Ep 31: Arianna Gayle & Adam Elsayigh – “Memorial”: a verbatim drama of loss

<p>How do you tell people’s stories so they can say “Yes, you have heard me. That is what I want to say.” This is the second of two conversations on the development of the verbatim drama, “Memorial.” A play that, in a sense, gives permission for hard, suppressed questions about Muslims as “others” to be asked. And that speaks of loss in a way that can be understood across cultures and spaces and experiences.</p><p>In the previous episode we spoke with Arianna Gayle Stucki. Today, via zoom, Arianna is joined by the play’s co-creator, Adam Elsayigh. Together they discuss the special, even idiosyncratic, process of how this play came together. </p><p>That process brought together a team of volunteers, transcribing the recorded interviews and listening for pauses and inflections. This was not a process that fell back on AI or any machine generation but that process itself drew in a wider circle of people affected by the stories. </p><p>The word clouds produced from the transcriptions pointed to the significance of the Māori whakatauki (or saying) on the most important thing in this world: &quot;He tangata, he tangata, he tangata&quot; – &quot;It is people, it is people, it is people!&quot; </p>