The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023 - Issue 33

bitetheatre In an ‘I mean business’ manner, John-Paul took off his jacket to perform the next piece. ‘Inner Sissy Blues’ started with the statement, “Every man has an inner sissy”. Many of the men in the audience nodded in agreement, and I was glad of their honesty as I shared this sentiment too. Alongside this performance was more projections on the screen behind him but this time, they included one of a cute young boy with cer- tain spoken words of the performance ech- oed over the image. Other images included pictures of family, of a young boy growing up, then a picture of John-Paul circling, with the subject label pointing at him. In this piece, he spoke of his Afro-identity and took us on an autobi- ographical journey of places he’s lived and the statuses he’s had to endure. He poeti- cally told of his journey, skipping back and forwards through public school, his South African township roots, to Sweden as a cur- rent location, and claimed the latter to be a colour-blind environment. A memorable line for me was, “You’re a queen; you’re no princess, so reign free; smile as big as the world.” ‘The Past’ was a piece about performing various personalities - something we can all relate to. The projected images that ac- companied this piece were very memorable and enthralling: first of a man on the floor looking up, which morphed into another image of a man leaning over another man submerged in water; a man in a suit looking out at the view of a park and then a man standing under water falling, whilst hold- ing onto a rope. A melodic African song came on to scenes of a man dancing in a flat. “Visual rape; is this real, or is this cel- luloid?” The projected imagery switched to a beau- tiful sensual piece of two men performing rope acrobatics under the cascading water, then to posing men in glitter. “Sissy boy, you got it wrong; no one wants to hear your song”. Then, “Reverse, start your story”. At this point, John-Paul left the stage briefly, only to return in a t-shirt stating WOMAN UP. I and a few of the audience sniggered at this play on words. John-Paul performed his next piece, ‘Broth- er’, after an introduction. He explained it was written when the #metoo campaign took off. He humorously revealed it was written for “the males that needed their voices heard and were whining that they didn’t have their cause too.” It was per- formed to a thudding base beat (which di- rected us to lean in and listen carefully, or we would’ve missed the words), and lines like “You don’t just have a cause, you got- ta earn it, brother!” proved humorous and enlightening.