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Boulder's always interesting, always surprising Fringe Festival begins on Thursday, September 18, and runs through September 28. I'm honored to interview playwright and actress Erika Kate MacDonald, creator of "Tap Me on the Shoulder," which she'll perform at the Dairy Center for the Arts on various dates (see below). "Tap Me on the Shoulder," a one-woman show, is the autobiographical story of how Erika Kate started rapping unexpectedly as an adult. Set in a tiny Brooklyn living room, Erika Kate uses original raps to tell stories that range from Indonesian dance class to rural New Hampshire to Minneapolis bike punks to the Indigo Girls.
Here, Erika Kate shares her thoughts on queering rap, on the freedom of fringe festivals, and on fluid identity worth celebrating. Love what she has to say here? Attend a performance of her show! Ticket information below:
Tickets: $12/$10 Students and Seniors
Show dates and times (60 minutes):
Thu. 9/18 – 4:00pm (2-for-1 discount!)
Fri. 9/19 – 8:00pm
Sun. 9/21 – 4:30pm
Mon. 9/22 – 8:00pm (Erika Kate's birthday! Buy 4, get 1 free!)
Tue. 9/23 – 9:30pm
Plus one more show:
Fri. 9/26 – 4:30pm
Venue:
Dairy East Theater
in the Dairy Center for the Arts
2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, CO
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BOULDER LESBIAN: How did you come up with the idea for this one-woman show? I love the variety of topics – sexuality, Indonesia, rap, race. Why this story?
ERIKA KATE: Because this is my story.
OK, OK, the answer is not quite that simple of course. This is an autobiographical piece, and so these themes are present in this story because they have all been important in my own life. (Indonesia, for instance, makes an appearance in some way in nearly all of my work, because the time that I spent there was formative in many good and some very challenging ways.) The seed of this story is rap. But the first question I ran into hard when I sat down to write about my journey into rapping was: ‘How does anyone do anything for the first time?’ That’s what really set me off and running.
BL: Why do you feel Tap Me on the Shoulder is a story worth telling?
EK: I want to take this moment to talk about the Fringe and why it is such an amazing phenomenon. So many stories that are absolutely worth telling, but which may not have a Hollywood or Broadway sheen on them, can and do get told at the Fringe. The Fringe is a 100% non-juried festival, artists are chosen at random via a lottery, and each artist receives 100% of the price of the ticket you buy to see their show. Tap Me on the Shoulder is not a knee-slapping comedy or a shiny musical, it is a carefully-crafted and nuanced story about a queer white lady who grew up in rural New Hampshire and then, through a series of events, in her late 20s somehow finds herself deeply compelled by rap and the act of rapping. I don’t know if a producer who was only interested in profit would consider that a story ‘worth telling,’ but at the Fringe we don’t have to care about that hypothetical producer. We can tell the stories that we feel need to be told.
BL: How do you think rap relates to or interacts with issues of sexuality and race?
EK: If we’re talking about Rap with a capital ‘R’ this question is so multifaceted that I think I will not try to dig into it right here. What I will say here is that my approach to rapping is very much my own and that is an important part of this story for me. There is definitely a way in which what I am doing is ‘queering rap.’ I’m not Nicki Minaj, and my raps don’t sound like hers. In order to do something you don’t need to accept every part of what everyone else has done with that thing. Which I think is part of being queer.
BL: What do you want your audience to experience during the show? What do you want them to walk away thinking or feeling?
EK: At one point in the show, I take a little break from my story to dissect (high-school-English-style) one verse from a famous 1994 rap song (come to the show if you want to find out which one). Tap Me on the Shoulder is definitely about listening, about how challenging it can feel to really listen to someone else’s way of expressing themself, and also how essential it is that each of us is heard in our self-expression. When I started writing raps I surprised myself as much if not more than I surprised anyone else. This was not the way I had been taught to speak or write or sing. It was an alternative form for me. This show is meant to help people seek and find alternative ways to express themselves. And one way to do that is to remove some of the fear we have around listening to things that are unfamiliar.
BL: When you understood that my blog was lesbian-focused, you “warned” me that you are bi. How do you interact with lesbian-only spaces? How did you respond to the Curve magazine award, which listed your play as one of the “Top 10 Hottest Lesbian Plays”?
EK: I love words. I love all the ways that language responds to and creates and interacts with our attempts to find each other. And for that reason I try to be simultaneously as precise and as flexible as I can possibly be with language, particularly when it comes to talking and writing about sexuality and queerness. I was so honored that my last play, FLUID (which I performed at the Boulder Fringe in 2007, as a matter of fact), received that recognition from Curve, and was included alongside such a lovely roster of talented queer artists. And I am delighted to be featured on this blog as well, ‘lesbian-focused’ or otherwise.
BL: Is there anything else you want to tell my readers?
EK: Yes! The Fringe is ten days long, stretching from Thursday, 9/18, all the way to the end of the following weekend, on Sunday, 9/28. But nearly all of the performances of Tap Me on the Shoulder have been scheduled for the first weekend. So, if you are interested in attending, and I hope you are, I’d suggest you buy your tickets now and plan to come to one of the first two shows. Friday, 9/19 at 8:00pm is at a great time and should be a very fun show, or, if you have a more flexible or non-traditional schedule, come Thursday, 9/18 and tickets are 2-for-1.
Erika Kate’s website:
