Forget bad kreyòl—call me a bad Haitian, because this girl has just now finally seen her first Dominique Morisseau play. It feels as though doing so is a huge right of passage as a Caribbean theater artist, as a Haitian-American theater artist, at that.
Morisseau is widely known for her classic play cycle titled The Detroit Project (which includes Detroit ’67, Paradise Blue, and Skeleton Crew) the book for the musical Ain’t Too Proud (centering the Detroit-based vocal group, The Temptations), and Pipeline (which was dedicated to her mother and her time as a public school teacher in Detroit’s Highland Park). So, when I heard that Bad Kreyòl was premiering, I felt a strong sense of both curiosity and pride in what was to come from my cousin (to clarify: Morisseau is not my cousin; and yet, she is as us Haitians honor that kinship from our blood cousins to the Haitian stranger we see inside of a Western Union).
Witnessing this zooming out of Detroit and zooming into lakay nou, Ayiti, felt like witnessing Morisseau’s very personal journey in search of Haitian being, becoming, and belonging. As one of Morisseau’s characters in Bad Kreyòl, Pita, shares to his visiting Haitian-American “kouzen,” Simone: “You cannot escape your blood. You cannot run away from who you are.”
Directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, Bad Kreyòl follows social-justice warrior Simone (Kelly McCreary) on a (holiday to honor her Grann’s dying wish for familial reconnection) self-imposed mission trip to Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince where she stays with her no-nonsense cousin Gigi (Pascale Armand), an international business owner who owns and operates a high-class fashion boutique in her home. At the surface of the play, these polar-opposite cousins reckon with their seeming inability to connect and, beneath this is the conversation that Morisseau, many Haitians and Haitian-Americans, and myself have found ourselves contending with for over a century: Why the disconnect between worlds, between us cousins? And, how do we inch towards the remedying of this in the legacy of liberation that Haiti forged forth?
I happened to bring my mother—a first-generation Haitian-American—with me to the performance. She is the daughter of Jacqueline Laurent and Renaud Joseph, my grandparents who escaped Haiti under the brutal dictatorship of Papa Doc’s son, Baby Doc, in the early 1970s. The last time she was in Haiti was when she was 12. And, the last time I was in Haiti was never, as it has seemed from advice to those of us in the states from relatives living in Port-au-Prince, spanning over two decades of my life, is that it is never the right time, that there is always something. So, I have tried to extract, to gently siphon what I could about Haiti from playing krik krak with my grandparents and mother all my life, living (as Morriseau contends with) “between two worlds.”
For those that don’t know, Krik Krak is an oral, call-and-response tradition in Haiti where one goes—you guessed it—“Krik?” to ask if one is prepared to hear a story or tale, and the other yells “Krak!” as confirmation that they are ready to listen and receive the message. And, coming out of The Signature and running to catch our LIRR, my mother and I kept saying that Krik Krak could have absolutely been an alternate title for the play. It is this back and forth, this call-and-response, that fuels everything in Morisseau’s writing here.
Constantly, Morisseau’s characters [metaphorically] shout “Krik!” to the mountaintops and begrudgingly reply “Krak.” It is especially hard for Haitians in Haiti to answer “Krak” to Haitian-American counterparts when there is the constant grappling with the loss of freedom that we once conjured to free ourselves from physical and mental slavery. How do we keep that spirit when we are constantly called the” lowest of the low?”
In the play, Simone's assumption of the ease of choice to live in freedom and truth manifests on two planes of the external and the internal.
With the external, there is often the examination of the freedom of morality and integrity. For example, we see Simone constantly implying to Gigi that she should lower her prices to cater to the majority of Haitians who simply cannot afford Gigi’s price point. Gigi hires Haitian women artists to design her fashion and jewelry and feels she is giving back by providing work opportunities and is also sharing Haitian works of art; but how far can one stretch themselves in the weak socioeconomic climate of Haiti to compromise their own income? And even within attempts to change the system—like what we see when Simone (and eventually Gigi) help Lovelie (Fedna Jacquet), a former sex worker turned seamstress working with an NGO (nongovernmental organization) that works with a sexual assaulter—it becomes clear how instigating change can feel like a fruitless attempt.
Gigi confronts Thomas (Andy Lucien), a businessman who facilitates the purchases of Haitian goods with NGOs, about the man he is working with, he shares how he is powerless and that the firm itself is the one with the power to remove the wrongdoer. His belief in himself not making waves is cemented by his thought that he and his family (who sent him as a child to be a restavèk) will “never have to be a third class citizen in my [his] own country.”
From a Eurocentric standpoint, one might view restavèks as modern-day slaves; they are children that are sent by typically lower-class Haitian citizens to live in financially secure and safe[r] homes where, in turn of receiving an education, they help with housekeeping and other chores. Now, from my standpoint, no child should have to undergo any servitude. But, what other options are there for a more free future in Haiti? I remember my mother telling me how odd she felt visiting Haiti as a child and seeing a child no older than she was cleaning her aunt’s house in the other room while the family lounged in the parlor, and how odd I felt. But now, to Morisseau’s point, shared through her vessel Gigi, can us Americans and Eurocentric countries really criticize the system of restavèks when it is just the Haitian version of our foster care system? Yeah—that point made me think real hard.
When looking to the internal in the production, I think about the freedom to live in one’s truth without fear of consequence and the freedom to express love freely. Pita (Jude Tibeau), Gigi and Simone’s kouzen, is technically a restavèk in the family, which does not sit right with Simone. He is a queer man in Haiti and, at least at home (brilliantly scenic designed by Jason Sherwood, as his various Haitian locales we transport to are), lives in this proudly. It is not until Simone comes into the equation and encourages Pita to go to the Haitian-founded queer affinity space KOURAJ that he feels compelled to take a more public step forward in his queerness. However, when it is revealed Pita has gone and is not yet home, Gigi (rightfully) loses it and explains to Simone that KOURAJ can be a death sentence. And later, we find out that Gigi knew something about what she was saying. To be clear, Gigi supports his queerness. We as westerners have to understand that Gigi discouraging Pita going is, in a “weird” way (to us) an act of [tough] love. The mobility of simply being freely has very limited parameters in a country ruled by coups and gangs that show no mercy, in a country where conversations on queerness and affinity spaces are not at the forefront because they do not contribute to the next meal or the next paycheck.
I would not be surprised if Gigi is misunderstood by most audiences as an unlikeable, a stuck up, or confined character. She reminds me of many Haitian women, close and distant, that I know. She reminds me a little bit of my grandmother, actually, who was also ascribed these descriptors by Americans (myself and my mother once included) that simply did not understand where she was coming from. For me, this especially becomes evident in her love language, which is to cook and make and drink tea. I know because it was my grandmother’s love language too. And her sisters. And every old school Haitian woman in my life. And I’m not mad at that. For Gigi, it is the only way she is able to try to form a connection with Simone. When something is wrong? Drink some tea. Something is awry? Let’s make some pate. I do not blame her for not having the capacity to engage in uncomfortable conversations; it is learned behavior from mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and so on and so forth. Gigi’s willingness, even if small, shows that she is trying to break through generational trauma. But Haiti itself, right now, is a hard place to practice that through either big or small acts.
In this discussion of freedom, my main curiosities and questions of the play lie in the urgency of the current political climate and turmoil, especially with the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse (co-conspirited by his wife Martine Moïse, Prime Minister Claude Joseph, and more) and the rise of gangs and coups, which currently run between 80 to 90 percent of Port-au-Prince. Outside of KOURAJ, I was curious to understand more about how their presence impacted the lives of those we met onstage. While the 2010 earthquake certainly still leaves an open wound on the country, I wanted to better understand the shift from environmental to [even more] governmental (or lack-there-of) disorder. For example, how has NGO presence in Port-au-Prince changed since the President’s assassination? How have queerness and queer spaces shifted tactics for even lower visibility? Not that I think the play needed to directly discuss these topics as a teachable moment; but I became intrigued as to how plotlines might have been more heavily impacted in these ways.
My mother and I—days later—are still having our own Krik Krak, asking each other to challenge the [pre]conceptions we both have about Ayiti that we’ve both grown up with. Morisseau has offered her kouzens a not-so-easy krik to krak [at]. And, I am sitting here, eating my moure pate from Le Bon Pain on Jamaica Avenue, crumbling over my laptop, a very grateful Haitian. Mesi anpil anpil, Dominique.
