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In an act of healing, Eaton Fire survivors take their own experiences to the stage
From left to right, Daniel Moisés, Elisa Nixon, Julia Ahumada Grob and Rasheed Ali on stage in the David Henry Hwang Theater in downtown L.A.
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Mykle Parker
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Mykle Parker
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How art is helping fire survivors heal
A group of L.A. fire survivors wrote and recently performed a play about their experiences. The script was adapted from interviews by a photographer and longtime Altadena resident.
Altadena artist and muralist Austin Scott is painting a portrait in a courtyard outside the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo. As a steady stream of people walk in, he sketches some details of the face of a woman holding a bouquet of flowers. She wears a wide-brimmed purple hat, her eyes are closed, her face tilts upward toward sunbeams.
Her name is Evelyn McClendon. The retired Pasadena school bus driver was the first victim whose body was found in the rubble of the Eaton Fire in Altadena.
“It’s going to be a portrait of her face made up of little portraits of all the other faces of the people we lost in the fire,” Scott says.
Something like a memorial, he says, for the 19 people who perished.
Altadena muralist and artist Austin Scott paints a portrait of Evelyn McClendon, the first identified victim of the Eaton Fire.
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Erin Stone
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In front of the building entrance, as people eat tacos and chat, Emeka Chukwurah starts the music.
“Can you see it? We rising up,” he raps as his father, Onochie, and members of their band play drums, guitar and traditional African instruments. They specialize in Nigerian highlife fusion music.
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Chukwurah lost his Altadena business, Rhythms of the Village, in the fire. The store sold goods sourced from countries across Africa and hosted drum, dance and Nigerian language classes.
They’re finally about to reopen in a temporary space.
“What we went through is life-changing. It was very traumatic,” Chukwurah says. “But to turn something so traumatic into triumphant moments like these and create new memories, I'm truly grateful for how far we have come.”
Emeka Chukwurah lost his business, Rhythms of the Village, in the Eaton Fire. He's close to reopening in a temporary space.
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Erin Stone
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Putting real experiences on stage
The idea for tonight’s play was born after the Eaton Fire, when photographer Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, returned to Altadena after a trip to the Bahamas. Their home and community of 30 years were gone.
So they sought out their displaced neighbors. Gayle photographed them. The two collected more than 20 hours of interviews. After the fire, during mutual aid efforts, they happened to meet Sunder Ganglani, the artistic director for Cornerstone Theater Company. With Ganglani’s help, they turned the interview transcripts into the play’s script.
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Union Center for the Arts is the theater home of East West Players, considered the nation's first Asian Pacific American theater company.
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Mykle Parker
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Mykle Parker
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“And so the four speakers on stage, all of whom are fire survivors, end up speaking around 20 different people, you know, from every walk of life,” Ganglani says.
Eventually, the nonprofit Extreme Weather Survivors, which connects disaster survivors with each other, got in touch as well. The play became a part of a national tour of similar events hosted by disaster survivors across the country ahead of the midterms.
On this October evening, the crowd settles into the seats of the David Henry Hwang Theater. Gayle Nicholls-Ali takes the stage to applause.
“Tonight is a chance to see one another more fully, to feel something together, to remember that we still belong to Altadena even if we're not living there right at the moment,” she says.
The show begins
The lights go down. Four actors walk onto the stage, one by one.
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“My name is Rasheed. My name is Francesca. Shakira. My name is Sam. Darina. My name is Sunny.”
As they speak the stories, Nicholls-Ali rotates pictures of the people she interviewed, projected onto sheets hung behind the actors.
The performers onstage during "From Ashes We Gather."
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Mykle Parker
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Mykle Parker
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The building that houses this theater — the Union Center for the Arts — has been privy to some of the biggest events in Los Angeles history. It was a church for Japanese Americans before their mass incarceration during World War II, then a community center for Black Americans during the Great Migration. It was witness to racial attacks known as the Zoot Suit Riots, and was damaged by the Northridge earthquake.
Today, the art space and theater continues to be a place to process pain, to find refuge.
Like the actors in the play. All of them are fire survivors.
Their voices become a chorus with phrases repeated by survivors.
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“Driving back to Altadena for the first time was really chimney after chimney after chimney…”
“They killed 19 of our neighbors.”
“This is our generational wealth. We don't want to lose that.”
The questions they were constantly asked: “How are you? Where are you? What's going on? Were you affected?”
Rasheed Ali performs the piece he composed for the play.
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Mykle Parker
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Mykle Parker
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At the close, the actors exit one by one. Rasheed Ali is alone on stage. The musician and composer sits at the keyboard and plays a piano piece telling the story of Altadena before, during and after the fire.
At the end of the night, some special guests take the stage, including Zaire Calvin, the brother of Evelyn McClendon, whose portrait was being painted earlier. He performs a rap he wrote with his cousin. The show ends with Medusa, who grew up in Altadena and is a hip-hop legend who has collaborated with icons like Tupac Shakur, Erykah Badu and Common.
A healing moment
Gayle Nicholls-Ali thanks the crowd at the end of the show. At left, Zaire Calvin looks on.
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Mykle Parker
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Mykle Parker
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After the show, as everyone packs up, Rasheed Ali is reflective.
“For me, it was a breakthrough,” he says. “The fire has a paralyzing effect on your creativity.”
Gayle Nicholls-Ali feels the same.
“I have not been able to feel creative because this fire is like a big knot in your stomach that you can't get rid of,” she says. “And so this helps to unknot the knot.”
Not just for her and Rasheed, she hopes, but for their community too.
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You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
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