A Q&A With Victor Esses

Can you tell us about how you came to write this show?

In January 2017 I visited my parents’ hometown of Beirut, in Lebanon, for the first time and that triggered a lot of questions about my identity, having been born and grown up in Brazil in a Jewish community and then moved to London when I was 18 so I could live my life as I wanted as a gay man has meant that my identity has often reshaped. All of these journeys have made me who I am and I wanted to find the place that connected all of them… to explore if it even existed… and to meet the audience as the unique and every person that I am.

I started creating little bits of text and storytelling that represented moments in my life that represented my different cultures, significant moments of migration, my relationship to Lebanon since I was a child. I found that music connected me to all these different cultures, listening to the Lebanese singer Sabah on a cassette tape that my dad played in the car in São Paulo, listening to All Saints in a CD when I arrived in London, music is so representative of times in our lives and cultures, and I decided to use them in different points of the story

How does it feel to take such a personal story to the stage in this way?

I’ve very much enjoyed this journey. It‘s been very emotional, I’ve had to allow myself to become vulnerable, it was the first time I was saying a lot of the things I talk about aloud in front of strangers, the first time I put all these elements together. Ultimately it has been one of the most healing, empowering experiences to go through…

How did it feel to perform Where To Belong for the first time?

It was very scary. If I’m honest I was crying in the dressing room before the first full sharing at CASA Festival some years ago, while everyone else was in the space setting up. I felt vulnerable and didn’t know how the audience was going to react. But as soon as I stepped into the stage and started welcoming the audience, and asking them questions and recording them in a portable stereo, into a cassette I started connecting. As the show progressed I felt very present and there with everyone and the response was incredible. It was the experience I was seeking, I feel like I found myself as an artist and maker in that moment.

What have been your highlights whilst performing the show?

Performing it daily for 4 weeks at Summerhall in Edinburgh was wonderful, especially because I got to meet different audiences from all over the world every day. Sometimes we’d have lots of Lebanese people, others lots of Brazilians, British people, queer, some days was artists and programmers, that really made the experience rich as I talk to the audience throughout the show and invite their thoughts and stories too. Some days the whole of the audience would be in tears together, another day the whole audience joined me on stage at the end of the show… that was magical. Rehearsing and performing at Rich Mix was also great and seeing so many people come through the door. The Q&A with Daniel Goldman, former AD at CASA and friend was a lovely way to process that first performance at Southwark Playhouse and meet the audience outside the performance.

What’s your favourite moment in the show?

I love the moment when people answer some difficult questions I pose them and they write them down and I invite some of them to share their answers and it’s so beautiful to hear their personal experience and connect with my family history.

How have audiences responded?

The audience’s response has been beyond the expected, people have been in tears, I have seen them laugh and enjoy and connect. Many have told me they have thought about it for long after they saw the show. And that it’s really made them think about their reality and about migration and prejudice.

Has performing the show made you discover new aspects to your story and memories?

Hugely, it’s made me create new memories and rewrite history a bit, tell the past but also the process of making it and how I grew through this process. This autobiographical work is very honest and also doesn’t hide the artifice; I mention the making process and the different things that happened and I discovered most of all that I have more choices than I imagined.

Have there been any unexpected challenges in creating the show and telling your story?

I think finding the support from venues and organisations takes time: to make them believe that your unique story is worth investing in and that your performance language is something interesting, so you have to keep putting the work in and building step by step while you develop further those relationships. This was my first solo piece so there was no examples of past work to show that gave an idea of what this would be like. There’s also the thing that in the past I have always felt that theatres were looking for that gay story, or that Jewish story, of that Middle Eastern story, but never one that would talk of all of these, of a Jewish-Lebanese Brazilian gay story. And yet that’s exactly why it’s more interesting. So happy with where we got with this!

What do you hope to do next in your career?

I want to keep exploring different forms and growing my work. After making Where to Belong I made Unfamiliar, with my partner and visual artist Yorgos Petrou, exploring our desire to have children and queer families… In the last year and a half we adapted it to a live Zoom performance and then to a 4-channel video installation commissioned by Join the Docks. I hope to travel with the installation. I am making a new show that I hope to be bigger in scale and have live music very present in it. I don’t want to reveal more before I actually make it but I have had a residency at Shoreditch Town Hall and it’s been an exciting beginning. More soon!