Interview: Benji Reid on ‘Find Your Eyes’, his show at Manchester International Festival and more

Pioneer of hip hop theatre turned award-winning photographer, Benji Reid mixes Afro-futurist imagery with hard-hitting tales from his life and adventures in a unique show named ‘Find Your Eyes’ that unfolds before your very eyes. For Manchester International Festival 2023, Benji draws from the well of his own experiences- Exploring vulnerability, tragedy,and triumph through the photographer’s lens. Journeying through highs and lows, ‘Find Your Eyes’ explores how we make sense of the world through our stories and our art. Alt got in conversation with him to discuss his journeys, passions, the show, the windrush and more.

Alt A :

What invited you to the arts? What was a seven year old Benji thinking and what encouraged this journey?

Benji :

The reality of it is that my eldest sister, Claudia Reid, was a dancer. She was really proficient in tap and could sing. So in one sense, creativity was encouraged, especially by my mom at an early age. So, all of us played an instrument, even if it was at a very rudimentary level. So we were all at some point engaged in something creative.

Alt A :

Looking at your resume, you’re a multidisciplinary artist having gone in the direction of photography and theater. How did that contribute to the other things you’ve have done ?

Benji :

There are a couple of answers to that. I will say that for me, being multidisciplinary means that once I’ve gotten so far in one discipline that couldn’t get any further, I decide to do something else. And whenever I felt as if there was a glass ceiling, I would learn something else. So I started off dancing and I got far, and then realized that I didn’t want to just be a dancer because I got introduced to text. Then I wanted to be an actor, and I got far as an actor and then realized I was only getting limited genres due to there being lesser parts at the time. So then I started directing after which I met John Z who was an MC at the time. I was a dancer, actor, mime, so we got together and that blossomed into hip-hop theater. So some of them were kind of happy meetings and some of them were necessities.

Alt A :

Could you tell us a little bit about hip-hop theater and how has that evolved over time? because you don’t hear a lot about hip-hop theaters. I know we have examples like Hamilton and a few others coming up. But tell us a bit about your relationship to hip hop theater and you think that fits in the space now?

Benji :

My relationship to hip hop theater was that, I’m basically one of the pioneers in the UK. Jonzi was kind of the initial drive, and I was his creative partner at the time. So we were developing that language at the time, but that was driven through Jonzi’s vision. But I was involved right at the inception and what was really interesting about hip-hop theater is that it lived in poetry scene because it was where people could come up, do their thing and didn’t need any funding to do it. So you could rate something in the afternoon or in the evening over a couple of evenings and then perform it that night.

So there was an audience, and since poetry was there for people who were wordsmiths with a stage, having come from dance, both me and Johny could incorporate our own different languages. So I was a popper and he was an MC. And then he got taken on by other kind of theaters. And I went more down the theatrical route and incorporated dance and was really interested in the theatrical and the mime element of that. And my priority was always mental health, right from the very beginning.

So I always talked about what it is to be black and going through emotional landscapes. And that was, that was a thing that kind of really blew me up. There was a piece called the holiday which was a 50 minutes real time piece of this guy on a ledge. You get to see him deliberating why he should jump and all the voices in his head. It’s slightly comic, it’s comic tragic, but it’s physical. So it was a real interesting melding of ideas in terms of using different languages like popping, singing, poetry, which was all done with this guy on the imaginary ledge.

And that piece went all over the world. I performed it in Brazil where people couldn’t understand what I was saying in terms of the language, but got it emotionally. People were crying at the end of it, because when it’s really raw and physical and true in your body, people can read it regardless of the nuance of language. But if I just go back just one step further, there was a company called Black Mime Theater and Denise Wong was one of the directors and with Black Mime Theater Company, we used mime, storytelling, poetry and acting. And this is pre hiphop theater. So, there was a whole physical theater company and a whole physical theater language that people don’t even know existed. The precursor to hip hop theater for me was Black Mime Theater Company and Double-Edged Theater Company which was run by a guy called Amani both of which were doing super avant-garde work. And then the third was Talawa Theater Company that was doing more traditional theater. So during the eighties and nineties, there were three very distinct companies that were doing work that then became the breeding ground for hiphop theater.

Alt A :

You talked about mental health and using your works to get those messages across. You also speak a lot about black masculinity. Could you please elaborate on the lens that you are speaking from? What are the cause you want to put forward ?

Benji :

In terms of black masculinity, I’m a straight black man in the arts who wants to have a conversation about the prevailing voice that comes through hiphop with a kind of toxic masculinity in the way in which black straight men assert their straightness and lens that sees the kind of the trauma that black Americans have gone through. And that’s the predominant lens when, when we are talking about blackness. Because in the UK we’re almost invisible in terms of the diversity of voices coming from an urban background. So what I want you to say is, you can be black, you can be straight, you can be fragile, you can be an older male, and you can still be going through turmoil.

So I wanted to emphasize that you don’t have to be a super hard guy or hypersexual or be like the strong prevailing images that come through rap videos and songs and understand there are other alternatives to blackness so that our voice and the nuance is not lost. So when we start to put these voices in, in terms of being a black father, co-parenting separately that also has its story and its place and being able to put these stories is what we’re still grappling with. And I don’t have all the answers and I still thumb fumble and its okay to be imperfect because we are very rarely allowed to put our imperfect self in front of the view of our of audience but we are still works in progress with softness and vulnerability, and our vulnerability is strength too.

Alt A :

How do you feel about the conversations that have happened in the last four or five years post George Floyd? Are you confident in terms of where the conversations are going around black men and masculinity and maybe the nuances of homosexuality. Do you think that we now have enough black male storytellers now?

Benji :

This is so interesting, isn’t it? Because the needle’s constantly oscillating, but we’re also moving in so many interesting directions in terms of what identity means. I only have one perspective on blackness, which has to do with my age, with both my parents, where I come from, being from the north, the dance background, all of which are very specific to my lens. But my lens is my lens. There should be many lenses about blackness because nobody has the one true lens. It’s like a tapestry, and all we are is one thread within that tapestry. So, what’s really interesting is that when we think about where we’ve come from the wind rush to now, we’ve actually come really far, but it’s not far enough.

But I feel as if the more we are progressing in one sense, there’s more the opposing voices on the opposite side. And that needle, that needle will always oscillate. And I don’t really know whether there will ever be a time when there is such thing as equal distribution of wealth, equal distribution of visibility and equality for all. Because that’s basically the aim. If we’re talking about it, it isn’t just about me wanting equality for black males, but black females and black and white females, and, you know, all of us because the ultimate aim is for us to actually have some level of peace and understanding and visibility. Because when I’m talking about the bigger picture, we’re just talking about a beautiful vibration. We’re talking about being in harmony.

And we only can be in harmony when we’re all seen and all recognized for our beauties and our imperfection. So I’m not satisfied fully satisfied but the beautiful thing is that I think we now have so many interesting writers from so many perspectives in the UK. Whether you’re a black female or black, gay men or gay women, I think that there’s these beautiful rising of voices, political voices, spiritual voices that are coming that’s bringing up from the UK and we have so many different ways of disseminating our stories and there is no one gatekeeper that can now gatekeeper our stories. I mean, look how we’re talking now, and the fact that, that you become an alternative voice, rather than me having to go to the voice or to the guardian or to the times, you know? So in that sense, we’re living in really beautiful times.

Alt A :

So while we are talking about beautiful times. Could you tell us a bit about ‘Find Your Eyes’, the show at the Manchester International Festival. Tell us a bit about the concept, what is it inspired by, and of course the title.

Benji :

Let’s just start with the title. ‘Find Your Rise’ is about being able to truly see and to be seen ; to truly see wonder in everything, see beauty in everything, even in the tragic story. To be really seeing nuances is what ‘Find your eyes’ is about. And I wanted to be able to take my audience on this beautiful journey while deep down, the work is about healing. But I tell stories that’s framed from all short, episodic stories that I tell throughout the performance juxtapose me making work. So it lives in a space of live art and is again, melding of different ideas. So we’ve gone through hiphop theater, we’ve gone through physical theater now this is the mixture or the intersection between photography, theater, and dance. So now it’s another melding, another meeting point where my skills are kind of in conversation, but live on stage.

Alt A :

And what do you like about photography?

Benji :

The thing that I love about photography is that you can pick up a cheap camera and start straight away. I had come from theater and dance that are massive institutions in order, that take a massive team to put together. And at the end of it, somebody has to turn around and say, I like that idea, I’ll give you money. Photography takes all the people out of the equation. It’s a way of being completely independent. And for me it was a revolutionary act, to find a camera, and then start working with the subject that I love, which was my daughter. Photography for me was about freedom. That I could still make something that could live in a space without having to ask for permission for it. I lost my company in 2011 and I was devastated because for me, my company was an extension of self. So when my company was lost, I felt like I was no longer useful and photography was a way in which I could fall in love with my art again and fall in love with me and my relationship to my daughter. So that’s really what photography meant.

Alt A :

Since you mentioned the Wind Rush, what’s your views on just how this conversation has evolved and what the government is doing in terms of, the compensation, for example? While many people have different views and some people say that it was just one boat and shouldn’t even be called the Wind Rush, what is your view on this?

Benji :

Wind Rush for me is the symbolism, because we know that from fifties, all the way up to the seventies and even the eighties, people were coming over freely anyway. So it’s more about the symbolic meaning of these migrants coming here and what that story is. We came here to better our lives, we came here because we were sold the dream that we were going to a place where the streets were paved with gold, where we would live the life that people imagined in the magazines or in the news reels and they imagined that they would be close to the Queen and the King because that was their monarchy. So, there was this whole idea that people were going to be elevated and that they would be accepted. And that’s what the wind rush means, it is the dream that we were going to be able to take ourselves out of a situation and make ourselves better but then the reality of it is that we were pretty much hated in the workplace and even in our social spaces.

And then the slow letdown as the reality hit that it was cold, it was miserable,you didn’t have any places to stay. It meant that if you had even been educated, you would still have to start again because your education wasn’t counted. So for me, the wind rush is about that false dream and then our parents having to hold back the tide while trying to protect us while we’re now navigating the school system and not quite being cognizant of why things aren’t meeting. So, for me the heartbreaking thing was recently, I think it was Theresa May, when she turned around and there was this new legislation where they would send back people who weren’t fully documented and for me, there was a level of cruelty with that.There was a level of callousness that isn’t out of character to British politics. And that’s why there is that duality of being black British that whenever we go abroad, we are very clearly British, but when we go home, we can’t stand by the British flag and wave it. We don’t feel part of it and we don’t feel part of the decision making. That’s why a lot of black people are apolitical. Because they think, what’s it got to do with me? We don’t feel heard or seen. And this is the reason why as artists, we make the work so that we can be heard and we can be seen. But also we’re doing it on our terms.You know I’ll say this, that my mom recently suffered a stroke and it’s been two years since. And she’s grappling with the thought of what it was all for? She worked hard to get into retirement age and got a stroke because that was the weight she carried all those years.We get to learn from that and we get to tell their stories. And their stories didn’t happen in vain. They were at the frontiers, my mom and dad are adventurers and everybody that got on that boat was an adventurer because they gave up their life. They live, but something unknown. But they trusted in the journey. And for that, we have to celebrate them no matter how hard it was. And I think the beautiful thing is, is that my children are now feeling the benefit. My little one, knows more about theater than her theater teacher. She walks into theaters when I was directing my play and she’s sitting down there watching how plays are constructed. That’s the beautiful thing that the second generation now, are coming with a sense of ownership that they feel very much part of this world of England. What’s really beautiful is that they’re the ones who are defining it. So when we start to look at the three generations, we see the changing of attitudes and the fighting changes ever so subtly. So now my daughter is taught by people that look like her, but also she will go on to teach. When we look at these small stories in isolation, it becomes only a tragic story. But then when we look at what came out of that story, there’s transformation in that. We struggled with hopes and dreams, but then now our children are making their hopes and dreams into their reality. And bit by bit, I feel like we are creating this really beautiful story. And within 75 years is this massive transformation that has happened, where you can black people in every aspects of society, whether it’s politics, sports, theater, sciences etc. And that for me is inspiring.

Alt A:

Wonderful. A short question, where do you call home?

Benji :

That’s really interesting. Sometimes Manchester and sometimes when I’m meditating, the universe. But home is anywhere where I feel at peace and home doesn’t have to be fixed. It can’t be fixed in the, in the space that we live in.

Alt A :

What are some of the things you’re looking forward to in terms of the Manchester International Festival? What are some of the highlights for you?

Benji :

At the moment I’m just looking forward to bringing this work in front of an audience because I’ve been thinking about it for six years. But if I be honest with you, I’m excited about just being in the moment. I know it sounds really airy fairy, but I’m living in the now, I’m living in the present and I’m present here now. So if you ask me that, I’m so pleased that I am the man that I am now, with all that I’ve gone through.

BENJI REID: FIND YOUR EYES: https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/benji-reid-find-your-eyes/