Ifa Bayeza

Ifa Bayeza is a playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist.

Quotes

 * Language shifts with each character and with time. We were so close that it was difficult to see the end result. A part of it was looking at sound, how sound and language traveled with people through time.
 * On her collaboration with Ntozake Shange on Some Sing, Some Cry in “Sister Act: PW Talks with Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza” in Publisher’s Weekly (2010 Jul 26)


 * Sound is the connecting energy to our African past. When thrown into the Middle Passage and the babble of languages, then given this foreign language, English, that had to be learned by ear in this foreign land, Africans, even though they spoke different languages, found a connection and an umbrella culture emerging from the different ethnic groups thrown together by the brutal rubric of enslavement.
 * On how music came into play in Some Sing, Some Cry in “Sister Act: PW Talks with Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza” in Publisher’s Weekly (2010 Jul 26)


 * How do I treat this character, given my sensitivity toward being a woman and then my ire being a black person — trying to balance those two?...And as an artist, really wanting to be generous of spirit with all of the characters so that I treat them with humanity and with understanding — to be empathetic without being sympathetic?
 * On balancing the themes of racial injustice in “New play looks at the lives touched by Emmett Till's death” in MPR News (2019 Feb 12)


 * Because we might not get to truth, we might not get to justice…As, certainly, neither of those really emerged in this saga. But if we as humanity can get to a position of benevolence — which is a greater understanding of one another, empathy for one another, and forgiveness — then that's another beginning.
 * On her work benevolence in “New play looks at the lives touched by Emmett Till's death” in MPR News (2019 Feb 12)