Lennora Esi

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/08/04

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have some background in human rights activism; what is it?

Lennora Esi: I volunteered with Amnesty International. The first time I started volunteering was back in school. My friends and I started like our own youth group at the school that we all attended and that’s basically how I kind of got into it. Then after school I just volunteered in different places. I volunteered in a soup kitchen for a couple months; this was back in Germany. Then at a refugee camp in Germany for a couple sessions and then when we moved to Vancouver, I started volunteering with the Amnesty Downtown group here in Vancouver. And so basically, a lot of our work was like organizing different events and trying to draw attention to different issues like human rights issues around the world. So, we had bunch of different events throughout the past couple years that I’ve been working with them. We had one event on Palestine and the Olive Harvest Festival last year. We had one event that was also last year like thinking of the victims of the Holocaust. So, we did an event on the 27th of January with a volunteer of Life After Hate, which is like an exit group out of hate groups and he did a talk on his life experiences, being part of a hate group for a long time and then getting out of it. I think he was even part of the founding of the organization that now helps other people who are in like white supremacy groups or hate groups to get out of them. So, we do a bunch of events that we just try to focus on different issues sometimes, it’s very concentrated to like a specific topic and sometimes it’s broader. So, that’s basically a lot that I do and with my artistic work, I try to kind of combine it with human rights activism. 

What I’ve done often in the past is when I have a performance, I try to bring petitions that people can sign or have specific themes especially when it’s art that I make myself. If it’s like songs, I try to do tributes to certain issues or I wrote a play back in Germany that was about racism, homophobia, and fat shaming. So, I try to also draw attention to Human Rights activism not only through what we call traditional activism but also through art because it touches people in a different way. So, I think that’s kind of like my background. 

Jacobsen: And in Vancouver, how did you find Rzgar and The Sky Theater group?

Esi: I actually found it over LinkedIn. So, I was looking for new opportunities because I went to acting school back in Germany and then when I came to Vancouver, I was doing a lot more dance. So, I’ve pretty much been working as like a dance instructor and doing dance performances over the past two years and I really wanted to get back to theater and I found Sky Theater group. I think I just was scrolling through LinkedIn and I found I think the original pamphlet that he put out where he said he was looking for immigrants and refugees to kind of tell their stories and I just sent him a message and I was like if you need any help like on the back end of things, not with directing, but if you need like an assistant or anything where I can be of help, I would love to love to join. Then he got back to me and it kind of just went from there and then Hila also came on board. It was like the three of us kind of sharing the work. 

Jacobsen: With regards to tasks and responsibilities for Sky Theater group, what are they for you?

Esi: In the beginning it was basically like assisting with whatever they needed. In the first round I guess, I was like in charge of taking notes; I took notes of all the meetings that we had so Rzgar and Hila, she was the assistant director, so they could focus on working with the participants and I was just taking notes, so that in retrograde we could look back and see what was worked on in the different meetings. Also, I helped with writing the stories. They were writing the stories but I kind of went over like syntax and grammar and things like that. That was like further on in the process so that when it came to the actual reading, everything from the English side of things was in place. 

Jacobsen: How did you find working with Rzgar because I know he’s been doing this for a very long time? 

Esi: I found it very interesting because like with every director you learn something different and every director has very different way of going at things. And coming from Germany, we’re always very direct like there’s one way to go and I found he gave the participants a lot of space also to explore. A lot of it was also because not all of them were performers, it was like a group of different people. Some of them had performed before, some of them had never done anything like performances and so it was very interesting to see his approach how to kind of get them all on the same level. It was a lot of exercises, it was a lot of exploring within the body, expression in the voice and what I found wonderful is that he gave me and Hila a lot of space also to bring in our input because with a lot of directors they’re like “This is mine, this is my thing that I came up with,” who kind of want to have a hand over the project. Rzgar was very open to always listen to criticism or ideas and also gave us a lot of room to work with the participants ourselves. It was just a very open space to explore and to work with each other.

Jacobsen: Something interesting about My Home is a Suitcase; in many plays you’re dealing with situations that never happened and people who do not exist. In this case you’re dealing with situations and stories that really happened and people who are right there who it happened to. What are some of the dynamics that you notice would be different compared to what typically be a standard acting either mentoring or training job or role?

Esi: I think part of it was figuring out how to open up to an audience about your own life which is a different kind of opening up than for actors because in acting you still have to have to find a place within yourself. They’re kind of evolving from the beginning because in the beginning when we wrote the stories it was really just a couple of sentences because we wanted to take it very slow until we wrote the whole thing and just to see their journey. From the beginning, just writing a couple sentences and then also going through their whole story again in their mind and also to see what they found was worth telling of their own story because this was basically telling their life stories in like 2,000 words which is hard to do. Of course, the stories are also very different. Everyone was from a different background, different country, different reasons why they left their respective homes. But to see what they found was worth telling from their own personal history if it was more like human rights activism that a lot of them did or if it was more like family based or more on the art side of things. How they wanted to tell their story and what framework but also what within their own stories compelled them to what they thought was sharable for the audience.

Jacobsen: Why limit them to 2,000?

Esi: It would just have to do with time because we had seven participants. So, it just had to do with basically how much can also the audience take because even seven participants and just the 2,000 words that they had was already almost a two-hour reading. So yeah, it just had to do with time pretty much.

Jacobsen: What do you notice were some of the trends in some of the stories without giving too many details away of course?

Esi: You mean in terms of like the themes?

Jacobsen: Yes, some of the themes that came up pretty consistently throughout the stories. 

Esi: A big thing was family like everyone talked about their parents and how it was growing up as a child in their country and then also how much their lives changed when they came to Canada because for all of them, no matter where they came from, Canada gave them possibilities that their own home countries didn’t give them but because all of them still have family in their country, so it’s the kind of this this feeling of being torn of feeling safer or maybe feeling more prosperous in this country but also knowing that their heart is still you know with their respective families back home.

Jacobsen: Do you think that’s a common experience? For instance, individuals who are refugees or displaced persons, typically it’s based on being forced out of it or coerced out of a situation. Individuals who are actors in Germany then choose to move to Vancouver; it’s a little less traumatic. Do you still think it’s a similar phenomenon whether traumatic or not in terms of still having one’s heart with home?

Esi: Yes, and I feel that no matter where you go or no matter how much you assimilate in the new country, you will always feel that part of you missing; home. I feel like even if you don’t have any family left in your home country or you maybe don’t speak with your family anymore in your home country for whatever reason, there’s still always going to be that longing because it’s the place that you were born, the place that you grew up. And even if you’re like “I would never move back,” I feel like for a lot of people there’s still something that will always be missing. Same with way vice versa I think, then for people who maybe lived in Canada for a long time who decide to go back home there will be things about Canada or wherever they choose or had to move to whatever country, if they leave that, then there will be things that they will miss when they go back to their home country.

Jacobsen: Do you think… because I did see one of the readings at UBC, do you think one of the big takeaways is the fact that in the end we basically are our stories?

Esi: Can you frame that question a little differently?

Jacobsen: Sure. I’m taking little bit of a cue from Margaret Atwood, but I mean after we die, what’s left? It’s our stories, right? What do people tell at the funeral? Similarly, as we travel to each place that we might get to in life if we luck enough to travel, we take our stories with us. So, our narratives are the orbiting bodies of our core identity. So, do you think that one of the trends or one of the thematic elements of some of these narratives that are being told by these participants is the idea that we are our stories?

Esi: I think so but now that you’re asking a question, I keep thinking of… do you know the Hamilton Musical?

Jacobsen: Sure.

Esi: The guy who plays Washington or like one of the parts that Washington sings is “you have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” The first time I heard Hamilton, that really struck me and of the whole 2-hour Musical, that is the sentence that sticks with me most because yes, we are a story and yes, we own our own narrative and we share our stories but, in the end, when we do die, we have no control over it. I feel like even within our lives there are a lot of things that we don’t have control over. So, our stories and our personalities and our lives are also changed and shifted by outer circumstances. I think what struck me so much about that sentence is that also you have to let go of certain things and let go of the feeling of control and that you have control over every single thing in your life because some things you don’t have control over, I think it’s just a matter of how you deal with the things that you don’t have control over and how you learn those lessons and go on from there, if that answers your question at all.

Jacobsen: Yes. What did you want to convey to each of the actors in training, the storytellers when you were training them? Because you were doing editing for them but you also do acting training and I would assume that you’d basically want to teach them like how do you pace and tell a story for instance? What were you trying to convey to them mainly in the time that you had with them?

Esi: I think there were two separate things. One of them was the writing itself and one of them was the delivering of what they had written. So, we did a lot of editing work also within the stories and it was different for everyone because some of them had written like a lot that we had to trim down. For others, they had written a little bit and then we had to kind of expand on what they had already written. We tried to stay within and we didn’t try to change the way that they wrote or what they thought was important that they wanted to write about but we tried to find for every single one kind of the essence of what they wanted to tell and just using things like what words they chose or what sentence goes where or what passage goes where that maybe makes more sense than to follow the story from top to bottom. In terms of delivering the story, it was just working with the body like how do you stay present, like you’re not moving around so much but you try to place yourself, try to speak from your diaphragm that’ll also just calm you down. 

For a lot of them, it was the first time that they stood in front of an audience at all and delivered something, especially so person personal on the first time.  So, it was important for them to also take that space, take the time, not to rush themselves, and to breathe in between. I think we did a lot of like breathing exercises. It would calm them down when they’re standing in front of an audience and then also for the audience to kind of follow the story because it’s easier for an audience if they feel like the person is really taking them on this journey with them and you can kind of breath with the person. So, the audience breathes with the story and they all did a fantastic job. The first reading that we did on Grandville Island, it was really great. I mean the second reading was really great too but because that was the first one and it was the first time that they were actually in front of an audience, it was really amazing to see how much they’ve grown from the beginning stages to where they got to in the end.

Jacobsen: When will be the main release of the stories of My Home is a Suitcase? 

Esi: The stories themselves have already been released. We had two readings and then I think Rzgar had another shorter reading with a couple of them in, I think it was in March. I was only there for the two readings in January and February, I think it was the second one. So, just the reading part is done but they will probably be part of the larger play because the larger play will not be based on their stories, it will be like different characters. So, the characters that are in the story are actually fictional but we’re going to bring back their story. So, they’re also going to be featured and reading parts of their stories throughout the play as well and that we’ll kind of have to see when it’s possible. I mean we’re planning for next year but since it’s going to be a live performance and we do want a live audience to be there, we’ll just have to kind of monitor with Covid, how long this thing goes and when it’ll be safe again to have a live audience.

Jacobsen: Lennora, thanks so much for your time.

Esi: Yeah, absolutely.

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