It's all about Strawberries & Peaches
Time to read: Under 3 minutes
This April, Arts Commons Presents: TD Amplify Cabarets return! Each of these popular cabaret-style performances feature a different cast of amazing local talent that have inspired, challenged, and energized audiences with dance, music, poetry, and performance art in the intimate space of the Engineered Air Theatre. As with so many events right now, this first presentation of the TD Amplify Cabaret series, Strawberries & Peaches will feel a little different, streamed virtually direct to your home rather than live in the theatre. The plus side? You won’t have to worry about the show being sold-out, so anyone and everyone who would like to attend, can, free of charge.
Curator of Strawberries & Peaches, Misha Maseka, who is known to the performance community as Lemba, is a writer, musician, and filmmaker. Strawberries & Peaches has evolved out of Lemba’s identity as an artist, but also from her experience in the world as a black woman.
“The way that I express myself in my art is about questioning things.” The name Lemba comes from Misha’s middle name, which means ‘to ask’. As something that is part of her, but also apart from her day-to-day identity, Lemba became the natural choice for her stage name. “I grew up all over the world and was always ‘the new kid’. Whether it was personality, experience, or a little bit of both, I became an observer of culture very early. My upbringing, moving to Australia and moving to Canada, has always been through a lens of observing people, observing culture, and learning to adapt. I’m super grateful that this has made me observe the black experience, almost from an objective lens. For me, I’ve always known the nuance, diversity, and the dynamisms of being black in the diaspora.”
Lemba has applied this wide-reaching perspective to her art in many forms, including her most recent project as head writer for the much-anticipated TV series The African Family. In contrast, Strawberries & Peaches comes out of a facet of her character, the desire to share the sweetness and beauty of black womanhood in all of its incarnations.
“In the last five years, coming into womanhood and being more grounded in that, I came to a place where I thought ‘black women are so dope,’” says Lemba with a laugh. “So, when I was approached with this project, the first thing I thought of was, ‘I want to anchor this in celebrating sisterhood and celebrating black women – celebrating this experience.’”
The artists that she selected for Strawberries & Peaches are all dynamic performers in their own right, from Sabrina Naz-Comanescu and Natasha Korney, who are both dancers with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, to Dallas Hayes-Sparks, a professional opera singer and community ambassador.
So why Strawberries & Peaches? Among other things, Lemba is a trained opera singer, and has a huge affection for the musical genre. The inspiration for ‘strawberries’ in the title comes from Porgie and Bess, a Gershwin opera that has the distinction of being the one of the first operas featuring a majority African-American cast of classically trained opera singers.
“There’s this aria in Porgy and Bess called Strawberries, and as I was thinking ‘what do I want this [cabaret] to be anchored on, what do I wanted this to be centred on?’ and that aria kept popping into my head,” says Lemba. “The second thing to juxtapose that, the song Four Women by Nina Simone, is a beautiful song that talks about the black female experience. The last line of that song is ‘I am peaches’ so that’s literally where it came from.”
Though we currently can’t gather to experience the arts, we can share joy and artistic beauty though a virtual conduit. “I really want to celebrate, showcase, highlight, and tell the story of black womanhood in all of its femininity and sweetness,” says Lemba “And thinking of the crazy year that was 2020, I wanted to bring something to audiences that will leave everyone in higher spirits.”
Join Arts Commons Presents: Strawberries & Peaches on Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 7pm as we celebrate TD Black History Month. Tickets are free, but you must register in advance. Click to learn more about Arts Commons Presents: TD Amplify Cabaret: Strawberries & Peaches!
Follow the hashtag #BHMCabaret on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for news and updates about this cabaret!
The TD Amplify Series is made possible by the generous support of the TD Bank Group.
