UNIVERSES
is a ensemble of 5 performers who fuse poetry, theater, jazz,
hip-hop, politics, down home blues and Spanish boleros to create
moving, challenging and entertaining theatrical works. They have
performed at PS122, Mark Taper Forum, The Public, Sing Sing Prison
and countless other theaters and universities.
Mildred
Ruiz, Gamal Abdel Chasten, Lemon,
Steven Sapp, and Flaco Navaja
of Universes.
The
Artists Network first worked with Universes at the Point in the
South Bronx in 1998. The group (Steven Sapp, Flaco Navaja, Gamal
Abdel Chasten, Lemon and Mildred Ruiz) recently teamed up with
critically acclaimed director, Jo Bonney, to create "SLANGUAGE:
The Evolution of Tongue in Time," which will have a New York run
in July at the New York Theater Workshop.
"Universes
is pioneering a new form in theater." — Danny Hoch
EXCERPTS
of the Inside the Culture of Resistance:
Universes interviewed by Sarah Jones - June 4, 2001
Sarah
Jones: So welcome to our humble living room. I feel like The
View. Hi everybody, thanks for being here. This is really exciting
for me. One of those pieces was my first time seeing it and if
you heard creaking and rocking, that was me with the exaggerated
really-into-it motion in my chair because you guys do it for me
like that. The first time I saw Universes, it was a minute ago.
I've known you guys since 98, 97 probably. [When we met] I thought
to myself, "There are people in this community with whom I want
to be associated" and you all were that for me, you made me really
excited and proud to be a part of this community. And I want to
know how y'all met each other.
Steve
Sapp: ...The short edited version, we met basically performing
in the poetry scenes in El Puente and the Point, really just sort
of hanging out. We liked hanging out with each other, we made
each other laugh, which is very important. And we liked each other's
work, we admired each other from afar and we were asked to do
an event and as opposed to going up there and "I read a poem
and he reads a poem, she sings a..," we were like "this
is boring." So were like "Well why don't we just do something
together and then just blow everybody's mind and then leave."
So that's kind of how we got together. But to be honest, it's
more like just family and fun really about how we got together
and stayed together.
SJ:
Family and fun ladies and gentlemen. You guys should have a big
sign like McDonald's: "55 million minds blown." So I should warn
you that I felt outnumbered by Universes, doesn't mean I didn't
love you, when they said that I was going to be interviewing you,
it just means I felt lonely. So I brought some other people along
with me and they have their own opinions, they'll be asking questions
for which I take no responsibility whatsoever. Seriously, because
there are people here who don't just want to "kick it with
you," to use the vernacular, they really want to know in
a more concrete way ...At any point in your career, who would
you say are mentors? I know this is a question you probably hear
all the time, but I think it's really interesting because it helps
us kind of see your roots.
Lemon:
I knew what I wanted to do when I met Reg E. Gaines. He was writing
poetry for theater and I was so into the spoken word scene and
how people were performing their poetry, his stuff was being performed
by other people on stage and that's what I saw for my stuff. Then
I was hanging out with him, which is even better, which you don't
get to in like the rap game. And I got to hang out with a guy
that I looked up to. That shit was the shit. And then Reg E.'s
raw, I'm a little too raw, so Reggie'd be like, "...Fuck,
piss I'll punch somebody, see?" So in order to calm me downÉsee
I come from a real serious environment, growing up, and when somebody
says something, you take action. It's like life, you know, when
you want to do something, you're gonna talk your walk, and I was
one of the people growing up, I decided to do something positive
like poetry and so me and Reggie, we were kind of the same, you
know cause Reggie's real raw and I'm raw in my own ways.
So
then I took it down when I met Willie Perdomo. I met this guy
named Willie Perdomo, who was my favorite poet, I know his book
by heart back and forth. And he just taught me how to take what
I learned from Reg E. Gaines and take what I learned from him
and make myself, you know. So those are my two poets, Reg E. Gaines
and Willie Perdomo. And of course my favorite poet is Etheridge
Knight, which you guys need to go look for that. It's really underground,
he's a jail poet, he's a prison poet, and you know he has a voice
that I am so in love with, you know I could read his book everyday,
to keep me sane. So those are my poets, those are my mentors.
Jamal:
The first poet I ever heard, and I consider him a poet, was Muhammed
Ali. Growing up hearing this man who was representing people who
didn't have a voice at the time and he was very boisterous and
very bold and said things you wasn't supposed to be saying. And
he said them in rhyme, you know, and so for me that was the first
poet that I knew. I loved him so much that I wrote a piece on
him that's also in the show, and then I even took it further and
wrote a play, a solo piece on that.
And
also Nikki Giovanni was the first poet that I ever heard that
was recited to me, my father used to read that to me, along with
the Negro folklore, so that was also another person who I definitely
looked up to in terms of verse and poetry. And I got to meet her,
take a picture with her, which was kind of dope. And I'm like,
"Alright one down, two to go."
And
definitely these people, Universes, I was a fan before I was a
member. I'm also the co-president (laughter). I saw them perform
and I was like, "Yo, you can do that?" You can take
poetry and put it with music and all of that kind of stuff they
was doing and that blew me away.
And
in present day, as I got more entrenched in the poetry scene and
we got to meet people, my two favorite poets outside of this group
are Willie Perdomo and Louis Reyes Rivera. So that's what does
it for me. Musically, it's all over the place.
Mildred
Ruiz: Well vocally, I just grew up in church and I just got
to tell you a little bit about my church. It was a Pentecostal,
well I went from Catholic to Santeria to everything else and then
I found Pentecostal, right, and my Pentecostal church was in a
Jewish neighborhood, Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, so it was right
next to a synagogue and we used to also go to a lot of Baptist
churches, so we learned a lot of Jewish songs, we learned a lot
of Baptist songs, and it was just like this intermingling of stuff,
so we were really...non-sectarian, is that what that makes me
now? So I think that now I'm non-sectarian and my absolute favorite
singer was Mahalia Jackson, and still is. And that's also my baby
son's favorite singer. And my mother, my mother's my favorite
singer, my favorite poet, all-time. And if it wasn't for her singing,
even when we told her "Shut up, just shut up," she kept
singing and singing and singing and all the songs now, those old
Spanish boleros that I sing are all songs that my mother used
to sing while she was mopping, cleaning, whatever. So she's my
all-time favorite artist.
And
as far as poetry is concerned, my all time favorite artists are
these guys because when I came into the group, I was just a singer,
right. Actually that was as of last year. And I was like "I'm
not really a poet or anything," I mean when I was in college,
I was a lit major so I have skills, I'm not gonna say I don't
have skills. (laughter) But I try to keep humble, I try to keep
humble. So I was like "No no no, I'm not a poet, not a poet, I
just to write, I just write a lot." (laughter) And being with
them, I was able to write and it's been an amazing journey.
I've
met some amazing amazing people and Louis Reyes Rivera is one
of my absolute favorites, also Willie, Sandra Maria Estevez, just
like all kinds of influences. If I go down the line, I'll be talking
forever because I'm a jabberer. See when I get nervous, I just
talk a lot so let me just be quiet.
Steve
Sapp: Um, influences. Prince! Prince, and IÕll tell you why.
Prince was the first person I heard curse on a record. I'm serious.
And before Prince, it was all about Michael Jackson. You know
growing up, everybody, young Black kid, you liked Michael Jackson.
And I was totally on Michael Jackson and then a friend of mine,
before I went to college, gave me 1999 and Purple Rain and I remember
riding on the train listening like (makes a shocked face). I was
like "Ohh," totally had me open like "Wow," that he was just being
uninhibited about shit and that really had me open.
Big
influences, my mother and father, especially my mother. It's very
weird to say this in public because we war a lot. But my mother
constantly kept stressing to me about how beautiful the projects
were, like I'd be like, "Oh, we've got drug dealers and drug addicts,
blah blah blah." And she'd be like, "But you've got a park and
there's a community here and there's a church" and she kept constantly
talking about how beautiful it was. So when I started to write,
and I've been writing since I was a little kid, she'd always be
like "Talk about the nice...," to this day, "Talk about the nice
stuff, (in mother's voice) you've always got to be talking about
somebody dying, somebody getting killed, talk about the nice stuff."
But I mean it stuck in my head.
And
then my father for being non-verbal. He taught me the essence
of being really quiet and not saying anything. And I learned sort
of what it was to be a man watching him, the rage. Cause I didn't
understand, he'd go to work and come back, and just the rage of
being a Black man and going to work and coming back. I didn't
understand it, but watching his silence and watching him every
night, I could go out and come back, he'd turn on the radio, he'd
listen to his music and he'd be sitting there having a drink.
And he'd drink himself til he passed out. But every night I'd
walk in the house--and he played everything. I mean I learned
salsa music in my house cause my father played it all the time,
they thought we were Cuban next door cause we'd constantly (music
sounds), they thought we were Cuban. So stuff like that really
stuck. And then the brothers, the rhythms from the block, the
drug addicts, the pimps, the brothers, the rhythms on the block
really stayed in my head. I can hear it like a soundtrack (snapping
fingers), I can totally hear the rhythm of someone talking on
the block, and it really stuck.
So
when I went to a place like Bard College, it was such a trip going
to this predominantly White spot, which honestly I'd never been
around. I grew up in the South Bronx, the only White people I
saw was teachers and cops, that's it. So it was like, there you
keep talking about "you're a minority this, you're a minority
that," I never was a minority anywhere until I went to Bard. And
then I experienced what it was like to be a minority and it jacked
me up and I wanted to come back, I wanted to leave. And I'm saying
this now because she's sitting in the audience, but my advisor,
Elizabeth Frank, who was a teacher at Bard, really kept me there
because she kept constantly enforcing that I did belong there,
that I was as intelligent as everyone else was, and she brought
me this book, "The Edmund Perry Story" about a kid who got shot
in Harlem years ago, he graduated from Exeter, he was going to
college and he got killed "trying to mug a cop." She gave me this
book and I remember reading that book and crying, like "that's
totally where I'm at." Cause I didn't know how I felt being in
this predominantly White school, no one was there to verbalize
it to me, I was the first person to go away to college in my entire
family, so no one was there to really bounce things off of, like
"you're going to experience this, this, this, and this." I didn't
know, so going there and having her sort of bounce that off really,
and I'll say it publicly, I mean seeing her now, I mean she totally
changed my whole prospect, of thinking about how I was going to
function in the world, how I was going to figure out how I was
going to navigate, knowing what I knew and then learning all this
new shit at this college and I was going to bounce back and forth,
how I was going to be bilingual and be able to float in both worlds,
how I can sit there and kick it like this with all the brothers
hanging out on the block and sit there with you and talk about
Beckett and Godot all night long, which was very important to
me.
Mildred:
And it's true because he's talked about it always, so it's not
just tonight.
Steve:
And poets, Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka came to Bard College and
I'd never heard of him. And Bard College was very you know (uptight
gesture?) and he walked into the theater, stood at the podium,
looked around at the walls and said, "This is the dumbest room
I've ever been in." He said, "There's no pictures on these walls."
And I was like "oh shit" and it stuck, you know I was like he
just didn't care and the rhythm of how he spoke really stuck with
me.
to
be continued...
