cheeky little brown at The Lowry preview: In conversation with Tiajna Amayo

Coming to The Lowry for just two nights (October 20-21), cheeky little brown is a fresh new play by prize-winning playwright Nkenna Akunna, directed by Chinonyerem Odimba. The one-woman show stars Tiajna Amayo as Lady, following her as she navigates one particularly messy night out where the various tensions of her life seem to come to a head. 

Part drama, part musical, and with some dance numbers in between, the play is an exploration of friendship, heartbreak, self-acceptance, Black womanhood, and Queerness. cheeky little brown is a coming-of-age story, examining a friendship between two Black women – and best friends – on diverging paths of self-love and acceptance.

The play functions as a celebration of imperfection: the imperfection of women in general, but also Black women, and of Queer Black women especially.

I spoke to Tiajna Amayo, who stars as Lady, to ask her more about the play. On the importance of celebration, especially through an intersectional lens, Amayo described how “Historically […] in popular media, and theatre especially, and in any creative spaces where black women are portrayed, I think there’s been a history of watching black women having to […] play a certain type, you know, I’m sure you can reel over the archetypes…”

“But I think, in every single one of them, there’s an absolutism to each of them. There’s this idea that they can never exist in a very human space and make mistakes and actually understand the world as other people do, which is kind of like, going through it and trying to make the best that they can, and sometimes actually getting that very wrong.”

“What that means is sometimes it can almost be a dehumanisation of what it means to be a black woman living in space and in the world. There’s an expectation that we are supposed to be people who get it right, and we’re strong, and, you know, we carry the other characters, and we make sure that everybody is okay”.

“Being in a space where you can say, ‘actually, no, this is a young person, who, at the root of it all is really just trying to figure themselves out and exist within this intersectionality’. It’s really important to bring them back some humanity to, to blackness, and specifically black femininity.”

While the play is set in South London, there is also a universal element to cheeky little brown. As Tiajna describes, “No matter where you are, you can understand what it’s like to have a night out and it’s all gone a bit wrong.”

Similarly, while the play is about the friendship between two young, Black, queer women, Tiajna tells me that “Even if you’re a white man, or a white woman, or someone else, and you’ve never understood this, you’ve definitely understood making a tit of yourself in the middle of a party. Or, you’ve definitely understood being so drunk that the only thing you could possibly think to eat is a lamb donner in the middle of the night, on the night bus.”

cheeky little brown touches on a moment in life that a lot of us, probably all of us, have experienced: the breaking up of a friendship. A break-up that is maybe even worse than a romantic break-up, probably because its terms are more ambiguously defined: how is it okay to behave in a friendship break-up? Can you cry and scream like you might be able to in a romantic break-up? 

Tiajna told me what she thinks makes a friendship break-up so uniquely difficult: “Your friends, especially the friends who have grown up with you and seen, you know, the different iterations and versions of you, they’re probably the people who […] know you most intimately. And I think being rejected by them […] can feel like a rejection of your total self.”

cheeky little brown is only showing in Salford’s The Lowry for two nights – so be sure to grab your tickets now! Funny, affirming, and important: cheeky little brown promises to be a truly joyful experience.