Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers explores Black life 'beyond headlines and hashtags'

University of Lethbridge graduate Makambe K. Simamba presents her award-winning solo show Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers in Calgary at Arts Commons through Sept. 28. (Photo: Tarragon Theatre/Cylla von Tiedemann)

Makambe K. Simamba’s little brother didn’t understand the talk.

That’s the conversation parents have with their Black sons as they enter adolescence and need a primer in case they should find themselves in an unanticipated encounter with a law enforcement officer, which is sort of at the core of Simamba’s solo show Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers which opens Friday night at Arts Commons.

Simamba’s little brother who is seven years younger than the University of Lethbridge theatre graduate, grew up in the Caribbean, where Simamba’s family relocated from her birthplace of Zambia, until he was 10 years old when the family immigrated to Canada, where, as Simamba describes it, “he grew up in a very safe, multi-cultural space.”

All of which, when he finally got the talk, left him somewhat befuddled.

“That’s a necessary talk,” Simamba said, “but no one ever wants to do it.

“In my brother’s case, it was interesting to hear him push back against it, because he couldn’t understand why it (interacting with police officers) should be dangerous.

“His response was, ‘Why would a police officer do that?’” she said.

Our Fathers, which premiered in Toronto in 2019, was inspired in part by the 2012 shooting of Black teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida.

Zimmerman was a neighbourhood watch coordinator in a gated community who was suspicious of Martin, who was visiting relatives and carrying nothing except a bag of Skittles at the time of his death.

The drama was developed at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, where it had its world premiere in 2019. Simamba has performed it more than 100 times since, winning a pair of Dora Prizes (the Toronto equivalent of the Bettys) for Best New Play and Solo Performance, but Simamba has been anxious to perform it in Calgary, where her first solo show, A Chitenge Story ignited her career back in 2018 and also where another solo effort, Makambe Speaks, was produced (by Handsome Alice and Ghost River) in 2023.

“I’m very excited to be in Alberta,” she said. And in fact, the show’s unique form owes a lot, she says, to what she learned as an undergraduate at the University of Lethbridge.

“(The) year I graduated,” she said, “(I took) something special – a multi-discliplinary (program) where we were encouraged to figure things out in the program versus when you’re in a conservatory program you’re in a very specific (type of artistic) stream.”

That emphasis on multi-disciplinary and non-realistic storytelling is part of how Simamba dives into the world of Our Fathers, which opens with her playing a teenage Black boy in the afterlife, reflecting on how he got there, calling for God and getting no response in return, forcing him onto a "sacred journey through the unknown."

Simamba is also a trained dancer, who incorporates a lot of movement into the show, which she describes as a “non-naturalistic” exploration of “what happens to a Black body inhabiting a largely white space."

That’s also the question every Black family must answer when they try to assess at what point it’s necessary to sit down a son and have that talk.

“When is it too soon?” Makambe asks. “What’s the balance there?”

Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers runs through Sept. 28 at the Big Secret Theatre in Arts Commons.

For tickets and information, go here.