Meet Fringe creator Kitoko Mai
Along with Femmepire co-creator Claud Spadafora, Mai explores concepts of Black excellence in Messy: A Chaotic Black Femme Rage Musical.
It’s the early days of Hamilton’s 2024 Fringe Festival, where local theatre artists and storytellers from across the Steel City and around the world are highlighted over a week-long festival at participating theatres. One of the productions debuting, Messy: A Chaotic Black Femme Rage Musical, was written by Kitoko Mai, a Hamilton-based non-binary multidisciplinary artist, storyteller, and facilitator.
Mai creates socially conscious art based on their lived experiences, previously exploring their dissociative identity disorder (DID) diagnosis through film in 2023.
Messy tackles other social themes.
“After coming out to their immigrant mother amidst a looming alien invasion, Messy (a neurodivergent, non-binary “consultant”) decides to invest all of their savings into funding their dream rap career. The only thing is, Messy is not that good,” reads the description from Femmepire, a multi-arts collective led by Mai and Claud Spadafora that created and will perform Messy.
It runs from July 18 to 28 at The Staircase Theatre.
Mai is a playwright, solo performer and producer who takes the stage in Messy, while Spadafora (she/they), who directs and designs Messy, is a performance artist, playwright and poet, filmmaker, multimedia artist and musician living in Hamilton. You may recognize Mai and Spadafora from 2023’s Fringe production, Bimbos in Space.
Messy also features music composed and produced by Brett Klassen (Onglish, he/him), also a Hamiltonian.
“I think the idea for Messy began about six years ago. I think it came out of my frustrations with the idea of Black excellence,” Mai told HCM. “I feel like I barely have fun trying to be ‘excellent.’ I feel like there’s so much freedom in being able to present something mediocre, or just not perfect. I feel like ‘excellence’ is connected to capitalism and colonialism. Black excellence specifically feels like it’s often about proving that we are ‘just as good,’ where I feel like mediocrity is about not needing to be good or useful to white supremacy or colonialism in any way. I think I was just fed up, honestly, frustrated. I wanted to do something fun, and I like raps, I wanted that to be enough. I wanted Black joy and Black fun to be enough.”
Mai says each performance will be unique and that, depending on the performance you choose, you may come away with a different ending. They explain that they purposefully wrote two opposing scripts to reflect their complicated feelings about Black excellence.
“With the play I was writing, I felt like I was trying to meet the requirements of, like, what is ‘theatre’ in Canada,” said Mai. “What counts as ‘theatre’ and ‘live performance.’ So I wanted to perform multiple versions of this play to first explore what it felt like to attempt to achieve some form of excellence that I described, then another one that is prioritizing joy and community and fun.”
Mai and Klassen worked on Messy for six years. Although taking longer than expected, both artists prefer to take their time with their respective creative projects. While writing, Mai was living in Toronto and relying on the arts full-time when the pandemic hit.
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“I was super stressed, I ended up having a manic episode,” said Mai. “Originally the production was going to be a slice-of-life thing, but during the manic episode I started creating new ideas for the project, and it jumped into sci-fi. So when I got out of that episode I looked at all this material, and the play had shifted dramatically. I’ve been trying to collaborate with my mad self, instead of course correct. I have bipolar disorder, and apparently one of the things with bipolar disorder is that sometimes during manic episodes, people will speak in rhymes, so a few raps were created during that period, and the project became much bigger than I had dreamed before.”
On Friday, July 26, Femmepire is hosting a Black Out Night performance. Black Out Nights are performances for Black audiences, intended to provide a space for Black theatre-goers to experience theatre in a space made for them. Although no one will be turned away from attending, Femmepire encourages non-Black folks wishing to attend this evening to investigate why they would want to attend if they do not self-identify as Black.
“In Hamilton it can feel a bit alienating to make theatre as a Black artist,” said Mai. “The point is really just to create a space where Black people can come together and watch a piece of Black theatre together. There are cultural things about how we engage with theatre and music in public that are frowned on by colonialism and white supremacy, so I hope it’s also an opportunity for people to come and enjoy some weird music together.”
Secure your tickets for Messy below. Make sure to collect your Fringe Benefits Button before you attend a show, every Fringe patron over the age of 12 (including Passholders) needs to wear a Fringe Benefits Button to access paid indoor shows.
Get your tickets here.
