Theatre / vanessa kisuule
Review: Sexy, Wardrobe Theatre
“People can respect you or want to fuck you. You don’t get both, you greedy cow.”
From the moment Vanessa Kisuule bursts on stage at the Wardrobe Theatre in her underwear, she doesn’t mince her words. Sexy is a straight-talking show geared towards solving the enigma of sexiness.
The get-up soon includes black heels and a négligée, but this woman doesn’t just want to exude sexiness; she wants to smash the patriarchy too. It’s a contradiction that weighs so heavily on her mind that at one point she is nearly driven to eat her favourite pair of pants.
is needed now More than ever
Vanessa’s lifelong confusion is charted from her Catholic girls’ boarding school, where she is enthralled by the lithe bodies in MTV music videos, to her co-ed secondary school, where her dreams of being the ‘sexy one’ are shattered. Upon realising she doesn’t fit the thin/white/blonde stereotype, she resolves to become the funny, cool girl instead.
Her journey carries on, both anxious and carefree, serious and funny, hopeless and hopeful, into adulthood, which brings with it a deep understanding of how Western culture treats black women and their bodies.
Projections of popular culture provide a backdrop to her story, from Mrs Robinson’s seduction to Shakira’s very sincere hips. She mimes to Marilyn Monroe and rapper Cardi B in an attempt to find a sexiness that works for her.
There’s also footage of traditional Ugandan dance, of racist vloggers, of Grace Jones hitting her interviewer on live Australian television – a whirlwind of representations of sexiness and not-sexiness, and of all the typecasting, injustices and inner torments of being a black woman.
But despite the mixed messages and prejudices of the world around her, Vanessa wends her way to a final, life-affirming revelation: ditch the négligée and the heels (“designed by bad men” so that women “can’t run from their greasy clutches”). Don a pair of Doc Martens instead, and kick the patriarchy right where it hurts.
Her triumphant decision to no longer suppress who she is, the shake of her hips, the wave of her beautiful, natural hair, is obviously of particular pertinence to black women. Is it strange, then, that it was witnessed in the Wardrobe Theatre by an almost-entirely-white audience, or is that exactly who needs to be listening? Because, as she said before walking offstage: the chaos doesn’t end, even though the show does.
Sexy continues at the Wardrobe Theatre continues at the Wardrobe Theatre until Saturday, Feb 17, but all nights are sold out.
For more info on the show, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/sexy and for more on Vanessa, visit www.vanessakisuule.com
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