In Apartment 33 Giselle surveys the night time skyline of New York and flexes her pricking double jointed thumbs. The key has turned and Mom’s just gone with the last of the boxes. This is it: it’s moving out time. She’s 30, alone, and about to be without a home. Loneliness sweeps in from the cracked open window. Something wicked this way comes. She’s sure of it. Or is she just being paranoid? This is the year that the sun went out, that the west got burnt, that the south got drenched, that the north melted down, and the east pondered its position on the path to nuclear obliteration. This was the year everything turned a peculiar shade of orange. And what to do about it all? In the corner of the room the VCR creaks to life with a screech and summons up a blast from the magnetic past. Look! It’s reluctant psychic Oda Mae Brown from Giselle’s all time movie favourite ? Ghost. IT’S A SIGN! If anyone can help a girl who’s feeling down on her luck, it’s Oda Mae, right? Convicted fraudster, racketeer; a con artist with a heart full of gold, an angel’s wit, and a useful gift for ghosts: she’s a woman for all seasons. What if Oda’s huge dose of #BlackGirlMagic and chutzpah can pull her out of this neo-noir all round funk? And so begins a journey by way of Oda Mae, exploring millennial isolation, black feminist movements (militant and otherwise), the problem of gentrification in places and spaces dear to the heart, and the deja-vu of post-modern storytelling. Through song and action, tongue and cheek, call and response, Giselle LeBleu tells us a story of loss and loneliness, redemption and hope in the big city.

Downstairs