We Take Care of Our Own

Part of Illusion’s Virtual Spring Series…

We Take Care of Our Own

Written by Zainabu Jallo 

Directed by Carlyle Brown

Featuring: Arthur French as Youssouf, Glenn Kubota as Moon--so, and Richard Ooms as Bajran.

You can watch the an interview with Zainabu Jallo, Carlyle Brown, and Dr. Christine Matzke below.

We Take Care of Our Own is about three first generation immigrants from three different parts of the world — Africa, The Balkans, and South Korea. Each immigrant has had a distinguished career: astrophysicist, chemist, and filmmaker. Despite their successes they now find themselves in a nursing home in Europe. In their seclusion they form an unusual bond where they explore and share their existential anxieties. Youssouf agonizes over the omnipresence of people in the panopticon, Moon-So can’t sleep haunted by voices from his past, and Bajran wants to get baptized one more time.  

Bonnie Morris, Illusion’s Producing Director, reports, “This beautiful play came to us from our Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence, Carlyle Brown. Carlyle initiated and curates the Afro-Atlantic Playwrights Cultural Diaspora Project and we knew we could expect Carlyle to suggest moving plays from the AAPCP to Illusion when we wrote to the Mellon Foundation to bring him onboard to Illusion’s leadership team.”  

Of the piece, Carlyle Brown says, “In the Summer of 2018, I convened four African playwrights and four African-American playwrights for a month-long residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France to explore their craft, voice and African-ness in a beautiful Mediterranean environment.  The following Summer, 2019, three of the plays created during the residency received a three-week developmental workshop at The Playwright Center in Minneapolis. And now, one of those plays, Nigerian playwright Zainabu Jallo’s  WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN, an exploration into aging and migration, arrives to Illusion for a virtual reading. I was attracted by Zainabu’s use of language, its playful, poetic, percussive, slightly heightened nature. Theatrical, authentic, grounded in simplicity, it is a work that makes you think and causes you to wonder.”

Carlyle continues, “I am thrilled to witness the collaborative partnership between these three distinguished organizations --- The Camargo Foundation, The Playwrights’ Center, and Illusion Theater in support of this talented playwright and her thoughtful new play.”

2021