The following interview is intended to get a closer look into Phanesia Pharel’s ‘And Other Dreams We Had’ and her work as an emerging playwright.

On August 19th, 2022 Director Charlie Chauca interviewed Phanesia Pharel over a zoom call which began with a 10 minute recap of season 26 of The Bachelor. 

Below is an edited transcript of the conversation that followed.

Charlie Chauca: First question, which is kind of a big one, tell us your story?

Phanesia Pharel: Oh goodness, well my name is Phanesia. I use she/her pronouns. I’m from Homestead, Florida which is the southernmost point of Miami, Florida. I grew up on a dragon fruit farm. Both of my parents are Haitian immigrants. I like plays; I like to write plays. I think my bio says I write about the divine metaphysical dilemma of colored girlhood. I like writing about gendered violence. I’m really interested in writing for people of color and women of color, people who are at the intersection of poverty, gender and race. That's really exciting to me and that’s a huge focal point of my work. I typically take the Dominique Morisseau approach: writing about whatever is pissing me off at the moment, what feels true, and what’s exciting to me. There will be a bunch of different pieces of content at points in my life that explore this in different ways.

CC: I’m really interested in diving deeper but I caught a couple of cool details. You were raised on a dragon fruit farm? That’s kind of cool! 

PP: Yeah, so, we lived in Little Haiti for a while and that’s more of an urban area near Overtown, Florida. I come from a long line of Haitian farmers on both sides of my family and when I was about 8 years old, my dad decided to pursue it and go back to his roots. So the land of south Florida is not that different from the land in Haiti, according to my father. You can grow a lot of the same fruits and vegetables. We were living in Broward, Florida and then we moved to Homestead, which is near the Everglades, the Redlands in particular. Then my dad started growing dragon fruit, which is something the French brought over to Haiti during periods of colonialism but its roots are in Vietnam and Thailand. It’s an amazing fruit for people who have blood sugar issues or are undergoing chemotherapy. It also neutralizes free radicals. 

CC: And how did you begin writing?

pp: So growing up on a fruit farm I feel like I had to engage my imagination more because I did not grow up with access to electricity for most of the day. We had solar panels on our house so we would store energy during the day and run the electricity for about three hours during the night, being that we were in the early age of solar panels. I ended up reading a lot, spending a lot of time in nature, going on the tractor and I think that engaged my interest in stories. I guess every storyteller has a different way into it but I think that being in nature and having that time to be alone really activated my interest.

CC: That sounds really amazing. I can totally see your roots in your writing. Every time I read your work, I very much see your fierceness grounded in the worlds you create, which I think is really unique. How would you describe your writing if you could only describe it in colors, shapes, or objects? 

PP: That was so beautifully phrased, in terms of shapes and colors. I really loved that. I would describe my work as hugs even though that’s not a shape or a color. Hugs, lavender (the scent), a rush of colors such as pinks, reds, greens. In terms of a shape, probably a heart comes to mind.

CC: That’s awesome! When I was reading this short 10 minute play, in terms of how I see the shape of this work, it’s so gentle yet so powerful. Like a hug! You have an exceptional way of creating what seems to be tragedies filled with these really relentless and tenacious women in the forefront of your stories. I wanted to get the history behind And Other Dreams We Had. What drove you to write this piece?

PP: Absolutely. And Other Dreams We Had was developed in New York Stage and Film in 2017 or 2018. At the time, I really wanted to write a play about this question of whether or not we should have children in the midst of climate change. I’ve always had climate anxiety when I was a young girl growing up in Miami. Many of my friends and I would have this question of whether or not we want to have children. “Do you want to have kids?” “Do you not want to have kids?” And there’s a rising movement of people who don’t want to have children. I felt like it’s not too interesting to watch two people pre-climate change talk about, ”Should we have kids? Climate change is coming.” I felt like being in the midst of climate change, having the question of hope and whether or not to have children, would be the most interesting way of telling that story. And adding on to that, the most interesting thing would be figuring out, what does a child represent? It's more than being the first generation to not have as many kids as my parents because of climate change and because of late state capitalism. It's really about not being able to have dreams, not being able to have access to certain things that you are raised to want. We might not buy homes, our generation might be forever renters. We might have to make certain concessions in life because of how crazy late state capitalism has gotten. I think that’s really the root of the play and that was really what I was trying to find. I think the best way to find it is through two characters who really love each other, who want to come to an understanding, and unpack that conflict. So that’s the play!

CC: That was really beautiful. I love how these characters are gentle yet at odds with one another. I shared And Other Dreams We Had with a friend and she was saying she gets it, the fear of what it means to have a child right now. We were talking about the economical and capitalistic factors that go into raising a child and the pressure put on women to relinquish their autonomy to their partner when deciding to birth a child. She was moved by the relationship of these two characters. How it’s powerful to have a female-identifying person unapologetically fierce yet is shamelessly vulnerable. Can you speak on this dynamic between Jules and Mason?

PP: I think that for me that was me writing from my own feelings because this is a question I ask myself. Like, do I want to have children. That sounds weird right? Because I wrote the play when I was 18 or 19 years old. It’s probably odd to hear that an 18 or 19 year old is thinking about these things. I think that these choices change your life and it’s such a serious choice. I think that a lot of black women, we are both of those things. We have to be strong in the world that we live in but we also have these vulnerabilities. I was inspired by Sunset Baby by Dominique Morriseau and I wanted to create a world where a black woman was loved enough to be vulnerable. There are so many instances where we are vulnerable because we don’t feel safe so I wanted to create a lover where she can feel safe. This whole process was really exciting to me. 

CC: To me, that was the most beautiful element of this play in general. You don’t see that often and that’s really what it is. This work is truly idiosyncratic. I want to close by asking if there’s anything you hope our audience takes away from this presentation? 

PP: That’s a really good question. This is such a tricky question for me. I don’t have that sense of urgency and control because I wrote what I wanted to and the audience is going to take away from it what they may. I hope that if they have climate anxiety they can connect and feel comforted by the play. But I also understand that it’s not my job to dictate how the audience responds to the work. I’m a big believer in the great surrender and so I surrender my work. 

CC: Love that answer. It’s been awesome to hear from you! I’m very excited about this work and grateful to have the opportunity to work with you.

PP: I’m so grateful and this was incredibly short. Thank you so much! I appreciate this deeply!

Transcription by sofiya Lopez