From the past, moving forward, determined to live. Martina Marsha Laird

The actor Martina Marsha Laird is more than the sum of her parts. With a deep understanding that the past informs the present and the future, she speaks to us about the compassion for who she was, the acknowledgment of who she is, and the curiosity in who she will become. This ride ain’t over, folks! Join us.

Who are you?

There are no short answers with me I’m afraid. First of all, you said, “Martina, who are you?”  I often ask myself that because I wasn’t born Martina. I was born Marsha and I was renamed at three years old. I often wonder what that is, psychologically. Lately, in my life, I’ve started to (at least on social media, although it might be a bit of a paltry platform but it still is a statement) - I’ve started to put myself as Martina Marsha. That’s a start to who I am, a kind of reclaiming. I feel that, at the moment, I call my focus - my life focus - my sankofa period. Sankofa is a Ghanaian word that means “go back and get it”. It’s represented by the symbol - well two things - one looks like a kind of a heart, a particularly curly kind of heart that we’d often see in a lot of wrought iron design and things like that. The symbol is also a bird with its head turned backwards, plucking an egg or a pearl or bead off of its back. The idea being, that what you have forgotten or foregone, you can go back and claim. At the moment, I’m looking at my life (and I think this is what lockdown has given some of us), being with my thoughts and in my head and that’s a lucky thing. I know that having that space is what a lot of people don’t have in lockdown. I’m aware of that luck and privilege. What it means for me is that I am aware of reflecting on much of my life that has gone in directions that weren’t always best choices for myself or best representations of myself.

I’ve been focusing on going back -  not actually going back but preparing the thoughts and notions of what I would like to go back and reclaim. It’s easy to look back at the immediate past and go, “I’m moving forward, that’s an alien person to me now”. I know that I would be no more embracing myself by doing that than what I was doing when I allowed myself to get lost in my own morasses. The moving forward has to be taking it all with you and finding the self-compassion. The self-compassion has been a big focus as well and how far back it can extend. Sometimes, some of us need to go back to childhood and find the compassion for the child that we were and give ourselves what we would have liked to have received. It does take a lot of courage, it takes a lot of compassion that I have not previously had for myself. It’s challenging. I look at myself at different periods of my life, including periods of childhood and I find it hard to accept myself. Even looking at certain photographs, I can't bear to look at that person. It’s an ongoing journey of love.

Why do you do what you do?

Many people go into it because of a love of the craft, a love of the art form of acting and what it is. You sacrifice a lot to pursue a career, especially as a black woman who doesn’t fit into any boxes. I was going to say many but I corrected it to any! So, why am I still here? Am I crazy? I’ve asked myself what acting is for me. I think acting is a pursuit of truth, a pursuit of insight into people and the choices that they make. It is looking for compassion, for other people’s existences and stories. It’s an honouring of emotion, my emotional upbringing. My dad was English, of that generation of British man. He fought in the war, he believed in that stoical attitude to life. I mean that in a philosophical sense, in the emotional discipline sense, in that Roman stoicism – Seneca - these kinds of people. To meet life with balance in all things, so that you are not too happy, too sad, too emotional, all these kinds of things. And coming from that British background, you have to remember his parents would have been turn of the century, that Victorian upbringing, that saw being emotional as a weakness. Then I had a Trinidadian mother(!), so that should tell you everything you need to know! My mother was a very emotional person and was ruled by her emotions, in good ways and bad ways. That pull for me, the disparate calls on my relationship with my own emotions, I think, are legitimised for me within my acting work. If I analyse myself, I think that this is what I get. This is a place where you can safely explore dangerous emotions. If I’m successful having a compassionate embrace with myself, will I lose the frisson that creates art? Yes, this is the worry for every artist, isn’t it? If I’m too mentally healthy, will I lose my spark?! I’ve got to admit that all my acting heroes are somewhat eccentric, to say the least. No, I don’t think so. I imagine there’s a possibility that it will make me braver, I’ll be that much safer to throw myself into the unknown.

The Black Lives Movement, that followed the murder of George Floyd, was profound. I think the teaming together with lockdown was the recipe that created the intensity that we saw - that black people, who at the time, without us understanding why at the time, were being told that we were particularly vulnerable to a deadly virus, were still willing to go en masse to protest. They had finally come to a point where they could not be silent. I did go on those protests. What was great was that everyone was wearing masks, everyone in crowds of thousands was taking it very seriously and very responsibly. Also what was great was that there weren’t just young people there, there were kids there, also with a great sense of responsibility and purpose. In the early stages of the protesting, I got a bit frustrated because I thought - this has had the power to mobilise in an unprecedented way for this generation. Yes, we were getting all those responses from institutions on their social media saying, “mea culpa, we haven’t been the best when it comes to diversity...we’re going to do better. I’m not mocking the places that did respond because a lot of places didn’t - some surprising ones, some places that I hold a long history with, which was very disappointing. I was looking at all this mobilisation that was happening and there was nobody speaking. There was nobody saying why we, as British people, were taking to the streets because of a police murder in America and why we were focusing on this.

There were a lot of confused people, saying it wasn’t about this country but it really was, beyond the fact that the saying goes - if America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. I was sitting at home, I started to really get my thoughts together, do a whole lot of research, to make notes. I didn’t know what I was going to do with all those notes but I had to do something, to say something. I was given the opportunity by some people I know who were holding a rally. They were looking for speakers and they asked me if I would speak. My first thought - I’m not a political speaker, that’s terrifying, hell no!  Then I thought, if not you, then who?  I was sitting around, saying that someone needed to start speaking, someone needed to be pulling thoughts together and I had done just that so, I got up and did it. I gave my first political speech, which was terrifying because it’s not my arena. As an actor, I’ve not been asked to put my thoughts together and share them, especially not my political thoughts. I did it and that was my first creative response. Because of George Floyd, it took me to a place of growth and challenge. I think, what’s great, generally, is that this generation of black actor has been given a voice, at this stage. For my generation, it was a struggle to raise your voice in a rehearsal room. This generation has been given a platform from which to speak publicly because they felt that people now had to listen. The generation that were there, were ready to take up that microphone and start to call out places that needed to be exposed. We had all been, as the generations before, dealing with, individually or without that collective knowledge and power. I’m part of the previous generation and yet I spoke. It’s part of my sankofa! As a youth, I missed out on a lot of youthful bacchanal, I was not as free as one might have been. I’m now a woman. You know I hit fifty and I’m asking - is it over?  Have I missed it? Shit. I forgot to be radical. No, I’ve always been radical but you get what I mean? I forgot to live. I’m determined, I’m slowly coming together about how I might do this, I’m determined not to disappear because I’ve hit fifty. It’s interesting where you get made invisible. It’s not necessarily where you might think. Some young people can tend to make you feel invisible. It’s like, I didn’t realise I was old until some people told me I was or made me feel I was. Is it over for me? Do I not get a chance?  Is this as far as I’ll go?  No, that can’t be. Just because I missed out on my life previously... I’m here, I’m still alive.

As women, when we’re past a certain point, it’s easy to say, maybe you should just retire, enjoy your twilight years. Believe me, I know I’m not there, that’s not what I’m saying. This is my theory. Nature abhors a void. This is just a fact. Every school of science will tell you that. Nothing survives in nature without a purpose. So, if women’s only purpose was to breed, we would not survive the menopause. We certainly wouldn’t have been given, by nature, a phase of life, specifically about entering into a new life. We go through puberty, where we become a woman and we go through menopause, where - what is it we become?  We've been told that’s where it ends but nature doesn’t do that. It doesn’t give you a rites of passage, to “unfunction” (to coin a phrase) - to not function. The purpose, then, is something that’s freeing. Obviously it’s something that states that you now have a purpose, that you’ve gained over these years, that you now need to put into some kind of empowerment; that bringing forward from the past will help, in this new stage, to be visible in ways, that previously, I would not let be visible. The body is the thing through which we get to experience this world. What greater task could there be than be the conduit for the beauty of this life? Growing up, I had a terrible relationship with my body. I didn’t look like the people in my family. My body therefore, was also different because I’m “somewhat adopted”. I grew up with a feeling of shame about it, that I was big and unattractive all my life. In the past few years of my life, I did put on a lot of weight. I looked back at the me that I had been and damn! -  there was nothing wrong with that person. There was absolutely nothing wrong. I can’t believe I wasted my teens, twenties and thirties, hiding myself or embarrassed about myself. Absolutely ridiculous. So now that I’m in my fifties, I’m determined not to be embarrassed about myself. I’m determined to have a more celebratory relationship with my physicality. I’m determined to speak my mind, even though I have to learn to speak it softly. I think that’s what comes with maturity.

Why do you have to speak it softly?

I think I’ve frightened a lot of people in my life. You’re right to challenge that. I think what it is and I think George Floyd was a tidal mark for me - George Floyd happened on the back of the past few years of feeling impotent with anger and exhaustion at what it is we have to tolerate and live. You certainly get to see all of it as a black woman. You’re being disrespected and disallowed, as a black woman. Also, as an actor, you’re looking at the bigger picture as well, with the despair of the last few years and the injustice of the world that we live in. The darkness that feels impenetrable, under the last President leading to our current government...etc. I think that was part of the ill ease, the ‘dis’-ease, that was weighing me down. Also maturing within my field and finding that that garnered no respect, no dues coming, no pay off, no recognition or feeling that way. One is inclined to catastrophize when one is low. I think George Floyd threatened to make us combust. It was so much. In the speech that I prepared and gave, I showed how intrinsically linked the situation in the United States is with this country, how it was created historically by this country, in that country, how the legacy continues, the idea of reparation... When I was growing up, it seemed like an impossible idea. How could they do reparations? I discovered that we were paying reparations to the white landowners until 2015, so it was totally possible, it was just that black people didn’t get any reparations. Pure fury, inner rage. George Floyd was a point where one had to breathe. That breath was a central metaphor, for everything, that need to breathe. When I say ‘softly’, I don’t want my voice to shut anyone else up, though I want my voice to be heard. I don’t want my voice to disappear or to be made irrelevant, because it’s only about hearing younger people or a certain kind of person. That is a system of division, dividing and weakening us as a unified voice. It’s to learn to breathe, to remember to breathe through the rage and to encourage dialogue. The more you look at Sankofa as an idea, it’s not just my past self, it’s my past selves, in the sense that I’ve reminded myself over this period, that I walk proudly on the shoulders of giants, that I walk proudly on the shoulders of my region, that my region is noble, the suffering of my ancestors by whom I am still here… That somehow, through the worst of the worst, our ancestors in our region were able to create music and art, feed each other and find love, even though that’s problematic to do. They were able to be great souls.

To be proud of my legacy was also in my mind. Another theory of mine (I’m full of them), is that all that we remember of civilisations, comes to us through their science and culture. All these ancient civilisations reached a point of greatness where they were able to have people whose jobs were: culture, science and thinking. Whether it’s ancient African, through to Greek, wherever you want to go, that was your job, to think. Can you imagine? What lockdown/covid did, was to accelerate and create this kind of hot house version of that because you can only do those things when you are on pause. A lot of people, when they sat down and thought about George Floyd and its significance, they were on pause for the first time in their lives. They couldn’t be out struggling to survive. It’s a false leisure but yet it allowed for that thinking and introspection. That’s what was afforded me. That’s why the outcry was so loud and so many people got it. That and the fact that we need to thank Dominic Cummings. I have a joke that black Britain need to hail Dominic Cummings as a hero. At that point in lockdown, if he hadn’t been the idiot he was and gone on that trip, they couldn’t say too much about people going out and protesting a murder. Had he not flouted the rules, in the way that he did first and just prior to the incident - I think he gave us the freedom of the streets because of that. Dominic Cummings is a black British hero!

I hope that these days to come will be my glory days, to be able to walk into my power. I think that’s the thing about claiming something. Because it was so neglected and I’m guilty of that. I don’t know what I’m going back to claim. I don’t know. Who or what am I going to find back there? I come across things that I’d totally forgot, I feel like I’m a discovery of myself at the moment - I did used to do that, I did used to like that, I did used to get excited about that…

What would you do if you couldn’t do what you do?

I honestly can’t imagine. Maybe something like psychology. I’d still be curious about the human condition. I think I would write. I’m fascinated about what it is to be human, how big and how small we are. I’m fascinated by our flaws and our failings, perhaps more than our successes and joys, in a way. I think it would still be something that inquired and inspected what it is to be human.

Does your art inform your politics or do your politics inform your art?

I love that! I find it so intrinsically linked for me. I am political in the rehearsal room, I am passionate in my political life. I can’t understand people who separate their politics from who they are, an expression of themselves. I mean I understand but that’s not me. For me, I’m realising that politics isn’t party politics. It’s about ideals, it’s about fundamental beliefs in humanity and the right to dignity.

Who are you?

I guess I’m someone who seeks, in all aspects, to excavate and celebrate the truth in its glory and in its ugliness.