Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Oui Got Away With It

I figured I would finally give it a full-on shot. I was going to take classes at the Second City Chicago.

They had an array of classes that you sign up for. But they had this new type of class they were doing.

They were reaching out to Minorities. They had a Minority Outreach Program.

I thought that was an interesting thing to do. We were doing shows at Café Voltaire with some pretty good people who had moved on to do other shows (one was Amy Poehler, who headed off to work with her friends Matt Besser, Matt Walsh and Ian to create this currently completely unknown theatre company called "The Upright Citizens Brigade" that I don't think ever took off).

Hans thought this class I wanted to get into at Second City was interesting too. Chicago had never seen a majority of African American Improvisers and Sketch Comedians in one place. At the time I was doing improv there were only three of us: John Hildreth who was on the South Side with Cardiff Giants, myself doing the North Side and a woman named Frances Callier who was over at Second City and working there.

She started these minority outreach classes. In Hans' and my mind, this was a good way to get new company members for Underground Theatre Conspiracy where for the first time in his life onstage...HE was the minority.

I signed up and took classes. There I found Bill Underwood and Kecia Cooper. I asked them to come over to Orsis across the street from The Second City Chicago, as I wanted to invite them into this new company.

A member of that class name Dante Richardson (who was the most FABULOUS Man I have ever met in my life) followed us over. He had heard us talking about starting a company and with the little bit of money he had...decided to buy all the beer and pizza at the table and said: SO...We are starting an all black company?? GURL...I'm in!

At the end of it all, Hans and I were heading home and he says: I thought it was just Bill and Kecia?"

Me: It was! He just tagged along.

Hans: We already have the space booked and the run ready to rehearse! Do you want him?

Me: Well shit Hans...He bought all the beer and pizza! What are we going to do?

Hans: He has a lot of personality. I like him.

Me: Know what? I like him too. (Laughing) He bought all the pizza!

We had our first real meeting in 1994 at our house to plan out what we were going to do and more importantly, what to name the show. Jazz music underscored that rehearsal as we laughed and drank and tried to come up with names for the first African American Improv Sketch Comedy Ensemble in Chicago.

Dante came up with "The Rainbow Tribe." I said it sounded like a deranged black ice cream shop Jesse Jackson would open up.

We went on for an hour throwing out names until Bill Underwood said, Why don't we just call ourselves Negroes and get it over with??

We all could not stop laughing. It was Hans who remembered the joke that if black people owned a toy store it would be called "We Be Toys."

Of course he would remember that joke! He grew up around a Nazi! It all came so fast. With all of us screaming and laughing, it was a blur:

Bill Underwood: We should call ourselves We Be Negroes and get it over with!

Dante Richardson: Holy shit that's funny! And, it's so WRONG. We can't get away with it!

Me: How about we class it up? We spell the word "We" French like "Oui." So it's funny when you say it and spell it!

I wrote it out and showed it to everyone. The room erupted with laughter.

Dante: Oh chile, this is too much. You know we are going have to explain this to people.

Me: Oh baby. I got that!

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For years I had been holding on to the idea that Oui Be Negroes was homage to jazz musicians like Josephine Baker who made it in France and did better in Europe than here in the U.S.

For years.

After years of telling this big fish tale I finally said to an interviewer, Do you want the press version or do you want the truth?

There is only one newspaper (The Denver Post) in the ten or so years of Oui Be Negroes that actually printed the story of how five people in an apartment were screaming their asses off on Just getting it over with and calling themselves Oui Be Negroes.

It's even a lie in a whole chapter of another book.

We called ourselves Oui Be Negroes to get it over with while classing it up and making the world believe it was more than what it was. People needed to believe it was more than what it was, so we let them, especially very well meaning Caucasian people who thought the name had so much power behind it.

It did have power. Because we did get away with it.

We got away with seeing people holding up that sign at airports. We got away with it with seeing people turn pale when they couldn't spell or even pronounce the word "Negroes" correctly. We got away with it by going into corporate establishments under our acronym and then coming out and announcing We are Oui Be Negroes!

We got away with doing an African-American Style college stomp at the end of our show and getting the whole audience to chant Oui Be Negroes...and at its highest crescendo of audience chanting, we would go silent after the word "Be" and all of us on stage would here this from the audience:

Audience: NEGROES!

Me: (smirking) Thank you. Good night. (Black out)

Schandefreude at its finest. Before Schandenfreude became the actual name of a theatre in Chicago.

We got away with a lot by being named Oui Be Negroes. The names of our shows reflected the idea of getting away with it: "Can We Dance With Yo' Dates?" "One Drop Is All It Takes." "The Artist Formally Known as Oui Be Negroes." "Pigmeat Markham, Thanks for Everything, Spike Lee."

"All Coons Look Alike to Me."

We didn't even have to make the name of that show up. We just called the name of our show after a popular black jazz musician Coon Song who stole it from another black man during the Coon Music Rage of its day. We performed that song at the top of our show to it being interrupted by two of our members in the audience, with one screaming WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS??

What the fuck, indeed.

We didn't have to go too far to say Lets just get it over with and really show the world how socially and politically hip we are about Black Culture and the things that were so ingrained then and even today.

Lets see if we can get away with this.

And I believe we successfully did. We were the darlings of the national improv circuit. Television shows wanted all of us to audition at one point or another. We just couldn't do too much wrong. And with all of that we worked as hard as any actors and improvisers to do funny, poignant and socially aware comedy. Without the drama therapy part.

You know...Like The Second City Chicago. But with black people.

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