'You are healing so many people': Trey Anthony on bringing back 'da Kink in My Hair after 20 years
The writer, producer and actor spoke to Tom Power about what's changed since she staged her iconic show
Letty's hair salon is back in business! 20 years after its premiere at Toronto's Fringe Festival, Trey Anthony's legendary play 'da Kink in My Hair is back to blow-dry you out of the water. Reuniting several original cast members, including director Weyni Mengesha, this brand new production will explore the progress society has made since 2003 and also how much more needs to be done.
In a new interview on CBC Radio's Q, Anthony tells Tom Power that because the entertainment industry didn't have authentic roles for Black women, she wrote her own. "I remember coming home from an audition and I said to my grandma, 'This is shit! They're just giving me these shitty roles and I'm tired of it.' My grandmother was like, 'Well, if they're giving you shit, write your own shit! Stop complaining!' And that's how 'da Kink came about!"
Listen and follow Q with Tom Power on CBC Listen, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
Anthony based 'da Kink on her childhood, moving to Rexdale from England with her Jamaican parents. The play stars Novelette, a hair stylist in Little Jamaica, who has a knack for reading a story from every head of hair she touches. Her salon, Letty's, serves a wide range of customers whose monologues highlight issues such as gun violence, mental health and colourism, all of which Anthony has experienced within her community.
Since the play's premiere, Anthony has become a vital part of the Canadian entertainment scene as a producer, author, and playwright, winning 4 NAACP awards and is the first Black Canadian woman to write and produce a TV show on a major primetime Canadian network. 'da Kink was adapted into a series in 2007, and both seasons can be viewed on CBC Gem.
Voted one of the top 10 plays in Canadian theatrical history, 'da Kink in My Hair is celebrating its anniversary at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto until Dec. 23.
I have met so many of the cast of that show over the years. You know, they have gone on to do really incredible things and they've come in here to talk to me a little bit. It's pretty amazing!
Yes. It's 'da Kink magic, that's what I call it. Everybody who's been associated with the show has just gone on to do just amazing and magical things.
When I got the call to celebrate the 20 years, they were like, "Oh, we're going to do a production and we're going to call it the 20-year anniversary." I was like, "What 20 years?" It really did not feel like it was 20 years. If you asked me I would say maybe seven, 10 max, but never 20.
Was there a moment where you realized this thing is doing better than most plays do?
I think it was the first time we did a reading at the Now Lounge two nights, and it sold out. I was like, "OK, maybe this is luck," you know? It was a small room, maybe about 40 people. I remember pulling up one day to the Fringe Festival, and I was running late and I was actually in the show, and I saw this crowd going around the block, and I was like, "Oh my God, whoever's show that is, they must be really happy." Then I realized it was my show that people were lining up around the block to get in.
That's when I was like, "Something big is going to happen here."
So you immigrate to Canada from the U.K. when you're 12, and then to Rexdale, then eventually to Brampton, right? What do you remember from all that?
I remember when I immigrated here, I was 12 and I think that's a hard time for any kid. Imagine me moving from England with this English accent and moving into this very working class Rexdale neighbourhood. I got teased a lot. People were like, 'Oh she thinks she's white, right?' and they were like, "Oh she tried to talk like she's white, or she thinks she's posh," and it was hard. It was a really hard transition because people made fun of my accent. People thought I was better than them, and I was just like, "I don't know, this is how I speak!"
It wasn't until we moved to Brampton and we moved to a very middle-class, upper-class neighbourhood at that time. I went to school with some really privileged kids and I was really conscious of the fact. I couldn't name it at that time, of class. I knew even though I was in the circle, I was very aware that my family wasn't making the money that these other families were making. I think that's where I started to really learn to be this chameleon, trying to fit in and make fun of myself and make jokes before other people did. I would make fun of myself, make fun of my family, and I became that kid where everyone was just like, "Oh she's so funny, she's so outgoing." I was able to laugh at myself, it was really just this defence mechanism. Let me laugh at me first before you laugh at me.
Is that a good thing?
I think so. I think people make a connection with you when they feel that you stand in the level of authenticity. That has been something throughout my career, and even in my writing. I always put myself centre stage, and say, "These are the things that are going on in my family; these are the things that are going on with me. These are the things, then, hence, [that] are going on within the Black community." I think this has been one of the reasons why my work has resonated with so many people, because I'm pretty vulnerable and pretty transparent in all my struggles.
Writing is very therapeutic to me. If you talk to any of my ex-partners and my family, they're like, "If you want to know what's going on with Trey, just go to one of her plays because she'll tell everybody first before she tells you." It's where I work out my stuff and where I work out things that keep me up at night, and it's the place I'm the most vulnerable. I think things I'm not able to say. I then put the words into characters' mouths and the response that I would want my family or friends or partners to have to me, I then give it to another character. So it becomes very healing for me in so many ways.
When did you start writing?
I would say in grade 8. I had this teacher, and I will never forget him, Mr. Bellisimo. He gave me back one of my assignments and he said, "You're really special. Your writing is phenomenal. You should keep that." And that's when I thought I could be a writer.
In grade 13 — now I'm aging myself — I was in this writing class and I got back a paper and it was red all over it. My teacher said to me, "You will never be a writer because you write how you speak. Your grammar is terrible." That was when I kind of started to shrink and not think that I could be a writer. It's one of the things I always say when I talk to students and aspiring writers. What has worked in my favour is because I write how I speak, my characters sound believable.
It's not long after that you started writing 'da Kink in my Hair, right?
Right after that, I got into theatre school and I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a summer program, and then I got an internship on the Chris Rock Show. From there, I came back to Canada and I was really feeling myself, even though I was just an intern. I started writing after that when I started to go out for auditions, and it was just really stereotypical roles that were being offered to me like Black girl on welfare, baby mama number two.
I was just like I want to write stuff that feels authentic to me. I had these really big illusions of, like, I was going to hire a whole bunch of Black women, and I'm going to write for all these actresses that I see in the auditions. I really had this, I would call it, a Kanye West complex type of thinking I'm going to do it bigger and better! That's kind of how I started in that way of thinking, "I know you guys think that you're great, but I think I can do a better job," and I was very very naive.
In Black Girl in Love With Herself, you do talk about that a little bit. You talk about the stereotypical roles that you had been offered, and you talk about the damage that can come when people are reduced to stereotypes.
There's a lot of damage, I think, that occurs for Black people in the media or entertainment. We are relying on people who don't look like us to write for us. That has only started to shift and change in a significant way maybe in the last five years or so. I've been in several writing rooms where I've been the only person of colour in the writing room. If you think about things like that, a lot of time when it's coming from writers who are white, what they are playing on of what Black lives are, is the stereotypes that they themselves see are perpetuated in the media. So those are the things that we get time and time again.
People have always asked me what has been the secret of my success, and I've always said I've never believed the lies they told me about myself. I never believed that welfare baby number one, baby mama number one was me, drug dealer number two was me, crackhead number three was me. I was like, "No — I don't know these women. I'm going to write people who remind me of my sister, who remind me of my mom, remind me of my grandmother, my best friend, who remind me of myself." That has been something that has always stayed with me. Just be reminded of who you are. Don't let anybody tell you who you're supposed to be.
Talk to me a little bit about where the play came from originally, and maybe where the characters and the plot and all that stuff might have come from your life.
So the play is set on Eglinton in the hair salon and Novelette, who is the main character and who's the hairdresser, has this amazing ability to touch these women's hair, and it brings you into the personal and inner lives of these women. I always say it's kind of like, "What is the mask we wear in public and what is the mask that we wear when the mask drops?" That's who Novelette is able to access — the inner lives of these women, the vulnerable times that they're going through.
Each of these monologues has a piece of me. There's a monologue dealing with police brutality from a mother's perspective, and that monologue came from when my brother's friend was in the hospital and had gotten shot. I remember going to the hospital room and just seeing that and the mother weeping and saying, "You don't know what it's like to have a Black son, and the fear."
There's another monologue on sexuality about this young girl coming out to her family, and I remember 20 years ago when we used to do that monologue, people used to boo. They used to actually boo! And you could feel the discomfort in the theatre.
They booed someone coming out?
Coming out, talking about being a lesbian. It got so bad that at one point one of the actresses who played it dropped out because she said, "I can't deal with dealing with the audience every single night doing this. It's too much emotional work and lifting." And that was the true story of how my family responded, especially my grandmother to me coming out as queer.
There was another monologue dealing with incest and sexual abuse, and that was something that I felt I needed to talk about and experience what happened to me as a young girl. To say, "This is how perpetrators and abusers are able to make young girls become silent." That was something that was really important for me to talk about.
There's another monologue on colourism and that was straight from my own family of how we deal. We're a family who have very dark-skinned people in our family and very light-skinned people in our family. There's a part in there where she talks about her mom saying, "You're too Black to wear red. Never wear red," and that was a direct line from my grandmother. My grandmother used to always say that to me as a little girl, "Oh, thank God you're smart, because looks passed you, but thank God you're smart. You could never wear red." For the longest time I always knew I was smart, but I never thought I was pretty or attractive. I think a lot of women who come and see the play relate to those moments of how one statement can become so much of your identity, especially if it's coming from people who you trust and respect who are supposed to love you. So it becomes very healing for a lot of women.
Given that you just told me why this show was created — the personal nature of everything in that play, and how the play was speaking to a community that had never been spoken to before in Canadian theatre — how meaningful must it have been for you to have that many people show up?
The play right now is in the Bluma Appel Theatre, and I walked into that theatre and it's a 900-seat theatre and my play is in there. It was the same amount of magic I felt, and awe when it was in the fringe festival at 100 seats. It still makes me pinch myself sometimes and go, "People actually want to see my work! I have something valid to say!"
It's important work and it's healing work, and I truly do believe it's bigger than me. I believe people come for a level of healing, a level of community, a level of laughter. I do believe God, the universe, whomever you want to believe in, uses me as this vessel to say, "Be this voice and be true and be authentic," because a lot of times when I'm writing something it's me trying to heal, and I realize the work starts to heal others. That's why I never take it for granted. If I see two people there, 100 people there, or 900 people, I still feel this level of excitement, and there's this little girl in me going, "Oh my God, somebody is listening to what I got to say. How is this possible?"
What does your family make of their role in this thing?
It's funny because on opening night I thanked my family from the stage and I said, "I want to thank you for giving me this dysfunctional family, because if we didn't have a dysfunctional family I would not have a career." Then I said, "I also want to thank you for allowing me to be so public with things that happen behind closed doors, and I know that I take the liberty of writing about our lives, and it comes just from my perspective, and you allow me to do so."
Black Girl in Love with Herself was kind of like a memoir, and a very personal memoir. I talked a lot about my mom having me at age 17, and what that was like, and her own childhood and what led to that. I remember before it went to the publishers, I sent a copy to every single one of my family members and I said, "I want you to have a copy of this, because I think it's only fair that you read it first before it goes out into the world, but I also am not going to change anything because this is my truth."
They all read it and no one said a word. The only thing my mother said to me, that I will never forget, is, "I had no idea until I read it how hard I was on you. I'm sorry that that's how you felt. I felt that I was pushing you to be your best, and I know I put a lot on you as the oldest." My mom was a working mom of three, so I was like second in command, and so that really hit my mother when she was reading it. She was like, "I didn't realize how much you ran the household, how much you were doing at that point in time, because I was in survival mode."
So my family is very proud of me, but you know, my mom and dad are very Jamaican, so they don't use the words, like, "Oh, I'm proud of you." They will tell everybody and their mother about how wonderful I am, but they will never, ever say it to me.
It sounds like these people are still with you. If I'm not mistaken, you're a mom yourself, right?
Yes, I'm a mom myself. I have a son, Kai. I adopted him when he was 14 days old and he just turned three a couple of days ago. That has also given me a new perspective and a new sense of, wow, this is a lot. Motherhood is a lot. I think my mom did this when she was 17. I'm doing this in my 40s with resources and support, and it feels a lot to me and overwhelming, so it's made me much more forgiving of my mom. Becoming a mother has really opened [me] up. I feel just this other softer side of me, a much more forgiving side of people, because I see now how I'm doing my best, and yet I still feel I'm failing in this motherhood thing.
I heard someone got engaged at one of the shows. Is that right?
Yes, my sister got engaged at How Black Mothers Say I Love You and she's been with her husband now for 17 years. I got engaged at one of the Black Girl in Love shows, which I really shouldn't have damn well done, Tom. Somebody should have stopped me because that thing didn't last eight months after that.
Either way, very transformative show personally and in other ways. What are you most proud of?
What I'm most proud of is when I get emails or I get messages in my inbox of women saying, "I came to see your show 20 years ago and now I'm bringing my daughter," or, "I came with my mom and it's been a family affair."
I also got a message from a man who's a good friend of mine who said, "20 years ago I brought my Jamaican mom to 'da Kink in my Hair, and I brought her especially specifically because I wanted her to see the monologue on sexuality, and that's how I came out." Now he's married and he has a husband and has families all around him, and those things make me really proud.
What also makes me really proud is, I remember this young, blonde woman came up to me and she was just like, "Oh my God, thank you for telling my story. The whole play resonated with me, but especially the Nia monologue." And I was like, "The Nia monologue?" I said, "No, I think you got it wrong. The Nia monologue is about colourism, about her saying, 'I'm too dark, I'm the darkest one in my family, and my mother treated me terribly because of that.'" She said, "Yes, that's the one. I've always been the fat sister and I never thought my mom loved me as much as she loved my skinny sisters."
That is when it hit me that you can be as specific about something and yet, if you stand in your truth, people will find themselves in your work. The whole thing around wanting to be loved and seen and heard is universal. It will transcend race, class, sex, you name it. That was when I was like, "Trey, you're doing more than you actually think you're doing. You are healing so many people." That's what I'm the most proud of — that people come out of all of my work, and especially 'da Kink and say it's an experience. It's definitely an experience.
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
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