In 1975, Black American playwright Ntozake Shange coined the term “choreopoem”, a form of dramatic expression that combines poetry, dance, music, and song as a departure from traditionally western poetry and theatre forms. This perfectly described the innovation of her work, For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow is Enuf, and it also encapsulates the expansive staging of Queens of Sheba in 2022 at Soho Theatre. 

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Following in this tradition, Queens of Sheba leans on the power of a chorus (both sung and spoken) and movement to speak to the experiences of Black British women navigating love, family, and nightlife. In 2017, Jessica Kaliisa was deep in research for a dissertation on misogynoir — a topic she would often unpack with her good friend and spoken word poet, Jessica Hagan. It was around this time that she saw Timbuktu, a play about Black masculinity in contemporary society written by playwright and founder of Nouveau Riche theatre company, Ryan Calais Cameron. Here, the seeds of Queens of Sheba (or Queens as the crew and cast lovingly call it) were planted. 

After multiple focus groups with Black women across London, Hagan wrote poems based on the insights provided by herself and the participants, which were used as the basis of the play we know today. The voice of many can be heard on stage, not just in the stories shared, but the musical interludes featuring riffs from iconic Black Diva discographies. As the Queens Koko, Tosin, Elisha, and Eshe reflect on ways white and non-white men have disappointed them, they aptly sing Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and while comforting Eshe after an emotional opening scene, Aretha Franklin’s voice joins the cast as they call for just a little bit of R-E-S-PE-C-T. Even the soundtrack to the pre-show setting amplifies Black women, courtesy of the Queens of Sheba playlist filling the room while the audience files in.

Although it's the 2nd time that the play is being shown at Soho Theatre, it is the 18th time it's been performed, having previously been shown elsewhere, such as Camden People's Theatre in 2018 and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. "If you haven't seen previous shows, it's hard to understand, but what's different is the energy and the vibe. What happens every single year is our Queens get closer. They get tighter, and they develop more of a relationship, so the play becomes more seamless. It literally becomes like they're breathing it, so this is the most evolved version of Queens of Sheba that is out there", Kaliisa told AMAKA. 

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The depth of kinship among the cast can be felt throughout the play, which is a testament to the evolution Kaliisa mentions and the work of movement director Yassmin V Foster with starring actresses Elisha Robin, Eshe Asante, Kokoma Kwaku, and Tosin Alabi. "One of the beautiful things about Queens for me is that we all wrote it. Like, we all built it together. Even in the rehearsals process, the actresses were involved - We'd be like, okay, does this line fit with this person? Does that line fit with that person? And subsequently, a really beautiful flow was formed", Hagan says.

Thursday, the 10th of February, marked Gala Might, a time for friends, family, and press to support the project and everyone who helped bring it to life. Witnessing four Black women laugh, cry, dance, and take care of one another against the backdrop of a cold winter evening was the balm I needed. Experiencing this in the midst of mostly Black women mmm-ing along to the mirror on stage only made the medicine more potent. While the love, community and bond endure, both Hagan and Kaliisa hope there will come a time when work like Queens of Sheba and the struggles it highlights are no longer relatable. 

This was my only point of contention within the play. References to "Black Girl Magic" and "Queendom" remind me of the alchemy that Black women have had to perform on our trauma to turn it into strength. What is meant to be an act of empowerment, instead, further crystallises the "strong Black woman" trope and all its accompanying baggage. What if I'm not a magical being, a goddess, an inspiration, or a monarch? What if I'm just me, a Black woman who lives and breathes and dares to create a life for herself every day? My reality is extraordinary given the circumstances, yes, but I'm not a miracle to be exceptionalised, but a person deserving of love and respect and not willing to accept anything less.

I brought this up afterwards with a friend who accompanied me to see the show, and we both reminisced on times when we too had drawn strength from the double-edged sword of those personas and how far away we'd moved from that position. Out of curiosity, I asked Hagan how this play might look different if the focus groups took place in 2022. "It's so funny because, in this particular run, I watched the play, and I heard my voice, and for the first time, it felt quite separate from me. I don't think I would've written half of the things that I wrote three or four years ago, and I think it's because there's a certain resilience that I've built up as an individual, which means that there are just certain things that I'm not as expressive about anymore. There are certain things that I care less about, and there are certain opinions that don't affect me anymore as I've gotten older and so if I had written that now half of the things in Queens wouldn't be in there, not because they don't exist, but I think at the time that I wrote it, I was in an extremely fragile place", she said. This is not to say that Queens of Sheba is any less important or timely, but to recognise how attention and understanding of the world around us shifts with time. 

As more and more Black women are called to complete refusal over asking for accommodations, what might centring our gaze on ourselves showcase? Like the Queens in Queens of Sheba, what liberatory possibilities already exist in the ways we show up for one another? At the end of the day, the tangible love and bond between Black women was the real star of the show and continues to be, both on and off-stage.

Queens of Sheba is currently showing at Soho Theatre until 26 February 2022, tickets can be found here.

Disclaimer:AMAKA is not an official affiliate of the play.