B(l)ack on stage!
Hellooo and welcome to the latest edition of If I Speak. First things first is a thing I realised I hadn’t explicitly said in this newsletter, so I’ll borrow from something I wrote for a performance I did a little while ago:
“I'm a very particular person when it comes to "political" art. If it doesn't work I won't do it. I haven't really found a way for me personally to rhyme and rythmn a genocide, or at least a way that doesn't feel cheap or self-centred. So I'll say it plainly, Free Palestine and end the occupation, end the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that started almost a century ago. May all empires and imperialist projects burn so we can build something better.”
Also, read my work at Unwinnable for other work I’ve been doing talking about genocide and resistance. If all else fails come see me in the streets!
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I’ve been trying to commit to watching more live performance whether that’s bands or theatre or whatever else. I’d already been watching a bunch of drag but - which I wrote a cool piece about for Container here, but wanted to go broader. In doing that I’ve ended up watching 4 really interesting and very different pieces of Black live performance work - so we’re gonna do an expanded roundup as the newsletter! As a bonus, I’ll add a piece of art that I think connects with the vibes of each show.
For Black Boys Who Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy - Every Nigger is a Star - Boris Gardiner
Okay, let’s get the big one out of the way first! The West End transfer of the Ryan Calais Cameron show which got its start at the Royal Court is possibly the one that was the most frustrating to me.
The show is the following pattern:
Conversation where each character pitches in their own perspective in a slightly funnier version of a debate you’d see at a uni Afro-Caribbean Society. Lots of “mhms” and clicks from the audience.
We click into a space where a conversation topic hits an individual character’s neuroses or complications and enter one of the most striking/beautiful/touching sequences of choreographed movement you’ve ever seen
As we ease back into naturalism, we have a bit of dialogue/bad spoken word explaining the meaning of the piece of choreo we just watched
Rinse and repeat
The first site of my frustration here is an artistic one. I’m a writer/artist critic who loves repetition and that’s fairly obvious in both my work and my love of films like Chungking Express. However, here the structural repetition didn’t say anything thematically and just got tiring. Particularly exhausting was the explanatory spoken word refusing to trust the audience to get the things that could be left unsaid.
In a different show I’d just turn off but there is so much technical brilliance on display here, every actor is bringing their A-game and the lighting and sound design are so striking. I particularly want to shout out Theophilus O. Bailey’s movement direction/choreography. The best part of the choreo is Bailey knows exactly how to bring out the strong points of every performer, whether it’s their musculature, charisma or physical precision. Where this all comes together most powerfully is in the show’s queer moment, centring on Jet (Fela Lufadeju), there’s a masterful and specific synchronicity between the precise way his body and Albert Magashi’s intertwined, the flow of the music and tragically beautiful lighting. It's a touching sequence, that shows the height of what the work done here can be.
However it is just a moment - and then we're back to the sharply executed but rote structure. I also think the restriction of the queerness to this one isolated moment speaks to more than weak structure - it also speaks to broader cowardice. None of the other characters being present in Jet's discussion of queerness could be argued to reflect that cis black gay men in this country are often spiritually trapped and hiding (something I'm literally writing a play about right now). But that feels too easy. To me, it feels like none of the other characters are there because it would shatter the ability of the play to have these men be authentic while still playing to all sides of the audience. In keeping a structure of “this is the gay bit”, “this is the romance bit”, “this is the discussion of misogyny bit” etc, the show can avoid the messy conflicts which would cut deeper.
For example, the heteropatriarchy entrenched in Hotep ideology that Obsidian (Mohammed Mansaray) is borne out of, fundamentally does not have space for Black people who do not neatly fit into strict family structures and bioessentalised roles. How do those beliefs interface with gayness? Hell, how does the corny anxious Christian nerd Pitch (Shakeel Hakim) square his beliefs with this either? We never get the chance to see that!
I've recently been reading Adam Elliot Cooper's Black Resistance To British Policing and in it, he pulls on the work of JJ Bola and bell hooks to say that in advocating for Black men facing state/societal violence, a Black feminist critique must be employed by activists of all genders. Engagement with Black feminist critique doesn't come through softening the edges of the characters so that you only have to push back on the “softer” elements of misogyny. I think by the same stroke it is a weak move to even touch the idea of these other characters being homophobic when the sex/gender/race system that creates homophobia is the same one that defines Black men as deviant sexual beasts (an issue the show directly confronts!).
But again, the frustration here is there are moments where the show chooses to be brave. Its depiction of the various kinds of abuse Black men and boys are subject to and the effect that trauma has is bold and sensitive. But far too often it feels like there is a fear of creating interpersonal conflict that lasts beyond a few lines, a fear of trusting the audience can hold the difficulties and contradictions without abandoning these men. And so we recede into the zone of the sort of shallowness and political inertia of an advert before a football game which stops at telling men “It's okay to talk”.
Shifters - the below shot from If Beale Street Could Talk
Written by Benedict Lombe
Directed by Lynette Linton
Generally, I think it’s rude to make me travel to West London for any purpose that doesn’t come with a pound sign in front but this show was worth the journey. It’s a fairly simple set-up on its face, the high-flying achiever returns to her hometown for an event (in this case a funeral) and sparks she thought she’d smothered with her first love start to return. What develops, however, is a show that is incredibly tight and specific from performances through to characterisation through to theme.
A particular blessing in terms of the themes is that they are executed through the characters rather than on top of them. Shifters talks about mental health, neurodivergence, the experience of isolation that comes with being one of the few Black kids in an area and much much more. Yet it all comes naturally and never gets in the way of the dramatic force of the show. There’s also a fascinating fractured structure that plays with time and little recursive moments in fascinating ways.
The powerful duo at the centre of it all is Tosin Cole (Dre) & Heather Agyepong (Des). Their chemistry is electric and you could feel that energy radiate through the audience. Every little moment of slightly too-long eye contact or a brush of skin against skin got a gasp or a shift in the crowd. It really is a feat of direction, writing and performance coming together to make something beautiful.
cheeky little brown - Georgia by Brittany Howard
Written by by Nkenna Akunna,
Directed by Chinonyerem Odimba
cheeky little brown is a semi-musical story of one wild night where we watch the aftermath of a friendship* breakup, with our protagonist Lady (Tiajna Amayo) trying to figure out who she is without her best friend*.
This was truly a lovely one to be in the audience of. Amayo is endlessly fun on stage as the constantly stressed-out lead, with a Morley’s handbag (great extremely south London costume touch by Aldo Vasquez) and crutches which she very easily adapted into the character after an injury received the day before. The play has a lovely balance of silliness (like a love song sung to a doner kebab) but also isn’t afraid to dive into the more thorny emotional elements pulling on the tensions present. Jokes about the surveillance provided by aunties bleed smoothly into genuine anxieties over what it means to be seen as a person failing the community. Then the songs feel a bit like if the RnB infused pop of FLO and the energy of the music of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend had a baby and it mostly works!
The charm and talent go a long way but this is not a show without issues. On a smaller scale, there is a lack of precision which can let the show down. At points, it feels like Amayo gets stuck in a specific high energy level for too long and some of the shape of the piece gets lost. That same imprecision carries through to the songs where sometimes her evidently impressive voice gets impeded by bad mixing and inconsistent vocal choices.
The more fundamental issue, however, is that cheeky little brown never quite overcomes the difficulties of a one-person show. It certainly isn't for lack of trying. Vasquez’s set design deftly frames and tries to fill the stage, both audience interaction and the lighting are also used as tools to distract from how isolated Amayo looks on stage. But it's never quite enough - the fairly cosy Theatre Royal Stratford East has never felt so big. Also, acting out conversations from multiple perspectives worked a few times, especially when mocking the posh and sensitive Jesse, but can make the more dramatically weighty moments lose some impact.
In any case, it was a good time in the theatre! And I love getting to see messy and complicated Black queerness given space on stage.
Goner - Brontez Purnell, Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, “I’m Bloody By Nature Not ‘Cause I Hate Ya”
Performed and choreographed by Malik Nashad Sharpe aka markiscrycry
This is really a hard show to talk about without vague screams and saying you should go watch it immediately whenever it’s in your city!!!!
But yeah it is incredible to see Black people able to get fucking nasty on stage. So often Black Horror post- Get Out is forced into a tight box of being about something in a very narrowly constructed way. While GONER is engaged with the violence that surrounds Black queer existence, it is crucially interested in horror for its own sake.
Sharpe has a phenomenal level of endurance, presence and control on stage which transfixes you from beginning to end. This control combines with Barnaby Booth’s lighting design and Felix Villiers’ set which create terrifying long shadows and contorted monstrous shapes. That’s just one of many ways this show is deeply creepy and affecting. Also somehow they managed to make jumpscares work on stage which is srare.
The best thing I can say about GONER is that when the lights went up at the end there was a full thirty seconds where nobody knew whether to clap or not. We were all that shook!
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That’s it for this month! Live arts are fun and good, go see em where you can!
I’m less online lately, but whsiper on the winds and maybe you’ll fine me! Always appreciate your support whether that’s verbal, financial (ko-fi.com/tayowrites) or whatever else.