The Brooklyn Rail

Dominique Morisseau’s works feature richly drawn characters, offering piercing and nuanced looks into everyone from blue collar laborers (Skeleton Crew) to international stars (Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations).

Now, she turns her sharp gaze toward a depressed, thirty-something Haitian-American woman (played by TV star Kelly McCreary) in Bad Kreyòl, debuting at Signature Theatre Company (in a co-production with Manhattan Theatre Club). In this new play, Morisseau’s protagonist, Simone, makes a visit to her ancestral homeland to try to reconnect with her older cousin, Gigi (Tony Award nominee Pascale Armand), hoping to find greater purpose along the way. The following interview has been condensed for clarity.

Brian Scott Lipton (Rail): There’s often a personal or autobiographical aspect in many of your plays. How much of Bad Kreyòl is true?

Dominique Morisseau: There are many ways this play is slightly autobiographical. I am Haitian-American on my father’s side, and this was inspired by a trip I took with my father to Haiti about ten years ago. Like my main character, Simone, my only other time in Haiti is when I went as a child. I also felt connected and disconnected like Simone; I went to places where I didn’t know anyone, and I was way out of my element. But so was my father; he visited places he would never go. He worked with the Haiti Outreach Mission—doctors who would help set up clinics—but after I spent time with him, we traveled all around the country, and he stepped foot in places he’d never been. I honestly went to Haiti to write a different play, and it took me six years to write Bad Kreyòl because I needed the time to process the trip and decide what I wanted to say.

Rail: How instrumental was your father in the writing of this play?

Morisseau: He always read all my plays. But he started dying during the writing of Paradise Blue, and then he had another stroke in 2019, while I was putting up the musical Ain’t Too Proud. Then I really started to write Bad Kreyòl because it was the first one that I did for his side of the family. He did get to hear me read the first scene before he passed in 2020. His death made the writing of the play more important; completing it was like a need.

Rail: The play talks about Haiti as a dictatorship, its anti-LGBTQ stance, its indifference to poor women. Is the similarity to Trumpian America coincidental?

Morisseau: It speaks more to the fact that we have an under-acknowledged privilege of being in the US and having our freedoms. The play should also remind us that the progressiveness of the US is also the progressiveness of Imperialism; that we feel free to strip other countries of their things and their autonomy and tell them how to govern themselves. It’s laughable to the Haitians in this play how Simone can talk about feeling oppressed, when she’s just walked away from a good job just because she didn’t like the corporate culture.

Rail: Can you talk about the idea of having a split identity, specifically being a Haitian-American?

Morisseau: In many ways, Haiti reminds me of my hometown of Detroit. Both are Black cities/countries that were punished by everyone around them for their sense of independence. Haiti was punished by France; it ultimately had to pay back its own enslavers through taxes and the rest of Western world went along with that. In Detroit, we have shirts that say: “Detroit vs. Everybody.” Detroit is definitely not like the rest of Michigan; you can feel the hostility of the people in the suburbs when they have to come here. Haiti is not like Jamaica for example; there’s not poverty and high-end tourism. Haiti is not a vacation spot; when you go there from the outside world, everyone in Haiti wonders why you are there and what you are going to take from them.

Rail: I think many people struggle to maintain or forge family relationships when they have past grudges or vast difference in personalities. Why did you want to write about that subject in Bad Kreyòl?

Morisseau: I’ve experienced multiple levels of family discord and watched the hurdles seem insurmountable. And that made me curious about what can bring family together. A lot of my plays concern people who have chosen families, but here we see blood relatives who must decide to choose each other. And the reality is people live with real wounds that no one meant to inflict on them, yet can’t get past them. To other people, it seems silly; they think, “Oh, just grow up.” We talk about this a lot in the rehearsal room; this is not lightweight stuff.

Rail: The play is also about the difficulty of communication, which is another major issue we all face.

Morisseau: I think a colleague once said on his platform that to love a people is to love their language. When I went to Haiti, despite my sense of impostor syndrome, I felt I had to learn Creole before I went. And I did fall on my face sometimes. I still speak bad Creole to be honest. But it’s important to me to keep getting better at it! I think you must give yourself time to learn a new language, to take that task seriously and treat it with integrity. Conversely, if you watch someone struggle, please give them grace as they work through it. To me, this applies to all sorts of languages; in America, the new language is pronouns. Maybe some people don’t want to learn, I get that, but others do and are afraid to fail! And the more they feel like they’ll be crucified for failing, they will just stop trying to learn. So, we have to encourage any new form of communication.

Rail: You have long made it clear you want people to interact with your plays while they watch them. Do you feel like you’re making progress in seeing that happen?

Morisseau: I think theater is more than what’s on the stage, it’s the culture surrounding that stage. That makes a difference in how we experience the work. But the bigger issue is not only the interaction but introducing new communities to theater. I want to see people who are nontraditional theatergoers experiencing my work, because my plays are talking directly to them. I feel like it’s my personal failure when they don’t come. I love Black audiences; I love diverse audiences; I do not love audiences devoid of people of color. We need to find something sustainable to make sure we are all welcome and present at the theater, and that includes the freedom to express yourself inside the theater. How can you heal the world if the world isn’t your home?