Playwright Spotlight: Silma Sierra Berrada

An interview with Silma Sierra Berrada, written and conducted by Kith & Kin board officer Selena Milewski.

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A no-nonsense student activist and the immortal survivor of a lynching? Silma Sierra Berrada’s elegant script leaves us with the sense that, somehow, far stranger things have happened. In Alala and The Scarman, the supernatural meets the stark and unglamorous realities of the modern dynamics of power and oppression. Will love prevail? Could perspectives joining wisdom across generations point the way? Using spare, naturalistic prose, Barrada weaves a tale that is as engagingly fresh as it is unnervingly familiar.

MILEWSKI:

You’ve shared that the real-life inspiration for the character Shiny Herald is Dr. James Cameron, founder of Milwaukee’s Black Holocaust Museum and survivor of a 1930 lynch mob. What initially drew you to Dr. Cameron? How does integrating parts of a real person’s life experience shape your writing process and the narrative?

BERRADA:

I grew up in Mequon, Wisconsin and with that comes being one of the only Black kids in almost every room. And it was either a day my mom was taking me to see my grandma or to a rehearsal downtown, we drove past this building and I happened to look up at the name. Black Holocaust Museum. Three words that say everything. You see, in school we spent weeks learning about the Holocaust and a day pretending to be slaves going through the underground railroad. Since I was little, I felt something was off. And seeing that institution existence proved to me my intuition was right all along. I never made it inside as a kid, but I held those words until I wrote my first play at twenty years old.

I found myself thinking about that museum, or more so the name Black Holocaust Museum. And with a google search, I discovered the founder Dr. Cameron, the survivor of a lynching attempt. I didn't use much of his particular history. But rather, he stirred up a mythology within me. His story was a living symbol for what it means to be Black in America. What does it mean to not only survive an atrocity, but to carry that survival? And how does one heal from a scar that society reminds us will never fully close? For Dr. Cameron I think the answer to what you do with that scar was the museum. He alchemized the pain into legacy. For Shiny it's harder. He's still inside it. The scar is still open. The play lives in that gap, between survival and transformation, between carrying a wound and being able to put it down.

MILEWSKI:

What do you hope audiences will feel when they engage with the relationship between Alala and Shiny? What do you hope they will ultimately consider as they observe these characters in relation to one another and their world?

BERRADA:

I hope the audience sees themselves in these two people. Two people in love trying to figure it out; but unable to, because they are each carrying their own histories. And with those histories come their own masks, their own performances, their own ways of trying not to address their past. How does one love when both haven’t finished healing? And the tenderness of two people trying anyway.

MILEWSKI:

On your artist website, you describe using “art as remembrance: helping people reconnect to themselves, their ancestors and history, and the sacred elements present in our day to day routine.” How does Alala and The Scarman accomplish this goal, bridging gaps between people and revealing the sacred within the mundane?

BERRADA:

I see the spiritual in everything, especially the mundane. My ancestors are everywhere, and they usually arrive in the quietest moments. The play is just what happens when I stop and pay attention to that. The séance at the end of the play is the most literal expression of this— Alala trying to reach her mother across death. There’s also the language lessons, the gratitude rituals, the protest in the play. These are all acts of remembrance, of reaching back to something that was broken before the play even begun. The play asks what we do when that connection can't be fully restored.

And that reckoning lives inside the relationship itself. We are watching two people try so hard and just barely miss each other, because in order to truly meet they would have to face their own histories first. This kind of love is one of the most sacred things we are given. It’s the opportunity to learn about the parts of ourselves we’ve try to hide.

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A segment of Alala and The Scarman will be presented during K&K New Plays, which runs October 2nd - 4th at Inspiration Studios in West Allis. Secure your tickets here.