If a zombie uprising were to take place tomorrow, Emily Aboud wouldn’t mind one bit. “The fear of a zombie is only if my lineage has stolen something from their lineage,” she shrugs nonchalantly. “They wouldn’t be coming for me.”
Aboud, who uses she/they pronouns, is a Trinidadian playwright, director and drag king. Her latest play, Bogeyman, explores the question of what we fear and why. Its story is rooted in the history of the 1791 Haitian revolution, when the people overthrew the French colony to free themselves from enslavement. “Nobody knows about the uprising,” she says, “and I want them to know.”
Unlike in British schools, Aboud’s Trinidadian education taught the importance of the Haitian revolution. “This was a story of the underdogs winning.” But the spiritual aspect of the event was missing. At her Catholic state school (she is now “a raging atheist”) she was never told that the uprising is thought to have started with a Vodou ceremony in Haiti’s Bois Caïman, the alligator forest. “There’s a whole wealth of community and spirituality that made this revolution happen,” Aboud says, “and we didn’t learn any of that because it’s considered ‘demonic’.” She wonders about the narrative she and her classmates were told about Vodou, the same one that proliferates around the world about the much-misunderstood religion. “Is it considered demonic because it’s what defeated the oppressor?”
Growing up in Trinidad, Aboud attended Lilliput theatre, a drama group that has been running since 1975. Aboud is kinetic when she speaks, and never more so than when she’s talking about this group, which ingrained in her a total belief in the power of community. “It’s the greatest thing on the whole planet. I genuinely think that getting people together to talk and make stories together saves the world.” This training, which she then took on to student theatre at the University of Edinburgh, informs her process in the rehearsal room now, where she prefers to write, discuss and devise with cast and crew, before going back to writing again. She has just been shortlisted for 2022’s JMK award, an annual prize given to visionary young directors.
Soon heading to the Edinburgh fringe, Bogeyman sits somewhere between ghost story and thriller. “I don’t want to do a jump scare, and I’m not into blood and guts,” Aboud says. “I don’t want to traumatise the people I’m trying to empower.” She is far more interested in the origins of fear. “There is a PhD to be written on the Haitian uprising and horror.” Zombie itself is a Haitian word, she points out, with roots in Haitian folklore and the injustices of slavery.
By veering between 18th-century Haiti and modern-day London, Bogeyman explores how many modern fears are steeped in the continuing legacies of racism and empire. In discussions with her cast, they have shared feelings of living in a haunted city. “Looking at the Tate Modern, the Bank of England – they are built from money from enslavement,” she says. “I can’t even watch Downton Abbey. I just want to burn it all down.”
For Aboud, the revolution is an inspiration, but also a warning. In order to become independent, Haiti was made to repay the French for their loss of “property”. This debt, paid off in 1947, amounted to billions in today’s money, and has prevented the country from becoming economically stable. “The oppressed did win,” Aboud says drily, “but they’ve been punished ever since.”
So Bogeyman must be a celebration as well as a mourning. This double-edged approach was evident in her previous show, Splintered, which at once cheered Trinidad’s creation of carnival and the event’s embrace of queerness, and lamented the homophobia and misogyny many have to face in the rest of the year. “I think you need to have a sense of cynicism,” Aboud says of her feelings around Caribbean culture. “Nothing is black and white. It’s layered and complex.” That’s why Aboud called her theatre company Lagahoo, after the shapeshifter from Caribbean folklore. “Being allowed to be two things at once is really important to the work that I make.”
Navigating the historical legacy of the Haitian revolution and the ripples of empire in present-day life, Bogeyman encapsulates Aboud’s desire to use storytelling as a tool for empowerment and understanding. “We are trudging along to fascism right here in the UK,” she says, her voice a blend of despair and disgust. “I feel really hopeless about that all the time. For me, the Haitian revolution is an amazing inspiration. They literally abolished enslavement, on one of the most profitable colonies in the new world.” Aboud wants this story to serve as a reminder. “We can get rid of the oppressor. It has been done.”
Bogeyman is at Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, 3-29 August.
