‘Bad Kreyòl’ premieres in New York

Dominique Morisseau is a Haitian American playwright, who was raised in Detroit, Michigan. She’s written extensively about her native city, but her newest, and perhaps most autobiographical, play shines its light on the island nation where her father was born.

It’s called “Bad Kreyòl” — Kreyòl is the language spoken in Haiti, sometimes called Haitian Creole — and it looks at a pair of cousins, one from America, the other from Haiti, negotiating a difficult relationship. The play, co-produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club, is having its world premiere at New York’s Signature Theatre through Dec. 1 and has received some glowing reviews.

Morisseau began working on her play long before US president-elect Donald Trump uttered falsehoods about legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio. She said she sees similarities in negative attitudes between where she grew up and where her father grew up.

“To me, Haiti is the Detroit of the world,” the playwright said. “I’ve heard the same negative things about Haiti that I’ve heard about Detroit and vice versa. Two very strong versions of my identity have been fraught with media negativity about who I am. It takes a strong group of people to resist that and gives me a sense of pride and power.”

So, Morisseau’s new play is her first set in Haiti. And it’s been gestating for a long time.

“When I took a trip with my father in 2014 back to his homeland to try to visit places I thought we lost in the earthquake, I went to Haiti to write a very different play,” she said. “I had not been to Haiti, just like the character in this play since I was like a toddler, actually.”

“Bad Kreyòl” is written from the perspective of a Haitian American visiting the country and coming to grips with a culture that is beautiful and perplexing, familiar yet foreign. 

The central character’s name is Simone, and at one point, she says: “I’ve always been in between worlds. Half this, half that. I don’t know where I belong. I’m a Haitian who doesn’t speak Kreyòl. I’m a Black American who’s half Haitian. Do you know when I was a kid, the kids in my class didn’t even know where Haiti was?”

“She speaks, you know, quote-unquote bad Kreyòl,” said Kelly McCreary, the actress who plays Simone, and is well-known to audiences as a cast member of Grey’s Anatomy. “But is she also, like bad at being Haitian, you know,” she added laughing.

McCreary has a long collaborative relationship with Morisseau and is well aware that she’s a stand-in for the playwright. “It is such an honor to be Dominique’s avatar here in this play,” McCreary said. “I don’t know if she would describe it that way. But I have been fortunate over the course of my career in theater to play a version of her in a few of her plays.”

Simone wants not just to reconnect with her cousin, Gigi, who runs a high-end boutique in Port-au-Prince, after losing their grandmother, she wants to see what NGOs are doing in Haiti after the earthquake. She tries to help a former prostitute who’s now making pillows and is being sexually harassed. And she advocates for Pita, who is a restavek.

“Restavek in Haiti,” Morisseau explained, “generally they’re children who were raised in rural areas and their parents sort of send them off to more affluent families in the city in order to work for those families and in exchange for getting an education and getting, sort of like, better access to a better quality of life. And in many ways, those situations turn quite abusive.”

And, while Pita is treated as a family member by Simone’s cousin, he’s also her servant and a closeted gay man in a country where coming out can get you beaten up or killed. 

“I think of some individuals I know in Haiti or who are also from Haiti, who I look at them in my American lens and I’m like, ‘oh, I know what’s going on: You’re gay or you’re queer, you’re fabulous,’” said actor Jude Tibeau, who plays Pita and is one of the four Haitian Americans in the cast. “I get it. But you won’t identify as gay or you don’t say you’re gay to everyone else or we’re not talking about it and we’re being secretive and we’re like — shh shh shh — that’s not something we talk about.”

In the play, Pita joins a real Haitian organization called KOURAJ, which is for the LGBTQ+ community. “Bad Kreyòl” is filled with real culturally specific details about Haiti, but director Tiffany Nichole Greene said, in many ways, “we are telling a universal story. And it was really important to me that we dig into the nuance and the layers and the depths and the complications of being a human; finding joy, finding peace, surviving and finding self-worth.”

And, in a time, when so many immigrants have been demeaned and scapegoated, she added: “Isn’t it funny how art shows up right on time?”