LIVIA KOJO Alour’s life has been one big search. Searching for her origin, searching for her lane in life and searching for recognition.
The German-born performance artist will be giving theatre-goers a glimpse of what that search has been like through her debut play Black Sheep , taking place at the Rich Mix in east London this month.
Forming part of a series of works by Certain Blacks titled, Shipbuilding , Alour’s Black Sheep will close the show on February 27 and the former circus fire breather says those who attend are in for a treat.
Referred to as “a candid autobiographical show” and a euphoric reclamation of her core identity and ongoing fortitude, Alour said her play was “an extension of the way I grew up”.
She added: “ Black Sheep is basically the show that connects the dots, that talks about the person that lies under the shimmering entertainment outlook and who I really am.
“And also, that the person I really am, is also worthy of being on a stage.” Regularly gracing international stages as a renowned sword swallower, circus artist and dazzling burlesque artist, Alour is also a poet, musician, public speaker and theatre maker.
Speaking out about the challenges and repercussions facing black women who dare to ditch stereotypes, Alour reclaims her core power in this frank and deeply personal show.
“I came to the UK over a decade ago, I think it’s my 13th year at this point,” Alour said.
“Ever since I decided to become a performer and performance artist full time I’ve been searching.
“I think I’ve been searching to get recognition the way I’ve seen my white peers getting their recognition around me.
“As we all know, people of colour, especially black women as well, we always push and work against our stereotypes. And it’s really, really hard to, even if we overcome them ourselves, it’s really hard to actually be seen the way we are.
“Coming to London, working here in the cabaret scene first, I didn’t get recognition. I wasn’t seen. I was like struggling to find something that made me stand out.
“So, I ventured into the trapezium and I realised, oh my God, I have really bad vertigo. I can never do anything that’s in the air.
“But then there was this big circus revolution and everybody became a fire performer.
“So I toyed around with fire and it did it for, I think it was about two years, a quite successful one woman-type fire show.
“But then I saw a sword swallower on stage in a theatre in Germany. And I thought, oh, this is it because I needed to do something that stood out.
“And at this point there was a certain desperation to do something that nobody else does.
“You defy death. It’s something that only 50 women in the world can do, you and skin colour doesn’t matter anymore suddenly.”
Alour says learning how to sword swallow gave her a platform where she ‘felt seen and appreciated’.
Alour says she recently did a DNA test which determined she was 48 per cent Nigerian. Adopted by white German parents when she was young, Alour never met her father but does know her mother was Austrian.
Growing up in an all-white town in Germany fuelled her desire to learn about who she was and the search for identity and belonging was aided by the fact Alour could speak and understand English from an early age, courtesy of the private tuition her adoptive parents insisted she be exposed to, despite the fact they could not speak the language themselves.
Few places that Alour has been to, though, have felt like home.
“My parents were like big fans of English music, everything that came from the island was amazing.
“My mom was a really big fan of Benny Hill and that was like a major influence because she was like a proper fan. They didn’t speak English, I was almost raised bilingual because before I had English in school, I already had an English teacher because my mum believed that I have to learn English properly to be successful internationally, whatever I’m going to do.”
Alour continued: “My partner from when we left school, my boyfriend at that time, got into film. He was studying film and he relocated to Portsmouth and I visited London for the first time. I had no idea there were black people in London.
“I didn’t know. I came to London and I started crying.
“Like, I was crying in Soho on the street. And back then I thought, well, this is where I’m supposed to be living at some point in my life. It just took a couple of decades to get there. So expensive. I do really feel I can be myself in England, in London specifically, there’s only two places in the world where I feel this way, it’s London and New York. And this feeling has never changed.”
After moving from Germany to London over ten years ago to live and work in a more diverse community, Alour learned that lifelong feelings of self-hatred and otherness are part internalised racism and part survival techniques.
With a successful career under her stage name MisSa, but tiring of playing someone else full-time, Black Sheep has been long in the making.
“I think if you peel the layers of Black Sheep , you really find identity search and coming into myself understanding who I am,” Alour said.
“And I think because my journey was so complex, that I hope to touch everybody with the story.
“It doesn’t matter what heritage, what skin colour, where they come from, because I guess the deep roots of identity crisis are so complex when you start looking at what hurts you, that it’s almost like going into a rabbit hole, and it gets so scary, but when you actually get to the bottom, it gets very light because the journey is so difficult that you start rewarding yourself with trust and with self-love.
“I mean, it sounds a bit corny, but it’s really what happened.”
Livia Kojo Alour’s solo show, Black Sheep takes place on Sunday February 27, 7.30pm, as part of Shipbuilding Festival Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA
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