To venture out to a Dominique Morisseau play is to know you are about to encounter family—sometimes linked by blood (Detroit '67, Sunset Baby), by sweat (Skeleton Crew), or by struggle (Confederates). The playwright’s latest offering, a colorful Port-au-Prince-set family drama titled Bad Kreyòl, offers all three.
The story follows Simone (Kelly McCreary), a first-generation Haitian-American on a homecoming of sorts, returning to her ancestral land for the first time since childhood. At the dying wish of her grandmother, Simone hopes to reconnect with Gigi (Pascale Armand)—her brassy, entrepreneurial-minded cousin—and Gigi’s best friend, Pita (Jude Tibeau) who is a former restavèk child raised in their family’s Port-au-Prince home.
The ethicality of Pita’s role as both “fanmi” and servant to that “fanmi” is the first in a series of cross-cultural debates that Simone and Gigi navigate throughout the play’s two acts—debates complicated by Simone’s constant fumbling of the native language. Morisseau rhythmically intertwines Simone’s hacked kreyòl with the heavily accented English of the Haitian-born characters, crafting tuneful dialogue that swirls through both cultures, while also signaling how each character’s speech shapes their identity.
Simone’s inability to grasp kreyòl, for example, represents her distance from the very people and culture she’s most desperate to root herself within. It’s a struggle that Wynnie Lamour, founder of the Haitian Creole Language Institute of New York, knows is far from fictional for many children of the diaspora. Lamour spent time with the production as a language consultant, a task she assures was a joy especially because of the heavy Haitian and Haitian-American representation in the cast:
“Four out of the five actors are Haitian and Haitian American. They all, to varying degrees, have been exposed to Haitian kreyòl. I would actually classify them all as heritage speakers of Haitian kreyòl. When I sat for the first read-through on Zoom, I wasn't sure what I was going to hear, but I heard really great accents and great use of the phonetics of kreyòl being imposed on the English accent… By ‘heritage speakers,’ I mean folks who speak a language that's tied to their cultural heritage. So Haitian Americans, for example, even though they're not born or raised in Haiti, speak and understand kreyòl at a near-native proficiency. I love the term because it gives more life to the language and makes it clear that language is a part of us. It's not just a tool that we use to communicate; it's actually a part of our identity.”
Theater heavyweight Armand is still settling into this role, noticeably stumbling through lines at my performance, but her humor and ferocity are already there; only time is needed. Under Tiffany Nichole Greene’s direction, Armand plays Gigi with deliberate grandeur and loudness. It’s a performance that, to an American ear, might seem histrionic, but to West Indians is pitch-perfect. We are, undeniably, a dramatic people—quick to deliver overanimated gestures and always ready with a steups.
As Lamour notes, “Dominique does a really great job at including a lot of Haitian identity in the language of the play. Even though the majority of the play is in English, you feel it's a Haitian play in the way that the actors move their bodies, the way they move their heads, and especially the facial expressions.”
McCreary has a harder time warming us to Simone, a sort of ill-fated casualty of character because of Simone’s elusiveness. Simone is unmoored, frequently second-guessing everything she has to say, imposing and then retracing her progressive ideals, and grasping for control in a country that both is and isn’t hers. Ultimately, it is Tibeau’s portrayal of Pita that we cling to for stability. He exudes constant warmth as both a reliable sage and a hilarious shade thrower to these women, but he’s also a renegade of his own making—a gay man risking his life to join a rising organization of LGBTQIA+ Haitians called “Kouraj.”
It’s Pita’s story that plunges the narrative into darker, murkier terrain. Up until the point where a Kouraj meeting is targeted by a violent mob, Morisseau’s first act bounces along with a pleasant, sitcom-like simplicity. Scenes end where you think they will on punchy lines, and the A-B plot flips back and forth between the Simone-Gigi-Pita happenings and a less developed character named Lovelie (Fedna Jacquet)—a seamstress who works at an NGO and reveals one of the organization’s donors to be a sexual harasser. Scenic designer Jason Sherwood’s delight-filled set rotates like a carousel between Gigi’s vibrant boutique—bursting with pattern, lacquered with color, Haitian in every way—and Lovelie’s grayish workplace.
Act two ushers in higher (and more disturbing) stakes. One of Gigi’s potential buyers—a former restavèk-turned-international buyer named Thomas (Andy Lucien)—wants access to Lovelie’s merchandise. He also happens to associate with Lovelie’s abuser. Dialogue between Gigi and Thomas doesn’t just reveal their personal agendas, it also conveniently platforms Morisseau’s socio-political critique of gendered abuse and—after a negotiation scene regarding Lovelie’s cut of their profit—the post-colonial exploitation of Haiti by both foreigners and natives. These are necessary topics, yet there’s something heavy-handed about the way we can feel all of the strategic thinking behind them, like Morisseau is onstage instead of her characters. It’s not off-putting—for social justice writers like Morisseau, plays do function as a platform—but it does feel surprisingly novice for such a vet.
There’s a chance that this is simply a result of Morisseau’s own search for identity through this play. Bad Kreyòl is the first in her praiseworthy canon set in the Caribbean and spoken in her Haitian ancestors’ tongue. Lamour lends even more insight, sharing that the pair’s relationship goes back over a decade, long before collaborating here:
“Dominique was one of my first students at the Haitian Creole Language Institute. I met her as a Haitian American who was trying to reconnect with herself through language. She was taking kreyòl lessons with me. Our conversations were always deep because our lessons were right before her first trip to Haiti as an adult. She went with her dad and her husband, and we talked about what it meant to see Haiti through her family's eyes. We were helping her practice kreyòl to prepare for that trip, so our conversations extended beyond just the importance of grammar; we explored the question, ‘Who am I as a Haitian American?’”
Bad Kreyòl feels like Morisseau’s answer to her own question. It’s a story about belonging to many countries, many families, and thus, many selves—a phenomenon that rings true for all of us first-generation kids, straddling cultural lines. Bad Kreyòl reminded me that an often forgotten value of a play isn’t what the audience sees on stage, but who that play sees as its primary audience. In one scene, Gigi offers Simone a cup of tea, to which Simone replies, “Kinda hot for tea, isn’t it?” To most, it’s not a joke, but I threw my head back and cackled, drunk off all the brilliant cultural dissonance encapsulated in that short quip. It’s Morisseau’s wink to us. Too hot for tea? For a West Indian, Simone will learn, there’s no such thing.
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Bad Kreyòl is currently running at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
