Theater-maker and Associate Artistic Director of Target Margin MOE YOUSUF leads the last of the four SINDBAD LABS, running May 31 – June 24. Moe’s lab, YOGIBOGEYBOX, runs from June 21 – 24.
You brought The One Thousand and One Nights to the metaphorical TMT table, so this is clearly a project very close to your heart. What attracted you to the text? What makes it so ripe for modern theatrical development?
I think what excited me at first was not knowing anything about The 1001 Nights. We know so many things at this moment and are constantly overwhelmed with information that to be able to not know something is rare and something I truly value. The 1001 Nights are also a body of work deeply connected to my cultural identity as a Pakistani-American, and a part of an oral storytelling tradition that spread across many Silk Road cultures and people. Instantly the stories became a way to open up conversations about identity and art and cultural appropriation and politics that felt incredibly present NOW. There’s an incredible lack of equity and representation of South Asian, MENA (Middle Eastern / North African), and Silk Road artists and this way for me to explore these issues and for Target Margin to provide a platform for these stories and artists.
What would be in YOUR YOGIBOGEYBOX?
A gram of Wilson’s of Sharrow Tom Buck Extra SP.
How does your experience as a producer inform your writing and creating, or even your approach to the Lab? As Associate Artistic Director?
My experience working in theater has very little to do with informing my work and more its disruption. The things that inform my work most are the weather, what I’ve eaten, how long I’ve slept, exercised, and the proximity I am to the people I love. I really don’t know what a play is and hope I never find out. I’ve had the total privilege of working with people / companies that go beyond the knowable universe of what is possible in a theater or garage or bus. And I am beyond thankful. Recently, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of TARAB-a trance like state of ecstasy that is entirely about the relationship of the listener, to specifically Arabic music and maqams. There is no English translation or equivalent. And there never needs to be. The search for this state, this center, which is indescribable in the only language I know, is what I am grasping for and hope to create as a theater artist, as a lover, and friend.
What’s your “setting off to sea,” AKA what adventurous, foolhardy thing can’t you stay away from?
Pork Rinds. I went keto a few months back. Brown people are genetically more likely to develop diabetes and heart disease. So my doctor made me go all ketogenix as a preventative measure to re-calibrate how my body was processing these foods. So now I’m eating high high fat, medium protein, no carbs, leafy green way of living. But brown liquor is fine to drink.
Your show has many elements that are underused in the American theater, for instance: drones, bagpipes, ehru. Please tell us the story of how one of these things made it into YOGIBOGEYBOX.
About five years ago there was a little flurry of short articles by the BBC and NPR about Pakistan becoming the world’s leading manufacturer of the highland bagpipes. They were strange, fun and cheeky depictions of brown people dressed in kilts. But that all washed away and what I was left with was the feeling that here were brown people who were again made to feel exotic in their own land, and that the instrument they were leading the creation of now was one that symbolized their oppression. As a Pakistani-American I knew instantly that I had to play it. And so with the help and immense support of James Felder and the bagpipes loaned to me by John Henderson (both central figures in the NYU Pipe & Drums band) over the past several years I’ve learned to play the pipes (quite shittily). In YOGIBOGEYBOX you might find a well known Irish tune but I’ve been really interested in playing the pipes in nontraditional ways, creating noise and dissonance equal to or greater than an understanding of my cultural identity and history.
YOGIBOGEYBOX created by Moe Yousuf
June 21 & 22 @ 7:30pm, June 23 @ 4pm & 7:30pm, June 24 @ 5pm
Mixing traditional forms of drone music, UAV drone choreography, erhu, morse code, heavy synth, Western instrumentation, and dabke dance, YOGIBOGEYBOX combines the sheer spectacle of the Sindbad tales with an ethnomusicological exploration of neo-colonialism’s impact on Silk Road cultures.
MOE YOUSUF is a theater maker, creative producer and Associate Artistic Director of Target Margin Theater. He has presented works at PRELUDE, Dixon Place, Abrons Arts Center, SoHo Rep Walkerspace, The Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Rubber Rep Pilot Balloon and Title Point SALON!. Recently, he produced the NYT Critics’ Pick 150th Anniversary revival of The Black Crook and is currently an Abrons Arts Center Artist-in-Residence, creating a meditation / exorcism of 1927 film The Jazz Singer with Joshua William Gelb.. He is a Board Member of ART/NY and holds a MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Image from YOGIBOGEYBOX (2018). Photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki