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Answered by: Busty Beatz

Briefly describe your show. Packing a sweet punch of hip hop politics, Hot Brown Honey smashes stereotypes and serves up an audacious platter of dance, poetry, comedy, circus, striptease and song.

What was the inspiration behind your show? Hot Brown Honey was born from frustration at the lack of female artists of colour across the arts in Australia, particularly noticeable in the worlds of hip hop, comedy, theatre, television, film, burlesque... yeah, you get my point. We wanted to create a platform for brown movers and shakers. We have been real tired of the amount of cultural appropriation across the board. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Hot Brown Honey is from the point of view of brown, black and mixed beauties and we’ve mashed it up for the hip hop generation. Artists get to poke fun at politics and social structures around them as well as the art forms. The arts has the capacity to change culture and we are in a culture that needs change now.

What makes your show different? Hot Brown Honey puts diversity centre stage. We are the latest models of our ancestry. Y’all haven’t seen anything like us before.

Briefly describe the development process of your show? Tell us a bit about your creative team, too. Hot Brown Honey is the creation of the Luscious Lisa Fa’alafi, the Co-Director of Polytoxic Dance Theatre Company, the Curvacious Candy B (Ringmaster Circus Oz) and myself, the Bodacious Busty Beatz (Musical Director Briefs). Together Candy and I created Black Honey Company: a production house and cultural consultancy team that collaborate on and create fearless sticky performance. We all grew up with hip hop culture so we have a understanding of how to Fight The Power through making art. We have worked together before and where interested working with different artists, and to date we have got to do the show with some of the most amazing talent in the country.

Why did you decide to do Fringe 2015? And have you been involved in previous/interstate Fringe festivals and how was the experience? We have been involved in many a Fringe Festival: my first Adelaide Fringe was in 2006 with hip hop comedy crew Sista She. The Fringe was tiny compared to what it is now. Lisa has come with Polytoxic many times. We have done Melbourne and Edinburgh. It’s all pretty crazy. We had the honour of receiving the Inaugural Adelaide Cultural Fund which is awarded to work that is diverse, daring and ambitious. With the funds we were able to get here and now we gonna blow shiiiit up.

What do you love about Fringe festival besides all the shows? We don’t really get to have much downtime during Fringe but we love meeting up with the artists from all over the world. Eating is a big factor. Between shows I enjoy throwing shade at well known Oz hip hop dudes by questioning their privilege. Helps me prepare for the show... especially when they start crying.

And for a fun random one, in a fantasy world who would you be the love child of? Poly Styrene and Angela Davis.