Help us "SOW" our roots!

Hello everyone!

We are Los Angeles-based MaiM Theatre company (run by director Nathan Singh and playwright Julie Taiwo Oni), and we are gearing up to present a production of our new play SOWN in collaboration with Son of Semele Ensemble this summer (August - September 2019).

The Story:

Jones and Zora, young Black homeowners, find themselves at odds with their middle-class community when they decide to confront a strict American-only policy by planting a native African violet. While they initially defend this blatant infiltration of a monolithic landscape, a cycle of push-back and copy-cats eventually entangles them in madness. They must decide if they wish to stand up for the roots they’ve sown, or tear them down to maintain the status quo. This story explores the nightmare of contemporary segregation by placing its audience into a middle-class living-room-turned-battlefield.

The Team:

We've got two phenomenal LA actors, Joshua Michael Moore and Victoria Allen, for the roles of Jones and Zora, and we've been fortunate enough to have them onboard throughout the script development process as well. Julie has also been conducting research with the AVSA (African Violet Society of America)'s Thousand Oaks chapter and a local florist for both script development and design and character inspiration. We're rounding out our team with some other local artists of color to make a community invested in authentic storytelling of the marginalized.

Why This Piece Now:

We're living at a tense moment in current America. Families are being torn apart, citizens are killing and hurting each other, and in particular, people of color face serious obstacles in the effort to better ourselves among the chaos. Tackling these issues is at the heart of MaiM Theatre Company's mission.

We believe that storytelling, and theatre specifically, is a vital cultural practice that has the power to both reflect society's struggles and humanize the supposed other to show our commonalities. SOWN's setting is in the not-too-distant future, and its chaos is something that we imagine could become our reality if we don't wake up to the rampant fear of otherness across the country and recognize what joins us as human beings. 

We see SOWN as not just a play, but a conversation and a source for engagement. To that end, the production itself will include much community involvement, from post-show conversations on cultural ownership, assimilation, and the American Dream with the team, to dialogues on black botany and its rarity within the culture and what that means in our current state, to engagement with the plant life of Los Angeles.

The joy of theatre is that it takes a community to make it work, and we are hoping that our community will join us in supporting this piece of provocation and hope for betterment. We are intent on compensating the amazing artists who are helping us put this piece together, and we need your support!

What We Need & What You Get

We need your help sowing our roots!

Our goal is $3900, and every dollar raised will go toward the artists involved in the production, from actors to designers to our floral consultant. We feel that artists, particularly those of color, are too often encouraged to work for free, and we refuse to continue this cycle. Each and every piece of the theatrical mosaic is essential, and MaiM is adamant that everyone who helps in our root-sowing receive what they deserve.

For our lovely donors, you are also an essential part of the community, and your generosity will not go unnoticed. We will have various perks for you, from public gratitude to posters to a personally-designed floral arrangement to VIP treatment.

The Impact

We are hoping that MaiM will inspire a much-needed conversation about embracement of diversity and providing opportunities for all types of people to live comfortably here and be proud to call America home. 

MaiM has done two workshop festival productions and a variety of readings over the years, starting with our first project BUNK in 2014 at Son of Semele. This project dealt with a story that placed the Nigerian immigrant community in conversation with Black America through the collaborative (and actual) process of building an entire bunk bed onstage, and included post-show dialogues on the story process and engagement with both communities in Los Angeles. 

After BUNK, Julie worked with guest director Terrence Colby Clemons to craft DENIM, a piece set in Bakersfield, California in 1994 just after the end of apartheid in South Africa, which captures the interactions between a young Black South African woman and a White American man. We collaborated with a South African script consultant, and preparation included a team visit to the actual location of the story in Bakersfield, Julie's hometown.

Most recently, Nathan and Julie organized a reading of Julie's play CHISEL at Pepperdine University last summer for Albinism Awareness Day. CHISEL is another play that deals with Julie's mission of placing America in conversation with Africa, and its specific premise is based in the rampant killings and attacks on albinos in Tanzania. The result was a HowlRound piece Julie wrote on her endless search for an actor with albinism and the need for authentic casting in contemporary theatre.

With some strong successes under our belt, this is our first fully independent production, so community support is even more necessary. If you've seen our work, then you know that we are committed to provocative theatre and supporting the ostracized. We hope you'll join us in this mission!

Check out our Facebook page for more info. and updates: https://www.facebook.com/maimtheatrecompany/

Also explore Julie's VoyageLA interview in which she discusses MaiM: http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-julie-taiwo-...

Other Ways You Can Get Involved

By spreading the word about our project and Indiegogo campaign, you will also be helping us tremendously. Tell everyone about us! This play is important to us and hopefully it will be important to you, as well.

We have an additional live storytelling fundraiser hosted by Julie and her sister Jessica for their series called GRIOTS. More info. can be found on her website: https://www.julietaiwooni.com/griots-losangeles

Also look for updates on the Son of Semele website: http://www.sonofsemele.org/

Thanks so much for your collaboration!

xo Julie and Nathan