The Revival: Women and the Word is a new documentary that looks at The Revival Poetry Tour and the queer women of color at its center. The traveling salon-style performance art show hit seven cities across the country and brought some amazing spoken word and song to enthralled audiences. We recently spoke with the film’s director, Sekiya Dorsett. We talked about how she got involved with the tour, the importance of community, the challenges the women faced on the road and more.
AfterEllen.com: How did you get involved with The Revival Poetry Tour?
Sekiya Dorsett: I met Jade [Foster] back in 2009 and that’s when she was doing something similar in an apartment in Brooklyn and I went to that. I had just been finding space. I’m from the Bahamas. Trying to find my space has always been a challenge, to find where these black lesbians are. At a club is not where you find community. And so when I saw the community she was building in that little apartment in Brooklyn, I thought, “Oh this is pretty cool,” and I wanted to be at the event she was having. So she approached me about being a sponsor. I mean, I don’t know why I would be the sponsor, but I guess I was the only one that she knew that had a job. I wasn’t making that much money, but I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll be your sponsor.” So I became a sponsor for that tour and then I was like, “You know what? I should shoot it.”
At the time, I had a job so I couldn’t get off. I went to two cities and I just was like mesmerized by what was happening, at the artistry, at the talent, at just—everything was just amazing. So I decided, “Great, I need to do something.” And so the following year we scraped together some pennies and [Jade] had raised $5,000 for the tour. I think we used like maybe $2,000 or so to rent some camera equipment and pay some people because, again, because I was working I couldn’t go to every single city. So we had two people cover Oberlin and I think it was Detroit. And it was just kind of putting this thing together. We came back with all this footage.
AE: You must have had so much footage.
SD: We did. It was just endless. We were just trying to be a fly on the wall and see what these women were doing and trying to tape all the performances. Luckily, we were able to cut it into something that became cohesive and that I think really reflects the magic that was captured during the tour, which was great. And there’s a lot we left out. But I think what we did capture was this whole idea of sisterhood. That’s something that we really wanted to show because I think so many times we see these documentaries where it’s like, “Oh these sad black people” story, “Oh the homeless black people” story. All those stories are important, but we just don’t see what people are calling now this “carefree black girl”—this happy, this joy that there is. So we wanted to capture a little bit of that.
But as you saw in Oberlin, as we tried to live a life that is joyful, because I think that joy was in itself a certain freedom, as we try and live a life that’s joyful, there will be challenges. And seeing how the ladies processed the challenge of being a black woman in America was really important to also bring up at the same time. So I was happy that we were able to have that moment, sadly, because we did get a dose of reality that we can’t all be happy all the time. I was also happy that we were able to incorporate a historical component because this revival thing was not started by Jade Foster. This is a continuation of the work of many people before her. And so just that whole idea of being on a continuum has been really powerful and important.
AE: Staying with something you just mentioned, there’s a moment in the movie where the group gets into a bit of trouble with the cops. What was that experience like for you? You weren’t there, right?
SD: Someone else was filming that so in the moment I don’t know. I’ve watched the footage time and time again and I think that we were lucky. We were one of the lucky people that can survive a story that starts really simple: a boy going to the store to get a drink, ending up dead; a man standing on the street corner and the cops picking him up. You know, stories that start really simply. We were able to survive one of those stories.
AE: Had you spoken beforehand at all about this being a possibility? Or do you think it just completely caught everyone by surprise?
SD: I think it caught everybody by surprise, quite honestly. As t’ai [freedom ford] was saying, “Oberlin? Isn’t that where they have the Underground Railroad?” I think that there was not a discussion about what could possibly happen and how to handle that. So yeah, I think it came as a surprise.
AE: When you were around to film, did you travel in the van with all of them?
SD: That’s another challenge of doing this. It was a six-passenger van. There were seven of us. My hip is really large—let’s just be honest. So trying to fit very wide bottomed ladies in a six-passenger van was pretty much a challenge. And so we had to sometimes sit in this thing that we called a “cut,” which was just that section between the two seats, which was so painful on your hips for hours. So we did not get the Rihanna “777 Tour” treatment. It was challenging, definitely, at times. And then we all ended up on our periods at one point, which was horrible.
AE: How did you sync up that fast?
SD: I do not know. It was the most horrible thing ever.
AE: Now I didn’t want to be the person who asks, “How much drama was there with seven women in one van?” but now that you brought it up, how did things play out? There was definitely a sense of family and love there, but there was also some tension. So how was spending that much time with the same people?
SD: It got to be a lot. It’s sort of like your sibling. If you have a good sibling, you enjoy spending time with them, but at certain points you have seen them for a while, so you do want to take a moment just for yourself. We did have some moments where we were like, “Oh, we’re getting off at this bus stop? Nobody follow me. I’m just going to the bathroom.” So I think there was moments like that, but definitely it turned into more of a supportive, “Oh, you’re having your period? Why don’t we stop and get you some chocolate,” type of thing.
AE: Earlier in the interview you talked about community. At its core, the tour is largely about building community amongst queer women of color. I think you’ve alluded to that, but do you think that’s something that’s lacking, or was the tour just a way of building upon what already exists?
SD: That’s something that’s lacking across the board. There’s no doubt about it. Unless you have a small group of friends, there is no place you can go and a bunch of lesbians show up. And a club doesn’t count. It just doesn’t. Because people are coming there for a particular purpose and it gets real awkward and tense. It’s weird when you have to interact at a club with people. It’s not community. And so The Revival is that community where we’re coming to see a performance of poetry. It’s a different feel. It definitely provided something that is lacking, something I still think is lacking.
AE: Some pretty notable women attended the events in the various cities. Did any surprise you? For instance, it was pretty cool to see Janet Mock show up in Brooklyn.
SD: I think it was really good to see Nikky Finney there because she’s just like a powerhouse in the black poetry lesbian scene. A lot of people kind of look to her as an influence on their poetry, and so that was really great. Seeing Janet Mock was great as well because she’s become more of this celebrity. So to see her you’re kind of like, “Oh, wow. You took time to come to Brooklyn and hang out for poetry. That’s so cool.”
AE: So as a director you had all this great footage of the women together and performing. But you also made it a point to interview black feminist thinkers, historians and elders. How do you think that made the film better?
SD: At the beginning I didn’t have this whole idea to put in Nikki Finney and I didn’t have an idea to put in Alexis De Veaux, but I feel like we needed that. This is not a historical account of poetry salons—OK. But we don’t want to pretend as if we’re living not on a continuum. And so it was important to make sure that we gave a nod. We didn’t have a lot of time to give a nod because we were already over the time I wanted it to be, so I wanted to just tell people just a little bit about who came before us, who we look to, and hopefully they would want to do some research. And I think that allowed the film to have some context.
We’ve never been in charge of the history books. So many minute details of non-people of color life have been reported. Minute. The discovery of the hot dog, or something. And I felt that The Revival would have been lost as just another event that some queer girls had and that would have been it. But I think now what we have is an event that a bunch of cool, black queer women of color came together for sometime in the 2000s, adding to the historical component that has been going on from the ’80s.
We’re really writing our own history. And I think that’s important. It’s important to document ourselves. People are not going to document us unless we’re impoverished. Everybody wants to see this impoverished black person. We need to document ourselves. And social media has given us that option, but we also need to document ourselves more profoundly in film. Hopefully, someone can pick up this film years down the line when they want to do a revival, maybe, or they’re thinking about doing a poetry tour, or something. It’ll be available somewhere and somebody will see it. I think for me that’s the important part of doing this.
AE: Finally, what do you hope will ultimately be the legacy of this tour and this film?
SD: I want people to know that queer women of color were able to do it for themselves and make their space despite everything. Because it wasn’t a small feat to go on tour across country. It took a lot to organize, it took a lot to call every city and get people together. But people came out, and so there’s a community there. And so we hope that people know something great happened.
The Revival: Women and the Word plays at Frameline in San Francisco on June 18 and at Outfest in Los Angeles on July 15. The movie will also be coming to New York in September and to a Lez Journeys cruise in October. Check out the film’s website for future screening news.
