The War Shirt: A Dialogue with the Ancestors

Michael Downey, a participant in PPF’s Lavender Elders group, collaborated with filmmaker Rod Lathim to produce a film that explores the backstory of creating the play The War Shirt. The new documentary The War Shirt: A Dialogue With the Ancestors screens at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 19th at The Marjorie Luke Theatre. It explores the guidance of ancestral messages from African and Native American cultures in the creation of the play and this film. A panel discussion follows. Admission is free but reservations are required! To reserve your ticket, visit www.LukeTheatre.org/Ticket-Reservation. The Film is Open Captioned and discussion interpreted in Sign Language. 

The seed for the creation of this 45-minute documentary was planted in 2022, when Santa Barbara based actor-dancer Michael Downey wrote and performed a one-person play titled The War Shirt. His story explored his circumstances as a gay man, his relationship with a disapproving father, and the reconciliation that occurred hours before his father’s passing. Downey sensed that something larger had been set in motion that needed to continue beyond the play to fulfill itself. The War Shirt: A Dialogue With the Ancestors is the result. It is a documentary that brings new light to various historical and cultural events that were suggested but not explored in his original script.

Various Downey ancestors were born into slavery, and the documentary examines the horrors of the Middle Passage—that trans-Atlantic voyage that carried millions of captives from West Africa to the North American continent. The film is particularly focused on the continuing influence of those African ancestors and the significance of honoring them.

Director/Producer Rod Lathim views both the play The War Shirt and this documentary as a direct results of intangible influences that he feels are guiding and impacting events in our physical world. Lathim asserts that these influences enhanced his intuitive sense as a director and illuminated the development of the play script and subsequent documentary. Both Downey and Lathim acknowledge a guiding presence of African and Native American Ancestors and felt strongly that this film needed to be made to celebrate and honor them.

The film includes perspectives that draw from American Indian belief systems and South African Zulu healing practices. Featured personalities include Dr. Jeanne Eder, a Dakota Sioux and adopted member of the Crow tribe, Dr. David Cumes, a South African surgeon and Sangoma practitioner, Davies King, UCSB Distinguished Professor of Theater/Dance, and Aaron Jones, Director of UCSB’s Educational Opportunity Program and a former participant in an interfaith pilgrimage that traced the trans-Atlantic transport of West African captives to the Western Hemisphere. These various cultural points of view speak to Downey’s continuing journey into self-discovery and suggest a doorway of possibility that is open to the rest of us as well whenever we choose to embrace our own histories and inevitably uncover the timeless bonds that connect our lives to others.

The film is generously sponsored by the SBCC Foundation, Michael Downey, Claude Raffin, Marjorie Luke Theatre, and Pacific Pride Foundation.