By Monica Prince, Associate Professor of Creative Writing and English
“Roadmap” began as a choreopoem chronicling the life story of a man I used to love. Nick wanted his story told like Malcolm X told his story to Alex Haley.
“Never compare yourself to Malcolm X ever again,” I said, taking a sip from my chai latte. We sat outside the new Starbucks in our old neighborhood.
“Fine,” Nick said, putting his coffee down. “But I still want you to write my life story.”
“I don’t do prose,” I declared. He looked at me quizzically. “I said what I said.”
“Then how are you going to write it?”
“I write choreopoems,” I replied. “I’ll write your story, but only as a choreopoem. A choreographed series of poems. It’ll be performed on a stage like a play, but with performance poetry, dance, music, and singing.”
Nick shrugged. “Fine. As long as you write it.”
In fall 2015, I wrote the first draft of “Roadmap” based on his life story, but it didn’t work. Nick loved it, but it wasn’t finished. Too many threads, not enough information to pull the narrative together. Then Nick vanished—I lost my source material, and stopped working on it.
After last year’s successful production of “How to Exterminate the Black Woman,” the theatre department asked me to produce another choreopoem for the 2018-2019 season. I agreed, knowing that there were only two shows I had completed that could work for this campus: my graduate thesis “Something to Keep Me Vertical,” a show about love, sex and relationships that has little do with race but has a huge cast to maximize student involvement; or “Roadmap,” a show about a man trying to figure out if his past defines his future.
I chose “Roadmap” knowing I needed to rewrite it. I didn’t have Nick’s life rights, so couldn’t legally produce it in its current form. But I wanted to take the concept of legacy and apply it to the campus climate—when students of color and Jewish students and Muslim students and LGBTQ+ students and students with disabilities and other marginalized communities of students are struggling to prove that they exist and matter and deserve attention and consideration and love, what choreopoem would best spark dialogue on campus?
I rewrote “Roadmap” because I wanted to talk about how many people of color are murdered for just existing in this country. I rewrote it to call attention to the way we teach abuse as love to our children. I rewrote it to create a container for the men and masc-centered people on this campus to put in their anger, their neglect, their desperation and joy and sorrow and love. Toxic masculinity hurts us all, and demonstrating how it can harm generations matters.
“Roadmap” started out as a challenge back in 2015, but it ended as an attempt to showcase the way we create, maintain and dismantle toxic masculinity, generational and historical trauma and performative love. I wanted to share this final choreopoem with Susquehanna as a thank you to the students who rallied for my permanence here, who show up in my office to talk or get feedback or receive advice and who consider me and the other faculty and staff of color safe spaces. I’m only safe because of the people who raised me to be so and I’m grateful that I can pass that down to others.
I started writing choreopoems because I wanted to see the stories of people who looked like me on a stage, the center of attention, joyful. The choreopoem was created by Ntozake Shange in 1975; I hope she and the other ancestors who paved the way for my success are proud of me, the way I hope my descendants will also be proud of me. I already know I’m proud of my descendants—I see them every day in the diversity student organizations, in the published work that pushes boundaries and traditions, in the protests and rallies for equity and justice.
Even though “Roadmap” was the last choreopoem I will write, direct, and produce on Susquehanna’s campus, it’s not the last choreopoem the university will see. I hope students will sign up for my choreopoem course (WRIT 260) offered in spring 2020! Choreopoems are for the marginalized and silenced—let’s refuse to be either any longer.