Shipbuilding is a festival by Certain Blacks, named after Elvis Costello’s symbolic anti-war song. The festival reflects upon the climate of C19, Brexit and Black Lives Matter. It’s a topical festival featuring a series of shows built around true stories. Staged at Rich Mix, Shipbuilding features Livia Kojo Alour A.K.A MisSa with her debut full length show, Black Sheep on Sunday February 27 at 7.30pm.
Livia Kojo Alour is an internationally renowned sword swallower, circus artist and burlesque artist. She is also a poet, musician, an in-demand public speaker and theatre maker. Her work challenges stereotypes about black women, chiefly pointing out the challenges faced by black women who refuse to conform to them. This will be a frank and deeply personal show.
She has strong Brighton roots. Her artistic mentor is Brighton-based Marisa Carnesky. Black Sheep takes you through her past on a more personal level, digging deeper into her journey from Hamburg to the UK as a circus performer with a daring reputation. This is a great show to see if you like your cabaret to be a little more challenging. Dare I say avant-garde? Fans of David Hoyle would no doubt approve.
Livia moved from Germany to the UK ten years ago. She has spent a long time analysing life-long feelings of self-hatred and otherness are part internalised racism and part survival techniques. Her new show is about reclaiming identity. It’s also about survival.
‘Working with Livia Kojo Alour on her new work Black Sheep was exciting and inspiring for me a theatre practitioner. Livia is both highly skilled as a performer and experimental as a writer/devisor. Her voice as a theatre maker is important and new, she articulates complex experiences and issues around her identify and decolonising performance – exploring her material with honesty, wit and strong aesthetic styling. She combines spoken word, dance, song and live art to a thrilling effect, moving her audiences and leaving them with an important theatrical experience. As a collaborator she is highly committed and willing to work hard to find the material- taking on dramaturgical ideas and advice and finessing her material to high production standards. I look forward to contributing to this important artist and her work in the near future’ Marisa Carnesky.
Certain Blacks takes place February 18-27 2022 @ Hoxton Hall. £8 cons.
