Speaker 1: 0:14

Welcome to the Cohort SysSys podcast, where we give voice to the stories, struggles and successes of Black women and non-binary folks with doctoral degrees. I'm your host, dr Yama Cola, and today I'm really honored to have a conversation with Dr Michelle Gibbs, an expert in the fields of theater, academia and solo performance, dr Gibbs brings a blend of scholarship and creativity to the podcast today. Dr Michelle Gibbs received a PhD in theater, with a graduate certificate in performance studies from Bowling Green State University, and her research spans Black performativity and critical identity studies, delving into the intersections of race, gender and performance. Her insightful exploration of Zora Neale-Hurston's theater work has reshaped our understanding of Southern Black community's resilience. Dr Gibbs fearlessly navigates challenging themes as a solo performer, using her body as a canvas for thought provoking narratives. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, dr Gibbs, and thank you for your grace. We had some technical difficulties I'm holding a baby Like it was a struggle to get this started, but we're started, so thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm very, very grateful and so excited to chat All right, so tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Where are you from? I currently live in. Where are some of the things that you like to do when you're not performing or doing research?

Speaker 2: 1:39

Great question. So I am originally from Detroit, michigan. I've been a lot of places since I've been to Detroit. I lived in California for a little bit. That's where I got my master's degree at the MFA in acting from University of California, irvine. So I lived there for a little bit. I lived near Western Michigan for a little bit. I lived in New Orleans for a little bit. When you're a scholar you kind of go where the job takes you. But most recently I came from Minnesota, where that was my last teaching position, and now I live in Central Illinois, which is about two and a half hours south, about two hours south of Chicago, and I teach theater at Illinois Wesleyan University Nice.

Speaker 1: 2:29

And before we got caught off, you were telling me all about your gaming life. To be honest, I don't envision you as a gamer, so you are definitely shifting my stereotypes and my narrative of what a gamer looks like. So what are some of your favorite games and how does I'm curious does gaming have anything to do with your love for theater? Are they completely separate, or are they?

Speaker 2: 2:52

related they are, I don't know. I probably am a very theatrical person and I find video games to be very theatrical in the style of storytelling and the ability to bring folks in through story. So it probably has a little bit of element. But my whole thing is like to escape. You know, I like Marvel movies because I get the opportunity to escape into another world where I don't have to think, be constantly thinking about and like figuring out, like self and teaching and things like that. So yeah, I like to. I like to game as a way to sort of escape into someone else's story, where it takes a little bit of the pressure off of me to be who I am. But I'm playing right now. I play a lot of different games, but right now I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom Legend of Zelda, tears of the Kingdom, which is a fabulous game. I'm sure everybody knows about it because it's been like on YouTube and everything. But I'm playing that right now and that's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Yeah, I was. I'm one of those people who, like, never got the video game wave. My parents immigrant parents were just like you're wasting your time, you're not like that's just not. It was not a function of my childhood and I feel like I just missed the wave, like if there's no fiber of my being that is interested in picking up a console. Like I feel like I don't have the anti-coordination, but I admire people who make that a part of their life and, like you said, as a way to escape. I've never heard anyone frame it like that, but it sounds like it's a really great hobby and element of your well-being and self-care, so I love that for you. So let's talk about your love for the theatrics.

Speaker 1: 4:37

When did you first become interested in performance in theater, in otherworldly things, the extraordinary play? Tell us a little bit about the roots of that for you.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Yeah. So actually I didn't get started into theater until like late. You know, a lot of the people that I interact with started doing theater when they were like three and four. I just didn't have that luxury or no, or that desire. To be honest, I think I did a play in high school because I was trying to get close to a dude and he liked theater. So I joined, like, the theater club because I just wanted to be close to him but had no real interest in it. So I was actually interested in aviation science and I wanted to become an air traffic controller in the Air Force. So my recruiter said the best way to get to that is to go to college, get a degree, then enlist and then you get more money, you get a better rank, etc. So I said, oh, I'll go to Western Michigan University because they had one of the top aviation programs in the state. So I started there.

Speaker 2: 5:49

My advisor was like take this theater class. I have a lot of recruits that come through and they take this theater class. It's a really easy A and you know you get to. You know sort of move on from there because you need it as a Gen Ed. And I'm like, okay, sure, I'll take the theater class, whatever.

Speaker 2: 6:09

I started in the theater class and my advisor was wrong. It was not an easy A, it was so hard, it was hard as heck. But I fell in love with this medium of expression and I never really thought that that's what my life needed, was that kind of like. I was talking about video gaming as that escape. But I never thought that my life needed that kind of interest in that kind of expression before. And I was really intrigued by the readings by the professor, who was a very animated person, probably kind of got me started in the ways I teach now and my pedagogy, but just was a really, you know, fantastic teacher. And it was one of those classes that they kind of like kind of farmed you into it and made you work on their shows. So I was like I'm really interested.

Speaker 2: 7:01

So a props position came up where in the props you basically build, you know, set pieces and you build utilities that the actors will use in the performance. And I got to run props for a show called Flyin' West by Pearl Cleige and it's a play about these beautiful black women who are, you know, landowners and are really, really attempting to carve out a path for themselves. And I was offstage and they put me in a costume because I kind of had to look like I was being the part as I was carrying props on stage, and I just fell in love. I was like this is it. I figured it out. So I started at the back of the class, in this huge auditorium with almost 60 to 80 people in the classroom, to the very front row, and just my love of theater just sprung from that sense of the curiosity, the expression, the ability to engage with humaneness in that way. So I changed my major.

Speaker 2: 8:04

My mom cried. My mom was like you're going to be broke for the rest of your life and you know, needless to say, she's not crying now. I can't say I'm the richest person in the world, but you know she's not crying anymore. But she bawled at IHOP of all places because I thought I'd tell her in a public spot I'm changing my major. And she was like woo, I never seen my mother weep before, but she weeped in IHOP y'all. But yeah, so I changed my major. I became a BA in theater performance. It's now a BFA program now, but I was a BA in theater performance and I spent, because I was only there in my program before for about half a semester, about a semester, and so I ended up having to stay an extra semester. So it was there four and a half semesters, four and a half years, and just loved every, every bit of it, just every bit of it.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I'm curious what do you think? To what extent was the actual play that you were studying and working on, the first performance, being a story about black women? Did that have anything to do with your falling in love with the field, with the art? Do you think that you would have maybe had that same trajectory if you were working on some I don't know, the great Gatsby or something else that doesn't kind of center our stories?

Speaker 2: 9:31

Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think I would have had the same kind of urge. The professor was really clever in that. I don't know if it was clever, but he was just really intrigued. He was an older white man but he was really intrigued by like black theater and he talked about the Lion King and I had never I mean I saw the movie, but he talked about the Lion King on Broadway and a few other shows. He included in that Raisin' in the Sun, a few others, and I think working on Flying West was an eye-opening experience.

Speaker 2: 10:04

I had kind of discovered my queerness as well in that process. But I think there was something about watching these I mean, they were really talented black women who were freely emoting in these very vulnerable spaces that I thought to myself I think I can do that, I think I can give of myself and I think that there's a way that I can have permission to be vulnerable in these very public spaces, because the way I grew up, we don't really cry in public, we really don't. We kind of hold ourselves with the decorum as black people because we recognize that white people are always watching us and so there's a kind of a cultural understanding about how performance and performativity occupy spaces of identity in at least in my culture, in my black culture. So when I found out that there was this theater, this expression, this form of expression, and that black people were doing it, I was like oh wow, maybe that's permission for me to engage in that kind of way, and I always thought I was going to find my Flying West moment.

Speaker 2: 11:20

So I thought I was going to be some ways in that same particular space again and, like a drug, it was so intriguing to me that I had always sought out that kind of opportunity to be in space with black women and those kind of theatrical standpoints. And I don't know if I've ever actually since watching Flying West, if I've actually been in that kind of cohort of expression in that way of theatrical performance, in that way. But it doesn't stop my yearning for that and my ability to work with other black women in spaces that I also want to create that same kind of energy from. But I don't know if I ever like, if it was something like the Great Gatsby or, you know, like Julius Caesar, of which I actually really love Julius Caesar, shakespeare's Julius Caesar I don't know if I would have had the same kind of compellingness to it. Yeah, I think there was a lot of things going on in my identity at that time and recognizing my sexuality at that time that really caught me.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Yeah, and this, my friends, is why it is important to have diverse curricula at the undergraduate level. This is not a testament why I don't know what is so you fell in love with theater in this class that you were told to take because it was an easy A on your way to aviation school. Why go on and continue to study it? I think you know theater is one of those fields where most people who become interested in it do theater, they perform, they become artists. Why decide to continue on the scholarly pursuits and the scholarly investigation of theater?

Speaker 2: 13:05

That's a really great question. So I thought of myself as an actor and as an actress and that I was going to pursue theater from that standpoint. But it wasn't until probably my because my program was really about, like my mentor and my professor was really about funneling us into graduate programs. So you know, her goal was to see us in MFA programs because we were getting BA, Bachelor of Arts degrees, so she really wanted to see us get terminal degrees. So it probably wasn't until like once I was done with my four and a half years at Western Michigan that I realized that all of my pursuits had been in the study of theater, that I was so intrigued by every aspect of it. I mean, I took every theater class that I could take. I took scenic design, I took lighting design, I took. My advisor was like wow, you have a lot of electives and I'm like, yeah, and I'm going to keep going too. You know, just because I was so intrigued by it. But it wasn't until I was done with my program that I was like, you know, I want to be an actor but really I really want to keep theater at the center of my life. Like how do I keep it, you know, if I don't decide to be an actor, how do I still keep it as part of it, and I think that's where the theater studies started to kind of come through. So I made sure to pick a graduate program in my MFA that I thought was going to kind of give me both of that sense so that I could study acting and kind of have a very focused understanding of acting, but it also allowed me to teach as well. So my last two years of my graduate program I got a chance to teach and really thinking about like pedagogy and forming that and how that also impacted my desire to just study theater was also really important. I made sure that I got to be a TA for the theater history classes for the undergraduate students so that also kept me in conversation with other ways of practicing and studying theater and so that that became kind of the goal of it.

Speaker 2: 15:10

But I took a little bit of time between my MFA and my PhD. I took about six years off because I didn't know, like my friends had all been telling me, you know, in grad school, are you going to go get a PhD? You're such a egghead and I was like no, no, that's really not for me. I'm not really because I was really scared of it, you know, because a PhD means a lot and going into that kind of like. My graduate program was already, you know, pretty rough in terms of like thinking about racism and and and it. You know it was already really rough. It was really an old white man's club and I thought it's probably not going to get any easier in a PhD program. So I'm going to take a little bit of time.

Speaker 2: 15:51

And then I started to enjoy film and I started to produce film and that way, when I and I moved to New York and I started producing film and that kind of occupied a lot of my time. But so, yeah, there was a little bit of space of time before I decided to go get the PhD, of which I realized by that point in my life I had already had my daughter that really I did want to teach theater and that, for whatever that was going to look like, that I wanted to be able to teach theater. And so I pursued the PhD with always the thought in mind of keeping theater at the center of it but also marrying that with teaching and learning. And how was that going to expand. I had no idea what my research interest was going to be when I started my PhD program. It wasn't until once I was in it that that came about. But knowing that, like the core of me, wanted to teach and learn and then also keep theater at the center was really, was really profound for me.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Yeah, I love that. So why did you? What were some of the considerations that you were thinking through as you decided to go to Bowling Green State and ultimately did you? After the fact, did you feel like that was the right decision for you?

Speaker 2: 17:12

Yeah, yeah, it was, it really was. I thought I was going to in order to get a PhD. I thought I was going to have to go back and get an MA, because a lot of PhDs have a master of arts in theater studies and theater history before they moved to the PhD program. And my advisor, or my mentor from Western Michigan, had done a lot of work with a professor who taught at Bowling Green and she was telling me you know, I think they're going to really appreciate your practical understanding of theater and that that's a strength of yours. And this program really does marry the study of theater, the history of theater, but also thinking about the practice of it and how do you articulate that practice through these lenses of historiography, of history and of the study of it. And she really encouraged me to apply and I'm glad I did.

Speaker 2: 18:07

It was the right program for me.

Speaker 2: 18:09

It was actually the best program for me because coming in I did not have a strong background and criticism in that way and my professors were really generous in working with me.

Speaker 2: 18:22

But I had a really strong practice skill set in that I was an actor and I was a director and I had worked in film and there were a lot of things that I could bring to the classroom that could really help students nuance what they were learning in the study of it, and so it was definitely the right program for me, because Bowling Green does a really good job of marrying that skill set, and so, just like our comprehensive exams are not just we sit down and we take an exam, it's that we actually have to prepare a portfolio of like four or five articles, papers that can become articles, and then you also defend that.

Speaker 2: 19:03

You defend that portfolio of papers, and that was perfect for me, because I did want that sense of like what's the utility of this degree? What is it going to really teach me to do when I'm in the field, when I'm actually a professor or for whatever? Because a lot of people get PhDs and they don't necessarily go to the classroom. They go in a lot of different fields and they you know. So, yeah, so Bowling Green was really perfect for that that it wasn't this traditional, you know, sort of PhD mill that was churning out scholars, but that it was churning out scholars that were also really deeply interested in the practice of it and how the application of theater nuances the study of it, and so it was a. It was a really right choice.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Yeah, this sounds kind of like you know. I'm trying to draw an analogy between, like professional PhDs, like DRPH is a doctor of public health versus a PhD in public health, or a a society versus a PhD in psychology and those kinds of doctoral programs. There is very much a consideration of the practice of the field and I had it. I didn't realize that there were theater PhD programs that were framed in that way and it sounds as if this program was exactly that. So that's really cool. Before we started recording, you were telling me a story about your daughter.

Speaker 1: 20:30

And so I would love for you to speak a little bit too. You know, since I now know that you started your doctoral program with a young child in tow and you also, at the start of the episode, mentioned kind of moving around to a couple of different places, can you talk a little bit about, you know, your thought process of starting a PhD with a toddler and whether, yeah, what was going on in your mind in terms of location, in terms of support systems, in terms of just work, life balance?

Speaker 2: 21:00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. It was me and my little mama. That's that's what I call Eve. She's my little mama for a variety of reasons. So you know I was I wasn't divorced just quite yet.

Speaker 2: 21:14

I was separated when I decided to go and get the PhD at Bowling Green State and I also thought you know, bowling Green is about an hour and a half from Detroit where my brother lives with his family so I thought I got family. That's also a great program too, because I also have family that's close by and my mom with the time was in Texas. So I was separated and I didn't quite have a divorce yet because I didn't know if that was going to be in the cards. But when we moved to Bowling Green, it was just me and Eve.

Speaker 2: 21:46

It was me and my little mama. And when I finally did decide that a divorce was going to be the best, like permanent separation was going to be the best, I remember like having this like dreaded feeling of no, we really are alone, like we don't have any support. It's just me and her, and while my brother is an hour and a half away in this space, it's me and her and she relies on me and she needs me to be the kind of mother that prioritizes her, and that was a challenge in a PhD program which really is set up to prioritize the work.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Right.

Speaker 2: 22:27

And so trying to find the balance in that was really was really tough, but we figured it out. There was a lot of struggle but there was also a lot of fun in that too, of going, of having. So I have two stories for you actually. So the first story is that my program was incredibly supportive of me having a child. I mean really supportive, like I could bring Eve to class if I absolutely needed to. There was professors like Goddard that I was a parent and that that was really important to me. But there was this one time where it was just a rush.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Evie's daycare was closed for the day and she was about two and a half, she was about three, two and a half three years old and she I stopped at McDonald's, picked up McDonald's. She likes the big breakfast with the hotcakes, so I got that some syrup. I brought it there. My idea was that Evie was going to stay in the kitchenette because we have a kitchen area at my, at my former institution. We have a kitchen area. So she's going to stay in the kitchen area, eat her breakfast and then I'm going to check on her when we have a break and make sure she's okay. But she's going to hang out here. She's got like a little device, I think, at the Kindle at the time. So I say, wait here, I'll be right back, I'm just going to put my stuff down. I come back and Evie is covered in syrup. She had opened up the syrup on her own because she thinks she know everything, which is why she's a little mama. She pours the syrup and gets it all over herself and I'm just and she's standing in the kitchen crying, oh. And my one of my professors walked by and saw us and she looks at me and she says go to class, I got this. And I was like are you sure? She was like I got this, I'm a mom, I get it. You go to class. Me and her are going to hang out here. And she cleaned Evie up. I came back out for my break and her and Evie were sitting there laughing and chatting and talking. She had cleaned up Evie and that's one of the examples of like support there that you know they. They had my back in a lot of ways. And then I got boy, I had another story and I just I just lost it, but, but, but, but, yeah. So that's an example of just like that sense of support and feeling like, you know, we were on our own, but really, in reality, we did have. We did have some support and, yeah, I wasn't able to go to all the parties that I wanted to go to, but it was cool, you know, like it was me and little mama. Oh, I got this story. Okay, so this is my story and I'm we're going to keep going. I'm tell all these stories.

Speaker 2: 25:21

I was working on the. I did an ethnography. My dissertation was an ethnographic dissertation that married theater, ethnography and and performativity. So I had to go into the field a lot in order to do it and if I went to the field, evie was with me. So she was little mama was with me. One night I'm working on, you know, collect, like going through interviews, and it's it's late, and Evie's like mama, it's time to go to bed. And I'm like okay, evie, I'm going to be there in just a minute, just, I'm going to be there in just a minute. She's like no, mama is time for bed. I was like I said I will come to you in a moment. She says, mommy, my, your bed two minutes right now. And she goes up the stairs and stumps up the stairs and I'm like okay, time to work away and go get in the bed because Evie's like I, really I'm ready for my cuddle.

Speaker 1: 26:24

Wow, not her giving you a bedtime, but I mean. I love that accountability because it's so often that we like want to keep on grinding and it's not good for our health, it's not good for our wellbeing and it definitely especially if you're caring for other people. You can't care for others effectively if you're sleep deprived. So she was like no ma'am you need to go to sleep, I love it.

Speaker 2: 26:46

Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1: 26:50

So what were some of the other high point successes and some of the challenges that you experienced during your doctoral journey?

Speaker 2: 27:00

Um, let's see some high points was is that even in my you know, my, my well, two things. So even in my sort of lack of understanding always of understanding of the criticism part the theater criticism part it never stopped my desire to engage in that way and to think about it from my practice oriented perspectives. And one of the highest points was that I even won an award for one of my papers that I delivered. I won this $500 award and this I think I actually. I think I actually have the. I can't get it right now, but I have the plaque that they gave me. But a low point on in that was that I couldn't go to the presentation because I had Evie and I didn't want to bring her. You know, she needed to dress nicely for it. I just didn't have the money to get her anything nice to wear, and so I was. I missed the, I missed the presentation for it because I had, you know, my little mama, and so so I think the sort of balancing of, like, the fact that I'm able to have these kind of conversations and I'm brave enough to do this work, was really encouraging. But there were moments where, you know, I just couldn't, you know, I just couldn't be at certain places because I had you know, I had, I had a child, I have a child and that's that's necessary.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Probably another low point I'd have to say was that I really wanted to write my dissertation about Zora, no Hurston. I really wanted to write it about Zora, no Hurston, but I struggled with the right mentorship to be able to make that happen. I didn't have any scholars in my program that were as familiar with thinking about black womanhood because that's what I was interested in is, thinking about black womanhood in her texts and I just didn't have that kind of mentorship available. But what I did have was mentorship and ethnography and a lot of my professors were ethnographers themselves and were were in performance and thinking about anthropology and a lot of that way. So I ended up writing my dissertation about about that. But yeah, so that's probably like a pretty low point was the discovery that that wasn't gonna happen and I was gonna have to put Zora on the back burner was pretty that that was hard, that was hard to take but the I was gonna say, but the I mean.

Speaker 1: 29:41

The one of the benefits of being a scholar and being trained in this work is that the work it just continues like. Once you get your doctoral degree, you can continue to do research, you can continue to do work. My little mama is talking to us now.

Speaker 1: 29:55

I have one quick question before we kind of get into your life postdoctoral, postdoctoral, and this just came to me as you were talking about theater criticism. Theater is an industry where criticism is baked into the work, and so is academia, and I think that something that some one of the many things that often folks who are not familiar and don't know a lot of people who get a doctoral degree are surprised by is the kind of feedback you get on written work. You know, when you submit an article and it just comes back rejected. So I would love if you could kind of speak to, if at all and if in. If so, in which ways did the field of theater prepare you, the criticism that is embedded, that culture of criticism that is embedded in theater, how did that prepare you to navigate getting feedback and criticism on your scholarly work?

Speaker 2: 30:59

um, that's a really great question. So I think that my program did a good job in preparing us for that kind of engagement through through like active, participatory ways. So for example, in one of my classes, scott Moggleson he's now at Washington University of Washington. He was at the time the editor for a journal, for the Journal of Dramatic Theater, I think he was. I quite remember JCT. Anyway, he was the journal managing editor and he was like guess what? I'm gonna teach you a little bit about how to manage a journal. We're doing that this semester and it was supposed to be a theater methods class, so kind of fit in that method ease kind of way. But through that we got to read papers and adjudicate papers and really learn and really speak the language of critical thought.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Critical thinking and being able to help usher of author through their thinking and their ideas about a particular topic, and that was really rewarding is having that sense of reading other people's work and I mean, like you know, fairly big scholars who were writing to the journal and submitting articles to the journal really did help us prepare for how to think about our own work through these critical lenses and so I'm really great it was, it was.

Speaker 2: 32:27

It was challenging work but I'm really grateful for it because it prepared me certainly right now I, as a managing editor for my, for our journal, to really engage in that kind of thought-provoking, those thought-provoking ways of other people's scholarship that then I get to weigh in on in that way.

Speaker 2: 32:47

So I felt like of the program did a good job of at least this professor did a really good job of introducing us to criticism by looking at other people's work and being able to respond in that in a, in a way that was generative for the, for the author. So it wasn't in this way of like I am the critic, you know it's, it's my job to, you know, glean your work through these, through these lenses that aren't that are more self-serving for me as it is for you. But the idea of gift giving that it was really about gift giving, that my feedback to an author helped an author nuance their thinking about something that was really like giving a gift to them and then in and then I also received something in return when an author resubmitted a paper for for further feedback and inclusion in the journal. So that was, if that answers the question, I think does?

Speaker 1: 33:50

yeah, it does, and I think that that framework of feedback as a gift is powerful and a really great reframing for folks who struggle to receive feedback, who kind of hold on to their scholarship and their work because they're afraid of sending it out until it's perfect. So they get positive feedback. Sorry, I really like I'm glad you shared that anecdote. So now I want to talk about your life and work post PhD. So, as you mentioned, zora Neale Hurston's work is really significant to you. You wanted to study her work while you were doing your doctorate. Didn't get to do it to the end, but you were able to do it after. How does her theatrical work resonate with your exploration of black womanhood and intersect with your anthropological and ethnographic research?

Speaker 2: 34:37

oh, wow, that's a I all these great questions. I tell you, though, if you give a, if you give a scholar an opportunity to stand on their platform, we'll take it. So box will take it. So my fascination was or no, for Hurston first came out of my graduate program, where I took a class in theatrical modernism, or American modernism, that looked at, you know, plays, reframe them, reframe these plays through this very theatrical lens, and Zora Neale Hurston was one of the scholars that were part of that.

Speaker 2: 35:11

I didn't even know she wrote plays until I took that class and discovered that she had written a lot of plays and in a lot of ways, theater was actually going to, because at the time period, theater was gonna save the race and a lot of ways a lot of artists of that time period, of the early of the new Negro period and of the early Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century, really did feel like theater was gonna save the race, and Hurston was not, was not immune to that, actually believed that as well and attempted through her theatrical work to paint a story and tell a story about black, southern black folks and their own, from their own perspectives, and so her anthropological work and her ethnographic work really attempts to. It's actually quite joined in that by having this beautiful, rich ethnographic work, in this anthropological work, the theater helps realize that. It helps realize that for audiences and while Hurston, I think, was attempting to write towards black audiences so that black people could see themselves in these, in these, in these ways and really understand self and identity, a lot of funding came from white people, and so I think that there is a little bit of twofold in terms of audiences, of how it is that audiences really received. Hurston's work was from this you sort of white gaze, but also to from the black gaze as well and people who identified with those cultures, kind of like how we see gospel plays today. You know, if you've ever seen a gospel play, it's definitely has a lot of Christian undertones I'd say Christian overtones as part of them, but they also speak to culture and they speak to black culture and Hurston moved in that same kind of way.

Speaker 2: 37:05

So so, yeah, so I think, in terms of my own investigations of her work, that black womanhood appears as a stark contrast to black malehood, to black men, in the play, in these plays, and a lot of times black women are arguing for one aspect of identity. And then black men are often arguing for something, for something different, but they find a way in her place to meet in the middle. They don't always agree, but they find a way to resolve some kind of conflict or come from some kind of position. And so I'm really intrigued by that intersection of of gender and identity, where black women are professing a lot of the desire to be looked at as human and is treated as human beings and not as objects, and so negotiating that, while at the same time they are also in domestichood, thinking about being mothers, thinking about being wives.

Speaker 2: 38:13

One of my favorite moments in a play, one of Hersta's plays, the Turkey and the Law, is at the very beginning of Act Two, where these women in the community are talking about what's needed for their community, what's needed for the men to understand themselves, while at the same time talking about cooking and cooking for their men.

Speaker 2: 38:33

And so it's really complicated in that either professing a sense of self by talking about the needs of the community and what needs to happen in order for the conflict to be resolved, but at the same time they're like I gotta go make dinner, because you know, if so-and-so doesn't have dinner on the table, there's gonna be trouble. So that really complication is very interesting for me, and so I'm currently and I'm hoping that it's kind of like one of those lifelong loves. I do a lot of things in the theater but I'm kind of hoping that Hersta is one of my lifelong loves, that I'll constantly be revisiting her plays because there's just so many juicy bits that are part of it, but that I'll always be sort of coming back to it in those ways.

Speaker 1: 39:23

So I have just a few more questions as we start to wind down. I want, I'm dying to hear about your solo performance work. Can you talk about some of the issues that you address in your solo work? Why even do solo work as opposed to I don't know if the opposite of solo work now that I'm saying it, I'm like I don't she don't know the appropriate theatrical term for non-solo work but what inspired you to do solo performance work and what are some of the main issues and conflicts and themes that you tend to address in your solo performances?

Speaker 2: 40:01

Oh, yeah, this is. You guys got all these great questions. This is so awesome. Okay, so my interest?

Speaker 2: 40:09

So I have a certificate in performance studies from my institution and so a lot of my professors spent a time doing ethnographic work and connecting it to theater and particularly theatrical practice. And so, working on my dissertation, it kind of opened the door for me, for how could I express the complicated feelings and the complicated interpretations of black identity that's explored in my dissertation? How could that be actualized? How can, similar to Zorin Al-Herson, how can what I was learning in the field be effectively understood through the body? And so how does the body become this space and this become this apparatus for nuancing identities, particularly black female identities? And so I began to sort of muse about the notion of solo performance. Solo performance is incredibly theatrical. It's storytelling, and a very theatrical from a very theatrical standpoint, with the ability of which for the performer to connect with audience and recognize that through the process of storytelling, there's a theatrical element, that there's a connection to audience, and a very direct connection to audience, as opposed to in scene work, where there's a direct connection to the other, knowing that you are being watched through another kind of lens. So it's two sort of separate, different spaces and so I was really interested in the solo performance component of it.

Speaker 2: 41:46

And then auto ethnography really came about in my graduate experience too, in writing about auto ethnography and really thinking about what does it mean to be reflexive in how it is that really performance, auto ethnography? So how to be sort of thinking reflexively about self in these very theatrical sort of performative ways, so acknowledging that performance, identity and theatrical storytelling can exist simultaneously to tell a larger story about what's happening in the world and making larger connections between self and larger issues that are happening. And so my solo auto ethnographic work really attempts to respond to that. And because of the time when I was in graduate school I was really thinking about black motherhood and a lot of those spaces, my writing of my solo auto ethnographic work really took shape there. I was really intrigued.

Speaker 2: 42:55

One of my very first pieces was called Blunt Force Trauma is called Blunt Force Trauma, where I was really intrigued by how it is that a mother could hurt her child. I had taken, I had learned about a story of a black woman who had murdered her son because he had thrown a Wii controller, a remote controller, a video game controller into a television, to their television, and so she beat him to death. And yeah, it was very tragic. She had beat him to death and the thing was is she waited five days in their apartment for him to die. And the whole time she doesn't the whole thinking of it I think her processing of it is that she doesn't think he's that bad, and she was also. When she was caught by the police and arrested and incarcerated, she told the judge that she was afraid and that she was scared that she was going to get in trouble.

Speaker 2: 43:59

And we talk about a 19 year old mother of two who was a parent, and so I was really intrigued by that idea about how could there be empathy and compassion for someone who could do something so horrible to another human being, also their child. And so that intersection of just finding empathy I felt like solo auto ethnographic performance gave me a way to look through my own life and how I was parenting my own child, because we really don't know as parents if we're doing a good job. We listen to what our elders and our ancestors tell us about parenting, but we don't know we could be causing harm. We could be doing harm. So I wanted a way to negotiate that and I felt like solo auto ethnographic performance gave me the platform and really gave me the lens to be able to critically understand how it was that I how was my relationship to my daughter? Sort of sort of a dance, how was my relationship to my daughter really impactful compared to this woman who had had a relationship with her son in this way? And so I say all that to say that soul auto ethnographic performance really does open up spaces of empathy and really the exploration of humanness in that.

Speaker 2: 45:28

So when you're connecting a very hot topic to thinking about self, it opens up the door for a lot of conversations that audiences can have with each other, that audiences can have with the performer.

Speaker 2: 45:44

So always making sure that any of my performances I have talk backs so it gets the audience talking about what it is that I did is really important and really valuable.

Speaker 2: 45:55

So it becomes this beautiful way of expression. That's also this way of learning and navigating how we know and what we know and so, yeah, so I feel very privileged to do that kind of work, because there's a lot of troubling ways that you can get caught up in self and forget that the work really is for a larger audience and we learn something in that larger audience which I think separates the work of like, let's say, richard Pryor, who I also think is a very compelling solo performance artist, in the work of John Leguizamo and wanting to talk about his culture. Puerto Norican culture is solo performance in a way that is attempting to tell a story, but when you add the auto ethnographic component we begin to learn something about ourselves and about the communities at which we are part of, and the audience also gets that as well. So again about this gift exchange I'm all about exchanging gifts, y'all this beautiful exchanging of gifts that happen when we combine and really think through solo auto ethnographic performance.

Speaker 1: 47:14

I am just like so intrigued by all. This is so different from my work and really anything I'm familiar with. So I am like really curious. I'm going to scour the internet and figure out how we can find some of your work and some of your performances and we'll drop whatever we find in the show notes so that anyone else listening can also better understand and hopefully be able to experience some of what you're talking about, that gift exchange of the auto ethnographic work from the actor, the performer to the audience. It just sounds so fascinating, so I'm really excited to delve in a little bit more deeply. Final two questions as you reflect on your doctoral journey, what's one thing that you would do differently if you had to do it all over again?

Speaker 2: 47:58

Oh, yeah, okay. So if I had to do it all over again, I was going to a lot of conferences when I was a graduate student and I think if I had to do it all over again, I would have involved myself and more theater groups that were that had like strong, like I don't want to say strong, but just had more black women as part of like, as part of those conversations. So being able to, you know, go to ATHAs, association for Theater and Higher Education, which is really expensive to go to and connecting with the Black Theater Association there, bta, where there are a lot of black women who occupy a lot of those spaces, and so just being able to, you know, do more to make those connections. And if I, and if not, like, finding ways that I could facilitate that kind of engagement with black female scholars in the field, you know, I think if I had, you know, had sort of know what I know now and could go back, I would definitely want to do that kind of work.

Speaker 2: 49:07

And right now I'm really interested in creating those enclaves of black women who can support one another black women in theater, particularly black women in theater in the academy that can support one another and think about, like the process for tenure, and thinking about like how do we advance ourselves in a you know, I'm not going to lie very white supremacist, like spaces that the academy often they become, they often are, they often are, and so how do we support one another in our journeys and our collective journeys and our individual ways that we want to study and practice and think critically about theater is something that I definitely wish I had had in my graduate journey, for sure.

Speaker 1: 49:57

That makes a lot of sense. And last question what is one final piece of advice that you have for current black women and non binary doctoral students, perhaps, especially those who are in the humanities and the arts? What's some advice that you have for them?

Speaker 2: 50:12

Okay. So I know you asked me for one, but I got to. My first thing is is that, as black folks, we need a plan. We need a plan of action because folks will tell us you know why. Folks will tell us what that, what our scholarship should look like and the kind of communities that we should be working with and thinking about, especially as you move in the tenure process. So having a clear plan, a clear set of goals of what you intend to accomplish with your degree while you're in your program is going to be paramount. Making sure that, as you are goal planning and goal setting, you're also thinking about your own life and what is accomplishable. If you've got children, if you've got, you know a partner or a spouse. If you've got, you know your caretaker for your own, for your parents, for your families, you know what is. How are those goals going to be aligned in that way so that, in a lot of ways, no one can tell you what your degree is going to do and what you are going to do, but that you have clearly paved a way that is accessible to you, that takes into account the struggle because there is struggle, there is always struggle, so that you stay sane, you know. You know nobody gonna tell you you crazy. You know like you've got a clear path. So that's my, that's my first one.

Speaker 2: 51:53

My second one is that get a life. Get a life that is not in the academy, get a life that is filled with folks that care about you, that love you the most in your life I had. I had a. One of my, one of my friends in my cohort said you know, graduate school really makes you an asshole Because you forget you're. We're working so hard that we forget that we have families and so, no, no, a life like, imagine a life like.

Speaker 2: 52:29

Get a community, be part of a community, create this was one of the best things I ever went to was a sister soul group of black women who can sit in space with one another and meditate and talk and journal and just reflect on life. And it's your space. So a sister soul circle is a great, great spaces, because they also not only do they reify your commitment to a beautiful community of black women, but it also reifies who you are and what it is that you, what it is that you need in order to get you through your program or through your first tenure, track position or through just through the academy. So I would definitely say have a have a plan, a goal, a path that aligns with your own goals in your life, and then get a life.

Speaker 2: 53:19

Have friends, call your parents, call your, your aunties and your uncles and the people who care the most about you. Keep them in contact because I'll tell you they are supporting you, they are behind you, they love you and they care about you and they got your back and so recognizing that you are not alone, that's, that's some good that's. I'm gonna call that some good advice, it's really good advice.

Speaker 1: 53:46

That is a fantastic advice have a plan and get a life. Thank you so much, dr Gibbs, for sharing so much of your own doctoral journey, your work, your interests, your research, as well as really critical advice for our listeners. We're really excited to have had you on the Coversus's podcast.

Speaker 2: 54:06

Yes, yes, I am grateful. Thank you so much for this gift. I am very grateful to you. Much love to y'all. I appreciate you so much, Dr Cola. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 54:26

Thank you again for listening to this week's episode of the Cohort Sisters podcast. If you are a black woman interested in joining the Cohort Sisters membership community or you're looking for more information on how to support or partner with Cohort Sisters, please visit our website at wwwcohortsistuscom. You can also find us on all social media platforms at Cohort Sisters. Don't forget to subscribe to the Cohort Sisters podcast and leave us a quick review wherever you're listening. Thank you so much for joining us this week and we'll catch you in next week's episode.