Australia’s Hot Brown Honey headlines Femme January
One of the hits of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is coming to Vancouver.
Hot Brown Honey has had two successful runs at the standard-bearing Fringe, including an award for 2016 Total Theatre Award for Innovation. Originally scheduled for just two weeks, presenters the Vancouver East Cultural Centre has added a week of shows. It now runs Jan 9-27, at the York Theatre (639 Commercial Dr.).
In addition, the Cultch is billing Hot Brown Honey as part of a month of programming. Femme January, as its called, includes a couple of other shows.
Making its Vancouver debut, Hot Brown Honey mixes hip-hop politics, dance, poetry, comedy, circus, striptease and song; a media release calls the show “equal parts theatrical spectacular and social activism.” The all-female cast includes members from Aboriginal Australian, Maori, Samoan, Tongan, Indonesian and South African backgrounds.
“We really do believe ‘You cannot be what you cannot see’, so we are just doing it; we are putting more brown faces on stage and in the process shining a light on all the talented Hot Brown Honeys… Because let’s be honest, there are plenty of women out there they just need to see the pathways where they too can shine,” the release quotes performer/director Lisa Fa’alafi.
Visit thecultch.com for tickets and more info.
Other shows that are part of Femme January include:
Reassembled Slightly Askew (Jan 17-Feb 4, presented with PuSh International Performing Art Festival, at Vancity Culture Lab, 1895 Venables)—An autobiographical, audio-based immersive experience involving a coma, brain surgeries and rehabilitation.
I’m Not Here (Jan 24-28, presented with PuSh, Historic Theatre, 1895 Venables)—Ireland’s THEATREclub presents this one-woman show. “I’m Not Here is many things: it’s a ceremony, a rite, a vigil,” according to the Cultch. “Creator and performer Doireann Coady will lead you into darkness and back out again, and it’s an experience you won’t soon forget.”