This Toronto spoken word poet is shedding light on the importance of having conversations surrounding Black mental health in a new stage production.
Created by award-winning producer, playwright, poet and educator Luke Reece, As I Must Live It is an endearing, yet hilarious show that touches on the poet’s personal experiences growing up with a mentally ill father in a mixed-race family. His goal is to assert and de-stigmatize conversations surrounding mental health within the Black community.
In an interview with Now Toronto, Reece shares how he got into spoken word poetry trying to advertise a play while at a Fringe Festival in Hamilton.
“It was Hamilton Fringe 2013 I believe and I went to a poetry slam to promote a show. And then I was like, oh my gosh, poetry slams are amazing. I didn’t know it was a thing,” he said.
The poet, who is also Soulpepper Theatre’s Associate Artistic Director, said he always loved writing poetry when he was younger, but felt constrained by the traditional structures and forms he was taught in school. He felt there was a disconnect between seeing his words on the page and simply reading them.
“When I discovered spoken word through the competitive form of slam, I was like, this is it. This is my form. Then, I started going to poetry slams in Hamilton, and eventually Toronto…It’s just really allowed me to open up and find my voice even more,” Reece said.
He adds that he appreciates the audience for truly listening and understanding his wordplay and messages, especially since a common theme within his work is real world issues, such as racism, social culture, the environment and so on.
Reece emphasizes that it’s crucial for the topic to be important to him because it helps to articulate and connect with his piece. When it comes to choosing which topic to explore, he says the ideas come from his emotions.
“Sometimes it comes from a moment that I’ve experienced and that I just really try to build from. Usually, it is literally just like, I’m extremely frustrated about something and then I find a metaphor to use it as a vehicle for that thing. And my metaphors can be all over the place from cereal to paper, to childhood nostalgia,” he explained.
He says his piece about cereal, specifically, was a defining moment in his career because it was one that proved he could successfully combine both clever humour and personal experience in a poem.
“I got this piece called Special K…I talk about feeling like I wasn’t being treated special by my partner at the time and then used a bunch of cereal analogies and metaphors and wordplay. On the surface level, it is so funny, but really, it’s about not settling for being treated a certain way and really being able to articulate how it is that you want to feel in a relationship,” Reece said.
“I think that piece was a key point for me because a lot of the people who knew me and my early spoken word slam days, they know that piece because it’s one that I’ve done almost as much as any other piece or any other pieces that I’ve ever done before,” he continued.
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND ‘AS I MUST LIVE IT’
For his newest project, As I Must Live It, he says the themes attendees can expect are family, mental illness, childhood and perspectivism, having to communicate different narratives within his family. Simultaneously, he is also trying to tell this deeply personal story with a humorous undertone.
“When you’re writing from trauma, a lot of it is self care. It’s just knowing what that means for you. I think we all need different things in our lives day to day. And so for me, it was about knowing what I needed to do for myself in order to get to the place to be able to access this part of my life and to be able to share it on the stage,” he said.
The poet reveals the project has been in the works for a long-time coming, about ten years in fact.
“I’ve always known that I’ve wanted to compile some of the pieces about my relationship with my dad and looking at his struggle with mental illness, but from my perspective as a child. I’ve got so many little pieces here and there about it that I’ve had over ten years of writing spoken word, so I’ve always wanted to bring it together,” he said.
The artist goes on to explain that the inspiration behind the show stems from a variety of places, however this one moment in particular gave him the push that he needed.
Reece was in Paris, France for the World Cup of Poetry Slam and performed one of his pieces titled “Creases.” The poem focuses on the way his father’s struggle with mental health impacted his family as a whole.
“I performed this piece, and a young Black man came up to me who lives in Paris and was coming out to a thing and saw that poem, and was emotional and thanked me for sharing that piece and asked to give me a hug,” he said.
“I was understanding how important it is for people that you don’t even know on the other side of the planet to hear that story. I was like OK, I should probably, more consciously try to put some of this work out there, because I’ve seen it impact people in real time and that is important. So, that was the final inspiration moment,” he continued.
The poet is encouraging everyone to come and support the show especially for Black History Month.
“I hope they see the piece, they hear the words, and they realize that something that they didn’t think was possible for them is now possible. Whether that is a conversation that they wanted to have with somebody in real life that they were going back and forth on, whether that means them finding a way to share their story, whether that means them deciding to go into therapy, or whatever it is like something that was a challenge seems like a possibility. That’s my goal,” Reece said.
Performances of As I Must Live It runs from Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4:30 p.m at Theatre Passe Muraille. The production is available now until Mar. 2.
Tickets are on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis at three price points, $12, $35, and $65 and are available online at passemuraille.ca.