Rites and Reasons

Since the summer of 2012, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop has been hosted by Brown University’s Department of Africana Studies, and some of the sessions have taken place in the Rites and Reasons Theatre. The theater develops work using the “Research-to-Performance Method” (RPM), where teams of artists and scholars develop projects using “direct dialogue with the community through the development process.” The purpose and approach parallel what we strive to do in our fiction workshops: use layers of creation, dialogue, and revision to guide writers to a point of completion.

As the Rites and Reasons collaborators plan and design, they also create their sets, the physical spaces of the storytelling. We build as well, developing the geography and architecture of imagined worlds. We build upon language and structure. How does the language create the color, dimensions, and feeling of the story and its moments?

Such questions and their answers affect the minds and bodies of our characters. As the storytelling turns inward, we mine the unspoken and the remembered, letting the inward journey inform the choreography of the spatial story. We see the characters move, and we often understand the thinking that fuels their movements and words. Both stories, the interior and the exterior, follow the contours the writer creates. The blend of culture, history, ideas, and aesthetic is a mix of the writer’s choosing. The range of voices is key to showing the many layers, voices, and approaches within the African Diaspora.

The RPM process applies to both the author and the characters. The “arc” is a common notion in story structure, but workshops often consider the arc of the writer’s life, assessing the path through each project and throughout a creative career.

The workshop offers an important intersection for writers of color. The gathering provides access to a collective, but it also stresses the importance of an individualized storytelling approach. The collective moment is meant to resonate after the workshop sessions have ended. As the RPM model shows us, the cycle of creation, feedback, and development is the platform on which the author’s structures—the imagined worlds and the aesthetic approach—are built.

Casey Rocheteau

Jennifer Bartell © 2014

Left to right: Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, Jennifer Bartell, Ching-In Chen, Annette Majanja

Leroy Cooper © 2014

Left to right: Lashon Daley, Aja Monet Bacquie, Jeremy Clark, LeRonn P. Brooks

Ama Codjoe © 2014

Left to Right: Jennifer Bartell, Irène Mathieu, Charan P. Morris, Dana Crum, Nadia Alexis, Isaac Ginsberg Miller, Ching-In Chen, Gregory Pardlo, Casey Rocheteau, Kimberly Collins, Aja Monet Bacquie, LeRonn P. Brooks, Jeremy Clark, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, Vievee Francis, Ama Codjoe, Kimberly Reyes, Lashon Daley, Sheila Carter-Jones

Desiree Bailey George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space

Brown University, Department of Africana Studies

Racquel Goodison George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space

Brown University, Department of Africana Studies

Ravi Howard George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space

Brown University, Department of Africana Studies

Vievee Francis & Gregory Pardlo George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space

Brown University, Department of Africana Studies