Kylie Jenner, the controversial 'self-made billionaire', is the name on the lips of millions of young women around the world, both figuratively and thanks to her multi-million-dollar Kylie Cosmetics range.
The 24-year-old, who grew up in the spotlight, has been involved with her fair share of controversies over the years, her commodification and appropriation of Black culture has made her a divisive personality.
Jenner and her divisive choices are used as a vessel to open a deeper conversation about colourism and the commodification of Black women in La Boite Theatre’s production of 'Seven Methods Of Killing Kylie Jenner'.
The play, which stars Moreblessing Maturure and Iolanthe, follows two Black women, Cleo and Kara, who have both grown up with different experiences and whose lifelong friendship reaches a crossroads after one of them tweets some remarks following Forbes Magazine’s claim that Jenner is a 'self-made billionaire'.
“There is lots of evidence and examples of how (Jenner) has blatantly ripped off Black women, and in this scenario, Kylie is purely a vessel and a vehicle to have this conversation. She stands in to become every white woman,” Co-Director Shari Sebbens (she directs alongside Zindzi Okenyo) explains.
Moreblessing Maturure
“It’s about two best friends, who break up and then make up, which is something every single one of us can identify with. What they understand is they have extremely valid experiences as Black women in the world. It’s very much an argument about ‘how do you protest? How do you mobilise about being heard'?”
“It’s that thing when you grow up with someone from primary school and you’ve been by their side your whole life and then you reach that stage where you go, ‘hang on, we’ve taken a bit of a turn, we’ve separated our ways a little bit’, but thankfully we get to witness them also come back together and it’s one of the coolest, funniest, exalting things in the theatre.”
Sebbens knew she had to bring this story to the stage when she first came across the script as part of her Richard Wherrett fellowship at Sydney Theatre Company. “In my role, plays come to us weekly that we have to read, and 'Seven Methods' was one of them, and I just thought, this is it. It is and remains the most exciting script I have ever read, purely the formatting of it. Playwright Jasmine (Lee-Jones) puts Twitter on the page and expects you to take it to the stage. It’s so exciting and terrifying.”
Sebbens hopes the play will open some much-needed conversations among the audience. “We have been deliberate in getting non-white audiences in, who sometimes don’t feel like they can access the theatre space or feel they aren’t welcomed or invited. Our goal is for those audience members to come in and feel like they are having a chat with their friends. So there’s a lot of response stuff that happens actually. It’s like this beautiful overtaking of the theatre and the audience going, ‘I’m going to respond how I need to be’.”
Iolanthe
“Those going into this as a white fella. . . I hope they sit with their discomfort and reckon with their complicity with the systems of white supremacy. They all sound like big and scary things, but white people aren’t the ones dealing with the ramifications of it all. . . Even me as a fair-skinned Aboriginal person, I have to sit there and constantly, every time I watch it, there’s a new understanding of myself in the colony, of the people next to me, of the people on stage. It’s beginning a conversation with yourself that I want people to leave with”.
While Sebbens, who broke out after starring in 'The Sapphires' alongside Jessica Mauboy and Deborah Mailman ten years ago, believes the arts industry has come along way in telling Black stories, she still believes both stage and screen have a long way to go. “Real base line, I’d love a Black family on 'Home & Away', I’d love to see a Black person running a mainstage theatre company. . . I feel like I’m seeing all this change, but when I have conversations with people that aren’t in the theatre or when I’m watching mainstream TV I go ‘where is Australia? Why aren’t the people we see on the streets filling the screens and stages?'”
'Seven Methods Of Killing Kylie Jenner' plays La Boite Theatre (Brisbane) 24 February-12 March.
