CREATIVE TEAM INTERVIEWS
Writer
KATORI HALL
Katori is a playwright whose other work includes The Mountaintop which fictionalises the final night of Martin Luther King Jr’s life. Katori’s other plays include Hurt Village, The Blood Quilt and Pussy Valley which is now also a TV series called P-Valley.
I’ve always been a storyteller. My family are a group of Griots in that they’ve gone through their lives, they’ve lived through certain things and those memories have tattooed themselves on their minds and their tongues. The kitchen table was always a performance of history and a performance of present and so I learned how to spin a pretty good yarn from sitting at the kitchen table just talking about a day’s worth of work. The details that mum and dad would add to their stories made their lives so visual for me, and that’s when I understood the power of storytelling . It’s the ability for everyday people to bring you into their world – bringing you into their memories and what they’ve been through.
I became interested in journalism and that was great because I learned how to look at the truth and be inspired by the truth. It wasn’t until college that I decided I wanted to step into theatre. I was taking an acting class and found that there was a dearth of scenes for me and my scene partner to do. We were two young black women and we struggled to find anything – that’s not to say there weren’t any plays for us, but they hadn’t been embraced by the canon and our school didn’t have them in our library. When our teacher couldn’t think of any suggestions for us, I realised in that moment that I would have to write those plays myself so I quickly switched from the acting track to the writing track. Instead of complaining about that dearth of characters available to me, I decided that I was going to put those plays upon the shelf myself.
I actually think that every writer and every director should take acting classes. Writers become better writers by understanding what actors need in order to truly embody a character.
I started on Tina when I was a child. What I mean by that is that I’m from Tennessee, Tina’s from Tennessee. My mother loved Tina Turner so much that she named my eldest sister after her. Her presence was always baked into the soundtrack of my own life – my mum would talk about her all the time, and what her influence was on being a woman in the South. I had Tina in my blood memory. When the opportunity arose and I got the call from Tali Pelman…I didn’t even pause, it was such an easy ‘yes’! She’s my mother’s shero, and I was very cognisant of the influence on the artists that I love. I could see the connection between Tina and Beyoncé, who’s one of my favourite artists. Tina and Beyoncé have performed together and I knew and understood the intense impact that she had on a lot of performers worldwide – female AND male. You can put Beyoncé’s concert footage side by side with Tina’s concert footage and you can see the direct line of influence.
There is vibrancy and theatricality in all of Tina’s stage sets.
I was afraid though – it felt like Tina’ story had been told so many times before. A lot of people know about her life, or think they do: there’s been a plethora of articles, biographies and a film and so I had to think about what was going to be different about what I was going to write. A lightbulb went on in my head one day when I realised that Tina’s never going to go back on tour.
The musical has to bring the essence of a Tina Turner concert into a theatre.
It is a way to make sure that this icon and her energy never goes away – to make her immortal. My parents got to see Tina perform in person but my generation has only seen her concerts in film footage. To see Tina live was a gift that is gone and so the musical is the best way to keep the theatricality of Tina’s own concerts, her life story and her influence alive.
Being asked to walk hand in hand with Tina in the process taught me that it wasn’t about what she said, it was about what she was hesitant to say. This was where the new part of the story was.
When I interviewed Tina, we talked a lot not just about Ike, but also her life before Ike. She grew up in an abusive home. Often people point to Ike and say he’s the biggest villain in her life, but in all actuality there have been a number of negative factors, including racism, sexism, classicism as well as abusive individuals and environments, including the household in which she grew up. Tina has had to slay the biggest dragons that anyone can slay and yet Tina’s journey has been utterly inspirational. As a result of working on the project, I can say that as a black woman from the South, I now move in a different way: I became clearer when I felt I was not being respected or given my worth. This came from listening to how Tina beat all the odds and I am so honoured to be involved.
For me it was about finding new information – digging into pieces of Tina’s past that had not been investigated.
I didn’t watch What’s Love Got To Do With It! I didn’t want to be derivative: even accidentally. There was this one little article that articulated the fact that a Capitol executive had reacted with racism and sexism to the idea of Tina being a Capitol artist. I assumed that this had been written about a lot but when I dug deeper, it hadn’t! We had to show how she confronted that and what she did to overcome that expression of racism and sexism. My constant question was ‘what is authentic to Tina’s story and what has never been addressed?’. Tina revealed a lot about having a toxic relationship with her mother, which I don’t think a lot of people knew about and so that ended up being a driving force in the musical where Tina was looking for love from her own mum and not being able to get that. For me it was stepping back and going through all the articles and all that she said and making sure that what was added to her narrative was a fresh perspective.
There’s tonnes of transcripts and research but when I write I stuff my brain with information, go through a long and intense process of research and then let it go! At the end of the day, you have to write a story and it has to be entertaining. You can be inspired by research, but research can lead to procrastination and can weigh down your story if you’re trying to cram everything in. Instead, whatever sticks from what you’ve found, that’s what you need to work with.
We went into the workshops with a script and then we would go over the arc in a way that was very methodical. Writing for Ike, we had to make sure that the actor playing Ike knew where to layer in a level of vulnerability. There’s a moment in the script where we’re allowed into Ike’s psychology. All of the abuse comes from somewhere – it doesn’t just exist in a vacuum. We worked through slowly and ask the hard questions that needed to be answered so that we could portray the abuse in a way that was realistic. There are so many layers to why men and women who abuse their partners or kids and I think we’ve created a nuanced portrayal of who an abuser can be, and where they get that from impulse from.
When Zelma passes, it’s a point where Tina has risen to a high level of success: she has the records, she’s Grammy award winning, she has the money and the fame – everything she’d been working for. The one thing that she didn’t get was her mother’s love and so to see this lioness be confronted with a mother who, even on her deathbed, was still unable to express love. Tina is forced to realise that the love she has been looking for is truly inside of herself. Ike comes by in that scene and we see Tina battle these two villains but from a place of grace. This is reflective of who the real Tina is: there is so much grace that just emanates from her. Sometimes you want to be mad for her but she has tried to move on and not stay in the past. For Tina to regain her power and to learn how to love herself, I think that’s the most pivotal scene in the entire show. This scene wasn’t difficult to write because it actually allowed Tina to have a win! Throughout the show, we’ve been wanting Tina to have a win, and in this scene she finally gets it!
In order for Tina to have her win, Tina has to lose her mother.
When I went to Nutbush I saw a world that was on the brink of erasure: A town that exists but doesn’t exist because the hustle and bustle of the town square has gone. Most people have moved to the city. Going there was a beautiful way of being infused with what she went through. In a way she came out of nowhere and YET, she went on this journey of a super-shero! It’s an origin story of picking cotton in a field in the South, to playing a concert to over 180,000 people in Rio! Being in Nutbush was a reminder of the extraordinariness of ordinary human beings.
I want people to leave the theatre thinking and feeling that they can literally achieve anything.
To see what this woman achieved in a life that other may have deemed non-important, to see this woman from the middle of nowhere to being at a point where her impact will be felt for generations. You can slay domestic abuse, you can slay the dragon of racism and I want people to leave the theatre feeling triumphant. The show ends with a concert. There’s so much joy in having survived and I want people to understand that no-one can take your love and power from you. It’s inside yourself and it can’t be taken.
I’m so happy that we can put the essence of Tina as a resilient woman, in addition to Tina the performer. The music is kind of secondary in that respect.
It’s the story of survival in the show that’s most important to be moved by – the message that you can rise to your own personal mountaintop.