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03.06.12 Reworking the kink
Eye Magazine
David Balzer
Trey Anthony is going natural. After years of sizzling her hair into subservience and recently having shaved her head completely, she has finally decided to begin wearing locks. Anthony is also finishing rehearsals of the first professional production of her 2001 Toronto Fringe sensation, Da Kink in My Hair, a concurrent event she does not see as coincidental. In fact, when she talks about "reworking the kink," it's hard to tell if she's talking about her hair, her play or her life.
"My hair feels clean, and in a way I feel reborn - and now the play is finally where I want it to be, and that only happened when I went totally bald and was able to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes," says Anthony. "I truly do believe that if you really want to know what is going on with a woman, especially a black woman, you have to look at her hair."
Such is the maxim of Novelette, the ample hairdresser-cum-matriarch at the centre of Kink, who presides over her salon like an oracle, coaxing intimate monologues out of her clients. Anthony plays the funny, garrulous diva, a role notably absent in the first incarnation of Kink, which was originally concieved as a deadly serious one-woman show, and a rebuff to the aesthetic and political restrictions Anthony felt had been placed on her career.
"I started to feel really pigeonholed as a comedian," says Anthony, whose stand-up wotk with Kenny Robinson's Nubian Disciples of Pryor was drawn mainly from her experiences as a first generation Caribean Canadian. Success with Robinson began begat gigs at Second City and then spots on WTN's She's So Funny and The Chris Rock Show. "I had to constantly remind people that my background was theatre, and that was always my goal. But after I got out of the theatre school, there was nothing out there for a black, plus-sized woman. I did audition on top of audition, but I couldn't get an agent - no one would take me."
Sick of feeling futile, Anthony formed Plaitform, a production company dedicated to promoting young, black, urban theatre, and then wrote Kink, which germinated further in the aftermath of a messy breakup. "I was bitter, bitter as hell," Anthony says, and then laughs boisterously, attempting (characteristically, it seems) to make her rage humourous and at least slightly congenial. "I wanted to showcase the lives of black women, and then I noticed I was going to all these different auditions and seeing the same people every time. And none of us were getting any work. So I was like, 'I got this play, and I'm going to put you and you and you in it!' "
Having workshopped Kink four times since its inaugural reading in 2001, Anthony considered this Passe Muraille presentation to be the world premier - the first time the cast is working with sets, costumes, music and choreography ("this is what the play looks like with money," she jokes). The piece has grown from personal therapy session into an organic conversation piece, which gives voice to an array of women in the black community. Responding to audience feedback, Anthony has finally decided to mix her comedic and dramatic proclivities in the new version: hence Novelette (Anthony), a composite of Carlene the Dancehall Queen, the uproarious character she created with the Nubian Diciples, and one of her ex-hairdressers. ("I don't go to her anymore because it's like this elaborate, all-day process.")
For Anthony, Novelette is a paramount importance to Kink: certainly in observing the all-female, all-black cast and crew rehearsing with verve and power, it's clear that Anthony strives to create the same supportive environment onstage as Novelette does in her salon.
"I made sure that when I hired the women to do these roles that they were genuine. We ain't no Halle Berrys. These are women who are like, 'OK. I'm having a bad hair day. I'm not a size four, I got hips, a butt, and I feel damn good about myself.'
"It was also important that I had a plus-sized woman doing the main role, talking about making love and being sexy. I really wanted a fat black woman to go up on stage and say, 'You know what? I have sex and I have damn good sex.' It's like, I know I'm having good sex in my own life, so I don't know why a character can't be up there saying she's having great sex if she's over 100 pounds."
But Kink isn't just a soul- and body-affirming romp; as in its nascent workshop form, the play takes on a barrage of serious social problems, including suicide, inequality in the work place and homophobia. Structured as a parade of issue orientated monologues, Kink gets rather heavy near the end, particularly when a young girl steps up to give a grueling account of her experience with incest in thick, vulnerable patois.
"I definitely did not want the play to come across as saying that black women are all in such hardship - that we're all victims and woe is us," Anthony says. "These women, especially Novelette, are survivors, and the music and dance in this show celebrates black culture and it celebrates life. There's a solidarity in the salon; all of these women have their problems, yet they come here, get their hair done, hang out with friends, have lives, love and hurt. Just like everyone."
Thus Anthony - who uses the term crossover ironically, always finger-quoting it - thinks non-black audiences will be able to see Kink as more than just an exotic peep into her own culture. She further hesitates to proclaim Passe Muraille's embracing of Kink is indicative of any current vogue in Toronto for black, or any other sort sort of non-white ethic theatre. Anthony does, however, thinks that it's about damn time the Toronto theatre scene starts recognizing some new voices.
"Toronto is so diverse, this really shouldn't be the one black play for the year," she says. And, again channelling Novelette, "We've got to open it up; we've got to let everyone in to have a big talk."