Putuma weaves magic in poetic piece
The lights of the hangar were switched off, and the cold air in the theatre hung above our heads as we waited for the show to begin.
The stage is pitch black, but the projector is producing light, showing off graphics that depict societal ills of our lives.
In comes a small-bodied woman in a white space jumpsuit, with microphone, megaphone and matching sunglasses, reciting verses that made some audience members uncomfortable in their seats.
Hullo, BU-BYE, Koko, Come In began. This is a multimedia stage adaptation of Koleka Putuma’s sophomore collection of poems by the same name.
In it, Putuma fiddles with archives, names, lives and legacies of in/visibility, memory, and black women in performance.
Putuma said: “The performance weaves together poetry, sound, and projection mapping. I experiment with various modes of documentation and performance.”
She broke down the title by reciting verses that were floating all over the stage, her “boy na” sometimes kneeling down as if paying respect to the higher realm while reading some verses from her book.
“Hullo” means life itself and seems to knock at the door in a queer refashioning of the world in Putuma’s new performance.
“Bu-bye” is backtracking, deleting and rewriting against the erasure of black and queer women’s contributions to the arts. Putuma fiddles with the archive in writing and, now, on the stage.
“Koko”: As though she is putting a cassette into a record player and pressing play, Putuma’s fingers write as if she’s reading stories from the tape which gushes with the words of Brenda Fassie, Miriam Makeba and Boom Shaka.
“Istraight Le Ndaba, these black women do not die. They live on and magnify because they created alternatives to the boundaries on their bodies.
“They played. They toyed with what was expected of them. So that, Brenda Fassie, whose song gives my poetry and theatre its title, could sing ‘Siyajaiva, hay siyahlala la or wen’ufun’ukuthini’,” she said.
“Come In”: Putuma is a leading contemporary player.
She messes with what is expected of poetry even.
She alters expectations of poetry and theatre by queering both forms and then mixing them like a DJ playing Makhadzi, Brandy and Nina Simone all at once.
Putuma’s work is not just poetry and theatre brought together; she alters the terrain of what we think both these forms can do and shows us what it means to make these adjustments — to fiddle with the archive of what black and queer women do in the arts.
She lets them breathe as poetry does, and dance as theatre does. In Putuma’s work, queering, as only black women do, becomes poetry-theatre and not a footnote.
“I don’t know if you get it ”— Brenda Fassie (in Hullo, Bu-bye, Koko, Come In).
Putuma said: “The title of the book and the related performance is inspired by a South African phrase made famous by the legendary musician, Brenda Fassie, in her 1992 song istraight Le Ndaba.”
Putuma builds on the themes she explored in her first book, Collective Amnesia, and goes straight to the heart of tackling the legacies of black femme erasure from society as well as in the arts.
“In Hullo, Bu-bye, Koko, Come in, I reflect on personal experiences of travelling and performing outside SA and, more specifically, in Europe,” she said.