Joy Nesbitt and Marley-Rose Liburd on the Diaspora, ordinary Black women and 'Blood of my Blood'

Joy Nesbitt isn't new to writing plays with complex histories, as shown in Dear Rosa, Stilt and Scenes with Black Folk. 

Blood of My Blood is no different. In this play, staged at the Royal Court Theatre, we meet Tallulah, a thirty-something Black British woman mourning her grandfather's death and seeking answers about her family lineage. In this lineage, we meet Ginnie, an enslaved African American woman who must decide whether to fight for her family or her freedom.​

The Floor Mag sat down with playwright, Joy Nesbitt and assistant director, Marley-Rose Liburd to discuss the production’s use of Hoodoo tradition, its ties to the diaspora, and the importance of portraying Black women as ordinary.

Joy Nesbitt in rehearsals for Blood of my Blood | Credit: Marc Brenner

The play centres on the Hoodoo tradition and conjure practice. I remember hearing the phrase "Blood of my Blood" in the movie Sinners. Nesbitt explains that Yvonne Thoreau is a leading scholar of this tradition and served as a key advisor in this play. "What was really exciting to me about the [Sinners] was that [Hoodoo tradition] was not portrayed as this “spooky magic thing” but rather as a practice that is used to converse with the ancestors."

​Because many people view Hoodoo or conjure practices as demonic, Liburd was determined to change this understanding of the practice.

"I think we've all been quite vulnerable and really thoughtful about the ways that we feel called to our own practices of ancestry and understanding of lineage and being able to connect ourselves backwards and forwards. I think it's been a really emotive and personal experience, rather than just trying to tie everyone to a sort of simplified version of hoodoo."

Liburd explains that pulling from the personal also helped build a secure foundation for what this world in the story looks like. "So much of Joy's personal history is within this play, and it's been really beautiful to be able to welcome everyone into that and see all of the different colours of how that shows up in everyone's lived experience through its play. I think we've all been able to trace our own connection of where we see ourselves reflected."

​While so much of this story focuses on African American history, I was surprised to learn that one of the main characters, Tallulah, is a Black British woman. Nesbitt could have made Tallulah African American, but she wanted to separate the character from herself and highlight connections across the Black diaspora.

​"In the decision of making her Black British, it's been really helpful to think about the diaspora in a way.  wanted to think about how we speak to our ancestors when they feel so far away from their reality. And I thought that it does so much more for us if that reality is even more separate from the world she's coming into."

Jodie Campbell as Tallulah in Blood of my Blood | Credit: Marc Brenner

Nesbitt has also found that living in London and speaking with more Black people in the UK has let her explore the richness of the Black experience. "There are so many different types of experiences here for Black people, and the communities that you find yourself in are dependent upon your culture and your race, and that is something that I also wanted to think about."

She also wanted Tallulah to be seen as a regular Black woman, because she believes Black women are often seen as extraordinary. "I wanted to depict Black women as not having all the answers when making big, hard decisions, but not necessarily fitting the strong Black woman narrative or the Black girl magic narrative. I wanted her to be a regular lady who's just trying to figure it out."

​When Liburd read the script, she was excited to dig into  the complexities of who people are beyond their choices: "That means living, that means their circumstances, that means beyond their choices."

​"I think the thing that stood out to me was how invested Joy was in giving all of these characters the opportunity just to be and really excavate what that means for them at that time, and ask us as an audience and as readers to kind of take ourselves out of a really ugly narrative and realise that there's like so much life and so much perseverance in ugliness."

​Liburd also wanted the play to explore the Black diaspora's relationship to space. She believes the global Black diaspora has an interesting relationship to space, and the play makes you think about the loss of spaces for the Black diaspora.

​"A lot of the things that we have and the spaces that we have don't exist anymore. And a lot of people aren't able to go back to those spaces. A lot of our parents weren't able to go back to those spaces," Liburd says.

"I think that moments like these and pieces of art like this really remind you to kind of just feel that the concept of space, which sounds so simple, has so much texture in what those spaces can be and how they can bring things out in you, and even when it might not be your own direct ancestry."

​When asked what audiences can take away from this play, Nesbitt wants audiences to think about their current decisions and how a single decision had to be made for them to exist, and for them to exist in this context. 

"Then I'd like for them to think about what decisions they need to make to be a good ancestor to their descendants in the future."

Blood of My Blood plays in Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at Royal Court Theatre until Sat 7 Nov.