Un/Earthed: a history of ourselves
Un │ Earthed
at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford Playhouse
on Tuesday, June 24
Review by JON LEWIS
A history of ourselves
What stories are most important to us in creating our identity? In Inez Aponte’s solo show Un │ Earthed she weaves together three strands of storytelling that have made her the person she is, stories ‘which are true, and others that are more true’.
First, she tells us her own life history from birth in New York to a Surinamese mother and Puerto Rican father. After her father’s abusive behaviour, her mother takes Aponte with her siblings to the Netherlands, the mother country for inhabitants of the former Dutch colony of Suriname. The second strand is where she tells us her family history. She researched her family from before anyone has memories. Finally, she tells us a selection of folk tales from communities in West Africa and Suriname that relate to her family’s history.
The folk tales are the most traditional element of Aponte’s performance. She tells of shapeshifting bush cows that magically transform into humans, a wistful story of a young prince who rejects life at court for a quest to find a magical land where time has been forgotten, stories of the savannah and the jungle. Some of these could have been told by Aponte’s ancestors. One tale is more brutal than the others, a narrative of slavery, of a slave beaten to death, the result of jealousy rather than disobedience.
The quest to discover her roots takes Aponte to an internet database and her discovery of the marriage of a slaver with the musical surname Ringaling to a slave he probably bought with the intention of marrying. It’s this marriage that explains her Creole heritage. This took place two centuries ago but her memories go back to her grandmother, the matriarch Oma Ringaling who, as the last thing she did, provided the money for Aponte and her family’s passage to the Netherlands. Whenever she mentions the name ‘oma’, Aponte trains the audience to respond straightaway with ‘Ringaling’ for a fun bit of audience interaction.
During the show, Aponte discovers that about half the audience, like herself, come from another country, affirming the relevance and importance of her performance.
