It’s no secret that artistic research takes place at the Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD), but what does it actually entail? In this interview, part 21 in a series, we take a peek behind the scenes, in conversation with theatre practitioner and actor Dwayne Toemere, who joined the ATD’s Research Department as a researcher in September 2024.

Part 21: A cloak around the grieving process

Your research is about the importance of Indigenous knowledge to art education, as well as creating space for Indigenous rituals around grief to aid the healing process. 

My mother died 18 months ago. I experienced her illness and death close-up. It was a big and beautiful lesson for me. Her death led me to embrace my own culture even more. Here in the West we often feel disempowered around grief, but grief is really embedded in Indigenous cultures.

Could you tell me a little about your background?

Both my parents are Indigenous Surinamese: my mother is Arowak and my father is Kalihna. They met in the Netherlands. When I was five they set up SCV Wajajong, an organisation in Rotterdam that uses song and dance to preserve Indigenous Surinamese cultures, and they had gatherings every week. But at home the focus was on assimilating. That’s what my father did, because assimilating into Dutch society meant increasing your chances in life.
 

I got into the Erasmiaans Gymnasium [a selective academic school] along with a handful of Moroccan, Turkish and Surinamese kids. Our white classmates put us down a lot, and that caused a lot of friction of course. One of my Dutch teachers gave me some advice, saying ‘You can stand up to those guys all you want, but in the end they’re the people you’re going to have to work with.' Clearly the message was: ‘Let it go’. 

I moved to Amsterdam to study psychology and it was only after completing my master’s that I enrolled in the Mime Department. I was one of the few people of colour there. It was only later, when I was teaching here at the Academy of Theatre and Dance that I saw the student body getting more diverse. At one point I was teaching an ATKA class with six people of colour. It was wonderful how much creativity there was, how much humour, music and inspiration. I was amazed, it was something I’d never allowed in myself before.

That’s when I started integrating my Indigenous origins in my classes – and in my daily life. And Black Lives Matter heightened that sense of need. Then my dear mother’s illness accelerated my search again. She was only 62 when she got her ALS diagnosis in spring 2022. She lived for another year, and in that final year of her life I wanted to stay as close to her as possible. I wanted to know everything about her. I made audio recordings of our conversations. Some of them were about growing up in Suriname, but we also just talked about everyday stuff. I wanted to be sure that nothing of that last year was lost. 

I was listening to one of the conversations just last week. She said she was going to miss us terribly –but she also wondered whether, after she died, she was actually going to be able to miss us. ‘Still’, she said, ‘right now I can feel how much I’m going to miss you all.’ Then she laughed and added: ‘After I’m dead I’ll do everything I can to let you know I’m still around.’ (laughs)

So, have you heard from her?

I don’t know.

Shortly after my mother died I started doing a cape-knotting course I found on Instagram. It was run by Wasjikwa, an organisation for Indigenous culture. Wasjikwa means ‘our house’ in Lokono, the Arowak language. It’s based here in Amsterdam, and its aim is to reassess Indigenous culture and pass it on. When I was feeling so lost after my mother died it really did become ‘my house’. Making a cape, knot by knot, is very slow and meditative process. While we were doing it, they told us that our ancestors were there with us. I thought about my mother and her friend Mieke, my dear stepmother, who died shortly after my mother. And I thought too about my ancestors in Suriname. It was as if every knot was a different ancestor. I found that a funny idea. Each knot, each tassel, was different from all the others. Some of them were a bit messed up – like some of the ancestors must have been.’ [laughs]

Have you visited Suriname yourself?

Yes, I went there for the first time in 2018, and then again last February. I remember during that first visit I spent a night in the rainforest and there was a terrific storm and it rained incredibly hard. It made me feel so insignificant – and that made a real impression on me. And it dawned on me that my ancestors had endured similar overpowering natural forces, and that they had produced me. And I got to thinking: I spend my time on all sorts of everyday stuff, but I’m bigger than that.   

In 2019, I went with my mother to see the Great Suriname exhibition at Nieuwe Kerk on Dam Square. Right at the entrance there was a huge photograph of an Indigenous man wearing a bead necklace and a headdress. It made quite an impression on me, because strangely enough I’d been expecting the show would be mostly about Black Surinamese history. But instead of that it actually started with the original inhabitants of Suriname. The wall texts described them as rather introverted and intuitive. 

Is that something you can identify with?

When it comes to being introverted, yes. In the year my mother was so ill she told me about her grandfather and how he would spend days on end in the forest by himself. She also said her grandmother would sit in silence on the veranda for hours at a time; that she was someone you could sit in silence with. We talked about seeking out silence, and about unwavering patience. That’s something I recognise from Buddhism. Most summers I go to a silent retreat in England. In the time my mother was sick I would go to the Buddhist centre every morning for an hour, to sit with everything. Then I’d take the train to Gouda, to my mother. 

Last June I joined up with José Montoya and Erwin Boschmans – both of whom are also theatre practitioners – to organise a series of inspirational sessions at Het Verbond, the research studio run by Frascati theatre. The first one was about Afrofuturism and creating new worlds and artworks from a non-Western perspective. The second session hosted a conversation with the Indigenous Surinamese artist Victor Bottenbley about integrating Indigenous knowledge and culture in Western art and life. The third one was a workshop on Winti religious mourning rituals led by Marian Markelo, a Winti priestess. Winti was banned in Suriname until the 1970s – it was dismissed as witchcraft, but it’s getting a new lease of life now, fortunately. The most important goddess in Winti is Mama Aisa, or Mother Earth. She’s the goddess of life and death. She stands for inclusivity, unconditional love, compassion and wisdom. In Winti the deceased is guided –step-by-step – to another dimension, and family and friends come together at various points to dance, to eat and drink, and to sing and tell stories. There are wakes on the night before the burial (dede oso) and on the eighth day after the burial (aitidei). After six weeks there’s a transition ritual called siksiwiki, when the spirit of the deceased person says farewell to this world for the last time. The mourning period concludes with puru blaka, which liberates the soul of the deceased. 

That session with Marian Markelo was such a comfort to me. As well as guiding the deceased, Winti guides the mourners into the new reality, step by step. My mother experienced a transition through her death, and her death also transformed me. 
 

Text and interview:
Hester van Hasselt

The complete series of  interviews Artistic research: New pathways to new knowledge? you can read here