Dasha Kelly Hamilton - Makin' Cake
“I don’t bake,” Dasha Kelly Hamilton emphatically states at the start of her show, Makin’ Cake. “... Baking is the least of my concerns.”
What did concern Hamilton for the next 50 minutes at the show’s Oct. 8 debut at the Milwaukee Rep’s Stiemke Studio (no intermission) is the “community conversation” she’s created using baking as an analogy. She takes us through history as she deals with race, culture, women’s roles, class structure, inequity and more. It’s a lot to bite off—no matter how you slice it.
Hamilton mixes a lot of ingredients together as we watch her explain the histories of everything from the discovery and patents of baking powder to the rise of the “New American Housewife,” which led to the development of that timeless dessert—cake.
Her rapid-fire use of alliteration speaks to her powerful understanding of language as Wisconsin’s first Black woman poet laureate. So, think of Makin’ Cake as part history lesson, part podcast and part real life onstage demonstration of, what else? Makin’ and bakin’ cake. Right behind her—stage left and stage right—is chef and chocolatier Walter Matthew and baker Tamu Jones (Hamilton’s real-life sister and the baker in the family, along with their mother).
Hamilton uses rear screen projection to illustrate the time periods through the history of cake as she speaks of “the three layers of America.” She cleverly draws comparisons between the bottom layer (lower classes) and middle layer (middle classes) fully supporting the top layer (upper classes), literally and figuratively. At times, Makin’ Cake veers off the recipe card, but finds its way back in fascinating ways: how pineapple upside down cake came to be when a company named Dole started producing pineapple in cans and asked the nation’s housewives for recipes.
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And for those with a sweet tooth (if you don’t have one at the start of this show, you will by the end) there was cake waiting for you in the lobby. And the best part is ... you get to eat it too.
Makin’ Cake will embark on a national tour, with additional productions in Wisconsin. For more information, visit: dashakelly.com
