This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast.

[0:03] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that, but it's the show where you can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:10] Tonya Pinkins: I am so excited for my guest today.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: She is a force of nature.

[0:15] Tonya Pinkins: I first heard her at a 50-50 by 2020 event sponsored by Jill Soloway.

[0:21] Tonya Pinkins: That was the first time I heard her do a poem.

[0:24] Tonya Pinkins: Wow.

[0:24] Tonya Pinkins: I have since been online listening to her.

[0:28] Tonya Pinkins: And oh, just the energy, the power that exudes from her pores.

[0:34] Tonya Pinkins: Please join me in welcoming Staceyann Chin.

[0:39] Staceyann Chin: Listen, I just want to be able to say like that your spiel.

[0:43] Staceyann Chin: You know, I do a lot of like podcasts and like I step into a lot of spaces where people are like kind of leading into the show.

[0:49] Staceyann Chin: I'm like, you've got a real voice for like TV for like I'm like, that's so flawlessly done.

[0:56] Staceyann Chin: You didn't have to do a second thing for almost anything.

[0:59] Tonya Pinkins: That's nice.

[1:00] Staceyann Chin: I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to like get my radio voice on.

[1:03] Tonya Pinkins: Get your radio voice on.

[1:04] Tonya Pinkins: You are uh you're just you're so dynamic.

[1:07] Tonya Pinkins: I was listening to poems of you for of yours on YouTube today and just thrilled.

[1:12] Tonya Pinkins: Um, so we are here um for this conversation, but I don't want to just leave us in this one conversation because there's so much that is dynamic and wonderful about you that I want people to know about.

[1:22] Tonya Pinkins: But a couple of weeks ago I got a text from you inviting me to a salon at your house that seemed to be a continuation of a group of salons you'd been having with women who wanted to talk about Slave Play.

[1:37] Staceyann Chin: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[1:38] Staceyann Chin: I have women in my house like all the time.

[1:41] Staceyann Chin: Lots of times they're like good men who are allies, and lots of times there are lots of white people who come in and are, you know, you know, they know they have to talk about race and those kinds of things when they come through my doors.

[1:51] Staceyann Chin: But in my 20s, I moved here in my twenties from Jamaica, and one of the things that I noticed in um in New York is like, I don't know, people maybe they live in small apartments.

[2:01] Staceyann Chin: They don't want to have people in their house.

[2:03] Staceyann Chin: And I come from Jamaica where people stop off from work, they gather eat at each other's houses, they're in the front yard cooking, they're like just like the house the pl the home is a very dynamic place that has a and I know the South is like that here as well.

[2:17] Staceyann Chin: I was in Chicago and I had five generations under one roof.

[2:19] Staceyann Chin: So I like it.

[2:20] Staceyann Chin: So right.

[2:21] Staceyann Chin: So noise and people and conversations and we could be loud and no one feared that we were gonna we were arguing or killing each other.

[2:28] Staceyann Chin: That it was just like I disagreed with you and I'm gonna disagree with you loudly.

[2:31] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[2:31] Staceyann Chin: So um when I in my twenties, I you know, and 30s, as soon as I got an apartment, I mine was weekly.

[2:39] Staceyann Chin: People would come by, you know, young black lesbians, you know, young not so lesbians, you know.

[2:46] Staceyann Chin: And and you know, and just like uh uh, you know, the most amazing people used to come through and just, you know, on a Saturday night you could just come to Stacey Ann's house because there would be wine and there would be conversation and there would be talk.

[2:57] Staceyann Chin: Um my my house is a drop-in house.

[2:59] Staceyann Chin: If you know me, you can just kind of you can ring my doorbell and and and come up.

[3:04] Staceyann Chin: Um, because I'm Caribbean, I'm a Jamaican girl who likes company.

[3:07] Staceyann Chin: I don't go to work every day, I don't have co-workers.

[3:10] Staceyann Chin: That's my great sorrow.

[3:11] Staceyann Chin: I have no co-workers, and so I like when people come by to chat.

[3:15] Staceyann Chin: And uh I went and saw this Slave Play.

[3:17] Tonya Pinkins: Did you see the New York Theater Workshop or on Broadway?

[3:20] Staceyann Chin: Um, I saw it on Broadway.

[3:22] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[3:23] Staceyann Chin: And um I saw it with two white friends.

[3:26] Staceyann Chin: Um and lots of people were like, No, you gotta go on the night that's um Black Knight.

[3:30] Staceyann Chin: The black night, and it just didn't work out because I have an eight-year old kid, and I have to just be home when I have to be home.

[3:36] Staceyann Chin: And so the night I could go to see it was when my friend who you know went and got two tickets and said you should come with us.

[3:43] Staceyann Chin: And I went, and uh I was so bloody shocked.

[3:47] Staceyann Chin: Like you're shocked about um, you know, not shocked by like the content because I had a sense of kind of like you know, I didn't read a lot about it.

[3:55] Staceyann Chin: I just knew, you know, like um I had a lover who was like, You should go see this, you should definitely go see this, you have to go see Slave Play.

[4:01] Staceyann Chin: But because we were in uh a strange relationship that you know, um, if you want to ask me questions about it later, I can answer.

[4:10] Staceyann Chin: No, it wasn't interracial.

[4:10] Staceyann Chin: She was a black person who's like, you know, but we were like, we were we were navigating a lot of things, and so you know, I one of the ways in which I was being passive aggressive was like, I'm not gonna go see something if you say I should go see it.

[4:21] Staceyann Chin: Okay, so I didn't go to see it, and then it just happened that I went to see it, and um I was sitting in the front in the second row.

[4:29] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, that's very close.

[4:30] Staceyann Chin: I know, and all of the you know, the body fluids and the proximity.

[4:34] Staceyann Chin: Oh my god.

[4:36] Staceyann Chin: I mean, the licking of the boots and the slurping and the spitting and the proximity to someone's vagina, I don't know personally.

[4:44] Staceyann Chin: I mean, just very like, you know, uh and and then I didn't quite know what was happening because as I said, I wasn't reading what the play was about.

[4:52] Staceyann Chin: And so when this woman came out kind of dressed in this, you know, kind of like stereotypical garb of like the black woman on a plantation, and then she started twerking to to Rihanna, and I I was like, so I was like, I I was confused at first, and then by the time she started eating the watermelon/slash cantaloupe, like I was losing my mind.

[5:20] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, you were upset.

[5:22] Staceyann Chin: Not upset, just like in deep shock.

[5:24] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[5:24] Staceyann Chin: Because I had never seen anything like this, but I was upset too.

[5:28] Staceyann Chin: But I don't think I could get to the upset because I was still so shocked.

[5:31] Staceyann Chin: And I'm unshockable.

[5:32] Staceyann Chin: I'm the one who talk about like vaginas and like, you know, I mean, like you, if you listen to my work, you know what my vagina looks like, what it feels like, how it talks.

[5:40] Staceyann Chin: Yep, I'm not, I'm an open book, so to speak.

[5:43] Staceyann Chin: But this thing was remarkably provocative and crazy.

[5:47] Staceyann Chin: And you know, I I I it shocked me.

[5:51] Staceyann Chin: And and I watched the whole play and I watched, you know, the dynamics between the people, and some of it was very clever, and some of it was very witty, but I don't know if I got to the place where I thought that the black woman story should have been presented for this kind of consumption in this way.

[6:09] Tonya Pinkins: And what is this kind of consumption?

[6:11] Staceyann Chin: Um I I feel like um I feel like the play, you know, I can't, I can't, you know, I'm not about to censor anybody, so I can't say what shouldn't be done.

[6:21] Staceyann Chin: I can just say what it made me feel.

[6:22] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[6:23] Staceyann Chin: Um I felt as if the the black woman's character wasn't it wasn't given the nuance was missing from it.

[6:40] Staceyann Chin: Um so this black woman needs to be treated as if she were a slave.

[6:46] Staceyann Chin: She needs to enact the violation of rape and uh the violation of the power dynamics between her and the white massa and or plant or overseer as the I you know, I I I I don't know.

[7:02] Staceyann Chin: And then we didn't get deep enough into why and how, because I can't be policing other people's fantasies, so I can get turned on by just about anything.

[7:12] Staceyann Chin: I mean, people when they close their doors, they should be able to like fuck and you know, according to DH Lawrence, to eat and fuck and crow.

[7:12] Staceyann Chin: They should be able to do all those things.

[7:21] Staceyann Chin: I mean, without any kind of like, you know, moral police, you know, exactly in the bedroom.

[7:26] Staceyann Chin: But the question is, how do we publicly consume a black woman's desire, which has stuff to do with like violation and rape on it without talking about what it does to us and who is articulating it and who is consuming it?

[7:43] Staceyann Chin: Because the night I went, the fact that they only have like a black night now and then means that the audience was not that black.

[7:48] Tonya Pinkins: Correct.

[7:49] Staceyann Chin: So I'm in the room with all these white people who are kikiing and laughing and like snickering and sniggering to all kinds of comments and jokes about racism and about slavery and about sex and rape and plantation rape.

[8:02] Staceyann Chin: And I couldn't get with it.

[8:04] Staceyann Chin: I couldn't, I couldn't crawl into it.

[8:06] Staceyann Chin: And I I think I'm like as radical as they come, but I couldn't get with it.

[8:11] Tonya Pinkins: I I can I can I mean I had a completely different experience of it for me, having dated predominantly white men, it was like he had written my life.

[8:22] Tonya Pinkins: And he had written an aspect of my life in relationships with white men that I was like, you know, you think how can could could anyone even understand this dynamic of um I think another friend of mine and I were talking about like like why do we date white men?

[8:36] Tonya Pinkins: Well, for me, dating white men is because most black men don't want to date me.

[8:40] Tonya Pinkins: I'm too much trouble.

[8:42] Tonya Pinkins: I'm you know, I'm a lot of work.

[8:43] Staceyann Chin: I can see that.

[8:44] Tonya Pinkins: So they they don't want to, they don't want to date me.

[8:46] Staceyann Chin: Right.

[8:47] Tonya Pinkins: So for a white man, I'm I'm easy and they provide a bit of access.

[8:52] Tonya Pinkins: Um, they certainly have more discretionary income.

[8:55] Tonya Pinkins: Um, they can be Lord have mercy.

[8:57] Staceyann Chin: You up in here preaching, you're up in here reaching people's lives.

[9:01] Tonya Pinkins: They can be sympathetic to my troubles in a way that a white woman probably can be to a black man, whereas two black people together, it's like we both had a hard day, you know, nobody's getting any extra sympathy today.

[9:09] Staceyann Chin: Right.

[9:10] Tonya Pinkins: Right, right, right.

[9:11] Tonya Pinkins: But I have always longed for relationships with a black man, that that knowingness of something.

[9:16] Tonya Pinkins: And you know, I just haven't, I've had a couple, and if they haven't been successful.

[9:21] Tonya Pinkins: So most of my relationships have been with white men, and there is this dynamic that Slave Play got for me from the very beginning.

[9:29] Tonya Pinkins: That to me, what white supremacy, and it isn't a color melanin thing, is that they want to get to be whatever they want to be whenever they want to be it, and you must revolve around their need to be whatever they want to be.

[9:45] Staceyann Chin: And to me, that's what that play showed.

[9:48] Tonya Pinkins: Like when the white man didn't want to uh to uh participate in a scene that made him so uncomfortable.

[9:55] Staceyann Chin: Correct.

[9:56] Tonya Pinkins: He didn't want to be uncomfortable for the sake of her sexual pleasure.

[9:59] Staceyann Chin: Exactly.

[9:59] Tonya Pinkins: And that was like, oh, don't I know the truth of that?

[10:02] Tonya Pinkins: I had literally uh like a week before the seeing the play, I had been taking a class at the academy with Kasia Urbaniak, and it was about women's empowerment, and we were learning about subbing and domming, and we were learning how to ask because for black women we are uber doms, we are always serving everybody's needs, everybody's things.

[10:20] Staceyann Chin: But we're also put in the position historically of like surviving, and surviving is about striking back, it's about hitting, it's about guarding, it's about walls. Yes, we do all of that, but very rarely do people serve us. Very rarely. And therefore we have no comfort with it as a process. We don't. And so this class was about me having to give up my uber dominance and learn how to suck.

[10:41] Tonya Pinkins: How come you ain't calling me into this class?

[10:43] Staceyann Chin: Well, well, you know, we can get together sometime. But I had to learn how to ask. And so what I had asked my white partner for was I said, and I heard this was something somebody else had said. And I was like, I cried when I heard you could even ask for something like this. I asked him if he would, um, when I came home, would he undress me, tuck me into bed, make me a cup of tea, and leave.

[11:11] Tonya Pinkins: And what did this man say, Preo?

[11:13] Staceyann Chin: Well, he did it. And it was sensuous, it was erotic, it was cozy, it was cherishing, it was comfortable. I loved it. It was lovely to not have to give back, to have to feel that everything was transactional, like someone just gave to me and I got to receive. Now he refused to ever do it again.

[11:35] Tonya Pinkins: No way.

[11:35] Staceyann Chin: He accused me of being a lesbian for even asking. And it became an ongoing fight that this thing that was 10 minutes that I said was fantastic for me, he would never do it again. And needless to say, he is no longer in my life. And to me, that was what Slave Play showed me. That these white partners, they're so used to you doming them, you either telling them what to do or screaming at them or listening to them in conversation. Because it triggers the um the historical um not narrative, but the historical reality of them being the people who tell you what to do.

[12:10] Tonya Pinkins: Because but they still are.

[12:11] Staceyann Chin: It's not historical, it's right now. Systemically, I mean, white people decide. I mean, right now I'm like, you know, we were talking gentrification, and right now I'm in the middle of like the conversation about gentrification. We only move as people of color when we are being driven out by white people who are needing us to go, or we are being uh corraled into a space that they dis they they say that that space is ours and not theirs.

[12:34] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[12:35] Staceyann Chin: Like, but they make the decision about what we do when we do it. Right. All the time. They are making all the decisions, but they want to pretend that they're not. Downstairs I went to Starbucks and uh, you know, all the people who were serving, all the people who are making the coffee, the, you know, making the soy chai lattes are people of color. And I realized there was not one white person behind the counter serving, but almost all the patrons were white. So it's a very like interesting, and when you say serve, I wanna I you know, I think I'm I'm interested in when you said like, oh, t we aren't served. But it's an interesting that the play provided this space that the service you're asking for is not because I I think that I I have a lot of like white women friends who are willing to like, oh, what do you need? Um let me do this for you. And it's kind of like a white savior narrative.

[13:24] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's not it.

[13:25] Staceyann Chin: Yeah, but the service has to do with um the service, the di the thing that like often white men do, they give you what they want you to have.

[13:34] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[13:35] Staceyann Chin: Okay, yes, that is not service. That's the same thing. They give you what they want you to have.

[13:39] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[13:39] Staceyann Chin: And it may be extravagant, but they don't take the time to find out if it is what you want, what you value. And I'm saying yes, not because I've dated white men, because I mean, I've never had sex with a white person. Um, you know, I came here when I was 24, and I mean I've had like maybe two or three like kind of dalliances with like white people who because you know, the you know, when you get a good white person, and you know, it can be remarkably kind of soul filling. Um, but I haven't been able to close the deal, so to speak. I've been able to I haven't been able to peel my aunties down in any way.

[14:14] Tonya Pinkins: But the the the issue, I think, um, but but the experience of of being with white people who only want to do what they want to do and are inflexible, unmovable with walking out of the space that makes them uncomfortable. I mean, how many times have you seen the crying white woman?

[14:31] Staceyann Chin: Oh we're not even talking about relationships here. I mean, you know, you date, you know, you date men, I date women, and like it's it's the first place they go, and I have gotten to the point with my friends who go, you don't get to cry. You don't get to cry. I mean, I have a friend whose son is dating an Ethiopian woman. And when she comes to their house, she's always accusing them of being racist for various things that they've done and said to her. And she wants to cry. And I'm like, but you don't get to cry.

[14:54] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[14:54] Staceyann Chin: That's she's accusing brown people of being. No, no, no. The Ethiopian woman is accusing the the sons of parents and grandparents of being racist. And she starts crying, and I'm like, but you don't get to cry.

[15:04] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[15:04] Staceyann Chin: You have to engage. Yeah. You have to say, Why are you saying that? What is this thing? Let's talk. I have an eight-year-old daughter, and um, every time I tell her that she's done something wrong, her first instinct is to cry. And one of the things that I've had to work at with her and to talk her through is when you do something, and we all kind of have it in some way, but you have to learn to manage it as you move successfully through the world. You can't punch somebody in the nose and then cry because they're bleeding.

[15:30] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[15:31] Staceyann Chin: It's a manipulation. You know, I I mean, and and maybe you might feel sad about it, but that is not your primary uh that shouldn't be your primary focus. If you're a good person, you should be able to turn it around and say, I've hurt this person, how is it that I can help them? How is it that I can make reparations? And nobody wants to talk about reparations in this country.

[15:49] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[15:50] Staceyann Chin: Yeah. Yeah. But I uh you know, I, you know, I ha I I had the conversation in my head in my in my house um with with a bunch of black women because I believe that it it was the one before the one I invited you to, it was a sea of black women only talking about this play. Half the room had seen the play and half had not. And so we had like a uh a woman in in the room who was like a uh a dom and she spoke of these men, like she she uh she specialized in having um white men as slaves and she spoke of them as slaves and ex slaves, right? But former slaves. I was like, yo, what the hell is this world?

[16:29] Tonya Pinkins: But see, that's this thing with the language. The language is very important.

[16:31] Staceyann Chin: So in the BDSM community, the Dom is the servant. So these men are paying someone to pretend to be the master so they can pretend to be a slave. And many of these men would walk into a situation, the very even the the man you might have dated who said, I'm not gonna do this 10-minute thing for you, no fucking more because you know it you're a lesbian. Like I'm he would say he would participate in a process where he was paying the person. That means he is for to do the very same thing he's still in control, yes, to do the very same thing. But if it is that you remove the transactional nature of it, because you take away when you remove the transactional nature, you take away his power, his paying power, you take away his power. He's no longer the initiator, the fuel, the driver of the action, and all of a sudden you're the driver of the action, then it makes him uncomfortable.

[17:28] Tonya Pinkins: Right, because now he's having to dom you, he's having to serve you, and by serve, it means put all your attention on the other person, figure out what they want, what they need. Is this working? Are they happy? Does that work? You know, it's like what it is to be a good lover. A good lover, but is a good dom. But even when it's not, you know, even when it's not sexual, I think that we as human beings really have a big struggle with like putting our own desires aside for a second. And then when you're in a position of power, like if you're a white person who's used to being in charge and calling the shots, can you imagine how difficult that might be for them?

[18:08] Staceyann Chin: My issue with slave play wasn't that it didn't bring up so many of these very important conversations and force us to talk about this thing that we only, you know, give all these black women side eye and say, you know, how are you dating this white man, or you know, you look at these black men in the street and be like, oh, you know, he, you know, he's with that white girl because she easy. Whatever. We have these like sub narratives, all of these like tangential narratives about interracial, and and people only talk about them in this kind of flippant way where we kind of assume we understand all of it already. So it was good to actually see the conversation being had in a in a real way and the conversations that ensued from the play. I didn't like how it ended, man.

[18:46] Tonya Pinkins: How you liked how it ended.

[18:48] Staceyann Chin: Well, I I've I've had, you know, a lot of things about that. I mean, I've I've done a lot of interviews with Jeremy about it and with the cast about it. There's a difference between how it's written and how it's played. And I asked Jeremy about that. I said, you know, that this thank you, like what is she thanking him for? I said, because he's pathetic at the beginning and he's pathetic at the end. Is she thanking him for letting her finally see you are never gonna be able to do what I want to do? And I think that he wanted the ambiguity that everybody in the audience walks away thinking, like some people walk away thinking she thanked him for that, and they're mad about that. And other people are like, wow, what did that mean? Are they gonna be together? Is it gonna be over? So there's an ambiguity in it. You know, for me, I felt like the rape wasn't violent enough. I didn't I felt like he still didn't step up and give her what she needed.

[19:32] Tonya Pinkins: You should have come to my talk because I mean I have never had the experience um where I wanted that from a white person. Like I've always had the e the you know, the the ultimate, but also because I've never dated a white person. I don't know what where my fantasies would take me if I were to be able to be in a relationship with a white person. So I you know, I speak from a place of lack of experience.

[19:57] Staceyann Chin: Right. Well, let me say this. I was beaten horribly as a child. And you know, the place where children get beaten is usually their butts, and so it's all around your legs, so it's all around all of your sexual being beaten. So I think that I am sort of primed for that. In fact, in some of my memories, I remember this combination of this erotic thing around excruciating pain. So, you know, but pain. I mean, right, but I'm saying I think that the idea of pain and eroticism are linked in me because of having been beaten from like two years old.

[20:32] Staceyann Chin: I think that's maybe most people's experience. Most people won't say it in a podcast, Tanya. I will tell you. Oh, well, you can't say that. So you really can't say that in public now, but I'm saying it. That's what I have. So for most people I know, you know, I mean, I've made love to quite a few people in my lifetime, and people respond to pain as an erotic, you know, thing, as an erotic zone, as an erotic tool, device. Right. And so I mean, I met a woman who said that like there's a point where the pain just you flip from pain and it just becomes a kind of ecstasy for her. I have never gotten there and I'm not into that yet because I don't like pain. But the idea of having a white man be raping me has been an erotic thing that I have experienced as a fantastic, oh so it's like tapping into a kind of psychological pain.

Yeah, that's psychological pain. Yeah, hallelujah. Jesus take a minute my life has come from that. Oh hallelujah my grandmother would say come Lord heck the kiss and give it a pillow Lord Lord Lord Lord Lord. That's so interesting because I mean it's interesting to talk to someone who can art and I actually had a young woman there she was like of college age like 20 years old and she talked about that erotic place and you know a lot of the older women in the room kind of dismissed her because she was you know 20 and they were like well you know she'll come to her own like pain about you know race or whatever. Um but now that you I mean you know do you mind asking how old you are?

[22:10] Staceyann Chin: I'm 57.

[22:11] Tonya Pinkins: And I'm 47. So there's a way that that you know like you're you're no you're you know you're not a kid you're not college you're not a college kid so there's an interesting thing that's happening in my brain now like hmm have I completely misjudged this because it hasn't been my experience but you know I mean like I um you know I I you know my own sexuality is is is is kind of tied up with like abandonment and you know um care like or lack of it. Like my mother left me when I was a baby my father didn't come to claim me and there was no one to care for me as an infant. And so whenever anybody kind of like holds me in this way that makes me feel like I'm a you know I I'm I'm I'm you know like my my kid self is being cared for that's kind of one of my erotic zones.

Like you know and and and I guess maybe it's about that psychological pain being able to kind of sit in it and be with it intimately um that allows you to kind of open up a little bit. Um yeah it's interesting I find that if I'm masturbating um my fantasies are very healthy but if I'm with a partner I like almost a healthy well I mean I'm saying if I'm with a partner and it doesn't really matter what race they are that my my fantasies are always abusive really all my sexual fantasies with a partner they're abusive and and it's very few times in my life that I've actually had sex with a partner where I'm actually present with them I'm always in some abusive fantasy in my head with a when a human other human being is there.

[22:11] Staceyann Chin: Yeah I think um you know I have a hard time Lord have mercy you know you dragged me into this conversation so early in the morning do you know that it's early in the morning it's too early for this shit Tanya too fucking early man come on this and these are conversations I should be having like with the white women so I can have some distance you know and white women who are like much younger than I am so I can dismiss them you know I mean it's like looking in a mirror situation is bad for me bad for me um you know but it's it's my own experience with like being present in a sexual space it you know I came up as a kid with like a whole bunch of shit around you know I'm I'm in a in Jamaica with no parents no welfare system so you can imagine all the things that happen and if you want to read about them you should you know I have a book you know that shows you all those things that happened to me and and so when I come to it I really struggle like whenever I get intimate whenever I'm really kind of present and intimate then I get like really scared, and like my emotional, my psychological self kind of flees yeah the room.

[24:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, you know, and I've had some of the most amazing experiences with partners who have insisted that I remain present. Um, but it but then all the shit about like the abuse and the fantasy is also in the room because that's what you're kind of running away from when you kind of pull away from partners. It's like you don't want to, you don't want them to see all this like dark underworld, this kind of idness, this freudness that is sitting underneath all of what gives you pleasure.

[25:00] Staceyann Chin: Yeah. I saw you in um Rush, is it Rush?

[25:06] Tonya Pinkins: Rashida Speaker.

[25:08] Staceyann Chin: I saw you in that play. And that was before we started to really talk about the angry black woman. Um that was before it became like it's what we the angry black woman's been around. No, but I mean like we started to before we started to deconstruct it in the kind of way, like now, you know, we're interested in a whole bunch of black women's stories, they're on HBO, they're you know mine hasn't still hasn't, I haven't seen my story yet. But but they're talking about and so people are like, they want to know what makes her feel this way. Whereas before she was just a character, she was this maid, she was whatever. So now some people are interested in some parts of her.

[25:42] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[25:42] Staceyann Chin: And so now the conversation I think is maybe a little more nuanced, a little bit more nuanced about who she is and why she does this or why she doesn't do that. And I remember that um we hadn't really kind of bumped into the Me Too movement yet. We hadn't really bumped into kind of like, well, you know, maybe white women are taking up too much space and are not given like black women time to speak. And uh I was sitting in the audience and I was really quite moved by how you played that character as a black woman who is often like seen as I dress weird, I talk weird, my politics are weird, I'm like way too kind of like too much, way too much. You know, I argue too much, I'm always arguing about what the food that didn't count, come, you know, whether people didn't talk to me or not.

And and it was kind of like really wonderful to see you like fuck with the psychological space that black women have with like people like in a working environment, you know, and how it made the audience, you know, kind of goblet up at the same time and I'm being uncomfortable at the same time.

[26:49] Tonya Pinkins: And I was never quite sure if the character was like really going crazy or if she was fucking with them.

[26:56] Staceyann Chin: Yeah.

[26:57] Tonya Pinkins: Well, Rashida speaking, Joel Drake Johnson just died two weeks ago. Rest his soul. Um, the character as written was written like she was crazy, like she was a nut job. And I I and you gave it nuance by playing it like, no, the world is crazy. And I'm not crazy. Like, and even if I'm a little crazy, it's because I've been in this shit with y'all for so long.

[27:20] Staceyann Chin: Yeah.

[27:22] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, that was important to me. And then there were some things that he wrote, and I was like, no, that's just too crazy. No, we didn't, we guys have to cut that. No, or there were things that he wrote that just didn't feel consistent to me as a black person, like he wanted her to swear on a Bible to a lie. I said, you know what, y'all, white people might do that, but the Bible actually has very real meaning in my culture and my community. So I I'm not swearing on a Bible. And it's and it's rare that you will find a woman who feels deeply and believes and is is centered in her life as a black woman who will swear on a Bible on a lie. That's a that's written in the play, and I was like, I I'll swear on this package of wipies, and I'm gonna make sure the audience can see that it's some wipes.

Um, though I was told later that people in the back of the house didn't know that it wasn't white beast, but for me that was important. It was like, I'm not putting that out into the world about my culture.

[28:06] Staceyann Chin: So doing Rashida speaking was living Rashida speaking. I was in a room full of all white people and one South African woman of color, and I told her day one, don't even jump into conversations about race because you don't have the same experience of race that I do as an American black woman. So I was living it and doing it simultaneously.

[28:25] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, it was hard.

[28:26] Staceyann Chin: I'm sure you know, I you know, I can't speak to the politics of living it, but I certainly know that playing that kind of role, which is the same thing. Like, I mean, I was it was interesting that the um the people who put slave play on understood. They didn't have the cast anything. Well, I don't know if exactly how they but I knew that whoever was talking about it, whoever put whoever was fighting for the rights of the people of color who were on that stage understood me.

[28:53] Tonya Pinkins: Really?

[28:54] Staceyann Chin: That was me. That was that they needed therapy. We are I set up every one of those talkbacks. That was me creating that whole talkback space and finding those people. I did that because uh what I became aware of is that these people that I was working for did not understand at all. And it was it was really difficult to go to work and have to argue with people about what it is to be a black woman from the west side and the south side of Chicago, which I literally am, and and they're gonna tell me what I am.

[29:27] Tonya Pinkins: So I was like, oh no, we we I got to, I got to, I have to. This is you know, the play is called Rashida speaking, and I have a monologue in that play where I say that Rashida is the new word for nigger. And you know, for me to point out to them, so the play is called nigger speaking. They were like, Whoa, huh? Like, what do you mean? No, like really? Are we in this much denial? I walk out of the theater and people say, Hey Rashida. It isn't called Jacqueline speaking, that's the name of my character. My character is Jacqueline. So they were in denial about actually what they were making.

[30:00] Staceyann Chin: And for me, because my mother was mentally ill, gaslighting is my button. So once you are like You have a mentally ill mother? She's dead now, but yeah, she was mentally done. So that gaslighting, when you when you we can't agree about reality, then I'm done with you. I'm done with you. Like when when you once we go to gaslighting, like we can't agree that this is the color white, we're done.

[30:25] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, I'm Tonya Pinkins, and that was part one of my provocative conversation with Staceyann Chin. Come back for part two, and a poem from her latest published book.