Target Margin’s latest production, PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE GIRL, based on various translation / transmissions of The One Thousand and One Nights opens March 29 and runs until April 21. During the run we are asking five questions to each of our five actors. WHO SHOULD WE PAY ATTENTION TO? Right now, CAITLIN NASEMA CASSIDY.
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Prior to working on PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE GIRL, how were you first introduced to the tales of The One Thousand and One Nights? How has working on TMT’s production, changed your understanding and/or relationship to the tales?
I have memories of meeting Scheherazade, Sinbad, and Aladdin as a child. I first encountered The One Thousand and One Nights through Disney’s Aladdin and Wordsworth Children’s Tales From the Arabian Nights, I think. But I had never read any of the tales – original or translated – myself until Target Margin.
Through the process, I’ve become as interested in how The Nights came to be as I am in the tales themselves. I’ve been drawn to the long and rich history (and mystery) of these stories. To themes of translation and transmission – what is lost, gained, appropriated, altered; to the danger of women; sexual politics; the way we remember things; the way we forget; xenophobia; exoticism. Working with The Nights has led me to become interested, especially, in questions of authenticity and truth. Who does a story belong to? Who has the right to tell it?
One of the many things The Nights are about is the power of storytelling. As a MENA (Middle-Eastern / North African) identifying artist, what has been the most challenging part of inhabiting and telling these tales? The most rewarding?
Being reminded of the seriously high (life and death) stakes of storytelling – in The Nights and in this moment in history.
And (as in life), letting go. Mostly letting go of desperately wanting straightforward answers and trusting that we are honoring the work as best we can.
In five words or less, describe PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE GIRL.
Pay attention to the girl (but seriously).
Or
A new-old kaleidoscopic romp.
This is TMT’s first production in our new performance space, THE DOXSEE, in Sunset Park. What’s been unique about the approach to creating the play? Has the new space opened up creative opportunities? If so, how?
Working with David and The Pay No Attention to the Girl team is a massive joy. The room is so alive and present and curious. The work is challenging and deep. It asks me to fire on a lot cylinders simultaneously, and I love that.
I also love the group of people the piece has convened. Musicians, scholars, puppeteers, teachers, actors, visual artists, designers, directors, and administrative staff have all come together to create in response to The Nights. I have never been in a devising room that is as radically inclusive and collaborative as this one has been.
The company collectively reads, tells, writes, embodies, examine, re-writes, re-tells, re-embodies, and re-examines. The process of re-writing and re-telling has been particularly powerful for me. It has asked me to wrestle with the mutability of language, memory, and truth. This process of iterative storytelling has allowed us to practice our own forms of transmission and translation and to appreciate how The Nights text that exists today has come to be over the last few centuries.
And of course The Doxee is MAGIC. And the design team is genius. Come. You gotta see it.
What’s important to you now? About the show, about life, about anything.
Here are a few things that matter to me a lot and which I am learning, remembering, and practicing alongside the folks at Target Margin: To love the big, difficult questions. To pass on neat, simple answers. To dive deep, examine, research, seek primary source. To listen. To invest in process and in the long-term. To share food. To laugh. To be silly. To value story.
Caitlin Nasema Cassidy is an actor-musician-theatremaker, who is over the moon to be joining TMT for Pay No Attention to the Girl. Caitlin is a 2017-18 Fellow with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and a Global Cultural Fellow with the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for International Cultural Relations. She is a member of The Orchard Project’s 2018 Greenhouse with LubDub Theatre Co. Acting credits include: Paradise (Central Square Theater, Shana Gozansky), A Doll’s House: Middle East Remix (Epic Theatre Ensemble, Noelle Ghoussaini), Anything Goes (Williamstown, Roger Rees), Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Synetic Theater Company, Derek Goldman), and Cymbeline (Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Tom Cornford). Training: Georgetown University, East 15 in London, Shakespeare’s Globe. www.CaitlinNCassidy.com