the Blacker the Berry / perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition

Kameron Locke's theatre production, “the Blacker the Berry / perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition” made its world premiere at the Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival in August 2024 at Fleetstreet Theater.

Based on James Baldwin, the African-American writer who wrote about topics of race, identity, and sexuality, his friendship with his German editor, Fritz J. Raddatz, and their encounters with being queer, acceptance, reconciliation, and love. This production coincided with what would have James Baldwin’s 100th in August 2024. He is tied with Hamburg through visits to meet his publishers at Rowohlt, the attempt to get his friend Tony Maynard out of prison, and a lifelong friendship with his editor at Rowohlt and later ZEIT feuilleton editor Fritz J. Raddatz.

The Chicago-born, Hamburg-based performance artist Kameron Locke centered on this as the starting point for this production. Inspired by Baldwin’s texts and his correspondence with Raddatz, he draws connections between his own identity and the two men, who were known for their sharp, analytical texts, their political stance, and for being openly homosexual despite social rejection. In collaboration with two other performers, Locke interweaves their writings with his own narratives, dance, sound and other forms of storytelling to create an intimate performance that meditates on identity, race and the shared experience of being openly queer, as well as the relationship with fathers, reconciliation and the activist potential to love.