Timothy Douglas Finds Connection and Catharsis Directing “Nine Night”

Timothy Douglas’ “child,” as he calls it, was ready to go about nine months ago.

The stage director started raising his play, “Nine Night,” last year. He’d shepherded it throughout the rehearsal process, caring for it, protecting it from harm. And he was about ready to send it “off to college” — that is, put it in front of a live audience.

But just before opening night in January, COVID took the whole play down. So Round House Theatre pushed it to this September, opening its 2022-2023 season with the British play. Months later, Douglas says the story retains all its power.

“When we came back together, and they opened their mouths and started speaking the dialogue for the first time, you could feel it was as if we had been rehearsing the entire eight months,” Douglas says. “It had that kind of specificity and personal delivery and compassion. It’s remarkable.”

The play, which first opened in London, tells the story of a British-Jamaican family grieving their matriarch Gloria as they stumble into the tradition of Nine Night. For nine nights, families and friends descend on Gloria’s household to revel and memorialize the departed, Douglas says. Their job is to disorient the spirit so it leaves and crosses over to a final resting place.

In directing “Nine Night,” Douglas saw elements of his cultural background reflected along with new traditions and a British setting.

“[I’m] familiar with a lot about Caribbean and Jamaican culture, because that’s my family’s background. I never heard of Nine Night,” he says.

As he brought the play to life, Douglas worked closely with its playwright, Natasha Gordon. With “Nine Night,” Gordon became the first Black British woman to write a show produced in the West End. She and Douglas collaborated to be sure the play would make sense for an American audience rather than a British one.

“There will be some basic terms that American audiences will simply have not been exposed to. And we were hyper aware of how that might unintentionally change the meaning of the play,” Douglas explains.

In the end, though, they changed only one word. Which one? “I don’t know if you can print it,” Douglas laughs, before saying the word was a derogatory term for a woman using her sexuality to get ahead.

He and Gordon wanted to be sure the Round House Theatre crowd understood just how offensive the insult was. The replacement word, Douglas says, got a “much bigger response” from American audiences.

Even beyond writing the script, Gordon influenced the texture of the entire play. Her own grandmother’s house inspired the set design of the matriarch Gloria’s home, Douglas says — complete with tchotchkes, a fully stocked kitchen, a shag rug and vinyl kitchen floor.

Now, his friendship with Gordon is one of his central takeaways from “Nine Night.”

“During the entire preparation, I had a very genuine enthusiastic invitation to come to London and spend time with her family. She especially wanted me to meet her mum,” Douglas says. “I made the plans for the trip three times, but Covid kept making that a problem, so I never got to go. And so even though we’re on the other side of the play, I gotta go. I gotta meet mum.”

For Douglas himself, the experience of directing the film was revelatory and healing, especially watching through the lens of the character Lorraine (Lilian Oben), a bereaved daughter.

“I still have many, many issues to resolve with my relationship with my late mother,” he says. “Working on this play, with this group of women, including the playwright, has helped me to get much further along in my results.”

He says he hopes to see majority Black and Caribbean audiences, who “will have a much deeper encoded understanding of what’s happening on that stage,” he says. “When there’s like 40, 50, 60% audience of color, it’s a very different journey for the audience and the actors. And it tends to be more overtly celebratory.”

He knows every audience member will walk away with their own interpretations, though — and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I wouldn’t presume to influence anybody about what experience they should have coming to the theater,” Douglas says. “I hope to entertain. I hope to provoke.”

“Nine Night” is showing at Round House Theatre until Oct. 9.

Round House Theatre: 4545 East-West Hwy. Bethesda, MD; roundhousetheatre.org // @roundhousetheatre

Aviva Bechky