Erykah Badu Premieres One-Woman Show Featuring Sock Puppets, Comedy, Potato Chips

Erykah Badu Premieres One-Woman Show Featuring Sock Puppets, Comedy, Potato Chips

Erykah Badu is currently in the midst of a three-day run of “Live Nudity”, a one-woman show that she is performing at Dallas’ Black Academy of Arts and Letters. Before the initial performance she said the show would be largely improvised– “I have a format, kind of, but I haven’t really had time to write a 60-minute show, so we just have to see what happens,” she said previously, in addition to notes that it was “not biographical”.

Now, footage has surfaced from her first performance, in which Badu did everything from performing with sock puppets to eating a bag of potato chips. 

According to the Dallas Observer:

Yes, Badu dons sock puppets and, using a Rosie Perez accent, has her cotton-clad fists get into a domestic squabble that devolves into repetitions of “fuckin’ shit” until you wish one of the puppets would actually sock the other sock and knock it out. Another bit that goes stale puts Badu center stage slowly eating a bag of potato chips. That’s it. Crunch, crunch, crunch into the mic.

According to the report, Badu also told the audience that the performance was her way “as an artist … to be in control of my inconsistencies.” The show was divided into 13 scenes, and Badu sang for three of them– the rest were a mix of improv and performance art. During the “comedy” portion of the show, Badu reportedly played “an unctuous New Age motivational speaker explaining chakras and forcing audience participation before comically dubbing patrons ‘pedophiles’ and ‘thieves’.”

“It’s kind of stream-of-consciousness. I’m a pretty spontaneous artist,” Badu said of the show in a separate interview with Guide Live. She said she had booked prospective performances in New York and Los Angeles theaters, but that she “chickened out.” 

She continued: “The title really expresses the pure honesty of my many personas. And we’re not going to let you know if I’ll actually be nude or not — you’re going to have to come see.”

Read a full review of the full show here.

Erykah Badu will host the Soul Train Music Awards, airing on BET and Centric on November 29.

Some clips:
 

Love this woman #erykahbadu

A video posted by @deflogik onOct 29, 2015 at 8:16pm PDT

 

Meditate on Deez #erykahbadu #livenudity #dallastx

A photo posted by Yvette (@loveanaturalme) onOct 29, 2015 at 7:02pm PDT

 

#ErykahBadu #onewomanshow #livenudity #meditateondeez

A video posted by Candice (@taylormadepr) onOct 29, 2015 at 10:11pm PDT

 

A photo posted by Maria Ceja (@sailorgirl07) onOct 29, 2015 at 7:03pm PDT

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