My Brief Interview With Playwright Assotto Saint

The following is from the transcript of an interview I did in 1989 with the late gay Haitian-American poet/essayist/playwright Assotto Saint (1957-1994).The interview was mainly about his theater piece, New Love Song, which was part two of a trilogy. (Part one was Rising to the Love We Need and part three was Nuclear Lovers.) He and others performed New Love Song in 1989 in a small theater in New York's Greenwich Village. Assotto Saint, whose birth name was Yves Lubin, died in 1994 of complications from AIDS.

Charles Michael Smith: Why did you decide to do multimedia?

Assotto Saint: I hate conventional plots and I usually don't have the patience to deal with that kind of situation. Multimedia*--nonlinear situations, dramatizations--works best for me because it becomes more immediate. Time is not sequential. The present is mixed with the future is mixed with the past. I jump in and out of sequence. That works best for me.

CMS: Are you worried about the audience's ability to follow what's going on?

AS: Actually, no. When theater started, it was also nonsequential. The roots of theater are based on rituals, which mixes the present with the past and the future and also a lot of theater that's being done these days is nonlinear. The whole theater of images that has gained so much popularity during the past ten years is nonlinear, is nonsequential. As black people, we have locked ourselves in so much realistic drama at times.

CMS: What are the sources of your work?

AS: The Yoruba and voodoo religions are very present in the pieces I do. I basically work in rituals. I'm trying to create rituals, black gay rituals in my work. I grew up in Haiti and I was surrounded by voodoo and I also grew up in a strong Catholic family. Therefore I was grounded in the rituals of the Catholic church and the rituals of the voodoo ceremonies.

I wanted to go back to the roots. To move forward you look back and then you go on. Some people feel looking back is death. But for me, it is necessary at where you came from and you move on.

CMS: How would you describe the segments of this theater piece?

AS: Some are stories, some are monologues, some are essays. Everything I do is complex. (He laughs heartily.)

CMS: Tell me about your self-published books of poems. Why do you self-publish?

AS: As black gay people, we must always search for new ways to establish our own institutions and that way we empower ourselves and become autonomous. It's necessary. We can do it. The women's movement has been an example. They inspired me.

*Multimedia also includes music, film and video clips, sound effects, photo slides, artworks, narration (live and/or recorded).