Five Nights of Hot Brown Honey
June 22 – 26 | Sydney Opera House
The sold-out festival sensation Hot Brown Honey makes its Sydney premiere at the Opera House this June for a five-night season of fiery, stereotype-smashing political cabaret.
Combining dance, poetry, comedy, circus, striptease and song, this acclaimed Australian production has in the last year shocked and delighted audiences at Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Brisbane Festival.
Sydney Opera House Head of Indigenous Programming Rhoda Roberts says: “Hot Brown Honey is an extraordinary production that turns tradition on its head and captures the contemporary fight on a number of fronts. Expect to be exposed to ideas and skin in this hilarious celebration of First Nations women by some of Australia’s finest performers. Check your privilege at the door, but be sure to bring your dancing shoes.”
Produced by the internationally renowned Briefs Factory, Hot Brown Honey features a bevy of powerful and talented First Nations women from Aboriginal Australian, Samoan, Tongan, Māori, Indonesian and South African backgrounds who are dead set on calling out the patriarchy, shattering preconceptions of colour and having a riotous time doing it.
Director Lisa Fa’alafi says: “It’s plain knowledge that there are limited platforms in the arts for people of colour, let alone women of colour. So we made our own platform, to tell our stories, to create a space where we stand centre stage. We really do believe ‘You cannot be what you cannot see’, so we are just doing it; we are putting more brown faces on stage and in the process shining a light on all the talented Hot Brown Honeys around Australia doing amazing work. Because let’s be honest, there are plenty of women out there they just need to see the pathways where they too can shine.”
Cast include: South African-born Kim ‘Busty Beatz’ Bowers; Samoan Australian Lisa Fa’alafi; Maori artist Materharere Hope ‘Hope One’ Haami; Kamilaroi woman Juanita Duncan; Tongan Australian Ofa Fotu; and Crystal Stacey of Indonesian descent.
Following their Sydney Opera House season Hot Brown Honey will take the buzz overseas with a series of performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.
“If you want to see what the world is like when women are truly powerful then go to this.” The Clothesline
