Teneile Warren’s new play is about three Jamaicans – Beyonsea, Simone and Michael/Melody – who are brought together by circumstance in a place meant to give them second chances. Here, the writer and director speaks about the play – on stage at The Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts from January 29 – February 9, 2024.
By Nigel Gordijk
What is the play about?
It’s a story of family, of family tension, of relationships, of finding yourself, and of finding a new family in an unfamiliar place.
What inspired you to write Beyonsea and the Mothers?
I worked with parents and pregnant mothers for five years in Toronto, and what struck me a lot about that experience was how many of them were Caribbean, African, Black, Latin American, and Indigenous First Nations. Many of them had come to join a mother, had a strained relationship with a mother, or a separation from a mother. That relationship impacted their own pathways to motherhood.
The play unpacks my own relationships with Jamaica, including the stereotypes of the stories that we’re told about a place and about the people who traverse back and forth. When you are back home there is a belief that no matter what you are experiencing in a foreign country, it is better than home. It is fodder for secrets and fertile ground for intergenerational trauma.
As someone who is Queer and non-binary, I think there’s this expectation that it’s supposed to become easy when you leave Jamaica, which is the case for some. I don’t want to dismiss that.
The intersectionality of our gender, our sexuality, our nationality, our race, are often ignored. For me, my queerness is not separate from my “Jamaicanness”. In Beyonsea and the Mothers, we see that a bit through Michael/Melody’s character – their gayness, their queerness, their gender expression cannot be narrowed and separated from culture. It’s very much tied into what it means to be Jamaican.
A key theme in the play is searching for a sense of belonging. What gives you that feeling?
The kitchen. It’s a place that I connect with my dad a lot, and the specific process of being in the kitchen is something that’s very grounding.
There are also things that keep me rooted and grounded to home. My ring, for example, which I got in university, at the theatre, and the necklace that I’m always wearing. There are also phrases that I might whisper to myself in moments where I need to be connected in order to move forward. And the theatre, well this is my church. It is the grounding place I know.
What is it like working with this creative team?
There’s this sense that writers sit in a room by themselves and it just kind of happens. Writers are informed by the world; it is in the room with us. That isolation with the story works for some but I enjoy workshopping. I want actors to do is to show me the character as they see it, because I know that their voice is also important. I think the story has been informed quite beautifully from the process.
I’m looking forward to the rehearsals; I’m really excited. There’s always that moment when you walk into a production when all the pieces are coming together. That’s both important and magical.
Tell us about your creative influences.
This play and its structure are very much a tribute to all of the artistry that made me. It’s a tribute to the Jamaican pantomime, and to the little theatre. It’s a tribute to my theatre mentor, Brian Heap. It’s a tribute to Miss Lou, and Trevor Rhone, Douglas Prout, Barbara Gloudon and Black Theatre Workshop, and all those elements and layers and components that don’t get honoured in a place like this. It’s a tribute to all the people who have influenced a word on a page that made it to the stage.
I’m proud that we’re all Jamaican. It’s something I had hoped for but wasn’t sure it would have happened. I’m a Jamaican writer-director, with a Jamaican cast, in Canada, in Kitchener.
What do you hope audiences will take away?
When the lights come up at the end, I want us to listen differently to each other, to the stories that we tell each other, and the ways in which we can have heavy, silent expectations, especially of children. Children have larger voices than we give them. There are ways in which we can be quietly complicit in each other’s sadness and each other’s happiness. How do we shift that?
Why was it so important to you to produce the play here?
I want people to know that Kitchener is a theatre town. I want people to know that Kitchener is a place for art. I want Beyonsea and the Mothers to do more than just be a show in The Conrad Centre; I want it to be something that people do after they go to dinner, I want people to walk to the park after, I want people to experience Caribbean food here, to experience Caribbean music here, to connect here, to meet their neighbours in a new way.
Theatre, for me, is a community experience. I really wanted this show to be here because moving here gave me something that I needed to get to the next place in my writing and my creative career. I want to give that back to Kitchener-Waterloo Region.
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Teneile Warren (they/them) is a Jamaican-born, Black, non-binary, playwright and activist living on Turtle Island and based in Kitchener. They are a proud Queer parent, writer, chef, and equity educator whose writing has appeared in ByBlacks, Huffington Post, Barren Magazine, CBC Parent, and Briarpatch Magazine. They are the Editorial Director for Textile, a hyper-local arts collective that supports emerging writers and artists in Waterloo Region. Teneile’s work explores identity, social issues and community through words and food.
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Beyonsea and the Mothers
January 29 – February 9, 2025
The Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts
