Where are you from? By Merlia de Ridder
“Where are you from?”
The seemingly normal question is for too many of us, and for Joshua Hinton, asked on a daily basis. Hinton’s painful realisation growing up is that what they are really asking is “why are you brown?” I could not help but look around to see who in the audience would find this surprising, something they hadn’t previously considered a problematic question.
Now a 26-year-old, our storyteller, Hinton (performer & writer), reflects on the damaging experiences he had growing up as the only non-white, sitting in his pre-school cohort, wondering why everyone grimaced when he said that his favourite food was his “Mehmeh’s chicken curry.”
While taking on his search for answers, we journey through the process of making Mehmeh’s one-pot chicken curry on stage. With the use of camera projection through the help of his brother Dominic Hinton (sound designer & operator), who sits on the stage nearby, a bird's eye view of the cooking table is created. Joshua plays out his Mehmeh's life stories by using his cooking pot as a bomb shelter, the herb bottles as his family members, spraying herbs to create the fires and bombs that rained down during World War II. This translated a bit clunkily - I could see what they were aiming to achieve but could’ve used a bit of chaos to portray the mayhem and turmoil of those experiences.
Joshua sparked some deeper ideas when speaking about the rose-tinted glasses we wear when we are protected by the naivety of our youth. He explained how Mehmeh told him only the small details of her life, where she speaks of ‘the love and not the bomb shelters”. Young Joshua found himself having to put two and two together to figure out which war events she had lived through. Between her beautiful Arabic Bahai prayer and Persian chant, a recording of her recounting her memories from planes roaring over her school dropping bombs to when her family were forced to flee across countries, gave us an insight into this incredible woman and the power of family love.
Joshua also spoke so fondly of his upbringing with his British grandparents on his father's side, ‘Poppi and Grandma’; a house that loved jazz and classical music and had a fair share of its own stories to tell. As Poppi had grown up in South Africa, the stories of living through Apartheid also became intertwined in their familial culture.
With such great stories and lessons to share, and with his brother Dominic on stage, adding quips to the dialogue, I was expecting and hoping for more genuine interaction between the two, going deeper by showing that family connection in real time. Although we did get a glimpse of it at the very end, when the two sang and played an original song together, ‘Evergreen’.
What I really appreciated was their use of the sense of smell - a chronically under-utilised sense in the world of theatre. Cooking on stage brings a real presence to the moment as the exotic smells of the curry waft through the air, and the sound of the sizzling onions keeps us on our toes. A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen is a story of family and knowing that if you are ever lost in who you are, the smell and taste of your nana’s or Mehmehs food will likely remind you.
So where does he truly belong? Well, after years of feeling like he had no answer, he has come to the conclusion that, actually, it is “anywhere and everywhere I feel at home.”
About Merlia de Ridder
Merlia loves a good drama; theatre with a sense of suspense, tension, and unique human connection. Working at ASB Waterfront Theatre allows her to watch a lot of this, adding to her training at NASDA and The Actor’s Programme. She delved deep into her own work in 2023 at the Little Andromeda Theatre in Christchurch with I Can Not Give Hugs, set in an age where AI creates ‘human’ connection indistinguishable from the real thing. She’s now delving further into directing, producing, a remount of her show, and if that wasn’t enough, recording her own music set to be released this month.
