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Class Notes: Rajiv Joseph “Dakar 2000”
00:13:39
Listen: Lauren Class Schneider talks to Rajiv Joseph, playwright of Dakar 2000 premiering at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Rajiv Joseph. Credit – Rohit Chandra “Class Notes” actively covers New York’s current theater season on, off, and off-offBroadway.
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- [00:02]
A
Hi, I'm Lauren Flash Snyder with class, noted for Broadway radio. I'm here with Rajeev Joseph, playwright of Dakar 2000, premiering at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Hello.
- [00:13]
B
Hi, Lauren.
- [00:14]
A
Thanks for being here. And we're going to talk about this play of yours. In Senegal, a Peace Corps volunteer survives a mysterious car accident. An imposing State Department operative immediately takes command of the situation. Though they couldn't be more different, the two form an unlikely relationship. It becomes clear that they both have secrets. The volunteer is roped into a darker side of public service, one he can't come back from. So the play, titled Dakar 2000, it takes place on the eve of Y2K. What makes that time special for the story that you're telling?
- [00:52]
B
Well, you know, the, the. I was in the Peace Corps in Senegal in between 1997 and 2000. And so this plays somewhat, you know, a recollection of that particular moment of my life. And I started thinking about it precisely because, you know, we are in that, you know, it's been 25 years since the millennium. And I think kind of my nature, human nature, to kind of look back on certain milestones and rethink about, you know, think about, you know, how the last 25 years, the first 25 years of this century and millennium have played out. Is. Was caused for me to kind of dig into this play, into this, into this subject.
- [01:37]
A
And is there significance to it taking place on the eve of Y2K, given how much there was in the air about what may happen to our planet?
- [01:49]
B
Certainly because that was a time where there was a lot of fear and a lot of nervousness about what Y2K meant. And obviously it didn't play out in any kind of disastrous way. But, you know, for anyone that was alive at that time, especially I think, overseas like I was, there was a lot of concern about it. And I was a young person. I was 25 years old, and I remember it very vividly. And in fact, in going back through my kind of archives of materials that I've kept over the years, I found all these kind of memos that we received from our Peace Corps superiors about all the rules and regulations leading up to Y2K and where we were supposed to be and how we had to account and all the sort of evacuation protocols if things went wrong. And so it was a time of kind of real heightened fear about what it could have been, you know, in the worst case scenario, the end of the world. And of course, it turned out to be very little. And I think most People weren't that afraid, but it was still in the air. And I think that it collides or kind of like sits next to a very different sense of dread that occupies our minds and hearts today.
- [03:02]
A
Yes, indeed, the play is being talked about as a thriller. And where did the idea of this thriller story come from for you?
- [03:13]
B
Well, I wanted to kind of present it as something in that realm in part, because that's what the story is. I mean, the story kind of. It is about a small story about a Peace Corps volunteer, but it's enveloped in all these other kind of global events. Y2K being, of course, first and foremost, but also the rise of global terrorism. A year before this took place, al Qaeda had blown up two embassies in East Africa. And at the time, you know, most of us had never even heard the name Al Qaeda. And of course, we would within a year with 9 11. But this was an early sort of, you know, terrorist attack that blew up two U.S. embassies. And as a result, there was so much resources and materials being kind of flooded into Africa, where I was. And as a sort of Peace Corps volunteer leader, I was a regional kind of leader. I was given charge of a lot of these materials. And so just as a young kid who really didn't know much, I was kind of by accident put within this sort of, like, chaos and, you know, of. Of these events that. That kind of were affecting me personally. And then, you know, in the play and in real life, I think, you know, I was. I was transporting a lot of these materials in a truck that I drove, and I had a bad accident and I flipped the truck and I destroyed all the materials. And. And that was sort of like the starting point of the play and also a real moment of my life that I look back on a lot because I feel like I could have died. And I feel like it's all happened right at this moment of. Of Y2K and, you know, so it's. It's always been a time that I look back on with great interest, and there's a. There's a provocative quality to it that lends itself to a sort of kind of spy thriller.
- [05:13]
A
Well, yes, I'm glad that you survived that experience and that you were taking copious notes while you were there.
- [05:25]
B
Yeah, I guess so.
- [05:27]
A
Right. Like the fact that you're a young guy in the Peace Corps, which is so remarkable in and of itself, and taking that time in your life to. To volunteer in that way, were you also on your. On the road to being a Playwright.
- [05:44]
B
You know, in a sense, I was. I was. I had a desire to be a writer at the time. I wanted to be a novelist. I hadn't thought about being a playwright at that point and hadn't considered that a path, but I was interested in writing, and I had, you know, majored in English and creative writing in college, and I had, in part, gone to the Peace Corps as a means to kind of, like, not only kind of expand my horizons and find something to write about, but also looking for, you know, trying to take myself to a next level in terms of the discipline it takes to be a writer. And I did do an awful lot of writing when I was in Peace Corps, mostly in my journals. You know, mostly just journaling and. And thinking about myself in this time and place.
- [06:31]
A
Well, thank goodness you did, or I'm not sure we'd be having this play to talk about.
- [06:35]
B
Yeah, I think so.
- [06:37]
A
And Manhattan Theater Club is premiering the play. They're wonderful about doing that. How did the commission come about?
- [06:45]
B
The commission came about several years ago, actually, and Lynn Meadow reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be commissioned by ntc. Of course, I said yes. It's one of the great theaters in this city and country, in the world, and especially for, you know, young playwrights, new playwrights, new plays, and. But as is the case with so many times with commissions, they can take a long time to bear fruit. And in the meantime, I wrote another play called King James that Manhattan Theater Club produced two years ago. And that was a wonderful experience, my first time working with mtc. And in the wake of that, I kind of churned out this script, Dakar 2000. And here we are again.
- [07:33]
A
Here we are. And the director, Mae Andralis. How did the two of you get connected for this piece?
- [07:40]
B
Well, I've known May for many years. I first met May at the Lark Play Development center, where we were both working a lot in the early parts of our careers, and we've been very close friends ever since then. And then back in 20. Well, it was supposed to be 2020. Ended up being 2021. She directed my play Letters of Suresh at second stage, a play that had been canceled because of the Pandemic, but then was one of the first plays in New York to come back to the stage in September of 2021. And that experience working with May was wonderful. It was our first time actually working together after knowing each other for so many years. And I loved working with her so much and told her about this play as I was writing it and telling her off the bat, I really want you to direct this one as well.
- [08:29]
A
Oh, great. And the play's a two hander. How involved in the casting?
- [08:36]
B
Oh, I was pretty involved in the casting. We actually didn't even do auditions for this play. I had always wanted to work with Mia Baron, who's an old friend and who's someone whose work I've admired all my career. And I brought her into to do a reading of a workshop last year and she was just terrific in the part. I'm so glad that she was in that she was able to continue to do the role. And Abu Bakr Ali, I didn't know, but I had seen him in a play a couple years ago in New York and immediately identified him as a young actor who I really thought was talented and I wanted to work with. And we brought him in for the same workshop and their chemistry was so clear and we were just. Me and May and MTC were like, if we can get these two for the play, that would be terrific.
- [09:29]
A
Wow. The stars aligned.
- [09:31]
B
Yes. Literally and figuratively.
- [09:35]
A
Once you were in rehearsal, how much did the play change?
- [09:39]
B
Enormously, which is not unusual for me. I tend to do a lot of rewriting in the. In the first rehearsal process of a new play and bringing in new pages pretty much every day and through into. Into previews. In fact, last week we were in our second week of previews and a couple of those nights Abu Bakr had to bring on pages, had to hold pages in his hand because that day I had given him a new monologue. So this is, you know, par for the course for me. I, I tend to rewrite a lot and I tend to kind of really, you know, develop the play in the moment when, when we're in that process. And it can be nerve wracking for everyone involved, including me and including the actors. But I think it, it usually.
- [10:26]
A
I'm going to ask you two questions in one and it's the last, the last questions for our time together and hearing how you talk about the time 25 years ago and the time now. What keeps you up at night?
- [10:45]
B
What keeps me up at night? Well, I think it's for me, it's both personal and global. Personally, what keeps me up at night is anxieties about growing older and keeping healthy and my family and friends growing older and keeping healthy and globally, it's, you know, I think what we're all kind of terrified about right now is that, you know, in the past 25 years, we've seen Such a change in the way that the world works and in humanity, technologically and culturally, politically. And all those things seem to kind of circle around each other with greater and greater speed. And I think I'm afraid of the speed of it all. I'm afraid of all those aspects of our modern world colliding. And I don't think I'm alone in feeling that they might.
- [11:41]
A
Yeah. And the. The flip side of that, what lets you get a good night's sleep?
- [11:49]
B
Art. Whether it's theater or visual art, film, music. And then paired with that, you know, I think friendships and family and love. You know, I realized, you know, this past year, I was actually a Tony voter for the first time this past year, and I had to see all the plays on Broadway, and it was a great thrill and an honor, but I found because of that, I had a lot to talk about with my friends who had seen all the plays, too, or some, you know, whenever people had seen something, and. And I realized that more than going to the theater and seeing plays, the thing I love most in the world is talking to people about shows, talking to people about theater, discussing the plays we've seen, discussing the ideas within them. And I just find those conversations so thrilling, whether they're with a girlfriend or with friends of mine who have, you know, seen something that I've seen or that I haven't seen yet and are telling me about it. Those conversations that circulate around art, around theater, that's really my favorite part of it all. You know, going to the bar after the show is oftentimes, you know, even more exciting than the show itself. And that's not taking anything away from the great plays I've seen and I enjoy seeing. But I think those two things go hand in hand.
- [13:11]
A
Right, how they're meant to be talked about.
- [13:13]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [13:16]
A
Well, this has been so enlightening, and I'm so grateful that we had a chance to be able to have this conversation today.
- [13:24]
B
Me, too. Lauren. Thank you so much for having me.
- [13:27]
A
I'm Lauren Klash Schneider with Rajeev Joseph, playwright of Descartes 2000, premiering at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Thank you.