Dramaturg Chloe Johnston interviews E. Patrick Johnson on all things SWEET TEA.
Chloe: How did you know/find the men interviewed in SWEET TEA?
E. Patrick: The first men that I interviewed were actually people that I knew – friends that I either grew up with or knew from college who live in North Carolina, particularly in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and also men that I knew who lived in Atlanta. And then, from there, it was a snowball effect. They told other people who put me in touch with other people and then they told people who told people who told people. So I was never more than one person – sometimes two people – removed from the person I was interviewing.
C: Why do this piece now in Chicago? How is it different to perform it outside of the south?
P: There are certainly sometimes some advantages to performing the show in the south and those advantages are sometimes an instant recognition of some of the mannerisms, the colorful language, or recognition of somebody like the person I am performing. But, you know, I have found that no matter where I perform that there’s always a possibility of people connecting. For instance, when I performed in Philadelphia it was one of the most moving and powerful and intense performances that I’ve ever had because there were all these black, gay men in the audience, who weren’t necessarily from the south. I just felt like we were levitating, I really did. And so I think that I stopped anticipating what the response would be from any audience based on whether they were in the north or south or east or west because there’s always the potential for people to connect in their own way to what they’re seeing and witnessing.
But Chicago is, to me, up south and many of the African Americans who live on the south side of Chicago are from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and have these rich, familial connections to the south. Sometimes it’s just the first generation away. So I think it’s important to perform the show here in the southern Diaspora, as it were, because I think that a lot of the themes will also resonate with folks who live here in Chicago. And not just the black, gay men but white, gay men or white lesbians or Latino lesbians…because, ultimately, the particularity of these stories also make them universal. Not in the “Kumbaya” universal way but in ways that speak to the experiences that we have when we deal with another human being. You know, family dramas, partnership dramas, all these kinds of things. I’m looking forward to performing the show here in Chicago.
C: How do you feel that your race, sexuality and geographical upbringing have each shaped you and is it possible to say if one shaped you more than the others or do you see them as always intertwined?
P: I see my southern upbringing, my race, gender, sexuality, class, all of that being intertwined. I will say, however, that my consciousness around how they’re intertwined has evolved. You know, for instance, when I was a kid I wasn’t conscious of my sexuality and even when I became conscious of it I wasn’t ready necessarily to deal with it. Ironically, when I moved further south from North Carolina to Louisiana and was really experiencing racism in more explicit ways than I had in North Carolina, it became a fertile ground for me to come into my sexuality. It was where I came out. And that’s interesting to me that, while I was really experiencing blatant racism, I was really at a place where I could deal with my sexuality. And that was in the deep, deep south in Louisiana. But my relationship to all of those identities has evolved as I’ve gotten older and lived a little bit longer…but I always see them sort of pivoting around each other.
C: What made you leave the south and what do you think of Chicago?
P: I left the south but the south didn’t leave me, that’s for sure. It was a job opportunity. I left the south because I was offered a job at Norhtwestern and it was the place to, it was a dream job because of its history in performance studies. So that’s why I left. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in North Carolina. I wanted a job at the University of North Carolina, my alma mater, but it didn’t work out. But I’m not sad about it anymore because I think of Chicago now as home. A lot of my friends in Chicago are southerners who were, you know, transplanted here for some reason or the other. I really have a sense of community here and not just academic community but you know, just everyday folk. Because Chicago is a small enough city to not feel overwhelming, I feel good about it. I love Chicago and plan to stay here for a while.
C: That’s good news for us! Well, thank you very much.
Photo from Gay Pride Rockland.
