A wooden crate, a pile of sand, candles and endless lengths of a strong white material, that might have been cotton, were all that Guyanese-born Vancouverite Alicia Collins needed to set the stage for what was a gripping and poignant play at the Theatre Guild Playhouse on Saturday night.
Gravity, written and performed by Collins, tells the stories of an unwilling Chinese immigrant, who came to these shores trapped in a wooden box; her feisty daughter ‘Ling’; and Josephine, Ling’s daughter who dies for love. It is the child Josephine left behind who finally puts all of the pieces together and tells the story of her strong female ancestors.
Collins cleverly interweaves the story, which at times seems eerie, with practicality. A demonstration of the Georgetown centrifuge system, proposed to rid the city of flooding, shared a slide presentation with oceanic journeys, traditionally bound feet and dainty embroidery.
The underlying theme of the entire one-woman production was water – the abducted girl’s voyage from China over water; her granddaughter’s drowning at Kaieteur Falls while searching for the man she loved, the 2005 Great Flood and the centrifuge which is to come.
The versatile playwright/actress used smatterings of Chinese, the peculiar Patois spoken only by Guyanese-Chinese and Creolese, smoothly changing character as the story flowed.
Crouched in the crate, Collins became the abducted Chinese girl cowering from her barbaric rapists. Dramatically suspended above the stage, her feet and legs tangled in flowing white material, which held her up, she was Josephine, forced into a loveless marriage with an older Chinese man, cradling her love-child in her arms. In two twists, she was Josephine falling head-first down the waterfall. On the ground, she was the child-woman haunted by the questions in her past, which her ‘Grandma Ling’ finally answers, freeing her.
Throughout the play, one could not help but be pulled into the lives of each of the women and for this, accolades must be given to Collins’s skill as a storyteller.
Unfortunately, the production, which was done for Carifesta X by Guyanese in Diaspora, was not as well attended as it should have been, even though the organizers held off the start for some 45 minutes to allow for late stragglers. Those who held tickets and did not show up missed a treat.
