Trouble in Paradise

‘Shangri-La,’ a performance piece with text by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, explores the allure of illicit sex in Thailand.

By: Ilene Dube

"Yusef

TimeOFF/Mark Czajkowski
Yusef Komunyakaa, a professor of creative writing at Princeton University, says he always begins with an image.


   Poet, playwright and librettist Yusef Komunyakaa has just returned from teaching an advanced poetry writing workshop at the Callaloo Writers Conference in Texas, and life is somewhat chaotic.
   It is a weekday morning and his Greek revival-style home in the Hilltonia section of Trenton is bustling with activity. A baby sitter arrives to tend to his 2-year-old; a team of painters is bringing in a clackety metal ladder, moving canvases and life-size sculpture; and a writer and photographer vie for his attention.
   The Princeton University creative writing professor and winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for the collection Neon Vernacular (
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) takes a moment to look at paint chips for the dining-room walls — peach is his choice — then settles into a sofa in the living room to talk about his latest project.
   Shangri-La, a performance piece set in Thailand, combines poetry, modern music and movement. It is about a San Francisco detective who encounters contemporary problems alongside the classical beauty of Bangkok while investigating an embezzlement scheme. The work-in-progress will be performed as a workshop for the Passage Theatre Company June 14 at the Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton.
   Mr. Komunyakaa, who has published more than a dozen collections of poetry (including Scandalize My Name, 2002; Pleasure Dome, 2001
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; and Talking Dirty to the Gods, 2000
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) and won numerous awards, says he began writing Shangri-La in his head about four years ago. "Someone gave me an article from the British edition of ‘Esquire’ about Western businessmen taking trips to Bangkok and having difficulty extracting themselves from that illusion of paradise. Some committed suicide. I filed the information away in my mind."
   A chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, Mr. Komunyakaa says he always begins with an image. Many of these images come from his life.
   A Vietnam War veteran, Mr. Komunyakaa made a return trip to Southeast Asia in 1990. "My plane was delayed for two days, due to a strange series of misconnections," he says. "I arrived in Bangkok and there were five other veterans there waiting for me. I had come in disarray, my baggage had been lost, and they took me to a small nightclub in a hotel called the Black and White Club. There were three waitresses and three microphones off to the side. The waitresses were dressed in gowns and, after 30 minutes, they got up to the mike and lip synced to the Supremes. It was such a strange moment.
   "I found that image and put it together with the one from ‘Esquire,’" he continues. "They gently nudged each other and became ‘Shangri-La.’"
   "I was interested in all the unsaid things of that particular night," he continues. "Just the name of the Black and White Club said a lot. It was the irony of that moment. Shangri-la is an imaginary excursion. It’s where reality and the imagination collide."
   Susie Ibarra, a drummer whose style has been called a hybrid of Asian gong, Javanese gamelan, Afro-Cuban, West African and be-bop, composed the music for Shangri-La. The contemporary classical score uses Western instruments but has an Asian tonality, and some of the phrases have been translated into Thai.

"Yusef
Mr. Komunyakaa won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for the Neon Vernacular (


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)


   "I wanted it to stay close to poetry, as opposed to narrative, and wanted it to be an image-driven piece," says Mr. Komunyakaa, who was introduced to Ms. Ibarra’s work by a former assistant. He attended her performances in New York, and she was part of an ensemble that accompanied his poetry at the Chicago Humanities Festival several years ago. The two had been talking about collaborating ever since.
   Ms. Ibarra, who has completed commissions for the Kronos Quartet, among others, and has taught at New York University, Oberlin College and Carnegie Mellon University, is responsible for casting and selecting the conductor, Tania Leon. Until rehearsal began, Mr. Komunyakaa and Ms. Ibarra did all their work by phone and fax. "I have to trust my collaborators, and I’m lucky in that sense," he says.
   As a Trenton resident, Mr. Komunyakaa has attended productions at the Mill Hill Playhouse, and Passage Theatre Artistic Director June Ballinger invited him to workshop the piece there. For the June 14 performance, actors will work with scores in hand.
   "My problem with the opera format is the melodrama," says Mr. Komunyakaa. "I am interested in Philip Glass/Robert Wilson collaborations, like ‘Einstein on the Beach.’ Robert Wilson is an interesting director — he sees a work like a painting. The visual aspect of his work is breathtaking."
   Mr. Komunyakaa is at work on a fourth opera/performance piece, The Reincarnated Beethoven. It is based on the life of DeWitt White as recounted in The New York Times. "I folded that article and put it away, knowing I’d return to that information," says Mr. Komunyakaa. "He was killed at the age of 17 — shot in the back. He would call himself the reincarnated Beethoven because he played piano and composed."
   T.J. Anderson, who worked with Mr. Komunyakaa on his two previous operas, Testimony (about the life and music of Charlie Parker, performed at the Sidney Opera House) and Slip Knot (based on the story of a slave who is falsely accused of rape and performed at Northwestern University), will compose The Reincarnated Beethoven.
   Mr. Komunyakaa says he usually works on three projects at once, but when he is working on a performance piece, it has a tendency to take over. "It changes my method of working," he says. "I can only concentrate on a single performance piece but I do have other ideas. An artist is working when he or she meditates on possibility. First you have to grasp the language of a piece. Often the form is imagistic. I try to stay close to poetic aesthetics."
   He has just sent a completed manuscript, a collection of historical moments for black Americans, to his publisher, Farrar Straus & Giroux.
   Born in Bogalusa, La., in 1947, his early years were influenced by the jazz and blues of nearby New Orleans. After high school, he served in the Vietnam War where he received the Bronze Star for his work as editor of the military newspaper The Southern Cross.
   After the Army, he discovered his nascent abilities as a poet while earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado in 1975. He went on to earn master’s degrees from Colorado State University in 1978 and the University of California at Irvine in 1980.
   In the poem "My Father’s Love Letters," he serves as a scribe for his illiterate father. He writes: "My father could only sign/ His name, but he’d look at blueprints/ and say how many bricks/ Formed each wall."
   Mr. Komunyakaa’s maternal grandfather came from Trinidad as a stowaway, and the family wound up in Louisiana. With a strong sense of identity as a Southern American — his work is included in the Norton Anthology of Southern Literature and the Oxford Companion to African American Literature (
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) — Mr. Komunyakaa reclaimed his grandfather’s name. "We internalize a terrain," he says. "Where we grew up influences how we see the world. The soil is very important to me, what things grow out of it."
Shangri-La will be performed at Passage Theatre Company at the Mill Hill Playhouse, Front and Montgomery streets, Trenton, June 14, 8 p.m. Tickets cost $10, $8 seniors/students. For information, call (609) 392-0766. On the Web: www.passagetheatre.org