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, LORI VEGA.
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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?
This is my intro to reading directly from The One Thousand and One Nights text. I didn’t study it in college, and my exposure to it or any of the stories and themes related to The One Thousand and One Night’s were westernized and particularly Americanized notions of it (i.e. Disney’s Aladdin or I Dream of Jeannie). I was always aware that these western concepts were fetishized ideas of the The Night’s stories, and it came to no surprise to me, as we were working on the text as a cast, of how nuanced, complicated and beautiful the stories actually are. These are stories full of mystery about the human condition and the journey/struggle of understanding what it means to be fully human. I didn’t come to this process with a full working knowledge of the Islamic world, particularly the ancient Islamic worldview, so I was learning as we went along. We also studied from a few working translations, and that became an interesting challenge in learning how to interpret the stories and deciding which ones we wanted to focus on and how. The varying translations changed the way a single story could be understood. The Burton translation, for instance, would focus on different aspects and characters in a particular story giving different weight and gravity to one detail while the Penguin translation may have completely left out a detail or a description or context behind a character. This would lead to conflicting interpretations of the same story within the tales.
One of the many things The Nights are about is the power of storytelling. As a Latinx identifying artist, what has been the most challenging part of inhabiting and telling these tales? The most rewarding?
The entire artistic experience has been nothing but rewarding for me. Devising with the cast and David has been a practice in engaging with one’s full artistic facility (mentally, physically and emotionally). In some ways, it can be exhausting, as we’ve had full days where we’ve been supremely focused churning out work and conversation about these stories. This has been a new way of working for me. Instead of focusing on the role given to me and working within a more linear approach to a text, we’ve worked collaboratively discussing the stories and building on work in and around them as a group or individually. Part of working this way invites us to share our own lives as well, which has been extremely rewarding to hear my other ensemble member’s stories. As a multi-racial cast, I feel we approach the text with not only a 21st century lens but a perspective that is representative of the rich makeup of our country today and all of its stories. The scope of The One Thousand and One Nights too is a vast, complex array of tales that make-up ‘silk-road cultures’– a term we have adopted that better represents the vast regions these stories come from. These are stories that may find their influences from Iran, India, and Southeast Asia. These stories come to us from multiple cultures, languages and countries, much like the creative team’s own voices and stories. And I think that’s extraordinarily special.
In five words or less, describe PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE GIRL.
It keeps going and going.
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?
The DOXSEE is essentially a raw warehouse space. It definitely challenges and pushes one’s ideas of what a theater space should be and look like and what it means to present theater in a space this size and in a space this bare. We used every inch of The DOXSEE to create; from behind the bleachers/audience seating where the set and prop pieces are housed to the bathroom to inside one of the parked cars in the space. It was joyful and freeing to work this way, and our designers have done a tremendous job creating this beautiful, mysterious world. It is a truly sensuous experience for the audience to be dropped into the world we’ve created completely immersed within it and emerging a bit dizzy and light headed at the end still pondering what exactly they just saw or experienced.
What’s important to you now? About the show, about life, about anything.
Right now I just want to be doing work that is important and inspiring to me with people who also want to be doing important and inspiring work. No one wants to work with a bunch of assholes. The fact that I can work this way with a group of people who are all so talented and kind and thoughtful, and I get paid to do it?! Well, you can’t wish for anything more than that. It’s pretty great.
Lori Vega is thrilled to be making her Target Margin debut! NYC credits include: If On A Winter’s Night at The Tank, The Protest at Cherry Lane, Quartemaine’s Terms at TACT, Mail Order Bride at The Beckett Theatre, La Tempestad at The Ohio and Men and Women Talking Love and Sex at The Davenport Theatre. Regional: Halftime with Don at NJ Rep. Co., As You Like It with Lake Tahoe Shakespeare and Idaho Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Lake Tahoe Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet with Saratoga Shakespeare, and Peter Pan with Dorset Theatre Festival. www.lorivega.net