LargeUp: What is your relationship?
We are friends and artistic collaborators… pum comrades, even. We met at a storytelling residency at Anitafrika! Dub Theatre in Toronto, run by award-winning storyteller and dub poet d’bi.young. We were both there working on solo pieces, and were taken with each other’s work, and the similarities our pieces shared: Feminist, West Indian-flavored, and a sense of humor that warranted deep belly laughs. Like proper ones that you buss with your fam. So, after the residency ended, we wanted to continue working together. From those sessions emerged Pomme is French For Apple. Pum pum powah fi true.
Where are you guys from, or where is your family from? I can’t figure out if you’re Trini, Jamaican or both. You guys are almost culturally ambiguous and I’ve had a hard time trying to figure it out. You represent so well.
Bahia: Representing GT—Guyanese mother.
Liza: Representing YAARD—Jamaican father. Both of our parents immigrated to Canada, where we were both born. We’ve been in Toronto a long time, and there is so much mix up mix up there — Trini, Bajan, Guyanese, Jamaican— that it is entirely possible that our accents are getting mix up mix up, too. Melting pot tings.
What was the inspiration/ motivation for PommeTV, and the content?
When we began writing, we knew we wanted to explore womanhood, and where better to start than pum – the gateway to life? Pomme is French for Apple is a live show, a play, designed for a live audience. We created PommeTV as a way to explore content that isn’t necessarily as well suited to live theatre, and also to promote the vibe of the play without giving it all away online. Pomme is French for Apple was conceived as a live medium, but we didn’t want our work to begin and end there. Once you get started with pum-themed everything, yuh cyaaaaan stop.