Shave &A HAIRCUT (and much more)
Barber Shop Chronicles lands in Bay Area.
There’s a lot going on in “Barber Shop Chronicles” — and haircuts are only part of it. Created by the Nigerianborn, U.K.-based poet and playwright Inua Ellams, this oneof-a-kind theater work delves deeply into the male rituals of urban barber shops. With insight into the essence of masculinity, the personal and political merge in Ellams’ hit show; race, politics, music and a wealth of verbal banter fuse in this wide-ranging co-production by the Fuel, National Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse companies.
Directed by Bijan Sheibani and designed by Rae Smith, the play arrives at Cal Performances this weekend after multiple runs in London; additional performances are scheduled at Stanford Live in November.
Ellams traveled to barbershops in London; Lagos, Nigeria; Johannesburg, South Africa; Accra, Ghana; Kampala, Uganda; and Harare, Zimbabwe, gathering more than 60 hours of recorded conversations to create the show. A cast of 12 plays 60 characters; the ebullient musical score ranges from ’90s pop songs to contemporary British and African-American music and songs from Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Uganda.
It all started with a flyer, the playwright
explained in a recent call from his home in London. “My girlfriend at the time handed me this little leaflet wanting to teach barbers the basics of counseling,” said Ellams, who was struck by the fact that the training would take place in barbershops rather than formal settings. “It got me thinking about what made barbershops safe spaces for men to speak about potentially revealing and delicate things.”
He started visiting barbershops — “loitering in them, really,” he said, “trying to ingratiate myself into conversations” — and eventually asked if he could record what was said. Surprisingly, he
received little resistance. “Once the barbers trusted me, it meant that the clients trusted me,” he said.
As he traveled from country to country, he recorded men telling jokes and stories, discussing sports, race, family, fatherhood and more. “It ranged from the very personal to the heights of political mythology,” he says. “I was surprised by how vastly different, yet how very similar, we were. I found the use of language, turns of phrase and use of imagery very poetic, in intent and often in execution. The timing was incredible, just in the jokes and the way people would tell stories. I found a lot of poetry in that.”
Ellams, who lived for a time in Dublin, Ireland, noted marked similarities between Irish and African banter. “There are a lot of Irish turns of phrase that just sound so natural and deft and musical. I found the same thing in the conversations I was hearing, and a lot of those things I used in the play.”
He also came to see a wide range of experience of men across the African continent. “I was surprised by how vastly different we
were, yet how very similar we are in our sensibilities,” he said. “I realized that I had subconsciously digested the monolith in which the African continent is represented in Western media.”
He cites the blog “Africa Is a Country,” which was founded by Sean Jacobs in 2009. The site has sought to counter Western media images of Africa and illuminate the differences between the continent’s 50 sovereign states.
Ellams initially considered the recordings as source material for a visual art project or an extended poetry work. But the theatricality of the chronicles quickly emerged. “It just grew and grew, into what the play became,” he said.
His initial script was four hours long; he condensed
that to a brisk running time of one hour and 45 minutes. “There are still several other plays locked in my laptop which haven’t seen the light of day,” he said. An adaptation for television is being considered.
Ellams still thinks of barbershops as safe spaces where men can express themselves freely. “There’s a need for places where we can be ourselves without a critical eye, a suspicious eye, a negative eye.” Today, he also sees them as sacred spaces.
“I think storytelling is a sacred art,” he said. “The art of communing is sacred, and the art of beautification is sacred. Finding a space where all three of those things coalesce and come together — almost like a Venn diagram — is a sacred thing.”