Edinburgh Fringe Q&A: Temi Wilkey

Tell us about your show. What can audiences expect?

Main Character Energy is about a beautiful and talented Black actress who bravely puts on an autobiographical one-woman show so she can finally take up the space onstage that she’s routinely been denied. It’s meta-theatrical, high-energy and highly absurd. Audiences can expect everything from singing to dancing, audience interaction to spoken word, an existential breakdown and, of course, radical self-indulgence.

What are your thoughts on the festival in general and how do you feel about being a part of it this year?

I feel really excited and fortunate to be a part of the festival this year. With the cost of living crisis and so many funding cuts to the arts over the past 14 years, it’s a really difficult time to be an artist. The comfort and inspiration I’ve got from other writers, performers and makers is definitely what has kept me going. So I’m most excited about spending so much time within the artistic community.

Looking at this new show, how would you say it links to your previous work both personally and thematically?

Main Character Energy is my first solo show and it feels like a really joyful merging of my artistic practises. I co-founded the drag king company Pecs and used to co-direct and perform in their shows everywhere from Soho Theatre to Tate Britain. Then, after I left the company, I started writing narrative plays and was awarded a Stage Debut award for my first play The High Table. Then I started writing for TV and wrote an episode of Netflix’s Sex Education. But all of this meant that I was writing more than I was performing and I started to really miss it so I tried my hand at stand-up comedy and discovered my deep passion for comedy and being a writer/performer.

This show feels like a blend of all of this experience. It’s informed by classic dramatic structure and the queerness in theatrical form that I learnt from years of making cabaret. It’s incredibly silly because of the last year and a half of doing stand-up. The main difference from my previous work is that, rather than developing work for a large ensemble of drag kings or for a cast of other people, this show is all about me. Which is liberating. It’s the most authentic, unfiltered version of my artistic voice yet and I’m so excited to share it.

Why is this an important story to tell?

It feels genuinely radical, as a Black woman, to make a show that is this purposefully self-indulgent. Black children, Black people and Black women especially are not encouraged or allowed to take up space in our society. Whether it’s the European beauty standards, institutional racism or the ‘just get on with it’ attitude that many first generation parents raise their children with, you’re encouraged to make yourself small. It becomes a survival tactic.

Having your feelings routinely dismissed and not feeling like you are deserving of attention has a huge impact on how you show up in the world. You feel as though your life is in service to others, rather than it being about you. Knowing that the society you live in only perceives you in a limited way affects how you view yourself and the belief you have in the possibility of fulfilling your dreams.

This show is important because it’s about a Black woman taking up space, creating her own – to be self-indulgent in, despite it all.

How do you feel about the current arts landscape in your country and your part in it? Does it excite you and inspire you to keep pushing the boat out?

Practically speaking, the arts landscape in the UK is pretty bleak. Most days it feels completely unsustainable to build a career and a life here as an artist. And we don’t even have the pre-Brexit option of swanning off to a cheaper European city for a few years. But, as I say, I am constantly incredibly inspired by other artists and the extraordinary peers I have within the landscape.

The Fringe, despite it’s ever-mounting costs, feels really hopeful. It feels so empowering to make your own work and I think that pushes you to surprise yourself and discover the artist that you are, the artist that you never necessarily expected to be.

What would you like audiences to take away from seeing this production at the Fringe?

That I’m beautiful, that I’m talented and that it is criminal that I haven’t been cast in more meaty roles in high-profile plays. But, primarily, that it’s hard to take up space in a world that wants you to remain small and that everyone deserves to be the fullest version of themselves.