Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/765720
118 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 7 Queen Sugar follows Charley Bordelon's (played by Dawn-Lyen Gardner) journey as she dismisses her failed marriage in Los Angeles and moves herself and her son back to her family roots in the plantation area west of New Orleans. I tend to do extensive research on any project, so it was particularly satisfying to conduct my exploration with the help of local resources such as libraries, private collections, plantation records and people indigenous to the area. We were all inspired by the land and its evolution, as well as its burden of being a haven for slavery. Slavery would be a subtle underline to the world we were about to design. "The house would have a worn look due to the fact that the patriarch of the family, Ernest, had lived there and lost interest in upkeep years ago after his wife had passed. Remnants of Ernest's wife and family life would remain, and the interior became a tapestry of their family's heritage." When Charley moves back to NOLA, she joins the remainder of her family: her sister Nova (Rutina Wesley) who lives in the Ninth Ward and leads an alternative lifestyle fi lled with politics, ecology and the edgy culture unique to NOLA; brother Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) who's recently released from prison; and Aunt Violet, her father's sister (Tina Lifford), whose Creole house serves as the family's focal point. Our first location search was for the small family house where the Bordelon family was raised. We began by extensively scouting any