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JCAL Presents on 1/11 our #ThursdayNightJazz event at 8pm featuring the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet. @WilkinsImmanuel is an American saxophonist who’s toured with Solange Knowles and other notable artists! Admission is free.

By: Shahael Myrthil

“Art has that power to make you see a life that’s not your own and embody it, whether that’s a drawing that you see in front of you or you hear a piece of music that exploits an expression of pain that someone else has that you have as well, ” actress Alexis Atkinson said in an interview at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning on October 4th.

Water, debuted at JCAL’s theater on October 6th, was written and directed by Atkinson who is a writer, director, counselor, and a playwright reigning from the heart of Queens .

Water as she noted “is about the traumatic experiences of African Americans of  the diaspora, specifically in America regarding their relationship with water, citing that throughout history there have been horrific experiences that have categorized who we are and how we feel about water that has shaped our reactions we have to it now.”

This play, filled with an all black cast, will take a social stance in trying break past those stereotypes that insinuates that  black people don’t like to swim for fear of getting their hair wet.

 As she said, “these very tenuous stereotypes that have wrapped around this misnomer that black people don’t like water, overlooking the fact that African Americans may have gone through traumatic experiences that shaped a disproportionate relationship where after constantly being terrorized by something, that’s supposed to give life, and that biologically is supposed to feed us.”

Atkinson referenced Simone Manuel, who was the first African American ever to take home an Olympic gold medal for her historical swim at  the 100m freestyle race in Rio last year, as what had inspired her to write this play. The Queens Native teased that the audience may or may not see one of her character resemble Manuel. And speaking of resemblance, Atkinson briefly mentioned a scene that was reenacted from her own personal life.

There is a mother in her play that’s very apprehensive about going to a specific beach with her child. It isn’t until later on “after much pleading and plotting,” that the little girl finds out that race had played a role in why her mother had been banned from that beach when she was younger.This scene can resonate with many African Americans from different walks of life, especially those who’ve grown up in neighborhoods saturated with black people, as Atkinson did. The education offered in her school district then wasn’t all that good which had taken a toll on her growing up.

“Being raised in Jamaica surrounded by black people, my mom had filled out a variant where kids could go to a school in a better neighborhood . I consciously felt like I wasn’t enough. I realized that a lot of my pain had to do with my race ,not that I hated my race though, It just had taken me a while to learn how to accept who I was and my race.”

While race is prevalent in “Water,” she noted that there was more to this play that viewers can expect to see.

“A lot of the scenes in the way that I’ve written them isn’t about blackness, a lot of the times they’re just humans in a space that go to the pool for the first time. There’s intimate moments; it’s very rare for black people to be in intimate moments.”

Aside from intimacy, exclusivity is another message that is conveyed in “Water.” As she said, her art “is to give life, give humanity, and resurrect those who’ve died who weren’t able to tell their stories,” and be treated as humans. Bringing up former San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick who had kneeled during the National Anthem last year, she correlated that experience to a person whose rights never have been oppressed by the police.

“You might be a white guy from Nebraska who’s never experienced any forms of police brutality and have never known anybody who’s experienced that and can’t experience that, and don’t know what it’s like be to stopped by police and yet knows what it’s like to be excluded.”

Posing a two part question, she asked “at what moment can I talk about those exclusions and the human experience of rejection of not being able to do what you want to do, of feeling unloved, out of place, and how do we humanize these experiences that are not common to every American but are very topical to several of the dehumanized ones?”

Dehumanization of women have been prevalent throughout history, especially in literature and theater.

“There’s a dominance that often happens in theater where men have power over women.” She made a conscious effort to give her female characters the ability “to take up their space and have the men characters are support it. And act a reverence of support and not supression.”

And speaking of support, the Queens Native credits The Tank, a nonprofit theater in NYC that incubate works, for supporting her throughout her journey and offering her the psychical space to put her vision to paper.