INTERVIEW: The Flea’s ‘Arden’ finishes extended run March 13
Photo: The Arden cast and creative team include, from left, Bernice “Boom Boom” Brooks, Viva DeConcini, Peter Born, Nia Witherspoon, Okwui Okpokwasili, Diana Oh, Jack Fuller, Niegel Smith and Serena Ebony Miller. Not Pictured: Carrie Mae Weems. Photo courtesy of Natalie Anne Powers / Provided by DKC O&M with permission.
The Flea Theater, which has faced turmoil in the past two years, has relaunched itself with a genre-bending new work called Arden: But, Not Without You, featuring the talents of Peter Born, Diana Oh, Okwui Okpokwasili, Niegel Smith, Carrie Mae Weems and Nia Witherspoon, among others. The show concludes its extended run Sunday, March 13 and serves as the first entry in The Flea’s “new mission to support and invest in experimental art by Black, brown and queer artists,” according to a press release.
Recently Oh, whose pronouns are they/she, spoke with Hollywood Soapbox about the experience of developing and performing Arden for the stage. They are billed not only as a performer, but also the composer and co-music director. Oh’s previous credits include My Lingerie Play, Clairvoyance and The Infinite Love Party — encompassing a career that has been focused on centering and celebrating “Queer, Trans, Non-Binary Humans, and People of Color — with integrity and joy.” They have created everything from performance pieces to installations to music, concerts, documentary films, rituals, parties and more.
Responses have been slightly edited for style.
On the development of Arden: But, Not Without You …
I got a phone call from Niegel [Smith, artistic director]. I was actually having dinner with my mom, and I got a phone call from him. He asked if I was interested in making a piece about love, and he had named some names I wasn’t really familiar with. I was in because it really is that simple for me. I was friends with Niegel, and I was interested in the ritual of love. I knew that it was an invitation for me to show up as my full self. It was an invitation for me to be who I am, to do what I do, so it just felt like an intuitive response. OK, cool, sounds weird, sounds fun. That was that.
On whether Arden is a response to these past two years …
I feel everything that we make is always going to be in response to the past few years — everything, everything. It’s impossible for it not to be. I don’t think it’s in direct response. I think the piece is intimate and personal, and I really love this about the piece. It is asking for each artist in it to show up, to be deeply personal and to be deeply intimate, and for some of us that means sharing our spirituality, that means sharing our shamanism, that means sharing our gift of sight, sharing our actual spiritual practices, and for me sharing my healing practices … for other people.
And I think that’s an inevitable thing because of the past few years where we’ve all been struggling, we’ve all been suffering, we’ve all been disconnected. … When we are in a place of community and in a place of healing and in a place of sharing and spiritual practice, it feels like a relief. I don’t know if it feels so much like a response, but it feels like a space of relief from the past few years. That’s how it feels like for me.
On whether there’s a fear factor of being so personal and open with the audience …
For me, it’s the only way I know how to be. It actually really scares me to be any other way. It scares me to not be that way. I get nervous in the spaces where I can’t be open in that way, and that’s my own personal practice as an artist. I describe myself as an open channel for the art that feels good to my body, and I prioritize mutual care, pleasure, keeping things heart-centered. So it’s always been that. It’s always squishy spaces.
I’m not really one for rigidity in that way, so it comes easy to me. And really wanting to be of service in that way, wanting to be of service as a bridge in that way feels really good to me, and I think that’s why sharing my music and writing music and singing my music feels like such a no-brainer because music is such a soother. It’s such a fun, easy, dope way to reach people. It’s such an easy way to let people in and also to communicate.
On how the audience has reacted to Arden …
It’s been so wonderful. I get that question a lot. How do you know how people will respond and if people will open up? This is where I feel like being Queer is everything, why your values are everything. My values are everything. The integrity of the work is everything. It’s not empty. I live by these values. It is consent-based because my life is consent-based.
Even approaching a person, I make the eye contact first. I ask the question with consent. I receive the consent. I don’t approach a person unless I get consent from them, and if they do not consent, then I do not approach them. It has to feel good for you as it does for me, and if it doesn’t feel good for you, then that is OK. I don’t judge you for that. You are deserving of the pleasure you want in your life, as I am, and we just move on.
And so it’s been a beautiful thing because I feel like people have been really clear and communicative, and that’s been really beautiful. This is where I felt really safe to drop into my clairvoyance and the shamanism because it needs the eye contact, it needs that intimate personalness to be able to look the audience in the eye — and without that, it can’t work. And so I’ve been really happy that the audience has been there, that they’ve been receptive, that they’ve been able to look me in the eye.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Arden: But, Not Without You, featuring Diana Oh, continues through Sunday, March 13 at The Flea Theater. Click here for more information and tickets.
