DIVA sat down with the bisexual star to find out more about her upcoming tour
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGES BY JADE ANG JACKMAN
Adorned in hot pink, Temi Wilkey commands the stage with just one powerful entrance walk. For the next hour, the audience is captivated with dance breaks, spoken word performances, hilarious monologues and even some Shakespeare. It’s camp, colourful and utterly captivating.
Performer, playwright and television writer is back on tour with the run of her wildly popular show Main Character Energy. From writing for hit show Sex Education to having her debut play High Table win the Stage Debut Award, Temi’s career is as boundless and genre-busting as her latest play. The star even co-founded the drag king group Pecs and has been a firm fixture within the stand-up scene.
Main Character Energy is a semi-autobiographical one-woman show which delves into topics like being a Black actor under the white gaze, becoming a star and childhood dreams. Temi is just as warm and fascinating when we catch up before the beginning of the Bristol shows on her UK tour. She tells me that the inspiration for the show initially sparked after she saw a photograph of herself at a queer club night where she looked really powerful. Her friend told her that she was giving “main character energy”.
“I thought maybe I should write something for myself. I had written High Table but not put myself in that. I thought about why I had never put myself centre stage before and never felt like I could take up space in that way in my own life,” Temi tells me.
For those of you lucky enough to have seen the show, you’ll know that audience participation is a large part of what makes it so special. Don’t even think about diverting your gaze from Temi unless you want her to direct the next monologue at you! On 9 October, Temi will be performing a special BLACK OUT night in Bristol, which invites Black audiences to watch the show free from the white gaze. Having done a BLACK OUT night before, Temi gets emotional talking about why this night means so much to her.
Temi explains, “It’s similar to the male gaze. Even the way you perceive yourself is affected by the white gaze. The BLACK OUT nights feel different. It’s a unique experience for an audience to get to watch something that was made for them and is just for them. It feels like home.”
While the show does delve into deeper themes about the way Black actors are treated within the industry, Temi is keen to note that she wanted to find the “absurdity” in it. “My friend Travis Alabanza gave me the best note about the psychosis of race and the impact of being racialised. The way it messes with your head is kind of funny. Exploring the funny is powerful. It feels more cathartic than exploring it in a dramatic way.”
Main Character Energy is just the first of a trilogy of shows Temi has planned. For the entire project, Temi hopes to explore love in all its many forms. “I want the trilogy to take on how we love each other and ourselves,” Temi says. “But also, how that’s made harder, especially for Black people by institutional racism and white supremacy.”
As a bisexual performer, Temi’s play is imbued with queerness from the campy nature of the writing to the iconic dance breaks. “I feel like my first play [High Table] was queer in content, whereas this is queer in form,” she notes. With an almost completely queer team behind Main Character Energy, you can feel the queerness even from the subtle touches to the play. “You can’t really define the show. It has clowning, stand-up and dance. You can’t just put it in one box, and that feels queer to me.”
Audiences will see Temi reflect on her childhood throughout the show in a number of different ways. I ask what that younger version of herself would think seeing the show. “I’m making this show for a younger version of myself. I think she would really love it. I also think she would be surprised by it, because when I was younger, I was very Christian! She would think: ‘What is this hedonism?’”
Right now, we could all do with embodying some main character energy ourselves. What’s Temi’s advice? “Having main character energy requires knowing, loving and accepting yourself. Being able to communicate with others. Hold onto what feels important. Celebrate yourself. It’s about not repressing yourself and being your fullest self.”
Tickets for Bristol can be found here. Tickets for the Sheffield run can be found here. And tickets for The Next can be found here.
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