It’s no secret that artistic research takes place at the Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD), but what does it actually entail? In this interview, part 22 in a series, we take a peek behind the scenes, in conversation with dramaturg, theatre practitioner and teacher Yahmani Blackman, who joined the ATD’s Research Department as an associate researcher in September 2024.
Part 22:We need to talk about dramaturgy
Yahmani Blackman: I’m always very aware of whose shoulders I’m standing on, as a human being and as an artist. I’m self-taught. I worked that way for many years making and performing in productions at De Engelenbak, the MC Theater and Frascati. Along the way I met people who advised me for longer and shorter periods, like Samora Bergtop, Jetty Mathurin, Maarten van Hinte and others. All these theatre practitioners are people of colour. They have been my teachers.
So you didn’t study at the ATD?
No, I studied Pedagogy. I avoided theatre school for a long time. I was afraid of losing my authenticity and I felt a kind of freedom in the ‘not knowing’. Everything I did was based on intuition and I said yes to every invitation. Those were my Yes Man years [laughs].
What were you scared of losing?
As a child I was very quiet. I almost didn’t talk at all. I could sit and play by myself in a corner for hours at a time, inventing stories in my head. My mother got worried, though, and she was the one who put me on the stage. It turned out to be a brilliant move. I was about eight or nine, and that was the moment my inner world opened up to the outside. I stayed at the youth theatre school in south-east Amsterdam until I was 21. The stage pieces we made there were always multidisciplinary: a blend of drama, movement and storytelling. Being a person of colour was the norm in that part of town. Our style was a bit more ‘grotesque’ and less restrained than the prevailing style. Choreographers and guest teachers there would always encourage us to manifest our unique authenticity.
But in the end you did decide to study theatre
When I was about 25, I felt a real desire to learn the craft. I also wanted to know what it was that I was doing differently. After a year participating in Factory at Likeminds I joined the Accelerated Theatre in Education programme at the ATD. It was quite confrontational [laughs], because I’d been thinking they were going to tell me exactly how to do things, but in fact they asked questions like ‘What have you come here to do?’ and ‘What do you want?’ I also noticed it I needed to define my Blackness. It was quite a journey before I could say to myself ‘I’m an African European’.
Defining my identity in this way was essential. My graduation show Het Knippa Meisje (‘The quenepa girl’) was about my mother, who grew up in poverty in Suriname. She was only six years old when she started selling quenepa [a Caribbean fruit] on the streets. I worked on that piece with three young female actors – two of Surinamese origin and one of Ghanaian. We would do two hours of rehearsals and then take a two-hour break during which I would take the actors to my home, where they could immerse themselves in my family history and call my mother in Suriname. We cooked and ate together, which is very important in Surinamese culture. My supervisors said, ‘You’re taking the actors out of their artistic process.’ And my reply was: ‘This is the artistic process.’
It reminded me of how when I was at the youth theatre school, after training we would dance together for hours and then go and eat together. And with the classes I teach I also do lots of things outside the lesson. I join the students in the canteen and hear the music they’re listening to. My thesis was on Socrates and Orunmila, the founders of Western and African philosophy, respectively. In African philosophy, art and culture are totally intertwined. So when you’re teaching someone, it’s best to do it in practice, in your own studio, and not in some bare rehearsal room.
You started out as an actor and practitioner, and now you work as a dramaturg and teacher.
I give classes in performance didactics and philosophy at the ATD and at Utrecht Theatre School. Over the last few years I’ve been getting more and more requests from makers of colour to be their dramaturg. At first I was always looking for the conflict, for what’s called the ‘motoric moment’. But increasingly I found myself wondering whether these things really mattered in the context of what my directors were expressing; whether I was just seeing things from a limited perspective. I started looking into non-Western dramaturgy and found an essay by Katalin Trencsényl, a Hungarian dramaturg working in London. That was fascinating. I also read We Need to Talk About Dramaturgy, an open letter by Black British writers in which they named the obstacles they face and the things they need, as playwrights of colour. Then I read an interview with the now former artistic director of London’s Young Vic theatre, Kwame Kwei-Armah, in which he applied a feminine dramaturgy. So I just thought: ‘I’ve got to go to London!’
I bought a ticket to London and met up with the director and the dramaturg at the Young Vic. I also got to know two theatre practitioners of colour who make youth theatre in deprived areas of London. They had a really holistic approach, with the director’s assistant also acting as a personal supervisor for the young people taking part. I’ve done similar things, like when I was working as a dramaturg with a young director who was having trouble with their piece. I told them, ‘Just go home for now and make sure you get enough sleep tonight. And when you come back tomorrow, put everything into the hands of the lead director. In the meantime I’ll be taking care of you – I’ll take care of what you’re envisioning. I’ll make sure you’ll keep on seeing what’s beautiful in your work.’
So in London you encountered a way of working that you found really attractive.
I wanted to go back right away. Thanks to support from the ATD Lectorate and Platform 2025, I could continue my research within the research department. I visited London again last October. This time I met the Nigerian-British choreographer and dramaturg Funmi Adewole Elliot. Before we met she asked me to send her live recordings of two of my stage productions to show how I thrive best as a director or dramaturg. She was less concerned with whether it was my best work, and more with the process. I asked her to do the same. The recordings formed the basis for a five-hour conversation we had. In the final hour Funmi said to me, ‘You do realise that you didn’t need to come to London, don’t you?’ I was totally taken aback. ‘Your research question is about how to do dramaturgy in a non-Western way, and what you’re doing as a dramaturg is the answer,’ she said. ‘What I think you should do is get your method down on paper. That’s your research.’
Yahmani Blackman gave a talk about her research on Tuesday 14 January during the Research Month at the What if… Decoloniality? symposium.
Text and interview:
Hester van Hasselt
The complete series of interviews Artistic research: New pathways to new knowledge? you can read here