Inspiring Women : November 2020

Getting Involved in Acting
I was always in the school plays. But it was when I turned 12 I
realized how much I loved acting. I used to act for my family and
at school all the time. One of my favorites was Bambi in 5 th grade
and I was Thumper. My favorite line was: “If you can’t say
anything nice say nothing at all.” Then I realized this was a job,
you can get paid for playing? This is cool.
But all the interesting roles at that time were played by white
women and I am not white. The world that I grew up in was full
of stereotypical roles of black women.
I got my first real break here in Germany, getting a role in a stage
production for the Theater am Kurfürstendamm. Called Monsieur
Amédée, we performed for a few weeks in Berlin, then we were on
the road through Germany for about two and a half years; in
Germany, Austria, Switzerland.
We did have to deal with an incident in 1998 when we were in a
really conservative part of Germany. As soon as I walked out on stage, a fifth of the theater got up
and left. We later learned that they had complained to the management, saying “why was there an
‘N-word’ on the stage? This was not how it was advertised.” They thought they were coming to see
something French, and then all of sudden there was a black woman on the stage. This was
disturbing to them, so they left. It was a French comedy, all in German, just the title of the play was
in French.
It was a strange thing to deal with while staying in character in my first acting roll on stage in
German! At first, I was shocked. Then I was like, why are you shocked? Fortunately they didn’t disturb
32 On the set of Stromberg as a cleaning lady with actor, Christoph Maria Herbst