A HONEY OF A SHOW
Musical offers sweetness and rage
With the new year fast approaching, thoughts of quitting bad things and adding good things to your life are likely starting to percolate.
Well, not to spook you, but only eight per cent of new year’s resolutions remain in effect by the time January says goodbye.
So why not give yourself a fighting chance and make a change that makes you happy?
Resolve to attend more live theatre.
A great place to start is with The Cultch and it’s Femme January programming.
The works are all by women and all very contemporary.
“I try to make sure at least 50 per cent of the programming has a female as the primary creative, whether that’s writer, choreographer or solo performer,” said Heather Redfern, executive director at the Cultch about her year-round programming.
Femme January marks the second time The Cultch has delivered a full month of programming created by women.
"(The feedback was) very positive, especially from younger women,” said Redfern about last year’s femme month.
“They were very excited to see the work of women who were taking a lot of risks in their work. It took the conversation to a
higher level. Personally, I felt really excited to be in a space to speak about feminism without feeling that idea was going to be challenged.”
This year’s Femme January features two Irish productions and one from Australia.
Hot Brown Honey, a label-busting, frank cabaret type show out of Australia, opens the programming.
After that, Shannon Yee’s Reassembled Slightly Askew (Jan. 17-Feb. 4) offers a new kind of storytelling. Eight people at a time lay down on hospital beds with headphones and experience a 3-D soundscape of Yee’s struggle with a rare brain infection, the subsequent surgery, and recovery.
The month closes out with I’m Not Here, a one-woman show starring Doireann Coady that travels through grief.
While the topics are all heavy, Redfern reassures that the deliveries are entertaining, thought provoking and, in the case of Hot Brown Honey, “uplifting and fun.” “It deals with de-colonization. It deals with sexualized violence. It deals with all kinds of really tough topics, and it does it from a sense of real craft and fun and irony and sarcasm and comedy, and from so many different angles. It’s really a cabaret show," said Redfern.
Postmedia News talked to Busty Beatz, the creator/cowriter/musical director/sound designer and performer behind Hot Brown Honey.
Q Can you explain the show in a couple of sentences?
A Hot Brown Honey is an unapologetic, empowering, genre-defying roller-coaster of a show featuring phenomenal women storming centre stage. It’s a theatrical explosion that shatters preconceptions and celebrates our similarities and differences at the same time.
Q How did the show come to be?
A The show was born of the desire to see more hot black and brown bodies on stage. We had been making our own music, theatre and visual art for some time, with many brilliant artists, and it was clear we didn’t fit into any narratives ... We decided to make the space for us to blow it all up. We started making pieces that made us giggle, exploring the taboos of our own traditional cultures, as well as the social structures around us.
I had the idea to ... invite artists to work on club spots and showcase their talents. From there it was organic. If we where all in the same place, we would call up talented sisters we knew and put a show together.
Hot Brown Honey became a platform, shining a light on untold stories of phenomenal women. Lisa (Fa’alafi, the director, designer, choreographer and also a performer) and I are theatre makers at heart, so we knew it was time to write our stories on to stage.
Q Did you have a checklist of issues you wanted to address?
A What we deal with in the show is what we deal with every day. We recognized the issues that came up for us also had a universal story for many, especially around intersectionality, living on stolen land, being a diaspora and colonization. We also wanted to show our resilience and the power of making noise.
Q It really looks like a visual extravaganza. How important was it to go big and bold?
A We live in a structure that wants us to be small and silent so we said: ‘What if we turned that notion on its head?’ The Honeys are all actually larger than life and full of joyous rage. Big and bold is definitely who we are. Visually we’re taking our real daily lives and putting a massive spotlight on the things that affect us, as well as how we deal with them with humour. The visuals reference pop culture — from art and design to hip hop and politics.
Q You kind of seem like a really cool gang. What would be your manifesto?
A Decolonize and moisturize. One stage at a time. Decolonization is such a massive, daily act and it’s extremely heart wrenching and tiring.
Q How great does it feel to get on stage and deliver such an empowering and unapologetic show?
A So great! We get to say exactly what we want to say by redefining and re-imagining our ultimate superhero selves.
Q What do you hear from people who have seen the show?
A The reaction has been mindblowing, inspiring and telling
... the mix of art, politics and culture is exciting to audiences. People are coming away feeling empowered to do something . ... In the words of Dr. Angela Davis “you have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” This (show) is how we do it. We don’t underestimate the power of the people. They’re a reflection of us."