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Opinion: Fatuma Adar’s She’s Not Special: Exploring your trauma, sort of

Opinion: Fatuma Adar’s She’s Not Special: Exploring your trauma, sort of

Blending stand-up comedy with music and theatre, a Toronto-based writer engages with ideas of Blackness, Muslim identity, trauma and Linkin Park 

By: Sophia de Guzman

Fatuma Adar for her show at the Next Stage Festival, She’s Not Special (Courtesy of Fringe Toronto)

Adapted to an online theatrical experience, Fatuma Adar’s She’s Not Special at Fringe Toronto’s Next Stage Festival sets out to tackle the myriad of contradictions and questions posed when a Black, Muslim writer must create for a white industry. Adar combines bare-boned stand-up comedy and earnest on-stage confessions with a variety of musical numbers into a 50-minute late-in-life coming-of-age that circles themes of identity-based trauma, self-worth, and self-actualization. 

The show opens by following Adar getting ready to perform the show we are all about to see. Supposed texts the writer receives as friends and family get ready to see her show appear on the screen and are read aloud; the words of encouragement get increasingly cacophonous until one phrase is repeated over and over: “Black excellence”.

Lights over a dark stage then ignite to reveal Adar, sitting on a stool, alone on stage. She begins a rap number to introduce the on-stage portion of her show, the lyrics hyping her and the audience up, reminiscent of popular “bad bitch” attitudes in 2010s millennial culture and popular artists of the time, such as Lizzo. A line that’s pretty summative of the number, “Be more like my bra / Be more supporting”.

Within the first 15 minutes of the show, it’s clear that Adar’s satire and humour will be the vehicles through which she will reluctantly “explore her trauma,” which is also a central line in the musical number that follows.

 At this point, at the end of the first two of five musical numbers, it seems Adar has said most of what she intends to with this show. Adar does not want to explore her identity-based trauma, yet feels she is demanded to by her industry and, in a broader context, she fears much of what she wants has been shaped by white society. 

Whether these are “valid” things to base a show around is not a point of contention; obviously, they are. However, She’s Not Special, either intentionally or unintentionally, poses a grand question: When embarking on an artistic pursuit that is entirely based on your membership of marginalized communities, what is your responsibility to said communities? 

Ostensibly, the answer given by Adar is none. 

Before I proceed further in my review of the show, I should be clear — I’m not Black or Muslim, so my criticism can only be taken so seriously. There are aspects of Adar’s show and artistry that could have very well eluded me as a consequence of my ignorance. Still, as the show revolves around dealing with identity-based trauma as a creator who is also a woman of colour, I, along with many others that are not necessarily Black or Muslim, could identify with the issues at hand. 

Adar makes quick work to express plainly, “Black excellence is a scam”, touching on a sentiment shared by many Black women coming out of the now endlessly mocked “girl boss” era of feminism — why must Black people, women especially, be excellent to be celebrated? Recognized, even? 

She further points out that the desire she has to achieve the “excellence” defined by the white society that she lives in feels even more futile as she acknowledges the systemic disadvantages she faces. Many Black women and women of colour can likely relate to these disadvantages; however, Adar’s message on Black excellence is obscured by smaller, almost bitter, throwaway jokes. 

For instance, during the course of this bit, she uses her “3-minute attempt” at Beyoncé’s rather intense pre-Coachella diet, as a sort of analogy for how impossible the standard for Black excellence is. But poking fun at the “joyless” diet comes off as ignorant to the tremendous pressure Beyoncé has faced to fit in the white beauty standard. This is not to insinuate that billionaire Beyoncé has had a hard life, but it is no secret that commenting on women’s bodies, and by extension, the things they often must do to maintain them, seems a bit low. 

Moreover, for Adar to frame her show as a bid for understanding that, as a Black creative, there are countless undue obstacles to cross in order to be recognized for her talent, and in the same breath laugh at the almost cruel diet a Black pop star felt pressured to go on post-pregnancy to maintain her relevance is fundamentally contradicting the spirit of the original point. 

Again, this sounds like a small throwaway joke, and certainly not enough to sour a whole production. Yet, this is the first in a trend for Adar. Instead of pointing the finger at her obvious oppressors — the white creative industry and just plain, old racism — she distances herself from Blackness. This attitude shines through best during the most visually interesting and high production musical numbers in the show.

 It’s a parody of a grunge-rock music video from the early 2000s (think Evanescence), and the song centres around an argument that nine-year-old Adar had with a boy in her class named Devante. While Devante thought Ludacris to be the best lyricist of all time, Adar thought it was Linkin Park. Consequently, Devante called her an “Oreo”, a derogatory term used by Black people, to describe a Black person that they see as wishing to be a part of white society or establishment. 

The song that follows then discusses how what she likes is not “conventionally Black” and that she is, in a sense, resentful that young Black people (she’s 30) are now able to freely be “alternative.” She briefly reconciles with the greater point that one would think that the song is about: she worries that what she likes and what she thinks may be more influenced by whiteness than she can control. 

But then, against my sincerest wishes, she comes back to say that “they” called her “Oreo” and importantly, she doesn’t know who “they” are. In the song, she doesn’t really allude to anyone calling her “Oreo” except for Devante. At no point in this song, or in the show really, does Adar directly point to whiteness as her oppressor, not even really at racism as the source of her issues. 

Of course, it’s not very artistic to state things explicitly, but Adar does decide to make fun of, or in some way distance herself from trap music, rappers and her five-year-old self’s natural baby hairs. 

So all of this said, we return to the principal question I think was posed by this show: When embarking on an artistic pursuit that is entirely based on your membership of marginalized communities, what is your responsibility to said communities? 

Ultimately, I don’t think we can critique how someone expresses the pain that they felt as a consequence of racism, misogyny, or any other form of discrimination. But I wonder, like Adar states in her show, if we “use” our trauma, particularly that which is based on our identities, do we not have a responsibility to at least acknowledge the true perpetrator? To identify that while we have been hurt because of the communities we are a part of, it is not those communities that hurt us? 

These are questions that are, at the end of the day, up to everyone to answer on their own. She’s Not Special has received critical acclaim from multiple critics in publications like NOW Toronto and CBC, so it seems many resonate with Adar’s answers.

She’s Not Special was available to stream at the Next Stage Festival in February 2022.