Lenelle Moïse can trace her origins as an artist as early as the fifth grade. The multi-hyphenated artist who writes, records and paints, was asked by her friend Atisha to write a love poem for a guy she was dating. Mother Moise stumbled upon the torrid love letter and thought that her beloved Lenelle was secretly dating, for certain a Haitian mother’s worst nightmare! An intense, near Guantanamo Bay-caliber, child-terrifying interrogation—that only Haitian mothers can conduct—followed.

From that traumatizing experience, Lenelle, the poet and wordsmith started to take shape. If her mother could be convinced that she was in love with some boy, just from a few words her imagination had inspired her to write on behalf of a friend, there must be something to her writing! Clearly, the girl had talent.

Moïse went on to pursue her passion, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from Smith College. Her playwriting has won various honors, one of the first major ones being the prestigious James Baldwin Playwriting contest. Most recently she’s been the recipient of the Ruby Prize for Merit, one of her original creations. A collection of Moïse’s poems entitled Haiti Glass, will be published two years from now. She’s also doing edits on a six-character play that she says is “about academia, isolation, sex and integrity”.

Q&A

You wrote a film at 20.
Yes, I co-wrote Sexual Dependency with Bolivian filmmaker Rodrigo Bellot. It’s a feature-length about how the media affects adolescent identities across cultures. We collaborated when we were both undergrads at Ithaca College. The film is divided into five sections. I wrote section four, “Mirrors.”

You earned an MFA in Playwriting from Smith College. If you had to do it all over again, would you go the fine arts route?
Definitely. I needed to formally study theatre, to refine my writing style and to build professional confidence.

As a recording artist you released The Expatriate Amplification Project.
I wrote a two-woman play called Expatriate. The characters, Claudie and Alphine, are soul mates and musicians. Claudie is a creative force. She’s very disciplined but repressed. Alphine is a sizzling wild-child, born to be a star. The Expatriate Amplification Project is a studio recording of the music I composed for the play. I sing with my Off-Broadway costar Karla Mosley. She hits the sparkly high notes, I caress the earthy low notes. Everything you hear is created with our breath, voices, snapping fingers and two loop machines.

Moïse and a co-star in her Off-Broadway play Expatriate.”

Do you find that your identity as an individual born in the United States to Haitian parents, affects your art?
Actually, I was born in Port-Au-Prince. I moved to the U.S. when I was a toddler. My family lived in Brooklyn, Fort Lauderdale and Cambridge–cities with significant Haitian-American populations. I find that I often write about bi-cultural identity and displacement. I’m also inspired by the aesthetics of Haitian Vodou–the vévé drawings, the altars, the poly-rhythms, the ritual and oral tradition. My writing is sound-based. Haiti also comes up in my newest one-woman show, Ache What Make, which reflects on disaster, diaspora, distance and death-defying love.

Of all the poems you’ve written, which one would you say is the most personal?
Forgive me, but I wouldn’t say.

What were some of your inspirations early on, or rather who?
When I was a child, my mother regularly took me to the Strand Theatre in Boston. There, I saw Boukan Ginen, Emeline Michel and Manno Charlemagne. When I was ten years old, I started reading Alice Walker, Euripides and Matt Groening. Hearing Nina Simone taught me how to love my own deep voice.

Now, as an all-around artist, you’ve written everything from poetry and you also are involved in creating visual art. There must be some forms of art that you enjoy creating in more than others.
I try not to compartmentalize my creative impulses. I use every tool I have to tell stories: my pen, my eyes, my arms, my voice. I make collages to meditate and to overcome writing blocks. It’s all enjoyable.

If you have a deep love for the theatre—and especially Black Theatre—you most likely have heard of the award-winning, Detroit-born playwright Dominique Morisseau. If you haven’t, you will. The Edward M. Kennedy Prize winner (she won a year ago for her play “Detroit ’67”), is one of the most talked-about playwrights in the nation. She once told the entertainment personality LA Williams, that as a kid, she was a dancing fanatic. Now she makes words dance on paper, on stage and—most recently—on film.

K. St. Fort: As someone of Haitian descent born in Michigan, do you feel that you’re less connected to the culture of your parents and grandparents, since you’re not from a place like New York, Boston, or Spring Valley? A sociologist would probably say that children and grandchildren of immigrants from those places are more connected to the culture of their parents and grandparents.

Although there is definitely a Haitian Network of Detroit that is vibrant and alive, Haitians are for certain a very small population in Detroit. And I pretty much grew up as a Detroit girl, hearing no Kreyòl spoken but often hearing my father speak French among my uncle and aunts and grandmother. He taught me some French early in childhood but as it wasn’t my mother’s native tongue, nor did she speak it, rarely did I ever speak it as well. So yes, I felt (and sometimes still do) more disconnected to the culture. However, it is strongly in my heart and spirit to represent the Haitian ancestry that I have, regardless OF it not being in my cultural upbringing. It is in my blood and that keeps me feeling mightily connected.

K. St. Fort: I think that a lot of times when people think of creativity, they think LA, they think New York, they might even think Miami, or Portland, but rarely Detroit.

Actually, if they aren’t thinking of Detroit with creativity, they should. Detroit has always been a hotbed of the arts in music, visual art and theatre. While it doesn’t have a thriving performing arts economy, there is an abundance of creative artists living in the city and many of them were people that I grew up around and studied underneath. We aren’t just Motown. We are jazz, hip-hop, blues, electronic music. We are dance, painting, poetry. And we are theatre. It’s all very alive in Detroit and it just needs funding to become a full signature of the city.

K. St. Fort: You graduated from the University of Michigan. Looking back now, would you still have gone to college after high school, or would you have tried to go directly in the theater, as a stagehand or another entry level position to get in the industry?

Though I experienced a great battle with systemic and institutional racism while I was at Michigan, I would not trade my time [in college] for anything. I learned to be quite self-sufficient and resourceful at U of M. I found a community of students of color who were my backbone and who helped to support my art. I became a playwright as well as an actress at Michigan. And most importantly, I found my initial roots of activism there. It is not necessarily required for artists to go to college (or anyone really) in order to learn a trade like acting. But there are things I learned in college that would’ve taken me ten times longer to learn had I not gotten my degree in Theatre.

K. St. Fort: Have you visited Haiti?

I just visited Haiti last year—2014—for the first time since I was a baby. It was strange to feel so connected and yet so culture-shocked by my own people. The poverty in Haiti was deeply traumatizing for me. But the land was a gift and a dream to witness. My biggest discovery was that the people are not so easily fooled by “outsiders” nor are they trusting of Americans. There is a brutal relationship between Haiti and the developed world that has turned its back on Haitian people and I can feel it like electricity when I’m there. I was moved beyond words from my experiences. I ate very well, and felt a deep spiritual connection to the people that I was able to talk to and break bread with. I plan to write about Haiti as I dig deeper into my culture, even learning Kreyòl from a Haitian language instructor and friend. My impressions are still being discovered. It was just frankly overwhelming—and beautiful.

This concludes Part 1 of the interview with Dominique Morriseau. Be sure to check out for Part 2.

[Photo Credit: Joseph Moran (of playwright in red shirt). Monique Carboni (with green earrings) ].

CLICK HERE TO VISIT DOMINIQUE MORISSEAU’S WEBSITE.

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