Spooky season is in full swing at the Alliance Theatre. “Covenant,” a play from York Walker, runs Oct. 8 – Nov. 9 on the Hertz Stage.
Inspired by the myth of Robert Johnson, “Covenant” follows Johnny James who, after disappearing two years earlier, returns to his small Georgia town a famous and talented blues musician. Johnny’s sudden success sparks rumors that he struck a deal with the devil. Directed by Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, the play stars Jade Payton, Brittany Deneen, Deidre Henry, Jemarcus Kilgore, and Alaysia Renay Duncan.
Ahead of opening night, Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Kajese-Bolden about the show, the lure of Southern Gothic stories, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you first come across this play and what drew you to it as a project for the Alliance?
Tinashe Kajese-Bolden: I was aware of the show because I had heard about this really exciting young writer who was workshopping a piece – that was York Walker – a few years ago from a friend of mine in New York. So I knew there was this supernatural thriller that was out there that was trafficking in these themes around Southern Gothic folklore. Of course, my ears just sort of [perked] up. I’ve always wanted to tell a thriller, especially in our Hertz space here at the Alliance. Then the fact that it was set in the south, and then when I found out it was set in Georgia – I just was so intrigued by this.
When it was produced in New York, I went up there to see it, and was just a fan of the creative team. I was so excited by the possibilities that this offered, not just from a producerial aspect, but the gift it is for the actors involved, the design element – it was all the thing that we do really well here at the Alliance. I love the intimacy of it, and the story is just so thrilling. I’m always intrigued by a story that is inspired by either a true event or a person that then the writer opens up into other possibilities.
I’m glad you brought up the Southern Gothic, supernatural aspect. What draws you to that genre specifically, and how do you incorporate that feel into a stage play when you’re directing?
Kajese-Bolden: I think that what makes a great thriller is not necessarily the jump scares or the ways to frighten people, but the tightening of that psychological tension. So often it is in the absence of information that our mind does wonders on us. In the world building of it, and talking with our incredible all-female design team, we really were talking about, what are the things that will invite an audience to be complicit in the horrifying and scary and thrilling aspects of it?
Thematically, the provocation of this story is, are there stories that we tell ourselves to make sense of the world around us, and what are the things that we swallow and bury deep in our belly in the hopes that it will never see the light of day? That led us to this idea of being buried alive, and what would a set feel like to feel as if you are in a coffin? That inspired a lot of the texture and the color palette, which is black on black and very dark and shadowy in areas, so that light becomes this wayfinder for us – so that light is the thing that we’re always reaching for. It’s also visually a really powerful way to highlight the actors on stage, so we’re really drawn to the relationship between them, and we’re drawn to what is happening to this community as they’re reckoning with this covenant that has been made. They think they know who has made this deal with the devil.
It also meant that as we were thinking about the dualities of the piece – this is so much about heaven and hell. It’s so much about the past and the present, and how time is slippery, the duality of desire and duty. So if the idea is a coffin, the duality of that, or the opposite of that, is a memory box – a memory box of things where secret little compartments can open up and something is revealed. That was sort of the impetus of the design – how do we create a container that, as we first experience it, feels bare and lifeless and almost like we are entombed in it, and then right before our eyes, it starts to become alive, and we realize that it was actually a living, breathing thing holding secrets all along?
This story centers around music. It’s a straight play, but how does blues music and music from the South incorporate into the feel of the show?
Kajese-Bolden: It is just so intrinsic in the world and in the culture and the rhythm of it. What blues offers us – culturally and from an ancestral place – is a collision of paradoxes, right? It’s this collision of mourning and celebrating. It’s a collision of love and fear, and it is where things can be in dissonance with each other. The story behind Robert Johnson is that he made this deal with the devil at a crossroads, where he got this guitar lick that made heaven weep. So this idea that music is also this mystery, that it is both spiritual and our salvation, but it is also this secular thing that takes over our senses and takes over our faith. The music, it’s not just literally in Johnny, who is this guitarist, but it also lives in the spiritual world of the church. It lives in the hymns and the rituals of their prayers, and they’re all woven with each other, so that we’re blurring the lines of both faith and fear and rumors and myths.
It’s also in the lyricism of the writing. It’s the lyricism of August Wilson, where the narrative is just so visually poetic. Because it sits in that note of the rural, Southern dialect, there is a musicality in it. There is inherently a musicality in the African American dialect, and even more particularly in the church. That is all part of the tapestry of what’s happening to us acoustically, which is another seduction of both heaven and hell, right? Music has always been the thing that has enticed us outside of our limitations.
I think of “Sinners” so much, listening to what you just said.
Kajese-Bolden: It is! Yes, it’s so in the zeitgeist. You know what’s so thrilling to me right now? We programmed this over a year and a half ago – about a year ago, we were going to do it. It’s also trafficking in “Lovecraft Country,” and, as you said, “Sinners.” It is finally giving homage and recognizing that so many stories that have been told within the African diaspora, they break that veil between the living and the unliving. There is such a spiritual awareness that whether you are religious-based or not – just in the very practice and the culture, the DNA of who we are as Black people, and then specific to the South – that dance with spirituality and music and summoning of spirits very easily falling off the tongue. It lends itself to the genre of thrillers.
Is that something you find yourself drawn to? I was looking through other shows you directed at the Alliance, and there’s a lot of Southern influence there – what do you typically find yourself drawn to when you’re finding a show you’d like to direct?
Kajese-Bolden: I am so drawn to stories that wrestle with the deep complexity of the human condition. Those are richest in these relationships that happen within a family, but with an epic background – with these smaller communities that are dealing with these huge subject matters that are happening socially and culturally around them. I love stories that allow the actor to be in their full and complete body. When I think about how we interpreted, how I interpreted “Toni Stone,”, and how movement is always a part of my work – for me that also is just a real joy and love for what is possible in the human form. I was saying to our actors today, we are shape shifters in this work that we do, and to be able to experience holding the spirit of these characters is something that I’m really fascinated by as storytellers that are interpreting the world to be a mirror and a reflection of what is happening around us.
I love stories that unearth the things that we don’t or can’t speak about. I love stories that push our certainty to curiosity, that test the boundaries of our belief, that give way to empathy, and the ones that an audience will come in having an expectation of what it is, but leave changed and more curious and asking bigger questions and feeling more connected to themselves. So often, those are the stories that can be wildly entertaining, but also crack open the things that we’ve held so certain were, and allow us to see ourselves in the world that we live in in a different way.
It’s interesting you bring up the movement aspect. I know that you’re an actor as well. How do you think that affects your acting style, having been on the other side of it?
Kajese-Bolden: It is such a huge part of how I approach and take care of the artists in the room. I don’t pretend to know what each of their individual journeys are and what it takes and the tax – psychologically, emotionally, physically – on performing. I know my own journey, and what I always endeavor to do is to meet them at a place where we can grow and safely and bravely experiment. I am the kind of director that will take you to the edge of the cliff and tell you to jump, and it’s not because I think you’ll fall – it’s because I know I can help you fly.
This is what I was born to do. I went through the journey as an actor so that I could create an environment that is a marketplace of ideas, and that I can harvest the best ideas with with love and bravery and invite them to to go beyond what they think that they could do, because I wouldn’t ask anybody to do something that I wouldn’t have done myself, and I think that builds a lot of trust.
I’m also such a visual director, and that’s maybe because in another past life, I was an interior architect and have a master’s in that. I just see the way that our bodies collide with the conditions around us, and that is so fascinating to me, especially when you go across different cultures … I love telling stories that are steeped in the deep, complicated legacy of the South. I think they are the most vulnerable. They’re the bravest, and they challenge everybody.
