Black & Rural

Pacific Theatre to April 15, 2023
Tickets $37.50 at 604-731-5518 or www.pacifictheatre.org

Posted April 2, 2023

Spell-binding. You know a theatrical performance has had an effect when there is a long silence before the applause. It’s as if applauding will break the spell. That’s the way it was the night I attended Black & Rural, created and performed by the charismatic Shayna Jones and directed by Richard Wolfe, Artistic and Producing Director of Pi Theatre.  I don’t know if Jones has a dance background but working with choreographer Amber Barton,  Jones moves like a dancer – barefoot, lithe and supple with long arms and long expressive fingers spinning stories in the air. She can be an ancient crone, old and bent, or a child sitting cross-legged in front of the tv.

Jones weaves her story about being the only black person on the streets of a small BC interior town. When the townspeople held a George Floyd rally, she wondered if she should carry a sign but then realized, “I AM the sign.” And although she has chosen to move amidst the all-white population there, she grows weary of being the representative black.

Jones actually lives away from town in a cottage in “the wild woods”, a two-hour hike from town or accessed by boat and it is this lifestyle that has led her to a deeper understanding of who she is. “I adore folktales. I love how they are free from the constraints of logic or adequate explanation. They are a window. A portal.” Amidst the trees – cedars, hemlocks, Douglas fir – she has been, as she says, forced to face herself. And that led her to being curious about others who were also black and rural so she went looking.

Over eighteen months she found and interviewed forty others who shared their stories. Unfortunately the sound quality of the voice overs is not great and it’s a struggle to understand what’s being said. The piece moves between Jones’ personal story, folklore and the stories of the forty interviewees. Like folktales themselves, the work meanders and takes tangents; seventy uninterrupted minutes is all the material can support.

Set designer Cecilia Vadala provides an inspired, magical ‘forest’ of five thick, heavy, hemp ropes that descend from the ceiling to coils on the floor. Lighting designer Brad Trenaman takes us with lighting changes from Jones’ reality into folktale, back and forth, while composer/musician Rufus Cappadocia provides music that ranges from melancholy bass to distant drumming. The overall effect is one of mystery, of magic.

That being said, Black & Rural is not for everyone, especially those who view trees as just another resource to be extracted or folktales being just for children.

Strangely, what lingers after Black & Rural is not black and rural at all – or, at least, it wasn’t for me. For more than fifty years I lived in an old waterfront cottage well away from Vancouver; the sense of connection to the natural world defined me: I knew the tides, the wind, the birds, the phases of the moon. I could stand outside at night and hear wind way up high in the trees although it was windless and quiet on the ground. Forced to leave because I was leasing and living on parkland, I have a profound and enduring sense of loss that Jones just happened to tap into. But I’m sure Black & Rural awakens a deep-seated longing in many of us who live busy, noisy, urban lives and wonder why we live the way we do. One life. No rewind.

But there is optimism in Jones’ words: “We move toward that which  brings us life.” Black & Rural is a meditation, a poem set to music and dance, a call to action. “Listen. Listen. Listen.”