Coming together: “Beyonsea and the Mothers” breaks down stereotypes in the search for family and home
By Nigel Gordijk Wednesday, January 1, 2025
“Beyonsea and the Mothers”, written and directed by Teneile Warren, tells the story of three Jamaicans who are brought together by circumstance in a place meant to give them second chances. It will be on stage at The Conrad Centre from January 29 to February 9, 2025.
Playwright and director Teneile Warren
By Teneile Warren, as told to Nigel Gordijk
“Beyonsea and the Mothers” is a story of family, of family tension, of relationships, of finding yourself, and of finding a new family.
In many ways, the play is a combination of my own migrant experience of belonging and unbelonging, and also coming into a new sense of identity. It unpacks my own relationships with Jamaica, including the stereotypes of the stories that we’re told about a place and about the people who traverse back and forth. As someone who migrated alone as an adult, that’s not a story we’re told a lot.
When the lights come up at the end of the play, I want us to listen differently to each other, to the stories that we tell each other, and the ways in which we can have heavy, silent expectations, especially of children. Children have larger voices than we give them. There are ways in which we can be quietly complicit in each other’s sadness and each other’s happiness. How do we shift that?
When I moved to Canada, I had to find a kind of mothering on my own, in a place that my mother really couldn’t guide me through, because she wasn’t here and she hadn’t walked that path.
I worked with parents and pregnant mothers for five years in Toronto, and what struck me a lot about that experience was how many of them were Caribbean, African, Black, South American, Latin American, and also Indigenous First Nations. Many of them had come to join a mother, had a separation from a mother, and that relationship impacted their own pathways to motherhood. That was something that was interesting for me, especially connecting with other Jamaicans who were from different parts of Jamaica than myself.
Also, as someone who is Queer and non-binary, I think there’s this expectation that it’s supposed to become easy when you leave Jamaica because of the stereotypes about that country. There is some validity to that, but the intersectionality of our gender, our sexuality, our nationality, our race, are often ignored. For me, my queerness is not separate from my “Jamaicanness”. In “Beyonsea and the Mothers”, we see that a bit through Michael/Melody’s character - their gayness, their queerness. It’s very much tied into what it means to be Jamaican.
I didn’t roll up to the village and say, “I found home”. It was more like, “I’m not feeling the thing that’s supposed to be happening here.”
One of the things that gives me a strong sense of belonging is the kitchen. It’s a place that I connect with my dad a lot, and the specific process of being in the kitchen is something that’s very grounding.
There are also things that I keep with me that keep me rooted and grounded to home. My ring, for example, which I got in university, at the theatre, and the necklace that I’m always wearing. There are things in my wallet that I carry. There are also phrases that I might whisper to myself in moments where I need to be connected, to be rooted, in order to move forward.
I am a writer-director who is trying to just be a writer, but maybe my calling is a writer-director, and I probably should not push against that anymore.
In November, we preformed excerpts of the play in front of a live audience. Workshops and readings are all about information. Where the audience reacts is information. How the actors go through that process is information.
There’s this sense that writers sit in a room by themselves and it just kind of happens. That works with some writers, but I’m a writer who enjoys workshopping, and so doing that with “Beyonsea and the Mothers” has been really important to the final voice and the final story. I always come into a workshop with questions, and one of the things I always want actors to do is to show me the character as they see it, because I know that that voice is also important. I think that the characters and the story has been informed quite beautifully from the process, by the actors and by the audience, and also the feedback so many people shared. It’s made it a better story.
It’s interesting putting a creative team together. There’s an anxiousness to the process. In theatre companies, people move in, people move around. Some people are here, some people are virtual. What has been consistent is the investment in the story. People said, “I want to tell this.”
You want to be able to tell a story that is authentic to the people and the place that are most connected, most rooted, most inform that story, but you want to have that universality without uniformity. We’re seeing that universality of finding yourself, and then there are also people learning these beautiful nuances about the telling of a Jamaican story. Not every Jamaican is going to roll up to this play and agree. That’s not supposed to happen, and that’s okay.
I’m looking forward to the rehearsals, and I’m really excited. There’s always that moment where you walk into a production when all the pieces are coming together. The actors are acting, they’re setting lights, and while they’re moving things, there’s something about that building structure that gives you a particular kind of energy and anxiety at the same time. I feel really supported, and I know the cast is really supported. That’s both important and magical.
This play and its structure are very much a tribute to all of the artistry that made me. It’s a tribute to the Jamaican pantomime, and to the little theatre. It’s a tribute to my theatre mentor, Brian Heap. It’s a tribute to Miss Lou, and Trevor Rowan, and Derek Walcott, and Black Theatre Workshop, and all of those elements and layers and components that don’t get honoured in a place like this.
I’m really proud that we’re all Jamaican. I’m a Jamaican writer-director, with a Jamaican cast, in Canada, in Kitchener.
I want people to know that Kitchener is a theatre town. I want people to know that Kitchener is a place for art. I want “Beyonsea and the Mothers” to do more than just be a show in The Conrad Centre; I want it to be something that people do after they go to dinner, I want people to walk to the park after, I want people to experience Caribbean food here, to experience Caribbean music here, to connect here, to meet their neighbours in a new way.
Theatre, for me, was a community experience, and I want to show that that is something that Kitchener can have. I really fought for this show to be here because moving here gave me something that I needed to get to the next place in my writing and my creative career. I want to give that back to Kitchener-Waterloo Region.
Teneile Warren is a Jamaican-born, Black, non-binary, playwright and activist living on Turtle Island and based in Kitchener. They are a proud Queer mom, writer, chef, and equity educator whose writing has appeared in ByBlacks, Huffington Post and Barren Magazine. Teneile explores identity, social issues and community through words and food.
Beyonsea and the Mothers
January 29 - February 9, 2025
The Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts,
Warnock MacMillan Theatre, 36 King St W, Kitchener, ON N2G 1A3
www.greenlight-arts.com/current-productions/beyonsea-and-the-mothers