EXPLORE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLACK, BRITISH AND FEMALE IN
DARK & LOVELY AT THE CRUCIBLE STUDIO
Artist and performer Selina Thompson brings her highly-acclaimed one woman show, Dark & Lovely, to the Crucible Studio Theatre from Wednesday 18 – Friday 20 November. Using memories, music, rum and a ‘Tumbleweave installation’, Selina explores the history and politics of afro hair and what it means to be Black, British and Female in the UK today.
Presented from within the Tumbleweave – a home for hair built from abandoned weaves and hair extensions – Dark & Lovely is an intimate, part-autobiographical, conversational new show that invites audiences to peer through the Tumbleweave. Using recorded conversations with barbers, hair vendors and customers, feel good music and written text, this new show explores the complexities of the social debate surrounding Black hair and celebrates what it means – and doesn’t mean – to be Black, through the way we wear our hair.
Dark & Lovely was first performed in Chapeltown, Leeds in a disused barber’s shop for a weeklong sell-out run. Selina Thompson says: ‘Dark & Lovely was developed in the barber shops and hairdressers – and making the work was a real coming of age moment for me: one in which I got to reconnect my heritage and cultural upbringing with my developing political consciousness and my practice as an artist. I like to think I’ve made something that reflects the love and care that those that opened up their community spaces extended to me – but also something with bite!’
Dark & Lovely is at the Studio from Wednesday 18 – Saturday 20 November. Tickets can be purchased from Sheffield Theatres’ Box Office in-person, by phone on 0114 249 6000 or online at http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/ and are priced £10.00 (a transaction fee of £1.50 (£1.00 online) applies to all bookings made at the Box Office, excluding cash).