Pete Freedman
Erykah Badu Has Settled On A Name For Her New One-Human Show: Live Nudity.
Last we checked in with Erykah Badu about her announced upcoming one-woman show for The Dallas Black Academy of Arts and Letters' 39th season, she told us outright that she hadn't yet put pen to paper for the affair — this just a month and a half out from the event's start.
“I haven't written it yet,” she conceded on September 9 about her show, which is slated to run for three nights, on October 29, 30 and 31, at the Naomi Bruton Theatre in Downtown Dallas. (Tickets to the show run $40 to $100 and can be purchased right here.)
At that point, she was toying then with the idea of improvising the whole thing right on the spot — and, while we suppose that's still possible, it seems the show is starting to take on at least a semblance of a shape. Or, uh, has it? Tough to say. Today, over on Guidelive, TBAAL founder and director Curtis King describes the show as “a reflection of her journey” even as Badu denies that it's a “linear life story” and says that it's “not biographical.”
More information, actually, can be gleaned from the show's poster, which Badu released through her social media channels earlier this week.
The highlights there?
• She's calling the thing Live Nudity, and, if nothing else, that's something with which we already know Badu is comfortable.
• Her tagline for the play is “Meditate on Deez,” which stands as proof that not even Badu can resist a good Deez Nutz joke.
• She's no longer calling it a “one-woman” show, but rather a “one-human” show.
• Perhaps most revealing of all, however, is the note that seems to show that, as ever, Badu is doing this performance because she wants to and not because she's doing some sort of favor to TBAAL. Reads that portion: “Partial proceeds go to Badu Private Jet :).”
We still have no clue what the show's going to be about — in the same above-linked Guidelive piece, Badu's show is described as “fit for all ages” even as Badu teases that her title could, in fact, be a literal description of what's to come at it — but at least the poster confirms one thing for us all. Many apologies to everyone who's actively clawing away in the city's growing stand-up comedy scene, but Badu is the funniest comic in Dallas.
