Interview: Where to Belong
In this series for Voila! Europe Theatre Festival, Laura Jaramillo Duque interviews artists about their work, the shows they’re bringing to Voila, and their plans for the future…
Laura spoke to Victor Esses, creator and performer of Where to Belong (Cockpit Theatre, 13 & 16 November).
Victor Esses is a maker working with live art, theatre, performance, games and larp. He is interested in participation, autobiographical material, storytelling and multimedia as ways to investigate belonging, human connection, overcoming and the contemporary moment. He creates interactive, devised live art performances that explore belonging, the collective and our times.
In January 2017 Victor visited his parents’ homeland of Lebanon for the first time, where his mother fled as a refugee of the civil war in 1975. In Where to Belong, he recounts his journey, navigating through his and his family’s history to different points of his identity as a Jewish Lebanese Brazilian gay man, he assembles a tender moving hour of storytelling, multimedia and planning for the future.
LJ: What drew you to the Voila festival? What opportunities do you hope it will open for you?
VE: I’ve learned about the Voila through Sharlit who runs the festival. I met her recently and we had a chat about the festival and it was exactly the kind of festival that I would fit in, especially because of their motto ‘No Passports Required.’ It is basically everything that my work talks about, it’s about how we learn from everywhere. Especially the piece that I showed at Voila!, Where to Belong is about being from many different places and questioning why do we belong here and not there. It’s a matter of openness. What interested me is the internationality of the festival as well, the warmth of [festival directors] Sharlit and Amy and their interest in pieces that make you think and feel at the same time. It felt like a great place to meet other makers from different countries, to build relationships and to get a rich experience of different kinds of work. I love being in festivals because it gives you that interaction, you meet so many interesting people and you get a chance to see other people’s work, they come to see your work and this exchange is very special.
LJ: What is the value of cross-cultural theatre?
VE: I think the value of cross-cultural theatre is immense. I think that any kind of art is where people can meet to think, to feel, to imagine and to create a different future and to actually see things from a different perspective. I’m interested in work that makes me feel and think of the world in different ways or makes me look at something that I don’t normally look at. That’s the work that I try to make all the time. That comes with crossing cultures, it’s about meeting the other and thinking: “Oh, actually you are a bit like me, and you are a bit different and unique, but we are the same deep down, and we love each other’s differences and we learn so much from it.” In terms of European theatre, I just find that contemporary European theatre is fantastic, historically as well, but especially contemporary because it’s very experimental, it’s very open to different forms and different ways of presenting to an audience, that is super exciting. So to have all these different cultures coming together and creating something new, that is what art should be about.
LJ: How does your cultural background affect your creative process?
VE: I think my cultural background always affects my process. I started directing plays, which were Brazilian plays in translation and that is my starting point. I can understand Brazilian culture in a way that an English person can’t, so I can offer something that brings that culture to an English audience or to a multi-cultural audience.
I think that as an artist the first thing you should use is yourself because you are unique and that is what you can bring to the table and that is your strength. There are other artists who like to do different things and I like to do many different things, but I have to come from myself as a starting point.
In this last work it was a journey of discovery of who I am, and that comes with all the cultures that I come from, even though I feel very much like a Londoner. And I think London has this strength that it welcomes you and it holds you if you allow it to, because I think there are lots of people who don’t allow it, they bring their culture and they hold on to it very strongly because they are afraid of crossing that barrier to someone else’s culture. But if you want, London has that space for you to become a Londoner which can include other cultures, and that is what I try to do in my work and it really influences everything I do and more and more I embrace it. Each new work I make I embrace more what is mine of my culture or my sexuality.
LJ: Why London?
VE: I love London, even with the difficult politics at the moment, it is a place where I grew up in, I came when I was 18, I came as a teenager and I became an adult here. The mixed culture of the city with the English culture is what I am very attracted to. It is a city that offers so much art in all kinds of ways; you know, theatre, music, contemporary art, and so many other kinds of art. The food got better and better since I arrived, it wasn’t always good. And especially I am going to say, as a gay man who has a partner who’s been with him for a few years, I wanted to feel free to be myself and to think of a future for us as a family. I think London of all the cities I know has more space for that kind of being, which not many other places have. I am sure you can be happy in other places but there is something about here. I think now I’m beyond the acceptance part, and for me it’s about celebrating me and others, you don’t have to go out or make a party, but it’s about actually celebrating the sense of having differences and that’s beautiful. I don’t need to be in your party, but I can think that’s nice and I can move on. Because I grew up with the idea of tolerance: “we should tolerate gay people, or LGBT people, queer people,” and that’s not enough.
LJ: You have experience with different art forms, how does it help you to explore and create new pieces?
VE: I originally trained in a kind of theatre that is very much about characters, story and dramaturgy, but more and more I am interested in contemporary art and participation. I think that a performance doesn’t need to be a different world or a different narrative. It can be right now and we are here in one place and this conversation could be a performance if I wanted. That is what interests me, the in-between, the place where one meets the other and it really influences the way I can just turn up on stage and start talking to you. I don’t need to give you a dance first and then the music come up and then a bit of smoke, I could do that, but storytelling can happen in a very small way and it can open so many things. We can learn so much just from an exchange, a little song like I do in my show, just from singing a song I take you somewhere else and I don’t need to have a band behind me. What interests me is the little things where you bring all these arts together and it’s an installation and it’s also a performance and it’s also theatre. A lot of my work happens in the accident, in the playing around, where something happens and it’s an accident and it’s beautiful.
LJ: Why is it important to explore the journeys of your past and how does it help you in your artistic career?
VE: I think the journeys from my past are very important, for example the trip I made to Lebanon 3 years ago was very important for me to know who I am, it doesn’t mean that I know 100% now but it means that I looked at all these references I grew up with at my parents and went: actually, I’m not just from one place. I grew up in Brazil but… there was Lebanon before. My journeys help me to see how everything is fluid and how we change and how my child could be a different person, that they won’t be like me. It also teaches me about society, we think we are English or we are not English, we are white or we are black, or we are this or we are that, and actually society is constantly changing so the importance of that is that it gives me lessons, is that whatever we think we are today tomorrow might be something different, so why are we looking at the other with those eyes. For me it was about asserting myself and to know who I am and to own it, it is also to claim it all and to say this is me and to assert myself. The freedom that gave me is unbelievable. Just the process of making Where to Belong I really feel stronger as a person. It affects every part of me. I used to think that I need to be more British in a way, to get into the arts, but I realise the more I actually embrace the uniqueness of mine, the more real I am and the more interesting I am as well because I have a lot of things that no one has and that I can offer, and I enjoy putting it on stage in front of other people; it is a very powerful thing and I think we should do more of it.
It all comes in stages, all of this is part of a process as well, and it hasn’t happened overnight. The first project I performed in was called Codependently Yours and it was about my friendship with Sitron, a great folk-rock musician, and I started experimenting with autobiography and poetry, both which I used to write, and music which I always used to play but never really put on stage. That project opened up something for me, and it happens gradually I think, that was the first step. It is also important to stay with it, to stay with the piece for a long time, because it grows. Sometimes the performance is different every day.
LJ: What advice would you give to other Latin Americans in the UK?
VE: First of all whatever you’ve done before, don’t expect everything to happen overnight, things take time. The more I’m in this I understand that it takes time, it takes effort, it takes resilience. If I really want to make something special I need to insist and I’m going to hear noes and I’m going to hear yeses, but I have to find my way. Be clever to find your niche as a starting point.
As a Latin American performer connect with Casa Theatre Festival, that is a great way in. There are also a lot of music and Latino nights. You don’t need to be that kind of artists if that is not who you are, but try to connect with other artists, go to the festivals, places and get involved, don’t be afraid. Also, go see other people’s work, because I see sometimes people come and they want to succeed but they never go to see other Latin American’s work. The Arts are a community. Even a solo piece like I did, I didn’t do it alone, I had so many artists in my rehearsal room at different points giving me feedback having a conversation with me. I could never have done it alone, me alone in a room I can write a draft, but then I need to interact. This is a work, it doesn’t exist by itself. Have patience, be proactive, look for programmes, do training because it is a great way to meet people and to learn, to get into the system.
I think also that when you act too differently from the culture you are in people don’t want to open the space for you, you don’t have to be the same, but you have to know your way to open your opportunities. Also, behave in a way that easily accommodates itself in any environment. It will happen. Once I spoke to a famous great actor and he said to me: “if your motives are pure, the angels will come,” which I thought it was a beautiful thing. I think leave opportunities open, don’t be naïve, because no one is going to save you and you don’t want to owe your life to anyone because that is not a great place to be at. It’s about being in charge, believing and knowing that today I’m panicking, tomorrow I’ll be ok, and then panicking again the next day… it’s a process.
LJ: Should art be always honest?
VE: I think it should always be honest, but there are different ways of being honest. My honesty is very honest, but of course I choose the order of what I tell you and the way I’m going to tell you that will provoke a certain emotion on you because I want you to go through a journey. So I present myself to you honestly, but I also have to be present on stage and I also have to offer you something that will keep you in and won’t just be: “aw, I was so tired this morning and when I came here blah blah blah”; it might be interesting but there are things that I don’t need to be honest about.
I think it doesn’t need to be one kind of honesty. Sometimes the honesty is in how fake something is, like pop art, this is honestly fake it’s about being pop and that is what it is so it needs to have a level of honesty, but it can come in so many different ways. I also think there are people who are not honest who just put on this big thing which doesn’t connect. I’ve seen so many times work that doesn’t connect because it doesn’t come from an honest place in some form or another.
LJ: What is the limit between being yourself on stage and acting on stage?
VE: There are performers who find that it’s easier for them to create a character of themselves on stage. I’m not that kind of performer in my autobiographical work. I found that I have to be present and I have to be myself. That’s what works for me. Of course I’ve rehearsed so it has a quality that it’s not the first time I’ve done it but it should feel like it is. I’ve tried to create a character of myself before and it just makes me uncomfortable. As long as I know my movements, the rhythm that I’m trying to achieve and the emotions I’m trying to provoke, then I can say things in a certain pace, in a different tone or I can invite you in in a different way, but this as far as my acting goes in this kind of work. When I direct plays it is different, I usually hire performers for acting a character. I want to explore more and mix the two genres more, but that is in the future. The aesthetic of my directed work is changing, it’s becoming way more like art, it’s much more getting things from here and there for making this magic happen.
LJ: What are your next projects?
VE: My next main project is called Unfamiliar, it’s a piece about queer families that I am making with my partner Yorgos Petrou, who is a contemporary artist. We’ve been together four years and we are questioning what it means to be a family together. We’ve interviewed many members of queer families and also unconventional families who are not necessarily queer. From these interviews we drew the themes, but it’s very autobiographical of our relationship and our hopes for the future and how it compares to the way we were brought up. It has storytelling, it has actions and abstractions of words; so it’s very much of a mix of arts. My partner brings the aesthetic and the performance art side of things and I bring a little bit of that also but my storytelling and our lives on stage. We are developing it next year.
I am also part of a programme at the Soho Theatre, where I am writing a play where I deal with two brothers’ competition, and patriarchy. I am also curating an evening of performances that celebrates the 50 years of Stonewall, the LGBT riots in New York, so that should happen next summer as well.
Even though we live in a politically troubled time with fascism on the rise, not knowing what Brexit is going to look like, the resistance is as strong as the dominance. This is a time like never before when we are getting to hear more and more queer voices and international voices and voices from communities that we never got a chance to before, black voices. This is so rich. Communities are getting together and making stuff happen. The possibilities are not only negative. It is an exciting time and an exciting place to be.
Follow Victor on social media to keep up to date with hisplans.
Twitter: @vhesses
Voila! Europe Theatre Festival continues through 18 November at The Cockpit Theatre, Etcetera Theatre, and Applecart Arts. Details & Tickets: www.voilafestival.co.uk
