"I think self-indulgence can be really radical."
Writer, actor and comedian Temi Wilkey on her one-woman show Main Character Energy, which opens at Soho Theatre later this month. Plus: three shows to see next week.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre by Fergus Morgan.
This is the free Friday issue, which usually contains an interview with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on a theatre-related topic. This week, it is an interview with Temi Wilkey, whose solo show Main Character Energy arrives at Soho Theatre later this month. After that, there are your usual three show recommendations.
In case you missed it, here is this week’s issue of Shouts And Murmurs, which is a weekly round-up of the most interesting writing about theatre elsewhere…
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Temi Wilkey has always wanted to be in the spotlight. She has always wanted to be the star. She has always wanted to be the main character.
And so, frustrated with the roles she was being offered elsewhere, the British-Nigerian actor, writer and comedian decided to write a show for herself. Main Character Energy, which premiered in the Paines Plough Roundabout at Summerhall during last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe after previewing at the Yard Theatre, is a comic exploration of Wilkey’s desire for attention, her burning ambition to play classic roles, and her wrestling with the societal structures that prevent queer, black women from getting them. “This is a deliciously tongue-in-cheek hour,” wrote Lyn Gardner in her review in The Stage last August. “But it has teeth, too.”
Now, Main Character Energy is transferring to Soho Theatre for a three-week run. It is the latest development in Wilkey’s increasingly diverse career, which has previously seen her act with the Royal Shakespeare Company, earn one of The Stage’s Debut Awards for her first play The High Table, write for the television series Sex Education and Wedding Season, found a troupe of drag kings, and perform stand-up comedy.
Main Character Energy is all about your desire for attention, right? You style it as your “ground-breaking one-woman show” and introduce yourself as “the beautiful, the talented, the criminally undercast Temi Wilkey.” It is self-indulgent in a funny way, but there is also some serious stuff going on. What inspired you to make it?
I think that self-indulgence is a really key word. I think self-indulgence can be really radical. I was thinking about who gets to be self-indulgent. I don’t actually think I have seen that many black women given the space to be self-indulgent. I thought about what it means, as a black woman, to be self-indulgent.
Right, no-one calls out self-indulgence when it is say, a middle-class white man writing another play about the struggles of being a middle-class white man.
Exactly. I used to really hate Kenneth Branagh when I was young. Later, though, I realised that I didn’t hate him. I was just jealous of him, because he would write, star and direct anything he wanted. He was allowed to be a multi-hyphenate because of who he was. Recently, I also got really obsessed with Jennifer Lopez and the film she made about herself called This Is Me… Now. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but I loved it because I just adored the self-indulgence of it.
In a way, making something about yourself is both incredibly egocentric, but also kind of ego-less because you don’t care what anybody else thinks. You don’t care if you look stupid or not. You are beyond embarrassment. And, then, that can free you up as an artist. I think there is a virtuosity that can come with self-indulgence.
Where does the humour come from in the show?
Well, it comes from me parodying theatre-kid-ness. It comes from the hubris of it all. I sing a lot in the show and sometimes the humour comes from the gap between how amazing I am in my head and how I actually sound.
I didn’t read any reviews during the Edinburgh Fringe run. I waited until afterwards, then read them all at once. Apparently that is what Katie Mitchell does. I printed them all out and sat down with a highlighter, which was quite scary. Anyway, one thing that someone pointed out was that the show sends up the idea of one-woman shows in general. I had not actually thought about that, but it does.
I read a review that compared it to Liz Kingsman’s one-woman show One-Woman Show in that it takes the piss out of the concept of a solo show that is in service to the professional ambitions of the performer. Could we call it post-Fleabag?
I think that is a really good way of thinking about it. It is playing around with the idea of a cynical star vehicle. That said, parodies work best when they come from a place of love, which Main Character Energy definitely does. It is so loving of theatre. It is so loving of one-woman shows. And it is also so loving of myself.
Did people get all that in Edinburgh? Did anybody get the wrong end of the stick?
It’s funny. The show arrives at this realisation that maybe I don’t need to play those parts or access those institutions that I have always wanted to. I kind of get past that. Most people got that. Speaking to black women after the show, they would say how much that resonated with them. There was one guy who came up to me afterwards, though, and was like: ‘Oh, I can definitely see you doing Shakespeare.’ He was really well meaning, but I was like: ‘Oh, that’s sort of not really the point. The point is that I don’t need any assurance or validation from all that stuff.’
You must be buzzing now that the show is transferring to Soho Theatre?
Yeah, I am. I think Soho Theatre is the dream place for it. I feel like there are fewer and fewer spaces where people can be artistically themselves. I feel like there are fewer and fewer spaces for alternative work that sits between theatre and comedy, and that pushes conversations forward. I feel like there are fewer and fewer spaces where artists are given permission to be daring and take risks. I feel like there is a stillness and staleness elsewhere in the theatre industry. The Bush Theatre isn’t like that. I don’t think the Royal Court Theatre will be under David Byrne, either. And Soho Theatre definitely isn’t. You can feel the energy. It is empowering.
Where did you grow up? How did you get into theatre?
All this is in the show, so it is a bit of a giveaway, but I grew up on the outskirts of North London. I started acting when I was seven. My mum thought I was really shy so she sent me to this stage school to get me out of my shell. I never looked back. I was an extra in Eastenders. I was on The Hoobs. I did National Youth Theatre. Then I went to uni. Then I was in the National Youth Theatre Rep Company. That was where I met Ragevan Vasan, who is directing Main Character Energy. He is one of the funniest people on the planet. It is lovely to be doing this show with him.
You studied English at Cambridge University. Did you do a lot of theatre there?
I did little bits of acting there. I wouldn’t say I thrived there. It was hard. I think people are more conscious of institutional racism now, but at the time there were not that many conversations about it. I think I could feel an inequity but I couldn’t really articulate it. I knew I liked comedy but Footlights felt like a bit of a boys club. I wasn’t given many opportunities. I did make some incredible friends, though. I met Celine Lowenthal, who I founded Pecs with, at university.
You spent a few years as an actor. You were in Paapa Essiedu’s Hamlet and Cymbeline with the RSC, plus How To Hold Your Breath at the Royal Court and Jubilee at the Lyric Hammersmith and Manchester Royal Exchange. Why did you start writing?
The first thing I wrote was for Jubilee. I had a speech, but I thought it should have been more about colonialism or something. He was like: ‘Well, why don’t you just write it?’ That was in 2017. That was the first time I’d performed my own writing.
After that, I reached a point where I wanted to say things, so I just started writing. The first play I wrote was The High Table, which was on at the Bush Theatre in 2019.
Is that true, because I read in another interview that you wrote a shit play first?
Ah, but I never finished it, so I don’t think it counts. I remember that the scraps that I had were written in this quite Oscar Wilde style. When I reread them a while ago, I was like: ‘Oh, that is so embarrassing.’ Now, though, I think I’ve realised that there was something true amid that cringey mimicry. I am camp and flamboyant. The version of me in Main Character Energy is so camp and flamboyant.
The High Table, which was about a same-sex Nigerian wedding and all the social and spiritual pressures surround it, was a hit. Since then, you have started writing for television - Sex Education and Wedding Season - and doing stand-up comedy. What does life look like for you at the moment?
I want the balance between writing and performing to be 50:50, but it is more like 80:20 at the moment. When my writing took off, I stopped performing for a while, but then I started really missing it, so I started doing stand-up and improv. I did a course in burlesque. I’m kind of figuring out what my relationship to all that is. This week, I did two comedy gigs, which is loads for me. I did one yesterday, actually. It is a night called Frida KahLOL, and I was technically headlining, which was mad and amazing. I feel excited about where that side of things will go.
What about acting in plays? Do you have time for that anymore?
The last acting job like that I did was the European tour of Alexander Zeldin’s LOVE in 2022, which I loved. Being in a play every night is amazing, but it is also exhausting, and I am not sure that I would want to spend all that energy on something that wasn’t an amazing part, and that is not really happening. I’d rather be writing or performing something else. I know that sounds really, um…
It sounds really Main Character Energy.
Yeah, it does. I guess I mean that the stuff I am doing now, the writing and the comedy, is so fulfilling, and often pays so well, that it doesn’t make sense to do a small part in a play at the moment. That is what it comes down to.
Main Character Energy runs at Soho Theatre from February 25 until March 15.
Three shows to see next week
Manipulate Festival - various, until February 15
Edinburgh’s annual festival of puppetry, animation and visual theatre is sadly slimmed-down this year due to financial pressures, but the Scotland-focussed programme still features some exciting stuff, including These Things Aren’t Mine, an exploration of PTSD from director Barney White and gymnast-turned-circus-performer Gabbie Cook, When Prophecy Fails, a UFO-themed show from Vicki Manderson, Finn den Hertog and Lewis den Hertog’s company Groupwork, and The Law Of Gravity, a new collaboration between puppeteers Blind Summit and the Scottish Ensemble. You can get tickets for all that and more via the button below.
More Life - Royal Court Theatre, until March 8
Kandinsky - AKA Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman - is one of my all-time favourite theatre companies. 2016’s Still Ill, 2018’s Trap Street and 2019’s Dinomania at the New Diorama Theatre were all intelligent, inventive and brilliant. Now, the duo has followed artistic director David Byrne to the Royal Court. New show More Life is a “sci-fi gothic horror” about transhumanism. You can read Natasha Tripney’s interview with Mooney and Yeatman here, and get tickets via the button below.
Three Sisters - Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, until April 19
Chekhov arrives in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse for the first time with Rory Mullarkey’s new translation of Three Sisters. Caroline Steinbeis’ production stars Michelle Terry, Shannon Tarbet and Ruby Thompson as Olga, Masha and Irina. You can read my interview with fellow star Peter Wight here in The Stage, and an essay on translating the play here in Exeunt. And you can get tickets via the button below.
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all - just reply to this newsletter, or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk, or you can find me on Bluesky.
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Fergus