Dasha Kelly Hamilton is not Betty Crocker. She makes that clear in the first moments of Makin’ Cake, her 50-minute performance art piece that had a one night only performance at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke Studio on October 8. Hamilton is currently Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate, and she created this performance piece as a commission from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (yes, the same Kohler as in the company that manufactures faucets and toilets).
Makin’ Cake is designed to engage a theater audience in a conversation about race. The program begins with Hamilton taking center stage, telling her story while supported by two (silent) professional chefs (situated upstage) who are actually baking and frosting cakes. At one side is a video screen. Video clips and slides occasionally pop up – which also offers Hamilton a chance to sip water and rest her voice.
Hamilton, who is Black, appears in a sleeveless red dress and matching red pumps. Although she rarely raises her voice, the red outfit communicates anger to the audience. Although she lists herself as a “community change agent,” in her case this is merely code for “civil rights activist.” Hamilton’s goal is to trace the history of America through a new lens, as viewed by one who represents women, Blacks, Asians, Indigenous People, etc. She is giving voice to the previously voiceless.
Her monologue can be jarring as it jumps back and forth between cake-baking facts and American history. As noted previously, she is quick to say at the outset, “I don’t bake.” She quickly moves on to discuss cake baking over the ages. She begins with the efforts of medieval bakers – who had to not only grind flour, but also the various other elements to prepare for cake baking. She talks about the chemistry involved in the basic elements of cake baking – how flour, butter, milk, salt, eggs, and baking powder combine with each other to give cake its airy, moist texture.
She adds a few interesting anecdotes, too, such as how the rancid butter served in Harvard University dining halls in 1766 provoked “the Butter Rebellion,” one of the country’s first student protests. Hamilton points out that during this period, the only students at Harvard were white males.
Hamilton’s discourse weaves through many other historical tidbits, such as the colonial “land grab” after the Civil War, in which the US government gave large plots of uncharted wilderness to white male settlers. Hamilton notes that the same option was not afforded to women, Blacks and other minorities. Even ex-Confederate (white) soldiers were eliminated from this program, she says.
She then picks up the thread of cake-baking, which eventually leads her to the once-famed Baked Alaska served at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York, starting in 1867. Delmonico’s was the pre-eminent dining spot for New York’s wealthy and famous, and it still exists today. (Other reports credit a French writer with the creation of baked Alaska in 1866, and another credits Antoine’s in New Orleans for first serving baked Alaska.)
About this same time, women were being “urged” (by university extension agents) to join together into canning clubs, which taught women how to preserve fruits and vegetables for serving during the winter months when fresh produce wasn’t available. “Canning clubs” eventually became women’s clubs that predominated from World War II to nearly the present.
In several spots during her presentation, Hamilton stops her storyline to mention that preferred status and the generational acquisition of wealth was not given to women, Blacks and other minorities. If any Caucasian audience members were formerly cluelessness about “white privilege,” Hamilton’s show spells it out for them.
It should be noted that this event attracted one of the most diverse audiences that this critic has seen at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
Following Hamilton’s presentation, everyone in the audience was invited to eat some cake and find a seat in small groups of chairs. The groups were designed to assist people in talking openly and honestly about race. However, Covid protocols (and the small size of the Stiemke’s lobby) prevented more than a handful of people from participating.
Makin’ Cake is scheduled to travel statewide and throughout the country. After making the rounds in Wisconsin, the show’s schedule includes stops in Massachusetts, New York and Virginia.
