Take d Milk, Nah?, a candid, frequently funny discussion of race, religion and identity
Credit to Author: Stuart Derdeyn| Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2019 18:08:09 +0000
When: Oct. 16-19, 22-26, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 20, 2 p.m.
Where: Vancity Culture Lab, 1895 Venables St.
Tickets and info: $35 at thecultch.com
If there was any question about whether writer/performer Jiv Parasram approached creating Take d Milk, Nah? with more than a fair bit of fun, one need go no further than his own description of his one-man monologue about growing up Indian, Hindu, West Indian and Canadian: “In Take d Milk, Nah?, Jivesh Parasram blends personal storytelling and ritual to walk the audience through the Hin-do’s and Hin-don’ts at the intersections of these cultures.”
Later, the author lays out his plan to make the first Indo-Canadian identity play be the one to destroy the whole concept.
The show evolved out of dramaturge and co-creator Graham Isador’s regular storytelling show at a bar in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. Parasram and others were sharing anecdotes on identity and asked to keep the pieces tight and, hopefully, funny. Parasram jumped up on stage and started telling a story about birthing a cow, and by the end of his six-minute set had birthed an idea for the full-length piece that is Take d Milk, Nah?
While writing the work Parasram delved into some mighty heavy stuff around his identity. It sounds far too serious to be turned into a show that has been described as hilarious.
“The whole evolution of Hinduism as a political thing in the Caribbean, specifically in Trinidad, has been a necessary thing to enable us to do things like go to school and not have to change our religion and things like that,” said Parasram. “In India, it’s the majority culture, and we touch on the differences of being a minority or a majority in the piece, as well as addressing obvious cultural similarities. There are deeply ingrained tensions between the various cultures in Trinidad, both as a result of taught and reinforced racism, as well as butting up against the whole notion of post-colonial nationalism.”
The writer says one of the things that emerged looking at this reality was how much more Indian people in Trinidad could be than those from India. It’s a situation that artists touch upon time-and-time again, described well in songs such as The Old Sod by Spirit of the West with its chorus hook of “There’s none more Scots/Than the Scots abroad.”
“It’s pretty hilarious how adamantly focused a lot of Trinidadians are on being Indian,” he said. “To the point that when someone from India meets them they will be saying, ‘What are you even talking about man, that’s not even a thing anymore?’ Sharing some of that with people seemed to go pretty well with audiences, so we sort of set about making it into a longer show.”
The creation process for Take d Milk, Nah? was on-and-off again for quite awhile, until B Current Performing Arts requested something for its Rock.Paper.Sistahz event. B Current is known for reaching the Caribbean community and Parasram wanted to get back to writing and see how his expanded ideas of bringing in the history of indentured labour and other facets of culture would go over. As a result of that expanded monologue, he was asked by Vancouver’s Rohit Chokhani to perform the piece at the Monsoon Festival in Surrey, and then B Current wanted it to be a complete production for the political Pandemic Theatre.
Along the way Parasram discovered a conflict between his work and the traditional form of “the marginalized person-identity play that has been kicking in Canada for a long time, where you get this person who somehow isn’t part of the majority culture to come out and explain a few things about themselves and everybody feels good about that and that’s the end.” If they also stress how much they really just want to be Canadian, all the better.
Parasram says he’s never seen this genre spoofed better than in Neworld Theatre’s The Adventures of Ali and Ali and the Axes of Evil. He didn’t want to recreate that work at all.
“We had a workshop to get more stories to flesh it out and develop it with the cow story at the end to wind it up all nice and light and it wound up with me banging my head against the wall proclaiming that it was about absolutely nothing,” said Parasram. “That the whole notion of identity is seen as an illusion in Hinduism didn’t make it any better either. So we broke it altogether, putting it back together with what we call the second act.”
While the original stories of past events and culture still form a part of Take d Milk, Nah?, the new material takes it into the failings of identity from a philosophically Hindu perspective. There is some audience interaction involved at the later points, but it would be a spoiler to go into any detail about it. Suffice it to say, some mainstream or marginal experiences might get broken down in a way that isn’t typical for a theatre experience.
“The whole piece is framed around the principle of puja (the act of prayer ritual), and I want to offer the audience a genuine blessing outside of mere performance,” he said. “So there is a legitimate spiritual plane that runs throughout.”
Take d Milk, Nah? is a co-production of the Pandemic and Rumble theatres, Diwali in B.C. and Neworld Theatre, and which goes on tour after the Vancouver run.