In this episode of As Grandmother Says, Brinda Guha hosts a conversation with Misha Chowdhury and Sharon Bridgforth.
In this episode of As Grandmother Says, Brinda Guha hosts a conversation with Misha Chowdhury and Sharon Bridgforth.
Brinda Guha: Welcome to How People Move People, a podcast about the impact that our words, art, stories, and lives have on each other. Each series' journey unfolds in a sequence of six episodes, and Series 4 is titled “Dida Bole Je,” or “As Grandmother Says.” Thanks for being here.
Welcome to “Dida Bole Je” (“As Grandmother Says”) on the How People Move People podcast, a production of the National Center for Choreography - Akron. I'm Brinda Guha. My pronouns are she and her and I'm a non non-disabled cisgendered caste-privileged queer South Asian woman with roots in Bengal and the Jersey Shore. Lenapehoking is the land I occupy today. I make things for a living and I bring together like-minded folks to make things with me.
In this series, choreographers, grief and health workers, musicians, activists and writers will connect with an artist in the same field but of a different generation. They will have conversations with each other, reflecting on stories of their grandmother figures, mentors and guides. Folks who may or may not have had the most profound impact on us, but who always seem to stand in the glory of their truth. Their hypothesis of what's coming, and their reflection on what was and what could have been. In this shared time, these impactful artists will speak on their processes, their understanding of the times that we're living in, and a moment in their lives when they fundamentally changed their mind.
Amar dida bole je, you can never have enough books to read. What are your grandmothers telling you now? When I was younger, I would watch award shows like the Oscars and only think about the performance and visuals of all the movies from that year that I got to experience. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I realized how important the writing is to making a script come alive. I learned that the written word can serve as the screenplay to how our bodies interact with the world. When writers create a framework for a story, the characters and descriptions create the images that color our lived experiences. When writers create dialogue, they consider every context of why the character would show up to conversations in the ways that they do. When writers create an arc to a storyline, they build a tangible journey for every reader to experience because on a visceral level, words matter. They’re like the X-ray to a body scan. Words are the bones, and the performance of them are the skin, the emotions, the muscles and ligaments.
And the specificity of those words matter too. As a South Asian dancemaker in a white-centered industry framework, I’ve always felt that we are constantly being pressured to create works that “speak to the masses,” interpreting that task as inadvertently removing all unique details of an experience so that nobody feels excluded from understanding what’s going on in the piece. It’s taken years for me to release that pressure in my artmaking. After all, we are the product of thousands of unique experiences that only we experienced. Now I firmly believe that the more specific a story is, the more universal its effect becomes. This is because the cultural nuances and individual contexts of every person and setting can allow the audience to fully immerse themselves in a period of time with the characters that were created for us. If we can understand them better, their goals, their expectations, their desires, then we can hopefully understand ourselves better, and extrapolate lessons that inform our own perspectives. For this reason, the art of writing has forever captured society’s values and ideas for all of us to revisit time and time again. When performance is added to that writing, we can begin to embody the words in a way that traverses the peaks and valleys of our intellectual minds, and sink into the heartspace at our very core.
There are few people in the world that bring the power of their pen to life through imaginative playwriting, focused direction, strategic screenplay design, and creative production. Two of those people are here with us today: Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Sharon Bridgforth. How do writers decide what to write about? And what do they negotiate when staging their work? We have the distinct pleasure of peeking into Misha and Sharon’s conversation about the written word and compiling ideas and stories that speak to our consciousness in ways that stay with us forever. I know this, because I’ve experienced their work in a way that sits in my rib cage, aligns my spine, and keeps me clear about the permission I can give myself to dream. I am so thrilled they are here with us today, because their work affirms our lived experiences and anchors us into a knowing about ourselves that allows us to stretch into our full potential.
Misha says, “I think that I would just encourage young artists to listen to themselves and trust that that listening will lead them towards something that allows their audience to listen more effectively than worrying about [this idea of]... ‘What do you want the audience to take away?’ and that question always befuddles me. I have ineffable answers to that question around what I want the audience to take away, but I don’t think it’s ever what we imagine. I think if we’re thinking too hard about, ‘This is how I want my audience to feel about me or about this character or this character that is a proxy of me or my people or my community,’ then that character will just flatten in a way that won’t serve the relationship that we’re trying to build between the work and an audience.”
Sharon says, “We need to not only find ourselves but we need to find a way to each other. It’s really hard to show up fully for others if you haven’t shown up for yourself. It’s really hard to have the hard conversations we need to have right now, so that we can move collectively, so that we can tend our relationships, if we haven’t done that for ourselves. I think it’s really hard to make courageous choices as artists if we haven’t done that work. Because our fear and the things that we are hiding from inside of us will govern us. And it will never be the brave choice. It will never be the free thing. It will never be all that we are capable of. And I think it’s hard to hold onto our wealth if we haven’t done that, because we won’t on some level believe that we deserve it."
And with that, welcome to the episode, with Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Sharon Bridgforth.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I'm so happy to see your face, Sharon. I feel like I shouldn’t go five years without seeing your face.
Sharon Bridgforth: I feel the same. And I wish I could have seen your show.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I'm trying to get it out to the West Coast. So, maybe there will be another opportunity. I hope that that becomes possible. How about you? How are you feeling in your body these days?
Sharon Bridgforth: Oh, Jesus. I got the call on black Jesus right now. I'm 66, so things have changed in my body that I am still learning to listen to and figure out how to support and honor and also, I feel like my container is expanding, my spirit, my cells, my mind, my heart, everything is expanding because I'm having to hold a lot like we all are, in these times, on personal, public, and all kinds of ways, and for me, in part, because my parents are 86. My mom and my stepdad are 86, and they are just requiring, they've entered a time where they require a lot more, and it is scary. It is hard. It's a lot of work. It's also fun and insightful.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: So, all in, within an hour, I could be like shivering in a corner crying, and then also laughing loud, and being exhausted, and then also doing really awesome, exciting things. And I'm really fortunate, you know, my wife Omi is like just doing as much work as I am with them (Chowdhury: Yeah) and my daughter and you know, like we have they have a big net (Chowdhury: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah). But it's, it's a lot. And yeah, so I feel honestly tired.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah (laughs).
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: That was one of the, like, sort of strange gifts of the early pandemic. My partner and I without having planned it just ended up living with my parents for five months and I'm like when else (Bridgforth: Wow) in my life, do I get to, at this age, spend that kind of time with my parents in the same house again?
Sharon Bridgforth: How awesome that you and your partner and me and my partner. Like, we can be close to our parents for whom queer life maybe wasn't the same, I don't know, expectation, you know, like something that they're used to or grew up with in the same way.
So that's really, really, really profoundly special.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: My mom just turned 70. They are, you know, they're still, knock on wood, doing well health wise, and they come down here pretty frequently, and we go up there, and it's not a long drive, so it's nice to be like, close-ish. My partner and I have been sort of registering how we don't want to take for granted this sort of wildness of the fact that we, you know, it's like an Indian gay man and a Black gay man (Bridgforth: Right), like here and both of our parents love us and they love each other. You and Cherríe have just sort of modeled a kind of queer life that was not about separating yourself from home and family, but queer life was about, returning home in, in all kinds of complicated ways. And it's just like, I'm like, “oh yeah, that was worth it. That pays off.”
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And Cherríe Moraga, who I just saw and got to hug in person recently, I consider, she's one of my role models and mentor, big sister people, and she's the reason I know you. Were you an undergrad?
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, I was like a sophomore in college, 2004.
[Bridgforth laughs]
Sharon Bridgforth: In Cherríe’s class, I can still so clearly see you and, you and Nia Witherspoon's faces, just so bright and shiny [Chowdhury: Yeah]. And Cherríe's face, all the pride and joy there. Oh God, there's so much to say about it all. In the eighties, when I figured out how to articulate that I was queer and my mom figured out how to ask me. I mean, at that point, she wanted to send me for hormone therapy. You know what I mean? (laughs) (Chowdhury: Yeah) This has not been an easy thing (Chowdhury: Right). And I think like Cherríe, like you, like I just chose to keep loving her. And what's interesting is. All of my work was me really trying to unearth, understand, unpack, and heal and move through that.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: And so, of course, right now, my new piece is kind of like a culmination of all that. Because it's like I understand so many things so much better now. I can look and reflect and receive so much more fully now. I can appreciate so much more now. This little bitty, fierce, African Americans from the South woman who moved to L.A., to South Central L.A. and raised me.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Totally.
Sharon Bridgforth: And, uh, yeah, so, I'm grateful to be an artist and to have, even before I knew I was an artist, I had words for that. I was still writing my way through the healing. Um, and then, you know, as I walked as an artist and explored and gathered my places to lean, my fierce supporters, my chosen family, my mentors, was encouraged, to keep moving in that way, because now I can, and this is what my whole new piece is, for me, my new piece is, which I'm still writing, but it is for me, metaphysically, it's my spirit looking at my mother and saying, I love you (Chowdhury: Yeah). And I know that you love me.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: So then it's like, what's the story of that? Um, but all that to say, it's not a given.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: My play Public Obscenities is super autobiographical. It's about a couple that resembles me and my partner going back to my family home in Kolkata, to a family home in Kolkata. And I'm like, A lot of people ask whether it's a kind of utopic play or something because it still I think in this day and age feels kind of unimaginable that like a queer story isn't about this kind of sort of like fraught, uh, like fight with the natal family or something. I'm always just like, “Oh, I don't know. Like, it's not utopic. It's just my, it's just my life, you know?” There was this guy that I, like a decade ago, probably more than that now was hooking up with, seeing in Kolkata, and I remember when he like, would come, like my grandmother would, um, like, you know, we never, it wasn't like, “Hi grandma, I'm gay.” She like had her own ways of sort of like, talking about what she saw between us. And, I don't know, I guess I just feel like sometimes I feel this. sort of thing in the culture that is sort of urging us towards cutting out people that are toxic from our life or something and, obviously I understand the impulse from which that comes.
Sharon Bridgforth: For me, the key thing is I chose to continue to walk with my mom, even when I felt very hurt (Chowdhury: Yeah). And not seen. And I did distance myself for a while, but I chose to come back to the relationship. So then, because I could choose, and because I did choose, then for me, my question eventually, like this, it took me a while, years to articulate this to myself. But my question was, well, “who do I want to be when I'm with her?”
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: And so yeah, she's not going to say everything perfect. Uh, my feelings still get hurt, uh, she doesn't show up for me in the ways that I really, really want her to, but there's also a lot more to the story. There's a lot more to the relationship and to our times together (Chowdhury: Yeah). And so how I behave when I am with her is on me. And that has really taken me on a journey um, looking at myself. And yeah, I say I have rules, so for myself, so like, when I'm with them, I ain't gonna stay a long time. I'm not gonna have certain fights. Uh, you know, so it's like, yeah, how do I navigate and negotiate for myself to be able to be the best that I can be in the ways that I want to be, which actually have nothing to do with them. Because I am also a mother, that, and this is partially, I'm working, writing my way through this in my new piece, it's like, “Oh, snap. Whew, my daughter could have surely pushed me away, and she didn't.” So I'm learning, I've, over the years of her life, learned from her how to be forgiving and loving and honest and have boundaries and show up and, you know, just turn that pointed finger inward. And, and it's teaching me, it's, it's useful for me in these times, too, that we're living. I mean, all these times, none of this is a surprise (Chowdhury: Yeah), you know, this is a boiling pot that we've been living inside of forever. How can I center and focus love.
Brinda Guha: Sharon and Misha were talking about queerness and choosing love and connection to family. And I ten thousand percent relate to this path, a path that was worth walking, but came at great cost. Because see, if you identify as queer, everything about you can be seen as generally queer, right? I mean, everything about everything is kinda queer, but that’s for another day. For example, my artmaking is queer, right? My view on family and strength of relationship and community building and fashion and food and communication and production is kinda queer. At least in my poetic, reclaimed understanding of the word, it’s essentially the opposite of “ordinary.” And most people in the world of art aren’t “ordinary,” and so, they seem queer to me. I don’t know. My work is full of non-white-cisgendered-heterosexual-men. You know what I mean?
I think about this sometimes - the rate of queerness in my life. And you know, my family gave me the love of science and ritual and dance and music and math and food - all queer things. And key players in this love net that raised me also totally dismissed my humanity at one point, and their own trust in me, when I revealed my true identity to them. Not all of them. But key players. I was shocked to lose this time. I was taught to think differently about everything. And yet, when I was closer to me, I was further from them. And those who embraced me, did it to either spite those who couldn’t, or did it in secret and without advocacy. Listen, I’m reactive. I have rage. I was pissed. It didn’t go with the values I was taught: the values of acceptance, kindness, unconditional love, and most of all, loyalty. It was paradox. And I later learned that everything is both queer, and a paradox. The biggest surprise of all, that lady I mentioned earlier, Bani Guha, my paternal grandmother my thamma – a not-so-gentle soul, someone who’s hurt people, but helped people, kinda crass, and a total feminist– received me in fullness when I told her who I was the last time I saw her: her queer granddaughter. And I’ll never forget it.
And so, with all that, we have choice. I fought for connection, for better or worse, with my family and we're rebuilding because of that choice. We will see each other at the end of our days because of that choice. No more moments will get lost because of that choice, my choice to initiate connection with those who didn’t remember their girl vividly enough in those moments. And eventually, they chose me again too. So as Sharon said, the only thing we might have that’s fully in our control, is choice. And in that sense, every day is new.
Sharon Bridgforth: When you think of a grandmother figure, is that the, your literal grandmother, the person that comes to heart for you?
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I mean, I feel very lucky that I got to, I mean, all of my literal grandparents have now passed (Bridgforth: Hmm), but I did get many years with, three of my grandparents. But also they're, you know, I grew up in a very joint extended family home. And there are great aunts and great uncles who are, were as much grandparents to me as my, as my grandmothers and my grandfather were. I don't know, it's like my mom recently, it wasn't that recent, but like, you know, sometime in the last 10 years she was going through stuff and my dida, my mom's mom, um, I think my mom found this journal entry that my grandmother had written after her daughter died. Um, my mom's sister passed away when I was in seventh grade. And that was this huge sort of like, It was the first time I'd really, like, lost somebody that I cared about in that way, and it was this huge rupture in the family. A woman and maybe an 80-year-old woman, writing to her daughter who had passed, but there was just like, it just made me realize, the depth of resources that, that she had, that a woman like her had, how she had been sort of prepared to move through the world and take the sort of like most unimaginable sort of like grief in stride.
And I think about like the kind of resilience that she had had to develop as a person, is a thing that I am like, oh, you know, like the slightest inconveniences in my life sort of like can derail my day. Whereas this like woman who never went to school and like taught herself how to write, and she's writing this sort of like, with beautiful penmanship, this sort of like eloquent, letter to her daughter that is not like this sort of woe is me letter, but is like the greatest gift was that I, you were given to me in human form. Like it's just a kind of like a kind of poetry with which to me, that sort of like human eloquence. I, I use the word poetry because like, feels so removed from the sort of like, way that I sort of like speak through my days. Um, but I'm like, but that wasn't poetry to her. That was just, you know, life. I think that as writer, I've been sort of um, like been registering how much, how it feels important to me to not sort of like throw away the gift of language. It was such a sort of hard won thing for her that she had learned to write so that she could write to herself in this private way. Whereas it just was handed to me, you know? (Bridgforth: Mm-Hmm. Yeah) That was sort of like available to me from like day one and I take it for granted and, um, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I've, when I've been thinking of her of late that my mom has pinned (Bridgforth: Hmm) that little note that she wrote to a bulletin board in our house. And every time I see it, I'm like, “Oh, wow. That's a testament to so much. Just the fact of that writing.”
Sharon Bridgforth: Absolutely. How divine and precious and awesome that you all have that literal piece of paper with her voice (Chowdhury: Yeah. Yeah) and spirit on it. And that history that is, that's amazing. Where did your grandmother grow up?
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Other than my parents and I'm, all of my family were, are back in Bengal. My grandmother, my grandmother is my only grandparent who was born and raised in, in Calcutta. The rest of my family is from what is now Bangladesh (Bridgforth: Hmm). She married into an East Bengali family (Bridgforth: Hmm). But yeah, she, um, you know, she was married at. age 17 to my grandfather, and her mother, her mother died when she was, I think two or three years old (Bridgforth: Hmm). I think about how quickly these women had to grow up in that generation (Bridgforth: Mm-hmm) but yeah, she, I mean, she was always in that for me. Our, our house in Kolkata was always (Bridgforth: Mm-hmm), her house to me.
Sharon Bridgforth: When you think of your work as a writer, Are there, can you trace, like, thinking of your grandmother and some of the, traditions, some of the many, many art forms that probably filled her day, you know, from cooking to whatever, do you, can you trace that influence tangibly in your work as a writer?
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah yeah yeah. I wonder whether, were you to have seen my play I'm writing in a kind of like really hyper naturalism, grounded realism-y kind of place now. And so what I've been writing of late and that my most recent play, Public Obscenities, was literally a play that took place in my grandmother's house. It is um trying to bring the sort of like detailed rhythms of (Bridgforth: Hmm) that house (Bridgforth: Hmm) and that experience (Bridgforth: Mm-hmm) to life. I think what has been a real revelation is that I can write her, even without sort of like being her. That I like have her voice embedded in me deeply enough that I can replicate it in, in a certain level of detail. And for the kind of work that I'm writing now, that feels like an amazing thing to have discovered that I can just, generate the Bangla that she spoke, which is not the Bangla that I speak, but that I like can write in a, I can write in a Bengali that I don't speak necessarily, but I like have her sort of like in my ear. It's like, right now, that hearth, that home, is like, the literal location of the stories that I'm writing, in a specific kind of way, and so, yeah, that home, her home, I think will sort of be my forever source material. Also because she's not there anymore, and that house is sort of like emptying, so I have to fill it myself (Bridgforth: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm). Um, because it's not there anymore the way that it used to be, so I have to kind of bring it to life in, in my writing (Bridgforth: Hmm), because people are passing.
Sharon Bridgforth: And that you are doing that, I will impose and say, is the answered prayer. You know? It's like, spirit continues beyond the veils, life is, we're connected, you learn, you pass on what you learn, and they, they exist fully. And their lives and their offerings. you know, get built on.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah. That's, I am crying over here like…
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: No, no, you're making me (laughs).
Sharon Bridgforth: …Oh Jesus. Yeah. I so appreciate that. That's beautiful.
Misha Chowdhury: The play is in fact inspired by a dream that my um, my mom's brother, my, my, her only brother, my mama, shared with me that I recorded a voice memo of, five or six years ago now. And that literal dream that he shared with me shows up verbatim in the play (Bridgforth: Hmm). I mean, the play is kind of built around that initial source material and then the play happened at Soho Rep and he, he passed, like, two weeks after the show closed and my partner Kameron and I flew to Kolkata. But he was in the hospital looking at these production photos of his dream. This literal, and he was like, “Oh, that's the green that I sort of like pictured in that woman's shaadi. And, um, it has been in, in, uh, in a way that I never could have expected that this, like his, his life ended just as the, like, life of this play that he sort of gave me the gift of began and it's like continuing and all of the cast members. You know, like they feel so indebted to him and connected to him. And so he keeps, like, being sort of like brought to breath every time the, the play gets a new life. When I was writing the play and he was helping me like choose props to bring from our house for me to bring back and then he left and the play exists and it (Bridgforth: Hmm) feels so fraught and strange. It was sort of like literalized that sort of like baton pass that you're talking about (Bridgforth: Yeah) in a way that I couldn't ever have expected.
Sharon Bridgforth: I just want to acknowledge and just name that , all the work that you had to do to be in the position to have that piece live as itself at Soho Rep, in these times, in New York, Pulitzer consideration, like, I mean, you are elevating the ancestors, baby. And I know they must be celebrating. And it's for any of us to survive as an artist, period (laughs), and to be doing the work that is so truly rooted in our love and appreciation and knowing of our ancestors. And then to have that live, that takes a lot. That takes a lot. That takes a lot. So congratulations.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I'm like obsessed with your whole body of work, but like when I read love conjure/blues at the age of 19 or whatever it was, it really was the first, the reason that I'm so sort of like forever obsessed with that piece was because it was the first time I had ever seen somebody write, the first time I'd read something where it became possible for me to imagine, writing so specifically in the music of how my elders spoke. Um, and imagining it in the eloquence that I'm talking about like that kind of like the eloquence of that music was so I mean every time I talk about Public Obscenities, I've been talking about how that was the model for me of like, oh it is possible to really write boldly in the vernacular of the way that our people spoke and like people will come and they will understand. You don't have to sort of like flatten the harmony down to make it be like this thing that we are translating for somebody else. I still, when I opened that book, I'm like, I can hear you hearing these other voices right? I'm like, “Oh you're literally doing this channeling thing.” That kind of listening Is what I was sort of like aspiring toward in, in trying to bring these people in my life to life. But anyways, I just like, have to name that because it is fully the springboard from which any of that became possible for me.
Sharon Bridgforth: Oh, thank you. I'm smiling. My, my face is hurting. I'm smiling so much. And you know, Cherríe, Cherríe Moraga's Loving in the War Years did that for me (Chowdhury: Yeah. Yeah), you know, and, and what, What you're naming, what, what we're inside of in this moment is what gives me hope about humanity because when we really are ourselves most fully, we can see each other. And we can recognize humanity and we can move together and be together and we can be all of our complex different things and love each other.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: And that's that's that's the journey. That's what we're here for.
Brinda Guha: You know as I am listening to this conversation, I’m grateful to Misha for talking about Sharon’s masterpiece, love conjure/blues. RedBone Press says, “love conjure/blues is performance literature/a novel that is constructed for breath. love conjure/blues places the fiction-form inside a traditional Black American voice/inviting dramatic interpretation and movement within the fit of a highly literary text—filled with folktales, poetry, haints, prophecy, song, and oral history. love conjure/blues considers a range of possibilities of gender expression and sexuality within a southern/rural/ Black working class context that examines the blues as a way of life/as ritual—in concert with Ancient practices and new creations. The past the present the future the living and the dead co-exist together/at the same time in a weave of dreams/Prayers/Love/Spirit expressed.”
I haven’t personally experienced this work yet, but I will. And to be able to have shapeshifting, legendary visionaries like Sharon in conversation with contemporaries like Misha – man, legacy lives and shines in different ways. I love that they are connected.
And, I have to talk about Public Obscenities, Misha’s latest show that took the theater world by storm. As a queer Bengali person, I feel like it’s my duty to describe this experience. See I went to Soho Rep with my Afro-Mexican-Indigenous percussive dance friend, and I was excited to not only experience the play, but to see my dear friends Gargi Mukherjee and Harun Sarwar star in this work. What I didn’t expect was that I would be walking into my thamma’s New Alipur living room the minute I walked into the theater. The faint coloring of the walls, the shadow of the window grills, the low furniture, the dusted glass, the kol balish or doughy pillows, kakima (or paternal aunt) napping under the fan on the bed, the TV rolling. The play hadn’t even started yet and I didn’t know what to do! How can this be true? How can art direction do this to the insides of my body memory? How can the feel of this take me immediately back to my thamma’s 2nd floor 4pm daily slumber? Bani Guha, my thamma, btw. And she loved to read at 4pm on her balcony every single day. I really felt like I was there next to her when I walked into Soho Rep theater. I wish I got to hang with her one more time before she passed. She passed in the same room as her favorite balcony.
Anyway, the play is a masterpiece. It is about all the things that you don’t expect it to be about, and it has nothing to do with what you’d expect. I kept feeling like I had to tell my friend who was with me what the different phrases and sayings were about. I felt like it was my responsibility to give her the true meaning of some of the sayings, since so much of the play was in a back and forth of English and Bengali, or even Benglish – but she turned around and looked at me and softly said “Girl, I’m Mexican. It’s the same shit in my family. I got it, don’t worry.” I released things and realized things in that moment that I’ll never forget. Mainly that, specificity means authenticity, and authenticity is the only gateway to connection.
Sharon Bridgforth: One of my earliest memories I probably was four and I was in Memphis, which is where my mom is from. I grew up in South Central L.A., but I would go back to Memphis all the time. My great grandparents lived in a shotgun house in the black part of town, which at that time was, the neighborhood they lived in was called Orange Mound.
I would play under my great grandmother's bed. She had one of those really, her and my great grandfather had one of those really tall beds in the shotgun house. And I would, I remember spending a lot of time under that bed. And what I know now is she was dying (Chowdhury: Hmm). And so I think that there was this transmission of spirit. Just being in that house and getting to be around great grandparents and great aunts and uncles and cousins who were so much older than me in this home place. But specifically, I imagine that things were being transmitted to me. And I received them, and I think I came here a very nosy human being. I love stories. I love watching people. You know, our people are eventful, so there's always a lot of stuff going on, and things to, to witness, and laugh about, and cry about, and pray about, and grow from, and fall out about.
I think my love of them just, I was always watching my elders, so even back home in LA, so my mom was part of one of the Great Migrations, and so a lot of her friends were also from the South. A lot of them were single Black women who were parents, and so there was, they partied. Friday night, Saturday night, they partied in my house. We listened to church on the radio on Sunday and then, you know, the week would start over and so, but we got to be as kids got to be present. You know, you weren't supposed to be all up in the grown folk business, but we were at the parties and I just remember watching them. And just being, just admiring them and just like falling in love with so many of them and all of that.
And so later, later, later, when I was writing, which I kept private actually until I was in my 30s, I wanted to tell stories as good as them. And so taking in those rooms where people are dancing and singing and laughing and praying and lying and cooking and eating and like all the things happening at the same time and with the blues as the base. You know (Chowdhury: Yeah), was what I was aspiring to. And then my dad and my step mom are from New Orleans. And so with love conjure/ blues, I was more inside of that beat, you know (Chowdhury: Yeah), that jazz beat and like that history and that like way of celebrating. Also by that time, a lot of the people that were my elders had died, like almost all of them had died. And so it's, but they were not quiet. I was still hearing them (laughs) and feeling them and learning from them and growing because of them. And so that's, that's what that was for me. Um, and so, oh God, anyway, it just makes me so happy that it, it landed, uh, with you (Chowdhury: Oh) and, and, and that, you know, yeah.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I love that way that you talk about, cause it is, it is that, right. That is the way to say it. Like I wanted to tell stories as good as them.
Sharon Bridgforth: It requires that we protect it and take care of it and let it be itself and, work and fight for who will hold and honor it and, um, offer it, you know. And that means a lot of times that we're not considered in the same way.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Of course.
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah. I moved to Austin, Texas in '89 and lived there for 20 years. And I really grew up artistically in Austin, which at the time was a very small place. It was, you know, it was vibrant and weird and funky and artists and people of color working globally and just so queer and everything. It was really a gift to be there. And so long story short, one of my mentors, Marsha Anne Gomez, who's an ancestor now, um, she was a sculptor, one of the founders of the Indigenous Women's Network, and just a fierce, fierce fighter for justice globally. And Marsha was curating this program at this place in town, I have to say all these places and names because a lot of them don't exist anymore and, and some of them do, but you know, La Peña Cultural Center, which did their events at Las Monitas Restaurant, which was owned by two fierce sisters, Cynthia Perez was the one that I was closest to, but anyway, Marsha was curating something for La Peña at Las Manitas restaurant and it featured Cherríe (Chowdhury: Hmm). And so Marsha was like, Marsha, Marsha was from a little town in Louisiana. She was like, “girl, I'm gonna put you on program with Cherríe.” I was like, “Okay, please don't.” Like it was one of my first public speaking things and I was, you know, I was terrified. Cherríe was my idol. Like, she was bigger than life for me. And Marsha, basically, you know how they do. She just looked at me and she's like, no, you're going to be on this program.
So I walk into Las Monitas. I literally was hyperventilating. Cherríe just looks at me and she just like, kind of like hits my shoulder and pushes me and I get on stage (Chowdhury: Yeah). God knows what I said or did. But after that, first of all, she and I, like I followed her like a lost puppy after that. And also, that's when I started really doing my work more publicly and experiencing, you know, it and understanding myself as an artist working for social justice, um (Chowdhury: Yeah), with art as the vehicle. And so I didn't have, uh, formal training in programs and schools and stuff, but I was trained in the car, in the street, at the restaurant, at the event, uh, by organizers who were using art to get people to access services and like all of that stuff. And so there's a weird way that I was much freer to be in my own voice.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah. Totally.
Sharon Bridgforth: To discover it. And so I discovered and fell into and fell in love with and became fiercely, fiercely uh, protective of this voice, which isn't even my voice. It's my, you know, it's my (Chowdhury: Right) ancestral voice and spirit voice, and so I am very grateful for all of that, and for all the people along the way that looked at me and loved me and pushed me (laughs).
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, absolutely.
Sharon Bridgforth: And what I learned to do and what I've always done is I just followed love. So, you know, I have, I did become a touring artist in the late 90s, and I have these long-term, ongoing relationships with institutions and individuals around the country. And, and I just follow love (Chowdhury: Yeah). And sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's like, “Ooh, that was, that wasn't that good love” (laughs).
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah yeah yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: But you know, we get it done. And again, I just want to come back and say that what you've done with your piece and, and how you cared for it and offered it and that you were able to give it light that received, you know, the, the world was able to receive and, and, and it make its ground for, it's not a given. It's hard. It's fierceness that gets you to that. And I know you worked for that.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Thank you. Yeah…
Sharon Bridgforth: And I'm sure that there were lots of sacrifices along the way.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yes, yes, it is, yes, there was fight. Yes. It was work, but also I had like I had my parents and I had you all with me quite literally so that it didn't feel like quite as uh, as hard of a fight as it could have been.
Sharon Bridgforth: I understand.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Like it really did feel like I had that, um, I had you all with me. A kind of confidence. There is a version of me that would have capitulated to the whims and fancies of whomever, wherever, and I don't think I would've had this sort of like spine that I have grown to have as an artist if I didn't feel like I had the permission. You all gave me that permission. I got to school and then like Cherríe was who I got at (Bridgforth: Yeah) school, you know? (Bridgforth: Thank god). And I was like, “Oh, this is a whole different kind of school” (yeah).
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Um Cherríe was the first person that sort of taught me if I wasn't being true to myself, like, I couldn't just sort of rely on, whether I was being given the check mark or whatever, because that, they didn't, they wouldn't know. There were so few people in the room who even spoke the language that the play was in. It's on me to (Bridgforth: Yeah) like, be, to fight for the things that I need to fight for, because literally there's nobody else who would even know to fight for it. I've never written like this before. And this is also a thing that Cherríe was always, because it's hard work and I'm kind of lazy about writing. That's why I like directing, like I can do the collaboration thing. Like I can do all of that with other people, but the sort of like solitary work of like plowing through the hard moments and like getting that thing out on the page was always hard for me even when I was in Cherríe's playwriting classes. And so I've never really like written like a, I wrote this big old thing. And I didn't know that I would like it. And I, um, and I did.
And what I mean by that is like, I didn't know that I would like the sort of like lonely part of it. Um, and maybe it has to do with me getting a little bit older and it's just sort of like, I'm like, “Oh, I can sort of like trust myself and be with my own thoughts more than I was able to be when I was younger.” On the verge of 40, I've just kind of like learned that I do in fact like playwrighting. Um, it was, you know, like it was in sort of abstractly, I knew that before, but I'd never really like gone for it. And now I'm like, “Oh, I've brought these beings to life in the world that didn't exist before.” This year I just am trying to spend as much. Just, like, say no to, say no to things so that I have the, like, quietness that I need to just, like, try again. Because it was so all-consuming to bring this thing to life, and I'm like, I do want to do that again, but I know that I need to give myself the time. I feel extremely grateful that I'm just sort of like in a place where I'm just sort of like, I love my partner. I love my parents. I have a kind of stable sort of foundation under me. If I'm feeling frantic, that's all, that's all, that's on me. Like I'm making that up. There's nothing truly in life that should be stressing me out right now (laughs). And so like, what am I saying yes to and what am I saying no to in a way that just like gives me the time and the space that I need to do what I actually want to do.
Sharon Bridgforth: That's real. And that's, that's it, that takes hard knocks (laughs)...
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah. Yes.
Sharon Bridgforth: …to get to. Yeah. Yeah. Similarly…
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: What are you working on right now?
Sharon Bridgforth: Two big things that I'm working on that are publications that will be in the world in 2025. One of them is a collection of everything that I've written. Uh, there's one piece that's not in there, and it was the very, very, very first piece that I ever experienced performed. It's called Sonata Blue (Chowdhury: Hmm). And part of it is I can't find the script (both laugh). I can only find excerpts of it. So anyway, I decided to let that live in the ethers and in the little bits that I have.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Oh. That's so exciting.
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah. And then the two Bull-Jean stories, the one that was published in ‘98 and the one that was published last year are not in it (Chowdhury: Yep) because they're in a book by themselves (Chowdhury: Okay). It's called From the Marrow, marrow as in bone marrow (Chowdhury:Yeah. Yeah). Um, and it is the, the pieces plus, um, writings by Black feminist artist scholars that worked with me on the piece. So each piece has an opening for me with kind of like a glimmer or a gesture or memory or something that is kind of how I got to the piece. Writing by someone that worked with me on it, and then the piece itself. Um, and so it's a beast. It's like, Almost 600 pages. It's gonna be…
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Oh my god. I’m so excited.
Sharon Bridgforth: I can't wait. It's gonna be in two volumes. 53rd State Press is gonna publish it…
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Oh, amazing.
Sharon Bridgforth: …in 2025. Um, and, and it's interesting 'cause it's like in looking at this journey with this work I see myself as a writer grow. And of course, some of the pieces, , it's painful to read them. Cause I'm like, “Ooh, that was not good writing y'all” (laughs). But the performers and the collaborators made it beautiful on stage. And you know, it's part of my story and how I got here. So I have to let it be itself. But all of that, like I was saying earlier, it's like I really have ridden my way to a kind of internal freedom that has been supported and nurtured and healed by my ancestors and my choosing love. So that, of course, carried me to this piece where I'm really in a metaphysical, spiritual conversation with my mom. Even though she's still alive, I can't have these conversations with her (laughs).
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Is there somebody, some ancestor that you've been thinking like, if this is what they would be saying to me (laughs) (Bridgforth: Mm-Hmm) if they were here?
Sharon Bridgforth: So it's Lauri Carlos (Chowdhury: Yeah) She's not a blood ancestor, but she is my artistic ancestor and she called herself my big sister. And I had the privilege of working with her for the first time in 1998. Lori was the original woman in blue in the original For Colored Girls. Um, I, she, she and like a lot of artists, women of color artists of her time period, worked with Diane McIntyre/ Miss McIntyre is a Black, modern dancer. And basically there's this way that Laurie used gestural language as a director and breath inside of that as a director, that it's kind of like she took what she learned in Ms. McIntyre's workshops and then embodied it and kind of shook it and, you know, It became something that she did, that was her signature. So two things come to mind. First, the very first time I worked with her, she was directing in Austin, Texas, a piece of mine called Blood Pudding. And Laurie, uh, would do, it was like in her directing, she would put together, to me it looked like hundreds of snapshots where the physical body, through movement, would create these snapshots and then move into the next thing with the language going all the time.
So the performers were needing to know the script, the text, um, of course be present with each other, be present in the space with no walls between them and the audience, um, catch the gestural language that Laurie was giving them as choreography, which sometimes included movement, and be present enough to do the jazz of that. And in this rehearsal process, early on, I was sitting next to her and the performers were on a break and she turned and she looked at me and she said, You know, “I go in their bodies and I find the block and I give it to them back as a gesture” (Chowdhury: Hmm). And there was this one performer that just wasn't able to do the gesture at that point and keep the language going and be where he needed to be with the other performers and all of that. And she was very patient and loving and kind with him. And eventually he got it. There was like this moment that happened and he got it. And then everything came in place. But I always remember that. She said, “I go in their bodies and I find the block,” (Chowdhury: Yeah) “give it to them.” So basically the gestural language for a lot of what she was choreographing was really a release for the performer (Chowdhury: Yeah) to be able to be more present, more healed, more, um, mindful, more inside of the work. I think as a facilitator, that's what I do.
So I, I. I, thank goodness, like I'm very hyperactive, um, and writing, as you said earlier, is extremely freaking difficult. It takes me a long time. And, uh, so I tend to work in seasons where I'm writing. And things that I'm writing are in different, uh, times of development, different phases of development. I am a dramaturg for a lot of choreographers, so, um, like Ananya Chatterjee and her dance company, which is how I met Brinda, and, um, uh, Urban Bush Women, and then a lot of the choreographers that came from that. And so I'm, I'm, I'm usually in a artistic conversation with, uh, choreographers, mostly women choreographers of color. And then I facilitate as well as write and bring my own writing to performance. But I've learned, because that moment never left me, what I yearned to do as an artist is moved by spirit and held by spirit and is about healing. And because I think I'm, um, you know, just like we all are very sensitive, I've learned to listen with my essence. And I think that's what Laurie was saying to me (Chowdhury: Mm-hmm). So, so listening with my essence and then the thing that Laurie now as an ancestor keeps giving to me that she would always say is everything's already in the room (Chowdhury: Hmm). So now as I am overwhelmed, I'm exhausted, I'm afraid. I don't know what to do with what is going on in this world. I know that there is magnificent, wonderful, just awesome things happening and things are devastating and heartbreaking and wrenching. All at the same time, Laurie keeps saying everything's already in the room (Chowdhury: Hmm). So I look, uh, uh, we live in a very urban area, but we have this little balcony and I have purposefully put plants on the balcony that hummingbirds like (Chowdhury: Hmm). So I just look out there and I look for the hummingbirds and sometimes they're there and sometimes they're not, but I'm pausing in the moment.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah.
Sharon Bridgforth: And I'm catching my breath and I'm realizing that everything is already in the room. And so when I can pause and be present in that, I can expand, I can hold, I can believe, I can go lay down, I can I can live a little more fully (Chowdhury: Yeah) and be more present with whoever else might be in the room with me.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I love that so much. Yeah (Bridgforth: Yeah).
Sharon Bridgforth: Yeah (Chowdhury: Yeah). What, what is your grandmother or your ancestor saying to you right now?
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I think my actual dida or my thamma, my actual grandmother’s, I do sort of like hear them reminding me how lucky I am. Um, and I'm trying to, and you know, that's not a kind of, that's not something they ever would have said to me. Like there's a kind of humility with which I'm trying to sort of really recognize the pride that I would see in their eyes or in their voices if they were sort of here with me right now. That's like calming me down a little bit. I feel a kind of urgency, um, uh, in a good way. I mean, I feel like I'm I have so much to say. And I better get on that. Because time is short or something, but it also isn't. My grandmother's life, like what she saw between 1921 and 2015, you know what I mean? I just sort of like see (laughs) in her eyes That it's happening. And it's kind of beautiful what you said. It's all already in the room. Everything's in the room already. I grew up in the generation where we kind of felt like we were going to save the world (Bridgforth laughs) when we were in school, right? Like that was the, like, it was like, it's my responsibility to save the whole world.
I don't know when that changed for me. But there was a, it feels like I've done a real sort of like 180 on that. Like I (Bridgforth: Hmm), um, not to sort of absolve myself of any sort of, like, responsibility in the life that I have, but I'm like, I do not have that power (laughs). My life is finite. And it's infinite in all these other ways, but like in a sort of real sense, it's like, this is just what I, I like, my capacities are, are finite. You know, in one of Cherríe's classes, we read Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. It was the same class that you came and talked to and actually, and like, you know, there was something about, I forget the language, but in Leslie Marmon Sillko’s Ceremony, that, you know, there's this sense of like, there was a time in which on this continent, people never moved more than, you know, you know, 50 miles from where they were born, right? I think the access that I have, , to all information and to all space at all time makes me feel as though I'm responsible for everyone and everything and all things at all time. Um, and that is a kind of overwhelm that I, that I sometimes feel. I think about my grandmothers and maybe there was a time at which I felt I would have felt that their lives were small or something compared to but that is just, that is just the lie (laughs).
Sharon Bridgforth: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: You know? How can I learn humility with which they attended to what they could cultivate?
Brinda Guha: I feel like a book was written today by two people who know how to connect the dots with their pens and their hands and their words. I'm so grateful. If you listen closely, you can hear their grandmothers now.
Sharon Bridgforth: Dida Bole Je, You need to go help somebody.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Amar Dida Bole Je, Wake up at dawn. Take a shower, put on talcum powder, go to the prayer room, take a morning walk.
Brinda Guha: How People Move People, is brought to you by The National Center of Choreography at The University of Akron, or NCCAkron. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Edwards, associate production by Lisa Niedermeyer, and editing by James Sleeman. How People Move People theme music by Ellis Rovin, and “As Grandmother Says” theme music by Roopa Mahadevan. Transcription is by Arushi Singh, and cover art is by Micah Kraus. A big thanks to this episode’s beautiful duo, Misha Chowdhury and Sharon Bridgforth, for their generosity in leading us through their thought process and storytelling. To be invited into their world of writing pages of our imagination, and to meet their illustrious grandmother figures is so important to me, and I hope for everybody else too. Gratitude to Anjali Roychowdhury and Bani Guha, my grandmothers. And a huge thank you to the cohort of creatives I brought together that held me accountable in this curatorial vision, including: Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Farah Yasmeen Shaikh, Barkha Patel, Sydnie Mosley, Stacie Webster, Candace Thompson-Zachery and Christy Bolingbroke.
Special thanks to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their continued support of NCCAkron programming. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @nccakron. We hope you enjoyed this episode and encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platforms by searching for How People Move People. Dida bole je…Free every person in the world fighting their oppressors, and listening closely for their grandmothers, too.