What Do You Do With Your Hair for Theatre Rehearsals?

“A Performer’s World” Transcript: Episode 5 © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Episode 5: “What Do You Do With Your Hair For Theatre Rehearsals?”

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

About Afro Archives

Afro Archives explores heritage and identity within UK society. It investigates images of black women through promotion of self-expression and confidence to be who we naturally are. This project seeks to promote and celebrate afro hair by having inclusive discussions about hair and hair-related experiences with people of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and creeds.

“A Performer’s World”

“A Performer’s World” showcases with comparison the experience of women with afro-textured hair through the eyes of the acting industry, where what we look like, matters. By asking to a diverse group of actors questions like: “Would You Shave Off All Your Hair for a Film?” and “Your Hair Represents Who You Are”, True or False?” we uniquely examine the responsibility of media, and curators of culture, as well as how we see ourselves and how society sees and portrays us.

“A Performer’s World” could not have been made without the time, generosity, and collaboration of the featured artists, and co-creatives. Thank you to all involved.

Big Thanks to our host filming location, The Black Cultural Archives, in Brixton.

Creatives: Africa Fashion (Afro Archives Blog Host), Robbie Spotswood (Photography), Chris Lovell (DOP), Imogen Mackay Dall (on-location Director), Loreen Brown (Photography), Livvy BakerMendoza (Music) Ayesha Casely-Hayford (Editor, Producer).

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

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Main Creative Team Creator & Producer Ayesha Casely-Hayford is an actress, award-winning voice artist and employment lawyer of Ghanian descent, born in London and raised in Kent. With her roots in law, specialising in employment law and discrimination, and as former chair of the board of trustees for The Act For Change Project, a charity campaigning for greater diversity in the arts, she is uniquely positioned to see the social, performative and legal issues facing black women in the UK today.

Photo credit: Helen Murray Photography

Director Imogen Mackay Dall is a Sydney-born writer, director and ‘ginger ninja’ raised in Tokyo, Washington D.C. and London. She wrote and directed the award-winning conservation documentar y Mystery of the Gnaraloo Turtles (2017) and is writing features for Pinewood Studios and Same Name productions. Keen to advance social issues in her work, Imogen is also writing Creative Breakdown Insurance, a book to help artists and freelancers manage their mental health.

Photo credit: Helen Murray Photography

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Featuring in this Episode and With Thanks To

Martina Laird

Alice Fofana

Verona Rose

Ann Akin

Ayesha Casely-Hayford

India Ria Amarteifio

Simone McIntyre

Ketorah Williams

Š 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

This is a verbatim transcript of our interviews

“What Do You Do With Your Hair For Theatre Rehearsals?”

Part 1 Featuring actors Alice Fofana and Verona Rose with Martina Laird ALICE: I just have my hair however I wrap my hair.

VERONA: You’re a bit particular “I wrap my hair” (laughs) I’m joking, I’m Joking! I’m Joking!

Anyway Only joking. I have to wrap my hair, because if I don’t, natural hair shrinks.

So when’s there’s lights happening and you’re rehearsing and you’re really interacting with the other actors, you sweat a lot and when you sweat our hair just goes “shzoooup” [indicates shrinking].

Ha, ha! It shrivels up.

But that happened to me didn’t it, we performed together and erm, it was actually, this was when we met it was, two years? It was a year ago. A year ago. Just over a year ago. And Alice always has her hair out. Oh what we done, we all showed each other pictures, it was me you and Lola, we all showed and asked which headshots we preferred and we all preferred ourselves with our own hair Oh yes. and one day, I just thought, Ah, Alice is so lovely with her hair natural.

And my hair’s natural but I might do this [indicates her braids], just something easy. And I thought, do you know what, I’m gonna wear my hair out. And you blow dryed it for me. © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

[laughing]. She blow dry it for me in the rehearsal room, was it the rehearsal room? the back room.

The backstage, somewhere backstage.

And I was thinking oh don’t I like cute and she’s done it all nice and then a couple of hours past and then it just kind of just went [indicates with hands, shrinking]. It just [shrank].

I wouldn’t consider it a downfall but it’s irritating.

You know you’re at home and you blow dry your hair out and you have a particular style and you walk down the street and that styles not the same anymore [laughing].

You got a leaf stuck in your hair and it’s not coming out.

Or you have a white bit. Yeah there’s always something stuck in your hair.

That’s why I always tie my hair back.

I think that’s the best way. I know I was mocking you before.

Yes they were all mocking my hair before rehearsal.

I wasn’t!

Yes you were, “why have you got your hair back?”.

I love your hair!

Only when I have my afro out, she says it looks good.

No, that wasn’t me, I’m sorry. I refuse to admit to that. I refuse to admit to that. I don’t think I would have said anything about that because I actually prefer to have my own hair.

So she says.

I do! But this hair is actually getting me auditions, it’s actually getting me roles.

And this hair gets me roles.

Yeah it does. But she looks prettier with her own hair.

And she looks prettier with her afro out.

Girl pur-lease.

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

MARTINA: I’m an actor, and of course, hair always comes into the debate, it’s a profession that’s about image, it’s literally your image, that you’re working with.

It’s funny because the industry isn’t really prepared to cater for different hair textures, I would suggest.

And even beyond hair texture I think it becomes also quite cultural in the sense that hair is so specific in terms of race, in terms of culture - how to achieve what anyone with their specific hair type wants seems not to be what’s taught to the departments of hair and make-up, and all of that.

I get the sense that they’re really trying at the moment to be more aware but, for instance, I used to work for several years on a television repeating drama.

I was looking back, whilst I was in it, I happened to look back at some of the earlier episodes and I had started the series with a certain amount of hair and the time I was looking back, must have been about two, three years later - I literally had half as much hair. It was shorter, I hadn’t cut it, it was going, And I think the rigours of day-to-day filming really [puts] a strain on my type of hair, and basically on afro-types of hairs.

And as a woman, this is a big thing, it’s a big cost.

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Part 2 Featuring actors Ketorah Williams and Simone McIntyre with Ann Akin SIMONE: I think if you’re doing something like a musical or really physical work and you have a natural hair style, Oh no, well you haven’t got a natural hairstyle or you rely on like, you’re straightening it the morning with the tong or something, And your hair’s got no chemicals, I think by the end of the rehearsal day your hair looks frizzy again, I’m pretty sure. So that might be a pain.

So you might have to think [about] what’s gonna suit what we’re doing.

Ketorah: I think for me personally if I’m signing up to do a theatre production I just wouldn’t have my natural hair.

I would always have it in braids or in a weave then that way during the rehearsal period it’s very easy for me to just tie it back.

Then I don’t have to worry about, oh is it going to be the same kind of curls as yesterday, is going to be able to, you know - I think it’s just so much easier for me when I’ve got extensions in, I can just get up and go and look the same as the day before, so.

ANN: Whether you get more afro, black people in your chair or not is not my problem.

It’s not my issue.

That’s down to the people that make those decisions, so the fact that I have constantly got to apologise, and then go the through frustrating, “oh” I feel like I can’t be like “oh, no please don’t use that brush” and I constantly feel like, for the sake of them, I have to shrink myself.

That was an interesting choice of words maybe but I feel like I do when I’m on set, and It’s been the most frustrating experience with my hair, as a creative, nobody knows what to do with it, and I can’t say “let me do it!”.

I’ll never forget, yeah one of the most recent jobs I did, this woman was trying to, like I said, I always go with my hair done, always, and um, You know recently, I mean it’s not a good reflection right now because it’s tied back but I have my hair in a nice curly fro and I’ve taken it out of the little twists, and whatever, and I always go on set like that. © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

But this particular job I was playing a character and they didn’t want my hair out like that.

And was just like “Oh, ok, cool, what are you going to do?” And she wanted to re-twist it but she was just like rolling it under itself, and I wanted to say to her, “oh, no, don’t do that, just…” so I started to do it for myself - ‘cause you know, I know my hair!

And then we were just having this weird like, you know [mimics tug of war] and she was like “no but I can do it” and I was like “no but you can’t” and that’s really frustrating and that’s when the relationship I have to my hair as an artist, as an actor, in this industry, is really frustrating.

I have my personal frustrations like - I got really used that style but now my hair’s too long for that style - but that’s just part of the education that I relish.

But as an actor, I’m always frustrated on set, because of my hair.

I always do my hair before, make-up not so much because sometimes if I’m lucky, I might get someone, but hair, I always have to, the night before, make sure my hair’s in tact. I always have to make it easy, for them

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Part 3 Featuring actors Ayesha Casely-Hayford, India Ria Amarteifio with Martina Laird

INDIA: Well like I’ve done three Westend shows and it hasn’t really changed, I haven’t had to worry about it.

AYESHA: Ok but Inds, what about when you were doing Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and you were being, and you had purple everywhere and on your hair line?

But that was in the show.

Did you never practice with it?

No. Ok, what about this then, do you ever have it when you’re in rehearsals and you have to lie on the floor and roll around?

Yeah.

That annoys me because, how often do you wash your hair?

Once a week.

Yeah, same. And I’m not gonna, I get annoyed, if I have to roll on the floor because I’m not gonna wash my hair again, necessarily the next day, and like is it inconsiderate?

Maybe they can think of exercises where I don’t have to roll around on the floor.

Well you have to remember though, it is a job.

Words of wisdom.

So you can’t really complain.

So, should I just wrap my hair.

Yeah!

What I normally do, if I’ve got a long rehearsal time is I’ll put it in braids, so I can roll freely.

If I roll and I get something in my hair, or I have to go and do rehearsals where my hair gets wet, that’s just what we have to do as actors, so.

True. © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

I just put up with it really.

True.

It’s not necessarily a thing that I want to do.

It’s kind of a thing that’s particular to our hair, don’t you think tough ? Because of how regularly we wash it.

Yeah.

Because if you are, with European hair, because of the grease [it] gets made more quickly, because they wash their hair more often, the impact is a bit different?

Yeah.

And because we wash our hair less, because of the way it damages it if we wash it as quickly.

Yeah.

It’s an interesting thing isn’t it? It’s a difference because of our hair, don’t you think.

Yeah, I suppose.

Because if I’m going to get my hair braided for rehearsals, that’s going to set me back £60, just to go to rehearsals.

MARTINA: I’m not one of those who enjoys having their hair combed, having their hair blow-dried.

I really like to keep it as simple as possible.

And yes there’s lot of history and legacy because of that. When my hair would be combed as a child, it was not a pleasant experience.

I remember working with a friend of mine, we worked together on a show, and she had the most gorgeous, luscious, full long hair and she would sit there in make-up every morning and she would have her hair brushed and brushed and she, you know, she looked like a cat, when you’re petting it. And how it just loves the stroke.

And I don’t.

I don’t love having my hair fussed over, and I think it probably has to do with childhood, wax, with a brush!

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford