FeliSpeaks: Life as a ‘black, Irish, queer culchie'

Irish Times

3 days ago

Over the past decade,
Felicia Olusanya
, who performs as FeliSpeaks, has written themselves into the contemporary Irish cultural canon. Growing up in
Longford
town, having moved to Ireland from
Nigeria
(via France) at the age of eight, there have been multiple landmarks along their creative journey to becoming a compelling and well-recognised performer on Dublin's spoken word scene.
Yet early on, they imbued their poetry with its own specific cadence, intonations, a musicality that can move like waves, often becoming an enveloping experience for audiences.
A moment that felt especially important was in 2017, at a fundraiser for the Repeal the 8th campaign in the Olympia Theatre. Olusanya's capacity to both quieten and command the room was potent.
What emerged was a poem written at their desk in the credit union where they worked:
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And who will march for us?
For girls who are fattened, bred and fed for men whose appetites fill like basket water,
Devoured by never enough.
For girls who can point out pain in the alphabet but cannot spell out their own name.
For girls, whose identities are buried under the smoke of a kitchen stove,
High on the opportunity to serve, at least.
They were nominated for Best Performer at
Dublin Fringe Festival
in 2018 for Boy Child, co-written with
Dagogo Hart
, and then
won the award in 2022
, for their performance in
thisispopbaby
's production,
WAKE
. Their poem, For Our Mothers, was included on the English Leaving Certificate curriculum in 2023.
Olusanya has spent the past two years living in Brussels, returning to Dublin in early July. They arrive in Temple Bar on a sunny weekday morning, finishing up a deli pastry. In the
Project Arts Centre
, we sit at the back of the empty auditorium upstairs, the airy silence interrupted only by a lone technician clearing lights from the stage floor.
At this year's Dublin Fringe Festival, this stage will be Olusanya's. Octopus Children, presented by thisispopbaby, is written by Olusanya, who also performs in the piece. Olusanya describes it as a 'choreopoem', using the term coined by the American playwright and poet Ntozake Shange, where multiple disciplines including poetry, music, and dance combine.
'Octopus Children,' Olusanya explains, 'is this idea that we're all connected by water. We all come from the water, the birth canal, we drink water to survive, we're 70 per cent water. I think water is integral to how we live, and one of the things we waste the most. That's the underbelly of the piece. The overbelly, if I can say that, is just trying to figure out where you fit as a person.' These are the tentacles. 'There are many layers people can see themselves in. But being black, and then being black-Irish, and then being black, Irish and queer in a religious setting, in a Nigerian setting, in Ireland, is very specific.' And beyond that, Olusanya deadpans, 'being a culchie'.
The idea for Octopus Children arrived in 2021. Olusanya felt the poems landing as songs. 'I could hear a sonic world with them.' They began hanging out with some producers in a garage in Blackrock in Dublin – 'very sweet boys' – working on a concept for an EP. The first piece completed in 2022, Tough Meat, was a video poem directed by
Bobby Zithelo
. 'Putting that out into the world, I was hoping to leverage that in some capacity – somebody will see it! Somebody will think it's brilliant!'
WAKE: Felicia Olusanya captivated audiences in thisispopbaby's hit show, journeying from Dublin Fringe Festival to London's West End and Manchester's Aviva Studio. Photograph: Ruth Medjber
In the meantime, Olusanya captivated audiences in WAKE. That show was a hit, journeying from Dublin Fringe Festival to a standalone sold-out run at the National Stadium in Dublin, and then to London's West End, and Manchester's Aviva Studios. The show holds many things simultaneously: chaotically fun cabaret; aerial artistry; breathtaking pole-dancing; club anthems; dance; poetry; Irish traditional music – all combining to become a moving funeral rite and a great night out.
In WAKE, Olusanya is a central character – part ringmaster, part preacher, part spirit, part healer, an anchor tethering the audience to the spiritual essence of the show. In rehearsals, Olusanya says that before developing the character, the thisispopbaby team 'really developed my talent and stretched it a bit'. Olusanya relishes a challenge. 'If you've ever grown up in a choir and a Nigerian auntie has been your choir master, girl, you take challenges real well! Nothing can faze you.'
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Olusanya recalls telling Jennifer Jennings, WAKE's co-director and co-creator, that the character felt like an offering for the audience. Amid the neon and glitter, WAKE is also about expressing and diffusing grief. 'Grief is so traumatic, and if you're going to address it, you need to bring balm. I feel like that was what I was tasked with,' Olusanya says. At one performance in the West End, they recall 'coming off the stage and I wasn't even thinking about the words, I was being the words ... I vacuum cleaned the grief in the room. There's something so difficult about that, feeling the intensity of people's grief. Take it off their hands, and then offering balm. Oftentimes I'll get offstage and my body is wracked. Hyperventilating. I can't breathe.'
An audience in the midst of releasing their emotion – joy or pain – doesn't often consider where that energy goes when those on stage are opening up those channels. 'Energy cannot be destroyed or created,' Olusanya says. 'It can only be passed from one to the next. So if you're releasing and you feel great, I'm determined to swallow it all up. I'll bring it before my chi and my god and release it that way.'
They pause to consider that process and experience. 'I felt powerful enough to be able to do that. I've been thinking about power a lot. Once you're aware of your magnitude or power, for me, awareness of my power meant service. You can't be powerful and useless – come on! The more aware of my power I am, the more I submit to the service of other people via my art. That's what I'm here for.'
'For all the weight and darker elements of the work ... Feli also brings a real lightness, humour, and an irony,' says Octopus Children director Oonagh Murphy of Felicia Olusanya. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
After the second run of WAKE in Dublin, Olusanya says thisispopbaby asked, 'What do you want to create? What do you have in mind?' Olusanya answered: Octopus Children. 'I made them a little PowerPoint with all the ideas and thoughts, the sounds, the music I had already created. They were like, 'What in the hell? Here's a director. Go sort that out.' They were interested, they were curious. I really appreciated that they wanted to see my perspective on life.'
That director is Oonagh Murphy. Murphy says Olusanya is 'a counter voice to what we're familiar with in the Irish cultural imagination. But also the craft of their work is incredible. When you think about how prolific their output is, there is a real discipline ... And there's a deep playfulness there too. For all the weight and darker elements of the work – which need to be given space – Feli also brings a real lightness, humour, and an irony.'
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Working on Octopus Children, Murphy says, 'has felt quite spiritual, magical'.
Early on in our conversation, Olusanya refers to 'being the rebel in your family unit'. What does that rebellion look like? Their upbringing, community and family in Longford runs deep. As a youngster, Olusanya was 'a good girl, because I liked the things that I was supposed to like'. They loved school, 'which, if you know anything about immigrant families, this is the
one thing
'. They loved church, 'because I was very aware of my spiritual nature from when I was very young, and I didn't have any other outlet for it'. They loved going to choir, and being part of a youth group.
'The rebellion started when I hit 15 or 16. I started wrestling with my gender identity without knowing what it was. I didn't even know what those terms were until I hit maybe 21, 22 ... I wore the wrong clothing. I 'girled' differently to how I should have. So my mum was quite worried about that. I also wanted to explore kissing boys and girls, but it was like: that's not something you do. And I was very aware of that.'
Around the age of 17, Olusanya recalls taking their younger brothers to the barber shop. 'I came home with a haircut too. My mother said, 'What is the matter?' She was so concerned because I cut my hair.'
The rebellion 'ramped up' in college in Maynooth, where they were studying English and sociology, 'because I decided to leave Christianity'. Then, there was coming out as queer. 'I came out by accident. I didn't know I was coming out, I was just talking about being queer on Instagram.'
I want black Irish girls, or non-binary people, or gays, to be like, 'Ahh! That's a bit of me!'
—
Felicia Olusanya on Octopus Children
Olusanya had attended Dublin Pride, alone, 'so excited, just taking it in, like wow ... I came back from my first Pride parade, and I made a whole Instagram post – as you do when you're 23 and stupid. I was so excited, saying all my thoughts, and I forgot church people followed me. My mum followed me, obviously. She commented, 'Mum's got your back always.' It was really beautiful in that moment.
However, some tricky conversations in the community in Longford followed. 'You know in the movies where they want to pray the gay away? They're really serious about that, you know… I was like: I like my gay. I'm not giving up my gay… That in itself was a rebellion.' On the hurt this induced, Olusanya says they 'would rather that pain, than the pain of hiding'.
Tears pooling in Olusanya's eyes, they express empathy and understanding for the context. 'That in itself is complicated and confusing, and requires all the emotional intelligence in the world to navigate. But yeah,' they say, brushing the tears away, 'that's also in Octopus Children.'
Olusanya flips the atmosphere into a moment of unexpected lightness, 'Do you know what? The Laya Healthcare ad helped!' Laughter fills the empty theatre. 'Do you know how cool it is when you're on billboards? They get over the gay stuff quick!' In late 2021, Olusanya appeared in a campaign for the health insurance company, bringing their image and words on to television screens and billboards across Ireland.
I suggest that this feels like a quintessentially Irish experience, but perhaps one more associated with another time. Olusanya nods, connecting the social attitudes of older generation white Irish people to first generation Nigerian-Irish. 'I don't like saying this, but that's how far away we are in terms of where we should be. I'm not saying white Irish Ireland has it all figured out, but in terms of the queer thing? It just feels like the story is a 1980s Irish experience. It feels like a time-travelling experience.
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'When immigrant black people come here and they make black Irish children, they're not expecting the assimilation that we experience. My parents and their peers came purely out of survival – 'at least you're going to have a fighting chance'. When people come from a survival mentality and you're trying to operate from a thriving mentality, they're terrified. Because even though they do want you to thrive, they don't know what that looks like. And so there is this push and pull between: 'I want you to be better and that's why I brought you here,' versus, 'What better looks like is really confusing and alienating for me as the mother or father or family that brought you here.''
This can cause, Olusanya believes, a 'disconnect' between some black youth in Ireland, and their parents and older relatives. 'It's either thrive and evolve, or we just end up replicating our parents. So that 1980s connection is so interesting. There's half of us who are like, 'F**k it, I'm going to take this opportunity to thrive beyond the economic.' Because, no word of a lie, black Irish people my age? Disgustingly equipped and educated. They have masters degrees for no reason, bruv! What, to work in a Centra? Relax!' The Centra line is obviously a joke. 'They're taking over Google! What's going on?! Educated to s**t. Lawyers, medical doctors. We're not playing it small, because we're not allowed to. We're not allowed to play it small, because survival involves going all the way up here,' Olusanya raises their hand. 'But that's economic survival.' The social and spiritual aspect, they say, is another thing.
Felicia Olusanya describes Octopus Children as a 'choreopoem', in which multiple artistic disciplines combine. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
I wonder whether the reaction Olusanya experienced to them being queer was also about a fear of another layer of oppression to contend with in a racist society. The conversations Olusanya had with family and others, they say, were 'not about hate, it's about fear. They were terrified, because they've built these communities and structures that incubate them safely. When you pop out of it for work, to socialise, you can still come back home. Even if I get racist experiences at work, there's a whole community that have my back I can come back to, so that is a temporary experience. That's how I think the older generation view it. Whereas if you're then gay, it's not the thing that's going to break you out 'there' in the white Irish world, but it will,' - or may - 'in the home that we've all built that's supposed to support you no matter what.'
'I want us to be able to have our communities, grow our communities, and not be caged by our communities, because that's also what's happening when people come from a space of survival, psychologically. I can't wait for a couple of generations where our people feel completely safe, that there isn't a demarcation. Sociologically and psychologically we all do this: you're drawn to people who are more like you, that's normal, so you'll always have those type of communities anyway. I'm not saying we need to dismantle our safety in our community in order to integrate. That's not what I'm asking for. But what I am saying, is to free ourselves from the limitations that the survival of our communities has brought. And one of those limitations,' Olusanya says, is a feeling 'that you can't be queer. Especially not out loud.'
They have just returned from two years in Brussels, a place Olusanya went to out of a sense of adventure and 'safety, because it felt like the country held me well - I visited several parts of of Belgium before settling in Brussels - and I didn't want to go to London especially, very Dublin 2.0 vibes.' Living there, they were exposed to 'a type of freedom and blackness that I had never seen before or experienced', as well as new forms of dance and jazz. Now, Olusanya is ready for the next phase.
They hope what Octopus Children does is make people 'one, feel visible in multiple ways, per tentacle. But two, that it frees us from the limitation of our own community – seeing a 'me'. I've come to accept – and no ego s**t – you just end up being a pioneer. You don't want to be a public figure, you don't want to be the person people look up to. But if you're going to do something different, you're going to end up being that ... With this show, I want to show my community – black Irish people – and the white Irish community, that this weird layered person-being can be visible, and it's completely okay. Visible and celebrated. I want black Irish girls, or non-binary people, or gays, to be like, 'Ahh! That's a bit of me!' and not feel like there's no representation. I hate the word representation, but it's so f***ing important. But I don't want to be the only one. I want to be able to make Octopus Children so octopus children can find it, so there can be a community of us, so we're very visible, very loud.'