridge and Tunnel co-director Steve Colman.
Bridge and Tunnel runs at the Wits Theatre in Johannesburg from December 6 to 8. A poetry event featuring Jones will be staged at the theatre on December 9. The play will also run at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town on December 11