It's A Fatty New Year at Komedia!
After the indulgence of the festive season comes the tidal wave of you-really-shouldn’t-have-done-that dieting adverts, gym membership schemes, and shop windows filled with athletic fashion ranges to remind you that 2020 is not the year to be fat.
Fighting back is Fat Cabaret: Fatty New Year – an alternative new year’s celebration showcasing some of the best fat activists, performers, writers, and more. Recognised as a radical act of defiance by the line-up, Fat Cabaret is everything society doesn’t want to see: fat people enjoying their bodies, minds, talents, and the spotlight.
Beginning with a book launch, reading, and Q&A from Dr. Charlotte Cooper, a psychotherapist and activist (among many other things), the night began with a mix of humour, harsh truths, and important advice on how to live in a world designed against the fat body.
She spoke on her journey from not seeing fat people perform live at all to collecting her thoughts on fat life in her new book, Fat Activist Vernacular.
The tiny Komedia stage was particularly busy that night with five more acts: Chub Rub, presenting a wonderful clash of chaotic quizzing and moving performance, drag act Marilyn Misandry who may have been the first person to cover the Komedia in mayo, Tayris Mongardi, Brighton’s very own Black Barbie bringing to the stage sass, beauty, and all the reasons why Black women are right to be very, very angry, and Sadie Sinner, singer and founder of The Cocoa Butter Club, lighting up the stage with her beautiful voice and buckets of personality (not to mention the glittery dress and matching glasses).
A personal highlight was the fantastic poetry readings from Tanaka Fuego, an award-winning slam poet who blended sensitive images with cutting realities of life in society that masks its intolerance with campaigns of inclusivity and progress. Their voice, even if you missed it at Fatty New Year, is one you should seek out and listen hard to.
A night of fat-fabulousness not to miss (despite what those Weight Watcher ads might say).
Catch the next Fat Cabaret event in Brighton soon, and until then - Fatty New Year!
Written by Lois Zoppi
Images: Tayris Mongardi, Chub Rub, and Dr. Charlotte Cooper (taken by Rosie Blackwell-Sutton, putter-onner of Fat Cabaret).