NY Review: Review: Kaneza Schaal & Christopher Myers’ “CARTOGRAPHY” Presented by New 42nd Street at The New Victory Theater
Natalie Rine, Associate New York Critic
Walking into The New Victory Theater this weekend, you’re greeted not just by their consistently cheerful ushers, but by the pulsating beat of foreign pop songs. The beats effuse energy into the air preshow, blasting toe-tapping tunes like Belgian singer Stromae’s “Tous les mêmes” or by Somali Canadian rapper K’naan’s “T.I.A. (This Is Africa).” In the case of the latter, you’re settling in to read your program while the lyrics float over your ears: “This is Africa… Where Holidays quickly turn to hell days / Stars fall quicker than box of shell case / No Bill Gates, No PCs…” It’s danceable, global music while simultaneously covering geographically-specific nuances, conditions, and yearnings alike. It’s this amalgamation that sets the tone of the following sixty minutes of Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers’ CARTOGRAPHY: this will not be a sad, heavy drama for a wannabe-escapist-pat-yourself-on-the-back white (Broadway) audience. What follows instead is as fresh, real, pulsing, and in your face as the high BPMs of the preshow playlist.
Written by Myers and directed by Schaal (assistant director Hazel Hernández), CARTOGRAPHY is inspired by the artists’ recent work in Munich with refugee youth from over 12 different countries. Following the 2016 influx of refugees into Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and West Africa, among other nations, Schaal and Myers identified refugees ages 11-17 and used a variety of tools, including map-making, storytelling and filmmaking, to help these young people share their stories. By layering these narratives, Schaal and Myers have created a sixty-minute whirlwind that follows four such refugees from the confined waiting room of The Border back through time and space as they excavate the intersections of home, migration, and meaning in their own journeys. The pace is breakneck, the fear and confusion and liminality of our characters palpable. Myers and Schaal have so expertly guided the small ensemble that every motion, every breath, every syllable hangs delicately in the air with purpose for deliberation. The cast of Janice Amaya, Noor Hamdi, Victoria Nassif, and Malaika Uwamahoro feed off each other with the vivacity of a symbiotic team; they push, stretch, paint, and humble the world around them, building crescendos of happiness and pain with their words, props, and bodies. Far from the “misery porn” temptation of other contemporary stories taking on our global refugee crisis, Myers’ writing for CARTOGRAPHY pierces through the political or otherwise tainted noise, anchoring their original story in a messy reality with the bluntness of youth. The crux of the piece arises out of the break of the four characters into playing themselves, painting personal anecdotes with humor, wit, and heart to show how migration is part of everyone’s story, not just for a problem and place far away.
These themes of migration and movement are woven throughout the performance from every production angle. The team of Chelsie McPhilimy (Lighting & Production Manager), Cheyanne Williams (Technical Director), and Anthony Sertel Dean (Sound Design) construct a deceptively simple space into a boundless playground for dream and pain painting. Sound senor technology, the balance of multi-lingual singing, and a sort of live foley sequence of waves creates a memorable and beautiful soundscape to the world of CARTOGRAPHY. The set begins as an enticingly lit wall of white rectangles positioned horizontal and vertical to form a back wall on the stage, with only one square gap the size of a small peg hole drawing the eye in the upper left corner. Looking something akin to a James Bond camera shutter opening, before the show even begins, you’re wondering: Is it a wall dividing something? Protecting something? Or a wall like the children’s television show “Out of the Box” where it will be deconstructed to build other things? CARTOGRAPHY ends up using it to do all these things but holds one breathtaking surprise addition for its utility: it becomes a projection wall where the audience is invited to pull out our cellphones and electronically map our own migration stories, compiled in real time onto the map in front of us. This interactive design by Pierre Depaz, Grace Huang, & Andrea Klaric, Mateo Juvera Molina, and Joshue Ott theatricalized the eponymous tool of map-making to emphasize CARTOGRAPHY’s greater message of theatre as a participatory space, creating the opportunity to think together in real time in that room together.
CARTOGRAPHY is about drawing new possibilities for yourself, mapping out not just physical locations or changes but emotional, visceral, psychological maps of daily choice- how did you end up here? What series of innumerable small choices made by you and those around you led you to this point in space and time? And then whose autonomy is that- your parents made decisions/maps for you, your teachers, your communities, your governments. At what point is the cartography yours to decide where you’re going and what you want your tomorrow to look like? CARTOGRAPHY is an invitation to stand at the epicenter of your own map and chart your own journey.
CARTOGRAPHY by Kaneza Schaal & Christopher Myers
“Cartography” is co-created by Kaneza Schaal (Director) and Christopher Myers (Designer), produced by ArKtype/Thomas O’Kriegsmann. Cast includes Janice Amaya, Noor Hamdi, Victoria Nassif, and Malaika Uwamahoro. Production team includes Kendall Allen (Stage Manager), Chelsie McPhilimy (Lighting & Production Manager), Cheyanne Williams (Technical Director), Pierre Depaz, Grace Huang, & Andrea Klaric (Interactive Design), Mateo Juvera Molina (Interactive Design Abu Dhabi), Joshue Ott (Interactive Design U.S.), Anthony Sertel Dean (Sound Design), and Hazel Hernández (Assistant Director).
“Cartography” runs through January 19 at The New Victory Theater (209 West 42nd Street). Run Time: 60 minutes, no intermission. The production is recommended for ages 10+. Full-price tickets for CARTOGRAPHY start at $17. Tickets are available online (NewVictory.org) and by phone (646.223.3010). To purchase tickets in person, the New Victory box office is located at 209 West 42nd Street (between 7th / 8th Avenues). Box office hours are Sunday & Monday from 11am-5pm and Tuesday through Saturday from 12pm-7pm.
Photo Credit: Elman Studio