How do you solve the problem of racial diversity in Australian theatre, both on and off the stage?
Simple. Just convince the artistic directors of all the major arts companies to step down from their jobs and hand them over to theatre makers of colour.
![Candy and Kim "Busty Beatz" Bowers.](/web/20161103050618im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/b/5/k/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsc0k1.png/1477537165704.jpg)
This is the radical catch-cry of sisters Candy Bowers and Kim "Busty Beatz" Bowers, the women behind Black Honey Company, a rapidly rising theatre company made up of artists from the African, Asian and Polynesian diasporas.
"People are always saying they want diversity in their arts companies, but then you look at the writer, director, designer and dramaturg on their productions and they are all white," says Candy Bowers. "You look at the human infrastructure of the major theatre companies and that's all white too. Those folks need to succession plan themselves out of their jobs. Then we can rebuild the entire sector."
The lack of racial diversity is down to "explicit bigotry", she says.
"It's all about who you have around your table. The arts leaders are hiring their friends. We have to change who's invited to the table and do it now."
The South African-Australian Bowers sisters have been making outrageous, comic and biting theatre across the country and the world for the past few years, culminating recently in the variety show Hot Brown Honey, which played to sold-out houses at the Sydney Opera House before travelling to the Edinburgh Festival in August. (It returns to the Melbourne Arts Centre in December.)
They are now in Sydney performing Australian Booty, a spoken word and hip-hop show featuring in Festival Fatale, the two-day, all-female festival created by the lobby group Women in Theatre and Screen (WITS). After Sydney, Australian Booty will head to the Adelaide Festival and Edinburgh Festivals in 2017.
"Australian Booty is a very personal storytelling show about how I became the person I am and why I am as political and as joyful as I am," Bowers says. "People think I'm going to be aggressive or hard core. Then they are shocked by my warmth and generosity. The show breaks through some basic stereotypes about being an angry black woman."
Next year, Black Honey Company is expanding with a new work at Campbelltown Arts Centre (June), as artists-in-residence at La Boite Theatre in Brisbane (October) and with a new commission from Queensland Theatre, Twelve, a soul and hip-hop musical version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The company is also in talks with the London Women of the World festival.
"I am a Shakespeare nerd and I love the classical theatre canon," says Bowers. "But my cultural heritage comes from music and poetry. What I'm seeing in Australia is a growing underground movement of artists working in a range of theatrical styles.
"We know talented artists who are young, African, queer or from Asian Polynesian diasporas. They don't fit the mould of traditional theatre. They are outliers. These artists are already here and they are ready to take over. It's a question of whether the theatre companies are going to get ready for the revolution or whether they are going to be left behind."
People think I'm going to be aggressive or hard core. Then they are shocked by my warmth and generosity.
Candy Bowers
Festival Fatale plays at the Eternity Playhouse on October 29-30.