Interview with Zakiyyah Modeste, special projects director, company member

By Nayo Watkins

Nayo Watkins: One of the things is you’re working with is the "Voices" project, and you’re getting the kids ready for their performance. Does "Voices" go on beyond this week?

Zakiyyah Modeste: Yeah. Appalshop is partnering with six or seven organizations around the country. One’s in Ohio.

NW: One’s in Durham, North Carolina.

ZM: Yeah, one’s in New York. So, I think they’re going to do a week of events there. I guess they’ll be similar to what they are doing here.

NW: So, this is the 30th anniversary of Appalshop’s program –

ZM: And Carpetbag.

NW: Does it go past this week, is it ongoing?

ZM: I think it’s for two years they have laid out different sites around the nation to do this. This is the kick-off since Carpetbag’s 30th and their 30th, they kicked it off here.

NW: In terms of Carpetbag and "Voices," is it ongoing?

ZM: Oh no, I don’t think so, but I know our relationship – we’ve always been in partnership with each other.

NW: I’m really trying to get a sense of what you do. There’s the youth project, there’s "Voices." What else are you involved in?

ZM: What else do I do? With "Voices," any performance that we have, since we are short of staff, getting information out, database, telling people about it, setting up press releases and making sure that the community knows about what’s going on here – whether that’s networking with UT, ’cause I used to go UT so I have friends over there and I know the bond between UT and KC isn’t that strong. So like for our Café Noir, different things like that, just keeping it going and being an instrumental person in saying stuff about Carpetbag. Always selling Carpetbag. I guess that would be like public relations. Human resources.

NW: So, you sort of do public relations across the board?

ZM: Right. For every event. Networking, and also grant proposals, writing grants – that’s a new thing that I’ve been exposed to. Quarterly reports, writing narratives. And I have to do the on-hand stuff with the kids, just the directorial things, I’ve written the script that they are using now. So, a lot of different things from different areas, which is kind of cool.

NW: What about your artistic stuff?

ZM: I guess that would come with the directorial pieces. I am a dancer. I choreograph. We haven’t done any dancing in our pieces. I guess setting the stage, directing the technical things, working on stage performance. Right now, as an artist, I am doing that. I haven’t had a chance to act, which I’m still waiting for.

NW: Is that part of your desire here, to be a part of the ensemble?

ZM: That was the reason I came up to Linda. That was one of the reasons I wanted to learn. As an actress in New York, it’s kind of hard to get this grassroots feeling. A lot of things are raised up from the grassroots. There are a lot of institutional companies and corporations that are kinda hard to tap into unless you have been paying them X amount of fees. The developmental process is kind of different up there than it is down here. Down here you have time to grow and there’s people that need you. So, you are able to put your talents to working on different projects, gaining experience. It helps you grow, rather than paying a fee to be instructed. This is hands-on. That’s one thing, why I came down here. And as an artist, looking for that, waiting for that opportunity to be in one of the pieces that Linda has. Then again it goes back to staffing. A big issue that nonprofits face in this grassroots connection is having enough staff for your program.

NW: What’s the most rewarding for you?

ZM: I like choreographing. A couple girls that were in the youth program, we’ve worked together to choreograph a piece, which we performed at homecoming, which is aside from Carpetbag. This new component – I’m trying to add a dance component to Carpetbag – with Linda’s permission, but I’m trying to develop it. That’s really rewarding for me. Even some of the KC students that aren’t dancers took our classes. I know the kids are involved in and interested in dancing.

NW: What’s rewarding about it for you?

ZM: For me? Just watching the learning process and seeing them grow and it’s self-rewarding, self-teaching. Also something that’s rewarding is the workshops that we did at Moses Teen Center. They were performance workshops, they were free, and we had them every Thursday in October. Just seeing kids that aren’t used to being in the artistic realm to openly express some of their feelings and some of the art that they have within them. Pulling that out of them, that was really rewarding. A lot of kids might not have gotten the opportunity to sit around and play a game, a theater game, or charades or just to act as if they were an actor or actress.

Nayo Watkins is an arts and community consultant who lives in Durham, N.C. She is sole proprietor of Bodacious Consulting and Organizing. Her work has included helping to build collaborations and partnerships between artists and communities that explore the relationship between art, culture, activism and empowerment. She served as coordinator for the Mississippi American Festival Project and for the N.C.-based Alternate ROOTS Community Artist Partnership Project. She was writer/facilitator for "Parables to Policy," an Internet project of Southern Rural Development Initiative and was consultant to the Mississippi Young Person’s Cultural Exchange. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, she served as executive director of the African American Dance Ensemble (Durham), At the Foot of the Mountain Theatre (Minneapolis), and the Mississippi Cultural Arts Coalition (Jackson), and as program assistant for the Afro-American Studies Program of the University of Mississippi. As an artist, Watkins is a poet, essayist, playwright and performer. Her poems and essays have appeared in literary anthologies and journals. As a playwright, she draws upon oral histories and participatory research to create plays rooted in place, people, culture and community. Productions of her commissioned plays have been staged in Port Gibson, Itta Bena and Oxford, Mississippi, and in Durham and Wake Forest, North Carolina. Her work is included in the repertory of actors John O’Neal, Cynthia Watts and Yolanda King.

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