INTERVIEW: Learning to protect and love in ‘The Siblings Play’
Photo: The Siblings Play, starring Cindy De La Cruz and Mateo Ferro, follows three siblings as they chart life without parents. Photo courtesy of Julieta Cervantes / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
Playwright Ren Dara Santiago is set to premiere her new show, The Siblings Play, at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York City. The drama involves three main characters — all siblings — who must learn to protect and love one another, yet they also know how to fight and make peace.
The setting for Santiago’s play is a rent-stabilized apartment in Harlem in 2014, according to press notes, and the writer attempts to figure out the complexities of growing up without parents in the home.
Santiago is an up-and-coming playwright who first experienced the theatrical magic of the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater when she was in the audience for Annie Baker’s The Aliens. She was a founding member of Middle Voice, the company’s apprentice company, under the mentorship of Lucy Thurber. She eventually went on to become Middle Voice’s artistic director.
For The Siblings Play, Santiago and Rattlestick have employed the help of several community partners, including Counseling in Schools, The Drama Club, Healing Tree, New York Foundling, The Possibility Project and Student Leadership Network, who will take part in post-show discussions.
Performances of The Siblings Play, co-presented with piece by piece productions and Rising Phoenix Repertory, continue through April 5 at the Waverly Place theater. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Santiago about the new play. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How would you describe The Siblings Play for someone looking to catch a performance?
The Siblings Play is a coming-of-age story most people don’t see. Even those that come from it — from the struggle, from the gaps. You don’t recognize the patterns when you busy tryna keep everything together. It’s set in Harlem. It’s pretty funny. The way they love each other up is adorable. And hard. And nothing in this play came easy for them, except loyalty. The parents came up in the ’80s, and the kids are from the ’90s-early ’00s. And the family is mixed-race.
Do you find that these teenage characters have a great deal of resiliency given the circumstances?
Definitely. I’ve seen their real-life counterparts navigate the choices in this play constantly, to varying extremes. I wrote this so my people could see that and feel me appreciating and loving them. At the end of the day, while this is an amalgamation of intergenerational stories, of inherited conditioning and all that, what the characters are dealing with in this play won’t be brand new to a lot of you. It’s heightened because I only have two hours to share how much I know ya’ll carry with you on the daily. I’m hoping to remind you that you made it where you’re at because you got through it.
For those that don’t come from this, I want you to know these things are true. And not to be afraid of our differences. We were all raised to believe that our differences will negate our truths. But we’re supposed to be different. Growing up in NYC, I know for a fact that I could live on the same block as somebody and be in completely different worlds, due to factors of differing social-economic class and access gaps that jump literally from one end of the street to the next in my city. So, even if you don’t think you’re a part of this story, one way or another, you kinda are, right? It’s important to do the work towards true understanding. This play is asking that of you. One day, it will no longer threaten another identity to accept and account for that. I want to make cracks so the worlds in all their fullness can seep in.
How has your time at Rattlestick been going? What do you love about the company?
I been in love with this theater since I was 16. I walked in the door and got to see something that was more than a show; it was a reckoning. Back then, I didn’t know the reason we got those comp tickets was because my teacher had made Rattlestick her home.
I was learning playwriting from Lucy Thurber at MCC Theater’s Youth Company at the time. Lucy became more than a mentor. She became safety and my truth-teller, and she fought for our futures. And I was learning what theater could mean for people through her, and the Apprentice Company she founded at Rattlestick. My director, my best friend, Jenna Worsham (the founding artistic director of the apprentice company) and our other founding members decided to call us ‘The Middle Voice’ because we made our stories from standing in the gap.
Through Middle Voice, everything I saw at Rattlestick, I saw for free, through ushering and performing office tasks. I saw all of The Hill Town Plays, more than once. I saw Yosemite, The Aliens, Horse Dreams, Where We’re Born, Orange Julius, The Few, My Lingerie Play, Enclave, Draw the Circle, Lockdown, Novenas, and so many alumni Jams. Everything I saw was true and complicated and a little scary, and I’d sit there and I’d see the artists and they were never afraid.
Now, I’m standing among them. And now I know why they don’t need the fear to shield them out there. It’s something about faith. About passion. And being believed. It takes a lot to make plays like these. It takes really special people. I got a director who goes to bat for me every day. In every way, no lie. I have the kindest, most brave and truthful actors. I have the smartest, coolest design team. Amazing support in the room. My theater family is producing. And spaces like these are just not possible if the team at Rattlestick was just a fraction less about it, you know? [Artistic director] Daniella [Topol] hired the brightest lights to staff Rattlestick. All of them believe in their artists. They walk the walk. And they been here for me and [director] Jenna [Worsham] and our fam every step of the way.
I’m falling more and more in love with this home. The community partner’s work is blowing my mind. Rattlestick caters the programming to match the heart and the intentions of the plays and the artists, and I just fuckin love them. I think Daniella is a visionary and a teacher and a fiercely passionate advocate for new work. She takes so much care of her families out in the West illage. I’m so proud to be here.
Did you have the conclusion of the piece in mind at the beginning, or did you let the characters evolve and take unexpected turns?
I wrote the first act when I was 19 and didn’t touch it for a while. Someone told me that there was nowhere to go after that, that nothing more revolutionary could come after the act break. And I took that to heart for about two years. But then, Lucy told me that if I had more to say I needed to say it. Whoever needs to hear that — listen, it’s your job to love your play and fight the conditioning that makes your impulses silent. Stop believing people who won’t do the work to really see you.
The second half of the play has been very different every time I got to workshop it. The characters did what they wanted, always. The irreversible thing that cracks the cycle has been there in different ways, throughout it all. Sometimes I was angrier. Or more destructive. Or more hopeless. Or more selfish. This one is the truth. It’s not there to hurt anybody. It’s there to find the cracks so we can open the heart to healing. I couldn’t do it without all the support throughout the years, from my MCC Siblings Play Fam to my Mentor Project Fam. I’m ready to break some cycles because of this team for real, for real.
How has playwright Lucy Thurber helped with the mentoring process?
She’s always there for me. She reminds me to fight for myself and also step outta my own way when I’m not allowing others to take care of me and this play. She reminds me I deserve more, again and again, that I need to raise the bar for my bare minimum in a way that’s about making pathways and space for impact. And she’s patient with me. She waits for me to land. And I know she be doing more behind the scenes because she does that for all of her people. I love her.
How competitive is the NYC theater scene? Is it very difficult to get original work mounted?
If there’s any competition, at the root is a problem of access and opportunity. It’s like, me and my friends who came to theater how we did, untrained, no stats, but wild talented and ruthless and about it — the only way to work on our plays is free readings, because it’s low-commitment. Because we can’t ask our actors to rehearse for free. So, we get stuck in developmental readings. But we don’t really know how we want the world to listen to our plays until we can breathe fully with the audience.
It’s almost impossible to get a production if you don’t know people with money — I got insanely lucky. I’m getting that because I have advocates and good timing and the right draft for the right doors, you know? For those that don’t get none of that, how do we make the opportunities to manifest their stories and their worlds? We know there’s no money in theater. And we would love to say fuck it and make it ourselves with no budget, but we gotta pay the bills.
The thing about playwrights is, with real writers, we love each other up. Unwritten truth is, when you love good writing, all you want people to do is respect their shine and celebrate their impact. I geek out on like, bearing witness to the ways in which a writer will use their innate or cultivated tools to layer the conversations that are going to impact the future in a tangible, physiological way — we just need the space. I wanna do what Lucy did and continues to do for me and all our people. I’m working my way to reach that impact level one day. Lucy makes space for the ones nobody’s looking at, or if they do, they don’t see all that’s there — people who have that resilience and that heart and passion. She backs you up. I think my peers are all doing that for each other. And that’s the only way we got to make space for each other. … For now.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Siblings Play, written by Ren Dara Santiago, continues through April 5 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. The production is co-presented by piece by piece productions and Rising Phoenix Repertory. Jenna Worsham directs. Click here for more information and tickets.
