Skip to main content
Log In
☰
Community Reporter Network
User account menu
About Us
Events
Log in
Facebook
Youtube
Main navigation
Home
Explore
Projects
Reporters
Report transcript in: Inspirational people to celebrate this Black History Month and beyond
Breadcrumb
Home
Inspirational people to celebrate this Black History Month and beyond
Please Report the Errrors?
So
in in terms of people that have really influenced you and have contributed,
black people contributed to your sense of identity and belonging.
Um,
Or have had some other type of significance,
you know,
an important lesson that you,
you felt that has come from
your knowledge and understanding of
um
and becoming aware of of people,
um.
Well,
the,
the list is endless,
a long list,
a really long list.
I'm very inspired by a lot of black people,
um,
and,
and it's,
I suppose it's like
across
every creative and intellectual genre.
Um,
I was just thinking like very,
very,
uh,
I was thinking,
who inspired me yesterday?
That's what I thought.
There's this comedian called Josh Johnson,
he's African American.
He's,
yeah,
he's,
I love him because he is
so topical
and his ability.
To take
the world that we can't comprehend as it's being played out today
and digest it into
a
humorous but really thoughtful critical
package that
where you can take in the news of the world without
feeling
in utter despair.
Yes,
he's wonderful in that respect.
Yes,
yes,
he has a particular way of stepping outside of something and helping you look at it
in all its absurdity,
uh,
and does it in a,
in a gentle way that still really,
really shows it up for what it is,
right?
He's,
he's,
I,
I like him so much.
I feel like he is,
it's precisely what you're saying.
That gentle way
means that
We,
and there's always,
there's space for black rage too,
but his particular,
I feel like
gentlemanliness
makes the digesting of his hard truths or the way he clouds them,
you know,
much more palatable.
More,
more people can take it on and hear it and think
because of his very
nuanced southern
style
of speaking.
I'm really
a huge fan.
Are there any other people you'd really like us to know about?
Um,
Yeah,
do you know what?
I'm going to go to the space of theatre.
There's a
playwright,
well,
there's two playwrights I could name.
One is Susan Lori Parks.
I think she does such interesting and complicated.
theatre
in the space,
theatre that is dealing with race,
and she's,
she's always reflecting on the
gaze,
both
what it is to be looked at
and what it is to look.
I think there's an actress called Anna Deavere Smith
who
I find fascinating because she embodies all these different people
and in a way that's so uncomfortable for us to
watch people embody
different race or races or cultures.
I think she's African American,
light skinned,
and
she somehow makes her body into a canvas to
hold all these different people and there's a contemporary
Performer
who on social media who does something
similar unfortunately I can't remember her name.
I know she's of a Caribbean
background,
but she,
she'll do these sort of impersonations of Donald Trump
where
she's mouthing
we've got his audio or she's saying it exactly how
he said it,
but something about her body as a canvas
really highlights
sometimes the absurdity.
Of,
of contemporary speech.
So I,
I,
yeah,
I'm really inspired by performers who
are able to use their bodies to,
um,
make us really think.
Yeah,
yeah,
that's there's
a feminist tradition of doing that as well,
isn't there?
So that that makes it,
yeah,
really,
really.
Up-big
