Interview with Kofi Fosu Forson

Kathleen Florence
June 2021

Kathleen:  Kofi, it’s great to connect with you again online.  The last big event of yours that I attended was the reading of your full length play “Hurt Country”.  Just after that you were a featured poet at NYC’s Great Weather for Media. You are a visual artist, playwright, prose writer, poet and philosopher whose work is both dense and lyrical, grounded in pre-modern knowledge and contemporary popular culture.  You’re accomplishing great feats and you’re in the heart of New York City.  But before we talk about that, let’s start with your early days growing up in Ghana.  How did your youth inform your current narrative?  What ideas from your family and in film, television, art have left a lasting influence?

Kofi: Ghana is my place of birth. I lived out my pre-teen years there studying at the Royal Preparatory. It was there I first showed signs as a creative talent when I illustrated images of soccer players and equestrians. I gained knowledge of the narrative in children’s books, other than the Ananse stories my grandmother told us, her grandchildren, as we sat on the steps of her house on her compound, where I spent my youth. We were also privileged to watch television dramas like “Ghost Town” and “Koliko”, all of which were Ghanaian productions. But there were shows from abroad like “Gomer Pyle” and “Bonanza” which gave us a glimpse into what people in America were watching.

As far as the influence of theater there was the work of the comedian Super O.D. who was a consummate performer. Watching my uncles chase and kill goats during Christmas celebrations always made for a thrilling experience. But it was the presence of the “Kakamotobe”, a bunch of masked and costumed men who stood on stilts, accompanied by musicians that brought festive notions of hilarity, performance and theater into my life at that age.

My ideas on making art came from fear, fear of art; portrayal of the dramatic in a facial expression, demonstrative brush strokes, explosive colors. That and fear of “melancholia” in music. I cried when I heard the song, “A Rose in Spanish Harlem” and I was afraid of a painting in my family household of a bunch of Dagomba men, a Northern tribe, wearing masks and raffia skirts, holding spears.

My will to perform and make art all came from the original notion of fear and how to counteract it. My life in Ghana laid down the foundations of art and theater. My displacement to and life in New York City titillated the raw definition of talent and  broadened my scope of art history, art privilege and the art conscience.

Kathleen:  Your New York writing experiences started with poetry.  What were the books and poets you were reading early on?  What was the music and what were the films that were impacting you?

Kofi: I never read poetry as a boy. The books I read at this time during grade school were S. E. Hinton novels and The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. I was studying at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and those art and writing exercises as well as composition, certainly built a regard for my writing ability. It wasn’t until I started high-school that I was introduced to American poets like E. E. Cummings and Emily Dickenson, the well known classic poems like “Ode to a Nightingale”, novels by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck. It was here I first became aware of Shakespeare’s sonnets, most notably his plays. After I left high-school, I discovered Bukowski, along with Wallace Stevens and African American poets like Quincy Troupe.

I grew up on my father’s record collection of jazz, African popular music, British Invasion music like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Funk and Disco music. Heavy metal music was popular among the boys in grade school. This was also a time of early Rap and Hip Hop, New Wave and the latter stage of Punk. The radio was very important to me because it heightened my knowledge of music. When I heard Laura Cantrell spin old time country songs. Delphine Blue played new music, especially those that were popular in the clubs and legendary dee-jays like Scott Muni who spun classic rock records and the rhythm and blues station WBLS which every Saturday night was party central.

The films that made an impact on me were 80’s horror films like “The Exorcist”, “Phantasm”, the “Friday the 13th” series, coming of age films featuring Molly Ringwald. I learned the importance of film making by watching those early Scorsese films, like “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver”. The artiness of Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise’. I was heavily into the French New Wave directors like Godard and Truffaut. Cable television was important because I got to see other foreign films by Alain Renais, Bunuel and others. Everything changed for me when Spike Lee hit the scene because he highlighted the black cultural experience.

Kathleen: Spike Lee was hugely influential.  Many of us had very little exposure to black culture on television or films, nevermind theatre.  How did his films, characters, stories ignite you, and how did it change the conversation with your peers?

Kofi: Spike Lee was important to me because outside of life in my Ghanaian home, the only black narratives I got growing up were from television comedies like “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons”. Spike Lee changed my imagination with an in depth look at black characters who challenged the normal perception of black folk. These films also were groundbreaking in that they documented the Black American experience in a more riveting manner, much closer to reality. The conversations I was having with my peers were based on the race relations in New York City at the time, which were troubling. Criminal cases like the torture of Abner Louima, or the mob killing in Howard Beach. These were topical, everyday conversations we were having. Spike Lee became the focal point on all matters black related. “Do The Right Thing” eclipsed everything.

Kathleen: You told me once that you started to love Shakespeare in high school and then you were introduced to Pirandello.  Can you elaborate?

Kofi: Actually, yes, as I mentioned, I discovered Shakespeare in high-school but I didn’t like his plays. I sensed a white-entitled superiority. I couldn’t navigate the general narrative of self-obsessed power and greed. Studying these plays were also overwhelming as they required all of my attention. It wasn’t until I started studying at Hunter College that I discovered Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and the opening line, “If music be the food of love, play on”. The gentle, soft and poetic nature of this line seduced me.

My years at Hunter College, overall, inspired a further interest in theater when I started reading Pirandello as part of the courses I was taking at the time. I could relate to the absurdist nature of Pirandello’s plays. There was a strong sense of musicality in the language. What I imagined would be a clown playing an oboe. I’m not referencing an image in Pirandello, but the idea of the awkward and how anything can happen at any given time. The feel for surprises, as an exploding birthday cake. Once again not referencing Pirandello. Generally how the stage can be a place where the audience is held in suspense was something I felt when I read Pirandello.

Kathleen: Your play “Hurt Country” is full of musicality and centers on the rocknroll scene.  Could you talk about the themes of this play and also your ideal cast when it gets on stage?

Kofi: The escapist reality of listening to rock and roll has driven my psyche for years. Much of this has evolved from the notion of a musician carrying a guitar case to “rock and roll” becoming a pop entity. I wanted to pay homage to my generation of those who were “born to rock” set to the pace of an apocalyptic world of chaos. The themes of the play center on power, subservience, control, fear, angst, lost love and catharsis. Interesting how I was the casting director for most of the plays I directed. My generation of actors have gotten older. I do like Jim Jarmusch’s trend of casting musicians in his films.

Kathleen:  When did you start writing plays?

Kofi: I had been reading Sam Shepard’s plays when I left high-school. I became an ultimate fan, reading interviews, watching his movies, following his career. It was at a time when the Off-Broadway scene was taking shape in New York City. Theater companies such as The Wooster Group were putting on highly imaginative plays. I quietly followed the theater scene by keeping up to date with shows like the American Theater Wing seminar on public television. I was part of a writing group and through the facilitator of the group I started going to watch live plays. They were mostly smaller productions by local theater groups. Overall, I was interested in what was happening in the theater world. I remember John Malkovich in “Burn This”, playwrights like John Patrick Shanley, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein. It wasn’t until I discovered August Wilson that I formed that sense and ability to approach dialogue which I experimented with by doing monologues and acting out all the different roles and tape recording them. Shepard’s plays lit the fuse. August Wilson’s fame gave me inspiration and confidence.

Kathleen:  Can you tell me about the plays with Riant Theatre, the Strawberry One Act Festival and your nomination for the Arnold Weissberger Award?

Kofi: I submitted my play “Punching Bag” to the Riant Theater after college. It was a play about a character torn between his future as a musician and  living up to the dream of what society expects of him. The theater’s artistic director Van Dirk Fisher directed and staged the play for me. I soon thereafter started submitting my plays into the theater’s Strawberry One-Act Festival. My plays “Black Birds in Leather Pants” and “Cushion Pill” were some of the plays which advanced in the several rounds of the competition. It wasn’t until I submitted my play “Alligator Pass” that I was confronted with the challenge of directing my first play. I directed several versions of this play. Set on an alligator farm in Florida, where Sophie, a schizophrenic, comes of age as a ticket girl and learns the ways of love.

The cafe, Heaven, was important to my theater career also because I staged events there and it was there I met the sound man for films, Rob Tazz, who gave the play to talent agent, Maja Nikolic. Eventually Maja Nikolic nominated “Alligator Pass” for the Arnold Weissberger Award.

Kathleen:  What was your experience as a director?

Kofi: My initial reaction was the overwhelming sense of power, the ability to make or break someone’s career. I looked at it as an opportunity to collaborate with other creative types. My sense and approach of the stage was very much what I used as a painter. I thought of an imaginary frame and it was up to me to direct whatever was contained within that frame. Certainly my work as director to actors lived beyond the margins of the frame. It was fun to see actors up close. How they prepared to do a scene. The histrionics involved. It was very demanding and challenging, Keeping working hours; being able to empathize with an actor in a case of insecurity or even a personal crisis. The knack I displayed was the ability to get the actor to portray what indeed I wanted. Speaking the actor’s language. I think back to Antonin Artaud and how he worked with actors. His was a work of madness and near torture. I tried to keep a method of yielding power to anyone who could at any point teach me something. In other words I was guiding chaos to a safer ground. Indeed the chaos existed in and of itself. It was never an ode to other directors. I existed in failure and success. Directing was the only time as an artist I felt I wasn’t playing up to anyone’s expectations. I was trapped within a space with some talented and adventurous people and we were working with magic, darkness and light.

Kathleen:  Who are some of the artists you’ve worked with who have most influenced you?

Kofi: During the New York City cafe scene of the 90’s, I worked with several young musicians, models and performers. I learned the language of the young and gained an experience which to this day inspires and channels my youthful sensibility.

As far as artists in particular, I think of the actress Dawn Cherie. I directed her in a one-woman-show, “History of Flesh” I wrote for her. The ability to work exclusively with someone, an artist who gained my trust. I was able to write original songs and teach her the songs. Our relationship reminded me of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. To summon the female spirit, first, within me and then masculanitize it to guide her vulnerability as a person and artist, is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.

Asca Aull, is a photographer and former model who traveled with his photography show Heaven on Earth/Paradis Sur Terre. I met him while interning at the Eickholt Gallery. His gallery was a block away. He taught me professionalism. The ability to prepare the work and make it deliverable in its most perfect form. He was a mentor and guide. He was able to enliven my spirit with conversations and brought a worldwide appeal to that quiet neighborhood in Soho.

Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, art curator and performer, was the first artist to change my language as an artist. In doing so she brought a sense of philosophy to my thinking. Our collaborations, be it in the email, postal mail, telephone, online were the most life-affirming experiences I’ve ever had. She is singularly the most important person I’ve ever known.

Dianne Bowen, was a friend and art collaborator. Whereas Gaynor Sweeney was a virtual person, as she lived in England and we never met, Dianne Bowen was my neighbor in the East Village. I was able to go over to her home and sit and drink coffee and have her cook for me. She opened up my mind to Brooklyn, where we went on art gallery crawls. Our collaborative project “Dismember the Night” was the first of its kind. Truly, one of, if not the first selfie show in New York.

Kathleen:  When did you begin Black Cocteau?

Kofi: Black Cocteau began as a project with Gaynor Sweeney. It was an extension of our dialogues on gender and sexual politics.

Kathleen:  You’ve written for art journals before Arteidolia.  Did that take you away from playwriting?

Kofi: Once I entered the Eickholt Gallery to intern as a press officer and pursue my life as an artist in the art gallery world, I struggled to write plays. At the time there was a fire at the building which housed the Riant Theater. I no longer had that option. I tried to keep up with my theatrical duties, writing a monologue show and trying to stage it. A lot was expected of me at the gallery. It made it difficult  for me to write and direct plays. At this time also Gaynor Sweeney had become my sole influence. Gradually my language was changing from “dialogue” to philosophy. The plays I wrote at this time had acquired a dark poetic quality. I no longer had an ear to how people spoke, or rather how my characters revealed themselves to me. I was more interested in interpreting thought, and fleshing out a philosophical theory. Very much like the writers I read at the School of Visual Arts; Barthes, Baudrillad and Bataille. Writing for art journals became a career. I pursued it at all costs. That definitely took me away from the theater and writing plays.

Kathleen:  You mentioned dealing with political ideas around 2016.  Can you elaborate?

Kofi: I come from a white-oriented art world where my friends, collaborators were mostly White Americans and Europeans. I gained a safe space within this world. In doing so, I lost my sense of identity and self. That was due to the supremacist ideology on art and beauty. I had suffered from this. All through my life I had made attempts to achieve an identity as a black artist. Changing my Christian name, Arnold, to my birth name Kofi Fosu, writing poems centering on my Ghanaian identity. When I read Ekow Eshun’s “Black Gold of the Sun”, I felt a familiarity with someone who dealt with dual cultures as a Ghanaian living in Britain. It inspired me to write poems in the black voice, using street, blues and jive as an influence. I realized that wasn’t me. I needed to be myself, meaning explore more themes on art, music and sexuality.

During the 2016 American presidential election, I started becoming aware and awakened by the plight of race and racism. The racism I experienced came early on when I started schooling in New York. Otherwise I was given a faux notion of acceptance in the white art world. All this came to pass when I posted trending topics like “decolonizing” online. I sensed a resistance from my white friends. Somehow I was fighting that supremacist ideology. This led to the early drafts of my then titled “Ninety Nine and One” play, written as a race play, which after many drafts, and a reading at the Actors Church became “Hurt Country”.

Kathleen:  Where are you today?  Right now?  How constant has that been this past year during the pandemic?

Kofi: I feel this is the most complete I have felt as a person. I think about the rock and roll suicides and drug overdoses. That could easily have been me. In other words, without getting too philosophical, I’m living a post-realm. Over the past year during the pandemic, I was involved in the Episcopal Actors Guild Artist’s Way workshops online. It helped rekindle the artist’s voice in me. One thing I had heard of about the Artist’s Way was that it was a combination art and spirituality workshop. That’s where I am in life. A balancing of my artist self with my spiritual self. I’ve been working with the symbol of fire all my adult life. I think there’s a cooling perspective in me now. Reforming from a dark and virtual persona, driven by extremes of lust, fear and panic. Much of this has shaped my thinking as an artist for many years. I’m in a quieter space. I’m not driven by my desires. I’m thinking about the next chapter, more so, chapters.

What is my next act, as a playwright, poet and performer, artist and painter, philosopher and thinker, writer, muse and mentor?

Kathleen:  Where do you see theatre in NYC going next?  What are you planning next?

Kofi: New York City is recovering from the pandemic. Nice to see actors and fellow theater people pursuing their craft, getting involved in productions for film, theater, poetry readings, all with guidance for safety and social distancing.

In so many ways, The Artist’s Way workshops have defined the past two years for me and it has inspired the many achievements I’ve experienced the past year; the reclaiming of my art identity, and the entry back into theater and production. For ten years, I was out of the theater world. Being involved with fellow performers and theater artists during the past two years helped shape my thinking into resuming my calling as a playwright and director. I have plans to do readings of my plays “Blackthong” and “Rain Men”. I am currently pursuing different avenues to promote “Hurt Country”.

I have been using the metaphor of Rodin’s “The Thinker” on top of a mountain. I think that’s how I best define myself.