From left: Jewell Bowry, Jasmine Case, Shauna Thompson, Asha James, and Trinity Lloyd in Flex.Roya DelSol/Supplied
When Obsidian Theatre’s artistic director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu first read the script for Flex, a play about a Black female high-school basketball team in rural Arkansas set in 1997, she immediately flashed back to her own youth. The WNBA had its inaugural season that year, starting off with eight franchises. Missy Elliott, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Mase were regulars on the music charts. And the Chicago Bulls were the reigning NBA champions.
It was also the last time Otu, who is originally from Victoria, played basketball herself.
“I played basketball because my boyfriend played basketball,” she says, beaming. She wasn’t thinking of going pro, unlike the young women in the play. The game was just everywhere. “It was such a big part of pop culture. It was a part of my social life. It was part of just being a young person. … And watching basketball was a huge thing – seeing Michael Jordan take the Bulls [to victory]. I still remember, vividly, watching those games.”
Flex has been described as American playwright Candrice Jones’s “love letter to the women of the American South.” But its story is just as true for Toronto’s Rexdale, Scarborough or Parkdale neighbourhoods – even today, adds Otu, who moved to Toronto in 2000. Over a four-quarter game, the cast of five high-school students and their coach dig into what it means to be on the cusp of womanhood and to have ambitions, how to compete and survive in a male-dominated sport, along with a conversation on women’s reproductive rights.
So when Crow’s Theatre associate artistic director Paolo Santalucia suggested the play to Otu for a possible co-production, she went for it. Santalucia had caught a performance of the play at New York’s Lincoln Centre. Given their prior history of working together at Soulpepper Theatre, Santalucia knew of Otu’s interest in prioritizing opportunities for young Black artists and tapped her to direct Flex’s Canadian premiere.
“It’s a play about fierce Black women playing basketball in the 1990s, when the WNBA was in full bloom, and there were possibilities for young Black women,” says Otu. The play also dribbles in music of the time, featuring artists such as Montell Jordan, Aaliyah and Xscape. Beyond the nostalgia, however, there was the thrilling challenge of bringing basketball to the theatre. “I’m drawn to theatre that has a little bit of an impossible quality to it. The fun is figuring out – how are we going to tell the story? How do we bring these two worlds together?”
The first thing Otu did was to hire a basketball coach, former National Basketball League of Canada all-star Alex Johnson.
“It had been a minute since I played basketball,” says Otu, laughing. She wasn’t familiar with the basketball terminology in the play. And she wanted to ensure that the actors looked like they could play the game and say their lines. Once the actors were selected, they underwent a week-long boot camp at the start of the year.
“They needed to learn ball-handling,” says Johnson, when asked what was important to him when it came to representing basketball in theatre. “The thing I have been harping on the past couple of weeks is being able to shoot. Being comfortable with different moves.”
“And ‘Hold your follow through!’ That’s what I keep hearing Coach Alex tell the girls,” adds Otu. “That’s been drilled into all of our minds.”
Working together, Otu and Johnson tried to create a bit of theatre magic. Rehearsing for the play after the boot camp, Otu realized that a bouncing basketball is rather loud. So they had to come up with strategies for the players to be able to say their lines – maintaining both the emotional arc of the dialogue and the athleticism of the sport. They also concluded that they needed a theatre space that would allow for the basketball to travel in many directions, and that they had to warn the audience of the possibility that a ball might just come their way.
For Johnson, the play also gave him an opportunity to discuss the sport with his wife, former college basketball player Brey Dorsett.
“Her biggest thing growing up was that she didn’t have anywhere to play. So she played with the guys. Fast forward to now, there are more opportunities,” he says. Women also tend to play differently, he adds. “It’s not so much competitiveness they are looking for – although that is there too. There’s also a real relationship. That connection, that friendship.”
Like any sports drama, there’s entertainment, as well as a hint of surprise and intrigue for the audience, says Otu.
“It will make them come back for another game,” she says, explaining that the play has an open ending that could go either way. “Are they gonna make this shot?”
Flex stages at Crow’s Theatre at 345 Carlaw Ave., Toronto, from April 15 to May 18.
