Wildfire at the Baha’i Academy for the Arts

I read the last stanza of the Roger White poem I’ve incorporated into the script:

Tell, Duarte Viera, kindly tell,
What crime won you a prison cell?

The Wildfire group, seven of us – Nancy, Navid, Serene, Carmel, May, Izzy and I – are on the stage in the Old Gym at Wellington College. We’re facing an audience of 300 or more. And the concentration in the room is intense.

As the last words die away, there’s a pause. I wonder how the audience will react to the musical narrative we’ve just presented, the story of Eduardo Duarte Viera, the first African Bahá’í martyr, who died in jail in Portuguese Guinea in March 1966. He’d been badly tortured.

The pause stretches beyond the point of comfort.

Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal

Earlier in the day, I’d been wondering with some desperation, “Is this piece ever going to work?” We’d sat in our comfortable room upstairs in the Wellington College Music School and practised and practised. I’d worked out how to stage what was in effect a script for radio and I’d taken the group through their moves – although those moves were no more than when to sit down and when to stand up. This was not a piece for theatre, but the kind of narrative that people could use in their living rooms for Bahá’í meetings.

But somehow our energy had slackened and the delivery was really not focused.

So, “OK, let’s take it from the top one more time,” I say.

Navid hits four slow beats on a djembe, Nancy comes in at double time on a smaller djembe, May shakes the rattle, and Carmel starts our opening song. It’s an African call and response song and I’ve never been able to get my mouth around the words. But Serene, Izzy and May pick it up and take it away with gusto.

We work our way through to the end. It’s OK, but it lacks sparkle.

It’s time to get across to the Old Gym. We’ve a ten-minute technical rehearsal slot and then that will be it until the evening.

Pre-performance nerves

Come the evening, and there’s nerves. Well, that’s as it should be. We’re all sitting in the front row of the audience as Richard Lee’s wonderful Zingaresque workshop, carry some challenging Macedonian folk tunes with fiendishly complex time signatures to a triumphant conclusion.

Old friends Kathy and Brian perform a comedy sketch, and then it’s our turn. Hadyn, the Academy’s technical wizard, resets chairs and microphones. The audience settles and we’re off.

Drums, song, the first bit of narration:

“This was destiny. All is terminated.” Part of Duarte Viera’s last message to his wife, scratched on a biscuit tin in his prison cell in Bissau.

Putting the narrative together

It’s a powerful story. Co-tutor Nancy Lee Harper had suggested that it would make a good narrative for us to work on at the Academy. I had written a script based on Viera’s obituary in Volume XIV of The Bahá’í World. The script provided the backbone of the final work, and the group that came together at the Academy – Nancy and myself, three 16-year-old girls, a very good classical violinist and a gifted singer song-writer (both in their 20s) – together created the performed piece through a week’s worth of consultation and action. Music, songs, drumming, edits to the script, all ideas that came from members of the group.

It took a couple of days for the group to meld and for the creative juices to flow, but once we’d engaged with the piece, the group worked hard.

High octane, high performance

Bahá’í audiences love to clap along to songs and music. Sometimes that’s just what’s wanted, but tonight I’m praying that they won’t do this. As we go deeper into the piece, the audience’s concentration deepens. I know the story has captured their hearts. The only hiccup comes when the script calls for one verse of an African song well-known to Bahá’ís the world over, Toko Zani. Some people in the audience begin to sing along. We’ve decided to cut the verse short for dramatic effect, but the singers in the audience slide on into the repetition of the final two lines.

I narrate on over the singing, in the hope that the audience will get the message and quiet down. They do. They quickly realize that there’s more to come.

The group is doing well. The tension between audience and performers is creative and gives the performance just the edge it needs. Any mistakes are minor and quickly put right. Navid strikes in with a tremolo on his violin as the story tells of police raiding Viera’s home and confiscating Bahá’í books. Nancy plays the opening of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata as Viera is arrested and beaten.

And eventually we hear that Eduardo Duarte Viera was the first African Bahá’í to lay down his life as a martyr for the Cause of Bahá’u'lláh. Serene starts the beautiful song she’s written around a text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Lift to Thy lovers’ lips a cup brimful of anguish”. Navid’s violin soars above the melody and then we are all singing the chorus, adding alto and base harmonies, Nancy’s piano adding body to the glorious sound.

I read Roger White’s poem. Silence falls. And we wait…

And the audience bursts into noisy, warm-hearted applause and cheers.

I’m trembling as we come off stage and sit down in the audience for the next performers. The adrenalin rush is over and life continues. After all, our group was only one amongst the many who had performed or were yet to perform last Friday evening.

The art of the Arts Academy

The Bahá’í Academy for the Arts is a remarkable achievement. Started some 14 years ago by two Bahá’í women, it has become a model for other Bahá’í communities around the world who want to give space and opportunity for Bahá’ís to develop their artistic skills and enrich the lives of their communities.

The ethos, which has evolved over the years, is one of service, of work performed in the spirit of worship, of sacrifice. It provides no space for big egos that want to show off. This is about humility on the part of all, whether acclaimed professionals or absolute beginners. The Academy team are utterly dedicated

And the extraordinary thing is that this ethos allows people to produce work of high standard and good quality in just a week.

There were courses for children, young teens, older teens, adults, everyone; courses in (amongst other things) urban art, comedy writing, speaking with confidence, computer presentations, fashion, painting, photography, choreography, storytelling, instrumental and vocal music.

And there was room for independent artists and writers.

I felt privileged to work with Nancy Lee Harper. She’s a wonderful musician and a very special person. The idea for the workshop was Nancy’s. I came in as writer earlier this year. I found our creative partnership productive and we were able to help a rather disparate group to create a piece that really touched the hearts of the audience.

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Tagged as: Arts Academy, Baha'i, Music, performance, Wellington College, writing